Dakar — It was only when 12-year-old Senegalese schoolboy Lassou Samb prepared to sit his end-of-year exams that his lack of any legal documentation finally caught up with him.

Like many young people in the West African country, Samb was never registered at birth, an oversight with potentially profound consequences for his education.

Hundreds of thousands of Senegalese pupils are sitting exams until Wednesday to mark the end of their school year.

But Samb almost did not take the test needed to move onto the next grade because he lacked the required birth certificate.

Every year, the exam period highlights a major failure to register births, not just in Senegal but across Africa.

Of the more than 300,000 students registered for the end of elementary school exams, almost 70,000 had no civil status documents, the examinations department said.

The issue has potentially serious consequences ranging from the protection of rights, access to public services and government policy planning.

Samb, one of six children born in a village in central Senegal, was the only one in his family not to be registered.

“Our (school) director often calls me into his office to remind me that I haven’t brought my birth certificate yet, but I don’t know what to tell him,” he said.

Samb “was born with a fractured hand at a time when things were hard for us,” said his father Malick, a factory worker.

“The priority then was to treat him.”

Like previous administrations, Senegal’s new government this year ignored the rule requiring a birth certificate for exams and allowed children to sit them without.

Unregistered children

“There is no question of sacrificing these children twice,” said Moussa Bala Fofana, Minister for Local and Regional Authorities. 

“Firstly by not declaring them at birth, and secondly by preventing them from sitting their exams because they have no papers, even though they have nothing to do with it,” he said.

While 98 percent of births are registered in Europe, the number stands at just 44 percent in Africa, according to a 2024 WHO report.

More than half of the world’s unregistered children live in Africa, totaling around 91 million, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said in 2022.

Birth registration is a critical first step in access to healthcare, education and justice, and is also an essential tool in government planning for public health and development.

But long distances to registry offices, a lack of knowledge, local customs and, in some countries, discriminatory practices and fees can prevent parents from registering a birth, UNICEF said.

Some parents neglect or ignore the importance of birth certificates even though they have up to a year to register their child free of charge, said Aliou Ousmane Sall, Director of Senegal’s national civil status agency.

After this deadline, a court has to authorize the registration and parents must pay a fee of 4,000 CFA francs ($7).

Fraud

Obtaining a birth certificate can take several years due to the difficulty of accessing the necessary services, obsolete equipment and poorly trained officials.

“For most of our African countries, we had to make a transition from the colonial state to the post-colonial state,” said Oumar Ba, president of the country’s mayors’ association.

“As a result, many measures were not taken in time. Our states inherited a civil registry that was not well structured,” he added. 

The shortfalls are conducive to fraud, with concerns about identification number trafficking widespread in Senegal.

Seydina Aidara, 23, said he was about to sit his final high school exams when he discovered that his civil registration number had been stolen, preventing him from taking the test.

For Lassou Samb, a birth certificate would later allow him to get an identity card, passport or driving license.

But his father said that despite his efforts, he had not been able to complete the registration process.

The government has launched a plan to modernize and digitize the civil registry in a bid to improve access and minimize fraud.

Nineteen million records have already been digitized, said Sall, of the national civil status agency.

“With this program, the problems will soon be over,” he said.
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Kampala, Uganda — Ugandan protesters who said they would press ahead with a banned anti-corruption march on Tuesday are “playing with fire,” the country’s president warned.  

“Some elements have been planning illegal demonstrations, riots,” President Yoweri Museveni said in a televised address late Saturday.  

Museveni has ruled the East African country with an iron fist since 1986. 

He said the protesters included “elements working for foreign interests,” without elaborating. 

Earlier Saturday, Ugandan police had informed organizers that it would not permit the planned protest in the capital, Kampala, as authorities had intelligence that “some elements were trying to take advantage of the demonstration to cause chaos in the country.” 

“Demonstrations can only be allowed under our mandate as long as they are not causing public disorder and disrupting lives of lawful citizens,” Ugandan police operations director Frank Mwesigwa told AFP. 

