The African Union has been granted permanent member status in the Group of 20 top world economies, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Saturday, adding momentum to his drive to give a greater voice to the Global South as host of this year’s annual summit.

The announcement during Modi’s opening speech for the weekend summit of the G20 comes as growing global rifts and the absence of key players threatened to make reaching consensus on the thorniest issues elusive.

There was widespread support, however, for adding the AU to the G20, making it the second regional bloc to become a permanent member after the European Union.

Modi rapped his gavel three times before announcing the move to applause in the room.

He shook hands with the current AU chair, Comoros President Azali Assoumani, and embraced him warmly before inviting him to sit at the table.

“I invite the representative of the African Union to take his place as a permanent member of the G20,” Modi said.

Modi addressed the delegates from behind a nameplate that listed his country not as India but as “Bharat,” an ancient Sanskrit name championed by his Hindu nationalist supporters that his government has been pushing at the G20.

Modi has made giving voice to the Global South a centerpiece of this year’s summit, and adding the AU at the outset was a strong step in that direction.

He told leaders that they must find “concrete solutions” to the widespread challenges that he said stemmed from the “ups and downs in the global economy, the north and the south divide, the chasm between the east and the west,” and other issues like terrorism, cyber security, health and water security.

With much of the world’s focus on the Russian war against Ukraine, India has been working to try and direct more attention to addressing the needs of the developing world at the summit — though it is impossible to decouple many issues, such as food and energy security, from the European conflict.

Modi did make a presumed reference to the war in his opening remarks, though he avoided mentioning the names of any countries involved.

“Friends, after COVID-19, the world is facing problems of trust deficit,” he said. “The war has further deepened this trust deficit. If we can beat COVID, we can also triumph over the trust deficit caused by the war,” he said.

As the summit opened, at least a fifth of G20 heads were not in New Delhi. The leaders of Russia and China opted not to come, ensuring no tough face-to-face conversations with their American and European counterparts over multiple disputes, most acutely the war in Ukraine. Spain’s president couldn’t make it due to COVID-19, and Mexico’s president decided to miss it, too.

A series of preparatory meetings leading to this weekend’s meeting failed to produce agreements due to increasingly fractious rifts among the world’s global powers, largely due to differences over Ukraine. Ending the summit without such a statement would underscore how strained relations have become and tarnish the image Modi has tried to cultivate of India as a global problem solver.

Participants arriving in the Indian capital were greeted by streets cleared of traffic, and graced with fresh flowers and seemingly endless posters featuring slogans and Modi’s face. Security was intensely tight, with most journalists and the public kept far from the summit venue.

Along with the addition of the AU as a permanent member, other major topics on the agenda were issues critical to developing nations, including alternative fuels like hydrogen, resource efficiency, developing a common framework for digital public infrastructure and food security.

Countries were also expected to address reforming development banks like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to help make funds more accessible for lower- and middle-income countries as they seek solutions to combat climate change, among other things.

India’s lead G20 negotiator, Amitabh Kant, told reporters that boosting climate action and climate financing were key priorities, particularly for developing and emerging markets.

“It was critical that we focused on multilateral organizations and how to redefine and reform them,” he said. “Our view was that Global South, developing countries, emerging markets must be able to get long-term financing.”

With so many other issues on the table, Human Rights Watch urged the G20 leaders not to let international disunity distract them at the summit.

“Political differences should not deter agreements on critical issues impacting human rights such as the sovereign debt crises, social protection programs, food security, climate change, or internet freedom,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy director of the organization’s Asia division.

Ganguly added that members should not “shy away from openly discussing challenges like gender discrimination, racism and other entrenched barriers to equality, including with host India, where civil and political rights have sharply deteriorated under the Modi administration.”

The summit comes just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin said a landmark deal allowing Ukraine to export grain safely through the Black Sea will not be restored until Western nations meet his demands on Russia’s own agricultural exports.

The original deal had been brokered by the U.N. and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but Russia refused to extend it in July, complaining that a parallel agreement promising to remove obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer hadn’t been honored.

Russia dispatched Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as its top representative to the G20. Erdogan himself was on hand in the Indian capital and others said ahead of the summit that they hoped to be able to find solutions, even as Russia’s military keeps up its attacks on Ukraine’s ports.

European Council President Charles Michel told reporters in New Delhi on Friday it was “scandalous” that Russia was blocking and attacking Ukrainian ports after terminating the grain deal.

“The Kremlin’s war is also unraveling lives far beyond Ukraine, including right here in South Asia,” he said. “Over 250 million people face acute food insecurity worldwide and by deliberately attacking Ukraine’s ports, the Kremlin is depriving them of the food they desperately need.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he hoped to marshal international resources to counteract the impact of Russia’s moves on the global food supply. His government has announced London will host a global food security summit in November in response to Moscow’s actions.

Alternatives could include land routes or taking grain out of Ukraine by river barge.

Sunak’s government has also said Royal Air Force aircraft will fly over the Black Sea as part of efforts to deter Russia from striking cargo ships transporting grain from Ukraine to developing countries.

Hundreds of Tibetan exiles held a protest far from the summit venue to condemn Chinese participation in the event and urge leaders to discuss Sino-Tibetan relations.

Before the meeting got formally under way, Modi met with U.S. President Joe Biden shortly after his arrival Friday evening.

White House aide Kurt Campbell told reporters afterward that there was an “undeniable warmth and confidence between the two leaders.”

