Guinea President Alpha Conde is appealing to citizens of the West African nation to unite as he begins his third term in office.In a speech following his inauguration in Conakry on Tuesday, Conde called on Guineans to renew national solidarity to heal wounds and cement terms of peace.Conde’s appeal followed deadly clashes during the October 18 vote boycotted by opposition candidates upset that Conde pushed through constitutional changes allowing him to run despite a two-term limit.Conde’s main rival, former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo, claims he won the election, alleging irregularities in the official poll results.The president of the election commission declared Conde the winner with just over 59% of the votes, citing the fact the opposition did not produce evidence to back their claim.
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Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram claimed responsibility Tuesday for the abduction of more than 300 schoolboys last Friday in northwestern Nigeria. Nigerian authorities have yet to respond to the claim. However, the Katsina State governor on Monday said he had begun negotiating with the kidnappers. Security expert Kabir Adamu believes bandits, not Boko Haram, abducted the schoolboys. Nigerian soldiers walk inside the Government Science where gunmen abducted students in Kankara, in northwestern Katsina state, Nigeria, Dec. 15, 2020.”We’re of the opinion that (Boko Haram) did not carry out the abduction,” Adamu said. “It was carried out by bandits, but it is a known fact that (the) group has reached out to these bandits and has attempted to recruit them.” Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State of West Africa Province, operate predominantly in the Nigeria’s northeast, while bandits initially blamed for the attack operate in the country’s northwest. But the claims by Boko Haram raise concerns that the group may be expanding its terror campaign to other regions, Adamu said. “There have been videos emerging from forested parts of the northwest with some of these bandit groups claiming allegiance to (Boko Haram sect leader Abubakar) Shekau, and he himself has shown that he’s interested in expanding his territorial enclave up to the northwest,” Adamu said.An empty dormitory full of schoolboys’ belongings is seen after gunmen abducted students at the Government Science School in Kankara, in northwestern Katsina state, Nigeria, Dec. 15, 2020.At least 333 students are still missing after some of the boys escaped to safety the night of the attack. Nigerian security forces said on Monday they had surrounded a hideout suspected to be the den of the kidnappers. However, rights groups continue to point fingers at authorities, saying government corruption has enabled terrorism to linger in Nigeria. Last week, the International Criminal Court said it will launch a full-blown investigation on war crimes committed by Boko Haram and the Nigerian military following several calls from groups such as Amnesty International. “These attacks are crimes under international law,” said Seun Bakare, a spokesperson at the human rights group. “They’re a direct attack on the right to education, and the government must swiftly rescue these school kids and, in addition to that, bring perpetrators to book.” Nigerian President Muhummadu Buhari promised to prioritize the fight against insurgency during his campaign for office in 2015. But five years later, the country’s security situation continues to worsen. 
 
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About 2.3 million children in the Tigray region of Ethiopia have been cut off from humanitarian assistance for over a month, the United Nations said Tuesday.
 
“We are extremely concerned that the longer access to them is delayed, the worse their situation will become as supplies of food, including ready-to-use therapeutic food for the treatment of child malnutrition, medicines, water, fuel and other essentials run low,” UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore wrote in a statement Tuesday.
 
Fore said the U.N. was prepared to provide essential services to malnourished children in the embattled region but needed access to Tigray that Addis Ababa is currently not allowing.
 
Telecommunications have been cut and access limited to the Tigray region since violence broke out on November 4, making it difficult for humanitarian agencies to evaluate the needs there.
 
Tigray, the northernmost of Ethiopia’s nine regions, defiantly held elections in September in which Debretsion Gebremichael emerged the leader, despite Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s decision to postpone the polls, citing the coronavirus pandemic.
 
Ethiopia’s government took military action against Tigray after the region’s forces attacked a military camp of federal troops November 4, according to Abiy. The Abiy government considers the regional government, led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, as illegitimate. The TPLF denied staging the attack.
 
Since November, more than 50,000 people have fled violence in Tigray and headed to Sudan.
 