The protest organizers told AFP they would press on with the demonstration. 

“We don’t need police permission to carry out a peaceful demonstration,” one of the main protest leaders, Louez Aloikin Opolose, said Saturday. “It is our constitutional right.” 

The protesters hope to take the march past parliament, which they accuse of tolerating corruption. 

“Our starting point in the fight against corruption is parliament … and the demonstration is on irrespective of what police is saying,” protester Shamim Nambasa said. 

The NGO Transparency International ranks Uganda low on its corruption perceptions index. With the least corrupt countries ranking highest, Uganda comes in at 141 on the list of 180 countries. 

The anti-corruption protesters have been keeping track of the sometimes deadly demonstrations that have shaken neighboring Kenya for more than a month. 

The Kenyan protests, which began as peaceful rallies against controversial tax hikes, turned into a wider anti-government campaign, with disgruntled activists also seeking action against corruption and alleged police brutality. 

At least 50 people have been killed and 413 injured since the demonstrations began on June 18, according to the state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. 
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washington — U.S. diplomats are working closely with African partners, the White House said Thursday, amid a fresh 15-day truce between the army and Rwanda-backed rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Experts on the ground say they’re holding their breath, citing the dire humanitarian consequences of spiraling violence in this fragile region.

The Biden administration believes this conflict in the northeast corner of the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa “poses a real threat to global peace and security,” a National Security Council spokesperson told VOA on Thursday.

In Congo, more than 940,000 people have been displaced this year, the United Nations says. And 7.3 million Congolese people – more than half women – are currently displaced. Conflict is the culprit more than 80% of the time.

This new truce, set through August 3, aims to quiet the constant thrum of violence that has plagued this resource-rich corner of Congo since the late 1990s. That’s when Hutu extremists with ties to Rwanda’s genocide fled over the Congolese border and began to organize militias along the shores of the massive Lake Kivu. That violence snowballed into a bloodbath that left millions dead across Congo in one of the worst civil wars of the 20th century.

Several rounds of United Nations peacekeeping missions have failed to stop the cycle of violence, which picked up anew after Congo’s violent elections in late 2023. Kinshasa accuses Kigali of backing one of the main combatant groups, M23, which is composed primarily of fighters from Rwanda’s minority Tutsi ethnic group.

State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel emphasized Washington’s diplomatic efforts.

“This is something that we are working closely on with the parties,” he said. “We’re going to work closely with the government of the DRC, Rwanda and Angola to support regional diplomatic efforts to reach a durable cessation of hostilities and set conditions for the voluntary return of displaced populations.”

He did not provide details when asked by reporters how the Biden administration plans to work with Rwanda’s government.

The last truce fell apart Monday, with an incident in the town of Bweremana that killed four children, according to media reports. White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson on Wednesday condemned those killings, while noting that “the parties to the conflict have largely respected the truce” – raising hopes that the children’s deaths may not provoke a slide into violence.

Analysts and humanitarian officials say the situation in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province – a shambolic but dynamic town in the shadow of the ever-smoldering Mount Nyiragongo – is unusually dire.

Onesphore Sematumba, a Goma-based analyst with the International Crisis Group, spoke in stark terms about a town accustomed to fielding knockout punches from both nature and humanity. In the past two decades, Goma has weathered an Ebola outbreak and multiple volcanic eruptions, all while facing a stream of violent militant groups, including an increasingly powerful Islamic State group offshoot.

Sematumba spoke Wednesday on a podcast on the subject, saying that the streets, roundabouts, storefronts and bars of Goma were thronged with desperate displaced people, among them women with babies on their shoulders and backs, begging.

“This crisis is massive,” he said in French. “This crisis is, I would say, gigantic, but as humanitarians rightly say, it is a forgotten crisis.”

Patel, of the State Department, also noted that Washington allocated more than $620 million in humanitarian aid to the nation in fiscal 2023.

