NOUAKCHOTT — Mauritania’s President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani is on track to secure a second mandate after positioning the country as a strategic ally of the West in a region swept by coups and violence, provisional results showed on Sunday.   

Ghazouani, who is seeking reelection on a pledge of providing security and economic growth, obtained 55% of votes, according to provisional results from over 80% polling stations, the country’s independent electoral commission said on Sunday afternoon. His main rival, anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, received 22.4% of votes, the commission said, with a turnout of almost 55%.   

The full results are expected on Sunday evening but Ghazouani, a former army chief and the current president of the African Union, has a comfortable lead.   

Although his opponents accused him of corruption and mismanagement, he remains popular among Mauritanians who see him as a beacon of stability. The vote is taking place in a particularly tense regional climate, with Mauritania’s neighbors shaken by military coups and jihadi violence.   

Mauritania is rich in natural resources including iron ore, copper, zinc, phosphate, gold, oil and natural gas. It is poised to become a gas producer by the end of the year, with the planned launch of the BP-operated Greater Tortue Ahmeyin offshore gas project at the border with Senegal.   

Yet almost 60% of the population lives in poverty, according to the United Nations, working as farmers or employed in the informal sector. With few economic opportunities for young people at home, many are attempting to reach Europe, and some are even trying to get to the United States through Mexico.   

“The last word belongs to the Mauritanian voters,” Ghazouni said after voting in Ksar, a suburb of the capital. “I commit myself to respecting their choice.”   

Saturday’s vote unfolded peacefully, according to observers.   

“Nothing has been detected so far and the CENI has not received any complaints,” said Taghioullah Ledhem, the spokesman for CENI, the country’s independent electoral commission. But some opposition candidates held a different view.   

Biram Dah, who came second in the vote according to the provisional results, warned on Sunday against “an electoral coup d’état for the benefit of Ghazouani, who was defeated by voters.”   

During a press conference on Sunday morning, Biram accused the electoral commission of fraud by giving Ghazouni thousands of votes “added out of nowhere.”   

“We are going to oppose this electoral hold-up,” he said. “I ask Ghazouani to respect his solemn commitment to comply with the will of the people.” 

  
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Kanyabayonga, DR Congo — The M23 militia group continued to gain ground in the war-torn east of DR Congo, with more towns falling into the hands of the rebels, sources told AFP Sunday.   

Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of backing the Tutsi-led M23 rebel group which has seized swathes of eastern DR Congo in an ongoing offensive launched in 2021 — something Kigali denies.   

On Sunday the M23 (March 23 Movement) moved into the town of Kirumba, in North Kivu province, which has been rocked by violence since 2021 when the group resumed its armed campaign in the region.    

Kirumba is the biggest town in the south of the Lubero territory, where the group has been advancing, and a big commercial center with more than 120,000 residents.    

“We regret that the large entity [the town] has since yesterday evening been in the hands of the M23,” a local official, who did not wish to be named, told AFP on Sunday.   

He said the group is now heading north from the town.   

‘They are numerous’ 

“They are numerous, some arrived on foot and others in vehicles,” a civil society leader who asked to remain unnamed told AFP.   

Another local official, who also said the rebels had arrived in the town, said they are “waiting for the government’s reaction.”  

President Felix Tshisekedi held a meeting of DR Congo’s defense council on Saturday.   

During a speech to mark the country’s independence day, Tshisekedi said “clear and firm instructions have been given for the safeguarding of the territorial integrity of our country”, without giving more details.   

On Saturday M23 seized the strategic town of Kanyabayonga, as other surrounding areas also fell into the hands of the rebels.   

Kanyabayonga is home to more than 60,000 people and tens of thousands of people have fled there in recent months, driven from their homes by the advance of the rebels.    

The town is considered a pathway to Butembo and Beni in the north, strongholds of the Nande tribe and major commercial centers.    

It is in the Lubero territory, the fourth territory in the North Kivu province that the group has entered after Rutshuru, Nyiragongo and Masisi.   

Other towns near Kanyabayonga have also been seized by M23, according to officials and security sources.   

Five people including three civilians and two soldiers have been killed in the town of Kayna where the rebels took control on Saturday, Console Sindani vice president of Kayna civil society, told AFP on Sunday.   

The mayor of the commune of Kayna, Clovis Kanyauru told AFP on Sunday there had been three deaths.   

DR Congo’s mineral-rich east has been the scene of violence for 30 years by armed groups, both local and foreign-based, going back to regional wars of the 1990s. 

 
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GABORONE, Botswana — Violent extremist groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group are growing in size and influence across Africa, fueling worries that as they improve their tactics they could attack the U.S. or Western allies.

U.S. defense and military officials described the threats and their concerns about growing instability in Africa, where a number of coups have put ruling juntas in control, leading to the ouster of American troops and a decline in U.S. intelligence gathering.

