Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Benin pledge to cooperate against militant group that has kidnapped 200 schoolgirls African leaders at a summit in Paris have agreed on a regional plan of action to combat Boko Haram, the Islamist group that has abducted more than 200 girls and threatened to sell them into slavery. In a rare show of unity, the leaders of Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Benin pledged...
Muslims fleeing Christian mobs say new state needed as UN warns of 'ethnic-religious cleansing' but analysts dismiss idea Rebels in the Central African Republic are calling for the establishment of a new country as a radical solution to the worsening sectarian conflict . The name the Republic of Northern Central Africa and a design for a national flag, are circulating by mobile phone in the dusty town...
International development secretary says system must be overhauled to ensure that more is done to prepare for disasters The global humanitarian aid system is being "stretched to breaking point" by climate change, war, population growth and extremism, and must be overhauled to ensure that more is done to prepare for disasters rather than merely relieve them, the British government will warn...
So-called "whingeing feminists" won a victory this month. The new bill to make gender equality a factor in Britian's aid budgets is up there with the slavery abolition act in helping women around the world, says Mariella Frostrup Mariella Frostrup ...
As Muslims in Central African Republic flee the Christian militia, African Arguments talks to Donatella Rovera about what went wrong ...
Neighbour state has accepted 70,000 who have escaped from Bangui and reprisal attacks against Muslims The search is thorough. A few weeks ago weapons and uniforms were found in a vehicle. Beside the road, suitcases are unloaded from trucks overloaded with jerry cans and mattresses. A pickup carrying Chadian forces roars by. A few hundred metres away about 50 French military vehicles and 200 men are...
Key country in Mali armed intervention says its security forces have arrested group for plot against President Idriss Deby The government of Chad has said security forces foiled a coup attempt against President Idriss Deby that was in the planning for several months. "Today, May 1, a group of individuals with bad intentions sought to carry out an action to destabilise the institutions of the republic,"...
Armed ivory poachers are reported to have killed 86 elephants in less than a week, including pregnant females and calves Poachers in south-west Chad have killed at least 86 elephants including 33 pregnant females in less than a week, in a potentially devastating blow to one of central Africa's last remaining elephant populations. Groups of elephants follow traditional migration routes during the dry...
s bad. Very bad," he says quietly. The Reuters reports describes a convoy of more than two dozen vehicles carrying heavily armed Seleka rebels leaving Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), and heading north. The news fills the city's archbishop with gloom. "They needed to be held accountable for what they had done. We cannot have impunity," he says wearily. His friend and companion...
' says the 17-year-old entrepreneur whose Café de l'Aéroport is a discarded UN container. Return custom is guaranteed because many travellers embarking at Goz Beïda – a gravel airstrip used almost exclusively by the UN and where delays are common – have large expense allowances at their disposal. But Hissène does not consider himself particularly fortunate: "The guy who was here before me is rich now....
time. Then I know the child has received pentavalent 1 and is due for the second vaccine." Tissi, on the border with Sudan's South Darfur and the CAR, lies in scrubland 800km from N'Djamena. So distant is it from the Chadian capital that the currency in use is Sudanese. Armed incursions from Darfur are frequent across the porous border, endangering humanitarian convoys on the 11-hour drive from the...
s flagship population report. If current trends continue, the number of girls under 15 having babies in this region is projected to increase from 1.8 in 2010 to 3 million over the next 17 years. This would take the estimated total number of under-18s giving birth in sub-Saharan Africa to more than 16 million by 2030, up from 10.1 million in 2010. The report , Motherhood in childhood: facing the challenge...
short term' when humanitarian organisations continue to operate in certain contexts for years? While none of the above questions are new, finding appropriate, context-specific answers remains problematic. The distinction between humanitarian assistance and development has implications beyond simply prescribing a timetable for intervention, it influences financing mechanisms, programme design and implementation,...
s project in Am Timan, Salamat region. The estimated death toll is more than 50; the town has a population of 213,000. At its outreach sites, the charity's teams said 73% of patients they have been treating were suffering from the mosquito-borne disease. One in four deaths in Chad is attributed to malaria and it is the most common cause of death in children. MSF said it was not unusual for cases to...
s style, she announced the appointment herself . A new prime minister forms a new cabinet. It was thought that Touré would have the cabinet by the end of the week. She had it by Monday evening . That's how Mimi Touré, as she is called, works. Touré is known as the Iron Lady . Every woman who rises to a certain level of government becomes an Iron Lady in the press. The men are, well, just guys. Whichever...
s oil came onstream, large infrastructure projects disguise a country failing to fruitfully invest its revenue Four years ago, residents of Koudalwa village, near Bongor in south-western Chad, noticed 4x4 vehicles carrying Chinese people into the bush. They were searching for a good spot to build a central processing facility for their oil extraction project, having bought oil wells from Encana , a...
s arrest and forthcoming trial in Senegal offers some hope to those who suffered under his regime "I would just like to look Hissène Habré in the eye and ask him why?" says Clement Abaifouta, who spent four years in jail after he was arrested in 1985 during the former Chadian president's "reign of terror". Abaifouta still does not understand what he did to justify the incarceration. "I was a 25-year-old...
s support for dictator accused of killing and torturing tens of thousands of opponents offers cautionary tale for American intervention Paramilitary troops from Senegal's rapid intervention force surprised exiled former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré in his plush Dakar villa on Sunday morning, charging him on Tuesday with crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture. The cunning and charismatic...
s president, the Rwandan economist Donald Kaberuka , presented a global action plan addressing the problem along with the World Wildlife Fund . "This is not just an environmental problem," according to the bank's Marrakech Declaration. "The violence and damage now threaten peace and the rule of law, as well as the revenue many African countries earn from tourism and other wildlife uses; some of the...
s least developed countries Félicité sees nothing unreasonable about her demands. Seated in one of the few shady spots in her yard, she details what she would like to obtain for her family: a decent wage, enough to eat, a health service and cheap building materials so everyone can have a home. "And school really free of charge for all children," adds this resident of Dembé, a poor neighbourhood of...