Sematumba cited fears that if diplomacy fails to keep the peace, conflict could draw in neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, nearby Burundi and Tanzania and even – clear on the other side of DRC, the smaller Republic of Congo as well. And he voiced concerns that the two major diplomatic efforts conducted in Luanda, Angola, and Nairobi, Kenya, “are struggling to materialize.”

“We would be heading towards a catastrophe like we’ve never seen, even at the height of the 1996 war, which drained almost all African countries, all African armies, from the upper reaches of the continent and into Congo,” he said. “So everyone is holding their breath, and everyone is trying to hang on to all the diplomatic goings-on to avoid such a nightmarish scenario.”

Nike Ching contributed to this report from Washington; Isabella Dail provided translation assistance from Washington.
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Yaounde, Cameroon — Officials in the Central African Republic say at least 300 rebels have dropped their weapons in the past month in an operation jointly organized by United Nations peacekeeping forces and government troops. Yet, while a total of about 5,000 fighters have put down their arms in the past decade, peace seems to elude the troubled nation. 

Officials in the country say the rebels who have dropped their weapons since June 10 belong to the Coalition des Patriotes pour le Changement, or CPC.  

The government sees the CPC as a network of six rebel groups created in 2020 to disrupt the country’s presidential and legislative elections in December of that year. 

Government spokesperson Balalou Maxime, speaking on state television Wednesday, congratulated the approximately 250 CPC rebels for dropping their weapons when attacked by the Central African Republic military. He said he wants other rebels still hiding in the bush to know that they will be killed if they do not do the same. 

This week, forces of the U.N. stabilization movement in the Central African Republic, or MINUSCA, said an additional 44 fighters of another rebel group, the UPC, laid down their arms in the southeastern town of Mboki. MINUSCA said many weapons were seized but gave no further details.  

Central African Republic officials say the operation to neutralize armed groups or get fighters to surrender is aimed at making the country more peaceful before local elections slated for October. 

These would be the first local elections in the country since 1988.  

At least 5,000 rebels have surrendered their arms within the past 11 years, officials say, but fighting has yet to stop. The U.N. says some of the rebels who surrender end up rejoining armed gangs due to hardship and poverty. 

Halidou Halale, president of Cattle Ranchers Union in the Central African Republic, stressed that rebels who are cattle ranchers are willing to drop their weapons in exchange for a few cattle or goats as a source of livelihood. He said rebels either refuse to surrender or they return to armed groups after surrender because of hunger. 

Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have often reported that rebel and armed groups in the country commit war crimes, including deliberately killing civilians, raping women and girls, and destroying civilian property.  

In 2019, the government and 14 armed groups signed an African Union and U.N.-sponsored peace agreement. However, the deal failed to stop the fighting, as six of the 14 armed groups refused to honor their commitments following disagreements over power sharing and amnesty for arrested or fleeing rebels. 

The Central African Republic has been wracked with violence and instability since 2013, when a rebel group forced then-President Francois Bozize out of office.   
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Mbabane, Eswatini — The sentencing Tuesday in Eswatini of two former members of parliament to lengthy prison terms on charges of terrorism marks a significant escalation in the tensions between the monarchy and those advocating for democratic reform in the southern African nation. Human rights groups condemned the convictions, saying the court decision raises questions about human rights and political repression. Pro-democracy activists say they are undeterred.  

The convictions of Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube, who were sentenced to prison terms of 25 and 18 years respectively, sent shock waves throughout Eswatini and the international community. 

The two men were arrested in July 2021 during pro-democracy protests that were violently put down by security forces, leaving dozens of people dead. Demonstrators were pressing for reforms to a complex system of non-party elections that ensured Eswatini’s ruler, King Mswati the third, faced no meaningful dissent.  

Rights group Amnesty International urged Eswatini authorities to immediately quash what it called “the unjust and baseless convictions and sentences of the former members of parliament.”  