“Threats like Wagner, terrorist groups and transnational criminal organizations continue to sow instability in multiple regions,” Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in opening remarks Tuesday at a conference of African chiefs of defense in Botswana. “I think we can all agree, what happens in one part of the world, does not stay in one part of the world.”

Wagner is the Russian mercenary group that has gone into African nations to provide security as Western forces, including from the U.S. and France, have been pushed out. The group is known for its brutality, and human rights organizations have accused its members of raping and killing civilians.

While Brown only touched briefly on the terror threat in the region, it was a key topic among others at the conference and spurred questions from military chiefs in the audience after his speech. They wanted to know what the U.S. could do to help stem the spread of insurgents in West Africa, the Gulf of Guinea and the Sahel.

This is the first time that the chiefs of defense conference has been held on African soil. And it is the first time the U.S. joint chiefs chairman has visited a sub-Saharan country since 1994, when Gen. John Shalikashvili visited Rwanda and Zaire.

A senior U.S. defense official said al-Qaida linked groups — such as al-Shabab in Somalia and Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, known as JNIM, in the Sahel region — are the largest and most financially viable insurgencies. JNIM is active in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and is looking to expand into Benin and Togo, which it uses as hubs to rest, recuperate, get financing and gather weapons but also has increased attacks there.

At the same time, the Islamic State group has key cells in West Africa and in the Sahel. The defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a threat assessment, said the Islamic State cells were getting increasing direction from the group’s leadership that relocated to northern Somalia. That has included how to kidnap Westerners for ransom, how to learn better military tactics, how to hide from drones and how to building their own small quadcopters.

A U.S. military airstrike in Somalia on May 31 targeted Islamic State militants and killed three, according to U.S. Africa Command. U.S. officials have said the strike targeted the group’s leader, but the defense official said Monday that it’s still unclear if he was killed.

Roughly 200 Islamic State insurgents are in Somalia, so they are vastly outnumbered by al-Shabab, which has grown in size to between 10,000 and 12,000.

The growth of the insurgent groups within Africa signals the belief by both al-Qaida and the Islamic State group that the continent is a ripe location for jihadism, where extremist ideology can take root and expand, the official said.

And it comes as the U.S. was ordered to pull out its 1,000 troops from Niger in the wake of last July’s coup and also about 75 from Chad. Those troop cuts, which shut down a critical U.S. counterterrorism and drone base at Agadez, hamper intelligence gathering in Niger, said Gen. Michael Langley, head of U.S. Africa Command.

Surveillance operations before the coup gave the U.S. a greater ability to get intelligence on insurgent movements. Now, he said, the key goal is a safe and secure withdrawal of personnel and equipment from both Agadez and a smaller U.S. facility near the airport.

Langley met with Niger’s top military chief, Brig. Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, during the conference, and said military-to-military communications continue but that it’s yet to be determined how much the new transitional government will deal with the U.S.

Currently, he said, there are about 400 troops still at Agadez and 200 near the airport.

But, he added that “as we’re in transition and resetting, we need to maintain capabilities to get enough intelligence to identify warnings of a threat out there.”

Langley said the U.S. is still trying to assess the militant groups’ capabilities as they grow.

“Yes, they’ve been growing in number. Have they been growing in capability where they can do what we call external ops attacks on the homeland and attacks on allies, whether we’re talking about Europe or anyone? That’s what we closely watch,” he said. “I’d say it has the potential as they grow in numbers.”

Both Langley and Brown spoke more extensively about the need for the U.S. and African nations to communicate more effectively and work together to solve security and other problems.

And Brown acknowledged that the U.S. needs to “do better at understanding the perspectives of others, ensuring their voices and expertise don’t get drowned out.”

The U.S has struggled to maintain relations with African nations as many foster growing ties to Russia and China.

Some African countries have expressed frustration with the U.S. for forcing issues, such as democracy and human rights, that many see as hypocrisy, given Washington’s close ties to some autocratic leaders elsewhere. Meanwhile, Russia offers security assistance without interfering in politics, making it an appealing partner for military juntas that seized power in places like Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso in recent years.
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NAIROBI, Kenya — In the heart of the crowded Kibera neighborhood in Kenya’s capital, Jacinter Awino shares a small tin house with her husband and four children. She envies those who have escaped such makeshift homes to more permanent dwellings under the government’s affordable housing plan.

The 33-year-old housewife and her mason husband are unable to raise the $3,800 purchase price for a one-room government house. Their tin one was constructed for $380 and lacks a toilet and running water.

“Those government houses are like a dream for us, but our incomes simply don’t allow it,” Awino said.

The government plans to build 250,000 houses each year, aimed at eventually closing a housing deficit that World Bank data puts at 2 million units. The plan was launched in 2022, but no data is available on the number of houses already completed.

Kenya’s urban areas are home to a third of the country’s total population of more than 50 million. Of those in urban areas, 70% live in informal settlements marked by a lack of basic infrastructure, according to UN-Habitat.

Some urban Kenyans have moved into a government housing project on the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi, where one-bedroom units sold for $7,600 last year.