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There has been widespread condemnation of separatists in Cameroon for a string of attacks and abductions of traditional village chiefs. Anglophone rebels released two chiefs on Monday but killed another for defying their demand not to participate in Cameroon’s December 6 regional elections.Scores of Dibanda villagers, near southwestern Cameroon’s Buea town, are mourning their chief, whose body was found Sunday after he was abducted by rebels. Cameroon authorities say Chief Emmanuel Ngalle Ikome was abducted on December 13 with two other village chiefs – they were freed on Monday unharmed.  His daughter, 37-year-old Libonge Epossi, says the anglophone separatists also abducted four family members when they attacked the palace.  She says a few dozen people who were in the palace escaped to neighboring houses and bushes when the rebels were shooting indiscriminately in the air.  Epossi says Chief Ikome was abducted along with two other village chiefs who had come for the inauguration of the newly constructed Dibanda palace building. Cameroon’s government says rebels abducted four other village chiefs in the northwest region last week.  Two were immediately released but the whereabouts of the other two is unknown.  Buea lawmaker Donald Malomba Esembe, who visited the bereaved family on Monday, says the rebels killed her father because he took part in Cameroon’s first regional elections on December 6.Cameroon’s Ruling Party Scores Landslide Victory in Regional ElectionsCentral government officials are promising to reduce their grip on powerHe called for villagers to arm themselves against the rebels.  “It is very preoccupying that the chiefs are specifically being targeted,” Esembe said. “I am calling on the people of Buea, people of goodwill, each of us has to become a vigilante{militia group member} in our villages and communities.”Cameroon’s rights groups and political parties condemned the attacks on village chiefs as a desecration of African traditions.The separatists accuse the chiefs of collaborating against them with the central government in Yaoundé.   Buea administrative official Abba Abdouraman also visited the palace of the slain chief.  He says the military will collaborate with militias to stop separatists from attacking village chiefs.”We have come to condole with the bereaved family, but to a larger extent to condole with the entire community,” Abdouraman said. “We have also come here to assure the bereaved family of the unflinching resolve of the state of Cameroon to stand by them, to fight those who are against peace.”Cameroon authorities in 2018 said a majority of village chiefs in the troubled western regions were fleeing the area to escape rebel attacks.  Cameroon’s government in September pleaded with the chiefs to return to their palaces to take part in the December regional elections.  Cameroon organized the elections in part to help resolve the four-year separatist conflict, which the United Nations says has claimed more than 3,000 lives and displaced over 430,000.  But separatist leaders in social media threatened to kill anyone who supported the polls.  The separatists are fighting for an independent state for English-speaking Cameroonians, who they say have been marginalized by the country’s French-speaking majority.
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Foreign tourists resumed flying into Botswana in November after months of closed borders due to COVID-19.  Lonely Planet in October ranked Botswana’s Okavango Delta fourth on its list of places in the world to visit.  But the coronavirus lockdown has left many tourist companies struggling to stay in business. Mqondisi Dube reports from Chobe, Botswana.Camera: Reference Sibanda  Produced by: Marcus Harton 
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When Tunisia’s embattled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali delivered a last-ditch speech promising new freedoms to a country in revolt, Nadia Khiari sketched her cat delivering the same address to a group of mice. The next day, January 14, 2011, Ben Ali fled into exile, forced out by weeks of unprecedented mass protests against his rule. Ten years later, her cat remains in rude health, and his cartoon alter-ego Willis from Tunis has become an icon of the revolution. “I decided to use this character to tell the story of what was happening in my country,” said Khiari, a painter and lecturer in fine arts. Pouncing on Tunisia’s unprecedented new freedoms, she began posting bitter and witty political cartoons on Facebook, all featuring cats. “For me as an artist, it was a true revolution, because from one day to the next I was able to express myself freely,” she said. Her audience, initially just family and friends, has grown to more than 55,000 followers today. Tunisian cartoonist Nadia Khiari, creator of the “Willis from Tunis” cartoon cat series, poses with her latest Willis book, in Tunis on Dec. 12, 2020.In November she published her latest Willis from Tunis book, a selection of her best work over the decade since the uprising.  Tunisia’s revolution, with its demands for “work, freedom and national dignity,” sparked a string of revolts across the Arab world.  The North African country has since been praised for its democratic transition.  But many Tunisians, disillusioned by economic woes, official corruption and pitiful public services, say they have gained little — apart from to right to say what they think. In one of Khiari’s cartoons from 2018, Willis lies silently on the floor, a boot stamped on his face.  “Before the revolution,” reads the caption. The next frame shows the same cat under the same boot but letting out a scream: “AAAAIIIE!” The caption reads: “Today, happily we have freedom of expression.” Growing corruptionKhiari says she has always enjoyed drawing, but Ben Ali’s fall let her creativity out of the bag. Before the protests against his rule, she had hinted at political subjects in the titles of her paintings, but “a satirical picture as such, a political cartoon — no, never,” she said. Today, she no longer pussyfoots around tough subjects. Instead, she takes regular swipes at Tunisia’s post-revolt political class, seen by many as just as corrupt as Ben Ali’s regime. “Hide your wallet,” one of her cartoon cats tells another as they walk toward the government’s headquarters in Tunis. “There are lots of robberies in this area.” This Thursday will mark 10 years since Tunisian fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi, 26, set fire to himself, sparking the uprising.  Ahead of the anniversary, Tunisia has seen protests demanding jobs and investment in long-marginalized regions, amid an economic crisis amplified by the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of medics from crumbling public hospitals protested last week to demand the health minister’s resignation, after a young doctor plunged to his death in a hospital lift shaft. The tragedy was widely blamed on official corruption and indifference. In this environment, Khiari’s cartoons have struck a chord.  “The government fights corruption,” reads the title of another of her cartoons, showing a cat in suit and tie sitting behind a desk. “If you want to speed up the process,” the cat purrs with a wide grin, “that can be arranged.” Taboos swept away Khiari says that while the media describes Tunisia as a “laboratory of democracy,” the messy reality is closer to that of a building site.  But she told AFP at a chic art and craft boutique she runs with her husband, the revolution did sweep away “lots of taboos.” “We talk about religious questions. We talk about sexual questions, homosexuals, women’s bodies, power,” she said. She regularly tackles themes of women’s rights and gender inequality in her work. In one cartoon, a female kitten asks why her brother gets more pocket money than herself. “It’s to prepare you for later on,” her mother replies. Khiari is on the board of Cartooning for Peace, set up by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and French cartoonist Plantu to “fight with humor for the respect of cultures and freedoms.” That is an ongoing battle in Tunisia, where press freedom watchdog RSF says the climate for the media and journalists has worsened since the election of a new president, Kais Saied, in October 2019.   For Khiari, that means the fight that began a decade ago is far from over.  “The attempts to silence us again have never ended, never, because freedom of expression bothers (some people),” she said. “So unfortunately, it’s a struggle every day to preserve that freedom of expression.”
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