Alpheous Nxumalo, a spokesperson for the Eswatini government, told VOA’s English to Africa Service the convictions were “discharged through the provisions of the law, which guarantees the rights of each and everyone who has been sentenced to appeal to a higher court.” He added that Eswatini’s international partners and friends should respect the country’s sovereignty and rule of law. 

Thantaza Silolo, a spokesperson for the Swaziland Liberation Movement (SWALIMO), told VOA that despite the harsh sentences handed down by the Eswatini High Court, the country’s pro-democracy movement remains resolute in its pursuit of democratic reform. 

“These MPs were strong inside the chambers of parliament and outside in calling to say we need a prime minister that is elected by the people, not a prime minister that is being appointed by the King and for that reason, they were sentenced, they were arrested and charged with heinous offenses as if they were criminals, they were murderers and terrorists,” Silolo said. “Yet, these are just advocates for change. These are just people who have been calling for freedom and we maintain as a movement that … we will continue to push for their release.” 

Political analyst Sibusiso Nhlabatsi sees the sentences as a major setback for democracy and human rights in Eswatini. She said the sentences are a classic example of “guilty until proven innocent,” with mere allegations being enough to secure a conviction. 

“You can see that the intention was to induce fear and I think most of Emaswati will now live in that shadow of fear — we don’t want to do what these people did and even members of parliament will say we don’t want to do what the other members of parliament did because we might follow suit,” Nhlabatsi said. “I think through this judgment the state has successfully entrenched itself. It has successfully been able to threaten anyone who may want to raise a voice against the establishment.” 

According to human rights activist Lucky Dlamini, the harsh sentencing of the MPs signals a wider attack on democracy and human rights in Eswatini. He said the country is a dictatorship, with the monarchy using state security forces to suppress dissent and violate fundamental human rights. 

“We remain under a cruel system of government which is an absolute monarchy where there’s immunity [for] the security forces against human rights activists and political activists and human right defenders, where they cannot be able to access justice in the courts, where they cannot be able to hold on to demonstration, where they cannot exercise freedom of the right to political participation, the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of access to the media, the right to freedom of assembly,” he said. 

A lawyer for the two former MPs said they plan to appeal their sentences. 
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LONDON — Discontented, economically squeezed voters have turned against sitting governments on both right and left during many of the dozens of elections held this year, as global power blocs shift and political certainties crumble.

From India to South Africa to Britain, voters dealt blows to long-governing parties. Elections to the European Parliament showed growing support for the continent’s far right, while France’s centrist president scrambled to fend off a similar surge at home.

If there’s a global trend, Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer said at a summit in Canada in June, it’s that “people are tired of the incumbents.”

More than 40 countries have held elections already this year. More uncertainty awaits — nations home to over half the world’s population are going to the polls in 2024. The world is already anxiously turning to November’s presidential election in the U.S., where an acrimonious campaign was dealt a shocking blow by an assassination attempt against Republican nominee and former president, Donald Trump.

Unpopular incumbents

Aftershocks from the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and spiking prices for food and fuel have left dissatisfied voters eager for change.

“Voters really, really don’t like inflation,” said Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester. “And they punish governments that deliver it, whether they are at fault or not.”

Inflation and unemployment are rising in India, the world’s largest democracy, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party unexpectedly lost its parliamentary majority after a decade of dominance. Modi was forced to rely on coalition partners to govern as the opposition doubled its strength in parliament.

In South Africa, sky-high rates of unemployment and inequality helped drive a dramatic loss of support for the African National Congress, which had governed ever since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994.

The party once led by Nelson Mandela lost its parliamentary majority for the first time and was forced to enter a coalition with opposition parties.

In Britain, the center-left Labour Party won election in a landslide, ousting the Conservatives after 14 years. As in so many countries, Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces a jaded electorate that wants lower prices and better public services — but is deeply skeptical of politicians’ ability to deliver change.