Felister Muema, a 55-year-old former caterer, paid a deposit of about 10% through a savings plan and is expected to pay off the balance in 25 years.

“This is where I have started living my life,” she said. “If I do something here, it is permanent. If I plant a flower, no one is going to tell me: ‘Uproot it, I don’t want it there.’ This gives me life.”

But experts say construction and financing need to change and speed up for Kenya’s housing deficit to be met.

“We cannot rely on the traditional mortgage route,” said UN-Habitat’s head of East Africa, Ishaku Maitumbi, who recommended a cooperative savings system that is popular with Kenyan businesses.

For home construction, some are exploring the emerging technology of 3-D printing. A machine layers special mortar to form concrete walls and cuts the building time by several days compared to traditional brick and mortar work.

A company, 14Trees, has used the technology to build a showcase house in Nairobi and 10 houses in coastal Kilifi County.

Company CEO Francois Perrot said the technology can help address the huge housing need on the African continent, but it will take time.

“If we want to clear that backlog, we need to build differently, we need to build at scale, with speed, and with low-carbon materials, and this is what construction 3-D printing makes possible,” Perrot said.

The company’s homes, like many traditionally built ones, remain beyond the reach of most Kenyans. A two-bedroom house costs $22,000 and a three-bedroom one costs $29,000. But Perrot asserted that acquiring a printer locally and making mortar locally would help bring down costs.

“People don’t really worry or care about technology. What they care about is the design, the price, the way it is set up, the layout of the building,” he said.

Nickson Otieno, an architect and founder of Niko Green, a sustainability consulting firm, said such new technology has great potential but remains limited.

“It will still take a long time for it to compete with brick and mortar,” he said. “Brick and mortar, everybody can build their house anywhere they are. They are able to access the materials, they are able to access the tradesmen who build the house and they can plan the cost.”

Financing remains a challenge. In June 2023, Kenya’s parliament passed a finance law with a new housing tax of 1.5% on gross income, to be used to build affordable housing. The law is being challenged in court. Critics argue the tax is discriminatory as it applies only to those with formal employment.

If the tax is rejected, Kenya’s government would need to look elsewhere for funding to build affordable housing.

The housing tax is one of the issues causing discontent among young people who have organized a series of protests that included the extraordinary storming of parliament Tuesday. More than 20 people were killed as police opened fire.

President William Ruto has defended the need for the tax.

“We have said that affordable housing, social housing is a right,” he said earlier this year in response to the legal challenge.
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NEW YORK — U.S. prosecutors are meeting with Boeing and the families of crash victims as a July 7 deadline looms for the Justice Department to decide whether to criminally charge the plane maker, according to two people familiar with the matter and correspondence reviewed by Reuters.  

Justice Department officials met with Boeing lawyers on Thursday to discuss the government’s finding that the company violated a 2021 agreement with the department, one of the sources said. That deal, known as a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), had shielded it from criminal prosecution over two 737 MAX crashes in 2018 in Indonesia and a crash in 2019 in Ethiopia that together killed 346 people.  

Separately, federal prosecutors are slated to meet with victims’ family members on Sunday to update them on the progress of their investigation, according to the second person. U.S. officials are working on a “tight timeline,” according to an email sent by the DOJ and reviewed by Reuters.  

Boeing lawyers present case

Boeing’s lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis on Thursday presented their case to officials from the Deputy Attorney General’s office that a prosecution would be unwarranted and that there is no need to tear up the 2021 deal, one of the people said. 

Such appeals from companies in the DOJ’s crosshairs are typical when negotiating to resolve a government investigation.  

Officials want input from family members as they consider how to proceed, the email said. Prosecutors from the Justice Department’s criminal fraud division and the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas will attend the Sunday meeting, it said. 

Spokespeople for the DOJ and Boeing declined to comment. 

Boeing has previously said it has “honored the terms” of the settlement and formally told prosecutors it disagrees with the finding that it violated the agreement.  

Prosecutors recommend criminal charges

U.S. prosecutors have recommended to senior Justice Department officials that criminal charges be brought against Boeing after finding the plane maker violated the 2021 settlement, two people familiar with the matter previously told Reuters. 

The two sides are in discussions over a potential resolution to the Justice Department’s investigation, and there is no guarantee officials will move forward with charges, they said last week.  

The deliberations follow a January 5 flight during which a panel blew out on a Boeing plane just two days before the company’s DPA expired. The incident exposed ongoing safety and quality issues at Boeing. 

Boeing had been poised to escape prosecution over a criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration arising from the 2018-2019 fatal crashes.  

Prosecutors had agreed to drop a criminal charge so long as Boeing overhauled its compliance practices and submitted regular reports over a three-year period. Boeing also agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle the investigation. 

In May, officials determined the company breached the agreement, exposing Boeing to prosecution. The DOJ said in a court filing in Texas that the plane maker had failed to “design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations.” 
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