US-China tensions

Caught between world powers China and the United States, Taiwan held one of the year’s most significant elections.

Lai Ching-te, of the Democratic Progressive Party, won a presidential election that was seen as a referendum on the island’s relationship with China, which claims Taiwan as its own.

Beijing regards Lai as a separatist and ramped up military pressure with drills in the Taiwan Strait. Lai has promised to strengthen the defenses of the self-governing island, and the U.S. has pledged to help it defend itself, heightening tensions in one of the world’s flashpoints.

In Bangladesh, an important partner of the U.S. that has drawn closer to China, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won a fourth successive term in an election that opposition parties boycotted. The U.S. and U.K. said the vote was not credible, free or fair.

Political dynasties

In several countries, family ties helped secure or cement power.

Pakistan held messy parliamentary elections – under the eye of the country’s powerful military — that saw well-established political figures vie to become prime minister. The winner, atop a coalition government, was Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, younger brother of three-time premier Nawaz Sharif.

Opponents say the election was rigged in his favor, with opponent and former prime minister, Imran Khan, imprisoned and blocked from running. The situation remains unstable, with Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruling that Khan’s party was improperly denied some seats.

In Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest democracy, former Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto was officially declared president more than two months after an election in which he won over 58% of the vote.

His two losing rivals alleged fraud and nepotism — Subianto’s vice president-elect is outgoing leader Joko Widodo’s son, and Subianto was the son-in-law of Indonesia’s late dictator, Suharto. The country’s highest court rejected their arguments.

Some outcomes were predictable. Russian President Vladimir Putin was reelected to a fifth term in a preordained election that followed his relentless crackdown on dissent. Rwanda’s election extended the 30-year rule of President Paul Kagame, an authoritarian leader who ran almost unopposed.

Far right’s uneven march

The far right has gained ground in Europe as the continent experiences economic instability and an influx of migrants from troubled lands.

Elections for the parliament of the 27-nation European Union shifted the bloc’s center of gravity, with the far right rocking ruling parties in France and Germany, the EU’s traditional driving forces.

The EU election triggered a political earthquake in France. After his centrist, pro-business party took a pasting, President Emmanuel Macron called a risky snap parliamentary election in hope of stemming a far-right surge.

The anti-immigration National Rally party won the first round, but alliances and tactical voting by the center and left knocked it down to third place in the second round and left a divided legislature.

New faces, daunting challenges

A presidential election tested Senegal’s reputation as a stable democracy in West Africa, a region rocked by a recent spate of coups.

The surprise winner was little-known opposition figure Basirou Diomaye Faye, released from prison before polling day as part of a political amnesty.

Faye is Africa’s youngest elected leader, and his rise reflects widespread frustration among Senegal’s youth with the country’s direction. Senegal has made new oil and gas discoveries in recent years, but the population has yet to see any real benefit.

Mexico elected Claudia Sheinbaum as the first female president in the country’s 200-year history. A protege of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the 61-year-old former Mexico City mayor vowed to continue in the direction set by the popular leftist leader.

She faces a polarized electorate, daunting drug-related violence, an increasingly influential military and tensions over migration with the U.S.

Uncertainty is the new normal

On July 28, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will seek to extend a decade-plus presidency marked by a complex political, social and economic crisis that has driven millions into poverty or out of the country. Opposition parties have banded together, but the ruling party has tight control over the voting process, and many doubt votes will be counted fairly.

South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, is scheduled to hold its long-delayed first elections in December. That would represent a key milestone, but the vote is rife with danger and vulnerable to failure.

Looming above all is the choice U.S. voters will make Nov. 5 in a tense and divided country. The July 13 shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, in which the former president was wounded and a rallygoer was killed, came as Democrats agonize over the fitness of President Joe Biden, who has resisted calls to step aside.

The prospect of a second term for Trump, a protectionist wary of international entanglements, is evidence of the world’s shifting power blocs and crumbling political certainties.

“The world is in the transition,” said Neil Melvin, director of international security at defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute.

“There are very broad processes on the way which are reshaping international order,” he added. “It’s a kind of anti-globalization. It’s a growing return to the nation state and against multilateralism.”
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Kigali — Paul Kagame’s win in Rwanda’s presidential election this week was widely expected, although critics say the vote was neither free nor fair.

Lewis Mudge is the central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. Mudge, who lived in Rwanda for several years, said elections there are a mere performance and always produce big wins for Kagame.

“Notwithstanding the economic progress that President Kagame has made, he’s effectively been in power since July of 1994. That progress has not been matched in terms of political and civil rights and that reflects open space for people to have an independent political platform that disagrees with the RPF,” he said.

Kagame won over 99% of the vote, according to preliminary results announced on Monday.

Earlier this year, like many analysts, Strathmore University lecturer Edgar Githua predicted the 66-year-old Kagame would win big but had no doubt the size of the victory would be greatly exaggerated.

“Rwanda is the paradox of Africa. Paradox of Africa because the Rwandese themselves are afraid to talk about their own elections. If you have a vote where 98% votes for one candidate, that is a red flag. Nobody is that popular in this world,” said Githua.

Kagame, who has held various roles since 1994, won by a similar margin in 2017. At a watch party organized by his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, he acknowledged that some people found his margin of victory this year suspicious.

“This is a strange thing, that’s why there are many who don’t understand it, criticize it, but instead it [votes] continues to increase. It’s the uniqueness of RPF and the uniqueness of Rwandans,” he said.

Indeed, Kagame’s supporters, including Samuel Kwazera, said they would vote for him forever if they could.

“During the genocide in 1994, I was four years old; now it’s 30 years until today you can see the progress and you can see democracy going on, I am proud. I wish myself as I love him that he can be forever, and ever,” he said.

Mudge said while there are Rwandans who will continue to vote for Kagame, this was not a free and fair election.

“For our point as an organization that defends civil and political rights of people in Rwanda to express themselves, our point is the context is very different if you want to express yourself differently, if you want to criticize government policy. There’s simply no space for them to operate,” he said.

Kagame faced two opponents — Democratic Green Party Candidate Frank Habineza and independent candidate Philippe Mpayimana. Both received less than 1 percent of the vote.

Other candidates, including some of Kagame’s most vocal critics, were barred from running for president, including Diane Rwigara.

One of the reasons was that she didn’t garner the 600 signatures of support needed in her application.

Mudge said in Rwanda’s political climate, Rwigara had no chance to get the signatures or a place on the ballot.

“For people like Rwigara and [Victoire] Ingabire, it’s not about this technical aspect of signatures. This is about not allowing compelling, articulate women to run, to take attention, and basically challenging the narrative,” he said.

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, another critic of Kagame who was a presidential candidate in the 2010 elections, was arrested, tried, and jailed on charges of terrorism and threatening national security. She was released eight years later through a presidential pardon.

She said elections in Rwanda have long been predetermined.

“Persistent wins of presidential elections close to 100% is not a sign of popularity but of lack of competition. … I don’t understand why they refuse to allow the most credible challengers to participate against President Kagame in elections in Rwanda. Of course, this is not only in 2024 but it was the case in 2003, 2010 and 2017,” she said.

Recently Kagame called her a “genocidaire” and said her life will not end well.

“I was surprised to hear President Kagame talking about me being from a genocidaire family but those are accusations used by the government to intimidate everyone who challenges the Rwandan government,” she said.

Analysts acknowledge that Kagame does enjoy real popularity among Rwanda’s electorate, mainly for his ability to guide the East African country toward internal stability and economic progress since the 1994 genocide, when an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists.

At the same time, they say, Kagame continues to stifle dissent, as support for the president and his policies is not unanimous.
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DAKAR — In a global operation targeting West African organized crime groups across five continents, police arrested 300 people, seized $3 million and blocked 720 bank accounts, Interpol said Tuesday. 

Operation Jackal III, which ran from 10 April to 3 July in 21 countries, aimed to fight online financial fraud and the West African syndicates behind it, the agency said in a statement. 

“The volume of financial fraud stemming from West Africa is alarming and increasing,” said Isaac Oginni, director of Interpol’s Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre. “This operation’s results underscore the critical need for international law enforcement collaboration to combat these extensive criminal networks.” 

One of the targeted groups was Black Axe, one of the most prominent criminal networks in West Africa. Black Axe operates in cyber fraud, human trafficking, drug smuggling, and is responsible for violent crimes both within Africa and globally, the agency added. 

Black Axe used money mules to open bank accounts worldwide and is now under investigation in over 40 countries for related money laundering activities, the agency said. The suspects include citizens from Argentina, Colombia, Nigeria and Venezuela. 

In Argentina, following a five-year investigation, the police cracked down on Black Axe and seized $ 1.2 million in high-quality counterfeit banknotes, arrested 72 suspects and froze approximately 100 bank accounts. 

Interpol, which has 196 member countries and celebrated its centennial last year, works to help national police forces communicate with each other and track suspects and criminals in fields like counterterrorism, financial crime, child pornography, cybercrime and organized crime. 

The world’s biggest — if not best-funded — police organization has been grappling with new challenges including a growing caseload of cybercrime and child sex abuse, and increasing divisions among its member countries. 

Interpol had a total budget of about 176 million euros (about $188 million) last year, compared to more than 200 million euros at the European Union’s police agency, Europol, and some $11 billion at the FBI in the United States. 
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Abuja, Nigeria — Nigeria plans to resume local refining of crude oil in early August, national petroleum authorities announced Monday.

The resumption would end years of idleness at Nigeria’s state-owned refineries, and analysts say that if successfully implemented, it would lower fuel prices.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company made the announcement while addressing an emergency session at the National Assembly. Lawmakers called the session to interrogate central bank authorities, the national economic management team and the NNPC about the country’s economic standing.

The chief executive officer of the NNPC, Mele Kyari, said one of the two Port Harcourt refineries in the oil-rich Niger Delta region will begin operations in about two weeks.

He said the other one will come into operation by the end of the year and allow Nigeria to begin exporting refined oil.

“We’re very optimistic that by December this country will be a net exporter,” he said, “that is [in] combination of production coming from us and the Dangote refinery and other smaller producing companies.”

The Dangote refinery is a privately owned facility being built near Lagos.

Nigeria’s minister of state of petroleum resources, Heineken Lokpobiri, voiced optimism about the impact of the revived refineries.

“The easiest way for Nigeria to come out of its economic problems is through the oil and gas sector,” Lokpobiri said. “As a sector, we have a clear plan to gradually ramp up production. Right now, we have a clear plan to see how we can get 2 million barrels and more.”

This is not the first time officials have announced the resumption of domestic oil refining.

They made similar announcements in December and March. On Monday, authorities said unforeseen technical difficulties hampered previous resumption dates.

All four government-owned refineries, which can process about 450,000 barrels of crude per day, have been moribund for years, forcing the country to rely on imports to meet its petroleum needs, estimated at 66 million liters (17.4 million gallons) per day.

Oil industry analyst Faith Nwadishi voiced doubts the refineries will operate again.

“I’m just keeping my fingers crossed and trying to be very optimistic about this because it will go a long way in reducing the hardship and perhaps also reduce the pump price … especially,” Nwadishi said. “But being somebody who’s in the sector, I become a little bit skeptical. We have an allocation of about 445,000 [barrels per day] for domestic consumption, which, if properly refined, we’ll have about 70 million liters. That covers our daily consumption.”

The Nigerian oil industry has been hampered in recent years by theft and corruption. On Monday, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative said about 140,000 barrels of crude oil were lost to theft every day between 2009 and 2018.
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