Leaders of the U.S., India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were working to finalize a joint infrastructure deal involving ship and rail transit between India and the Middle East to Turkey and beyond, in hopes it could be announced in New Delhi during the summit.

Campbell called the emerging deal a potentially “earth-shattering” project and said that “the strongest supporter of this initiative is India.” In the past, Campbell said, India’s leaders have had “almost a knee jerk reaction” to resist such massive multilateral projects.

“It’s the last moment that’s when things come together or they don’t,” Campbell said. “With huge, enormous ambitious deals it always comes to this place.”

As Biden made his way to New Delhi, U.S. administration officials sought to play down that Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn’t invited to address the G20.

The Ukrainian leader has made regular appearances, virtual and in-person, at such international forums since the start of the war more than 18 months ago to rally allies to remain committed to support Ukraine.
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Experts say it is unlikely that regional leaders in Central Africa and the international community will be enthusiastic in calling for the  reinstatement of deposed Gabon leader Ali Bongo Ondimba.

Gabon’s military leaders announced Bongo’s release from house arrest Thursday, following an apparent coup on August 30. State-run media showed Bongo greeting officials as the military leaders announced that he was “free to travel” abroad.

On the same day, Gabon’s military leaders appointed Raymond Ndong Sima, an outspoken critic of the former president and a former opposition leader who ran against Bongo in this year’s elections, as interim prime minister. Sima, 68, is an economist who previously served as Bongo’s prime minister from 2012 to 2014.

Less than a week after the coup, the military leaders, calling themselves the Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions, named General Brice Oligui Nguema, commander-in-chief of the Gabonese Republican Guard, as transitional head of state.

David Otto-Endeley, director of the Geneva Center for African Security and Strategic Studies, said that reactions to the leadership appointment from the regional bloc, the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), might go only as far as a condemnation.

ECCAS criticized the military’s move a day after the coup, saying in a statement that it planned an “imminent” meeting of heads of state to determine how to respond. The regional bloc did not give a date.

“I think there’s no general desire in a democratic era to see leaders who run in perpetuity in power. This is more or less a dynasty” within “some kind of democratic institution,” Otto-Endeley told VOA’s English to Africa Service. “The international community will be a lot more careful as compared to countries like Niger, where it was clearly a democratically elected president that was overthrown.

“Gabon has been seen as some kind of a handover — from father to son and son to father.”

He said a rule introduced in July, less than two months before Gabon’s national elections, put the main opposition candidates — the Alternance 2023 alliance — at a “disadvantage” because it had not fielded candidates for parliamentary elections.

Otto-Endeley also noted that Saturday’s internet shutdown and a curfew in the aftermath of the election gave troubling signals.

“I think the signs were clearly written on the wall,” he said. “We’re experiencing another coup pandemic. It’s a replica of what we’ve experienced lately in Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea and Sudan, but this time, the dynamics are quite different.”

End of dynastic rule

Otto-Endeley said he thought the Bongo dynasty, which has ruled the Central African state since 1967, coupled with the country’s lack of constitutional term limits, validated theories that Ali Bongo “had this coming.”

“The military has been used for regime protection in most of the dynasties that have stayed for long. And now, the military is seeing itself as the only hope that can liberate the country from this dynasty rule,” he said. “It seems the beast that the government has been using to attack the population is now eating its owners.”

Maja Bovcon, senior Africa analyst at the London-based risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, agreed that there was no interest on the global community’s part in seeking a return of Bongo to power.

“The international community and regional bodies are unlikely to go beyond condemning the coup and demanding the restoration of civilian rule,” she told VOA. “They are aware of the lack of public support for President Ali Bongo and the contentious conditions in which the latest elections were conducted.”

Bovcon said that “the putsch in Gabon, along with the spate of coups across the region, will put long-serving autocratic leaders on alert.”

Cameroonian President Paul Biya and his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, have reportedly reshuffled their military’s leadership since Gabon’s coup. It is not clear whether the changes were connected to the developments in Gabon.

Andrea Ngombet, founder of the Paris-based Sassoufit Collective, an organization that promotes democracy, human rights and anti-corruption efforts across the continent, told VOA that at the heart of the military takeover in Gabon was the desire to quash the “dynastic reign of the Bongo family.”

He said the coup was a message to multinational companies and international partners who operate in the country that they “cannot continue to do business as usual,” adding that if global condemnation against the military takeover wasn’t measured, there would be a risk of driving the Gabonese people to foreign powers like Russia and China.

“If we condemn the coup — just because it is a coup — we will push [the Gabonese people] away to the likes of the Wagner mercenary group, Russia and China,” he told VOA, because the “fundamental needs” of the Gabonese are restoring democracy and sovereignty and securing social and economic justice.

This report originated in VOA’s English to Africa Service. English to Africa’s Hayde Adams contributed.
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Members of the International Radio and Television Union from about 50 countries, meeting this week in the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde, say a lack of infrastructure and human and financial resources remains a major obstacle to the switch from analog to digital broadcasting in public media, especially in Africa.

They are asking governments and funding agencies to assist with digitalization, which they say is necessary in the changing media landscape. More than half of Africa’s media is yet to fully digitalize.

Increasing reports of cross-interference between broadcasting and telecom services is a direct consequence of switchover delays, they said.

Professor Amin Alhassan, director general of Ghana Broadcasting Corp., says most African broadcasters are not serving their audiences and staying as relevant as they should because of the slow pace of digital transformation.

“Public media stations across the world are very old,” Alhassan said. “They have heavy investments in analog media and also analog media expertise. Our staff are used to analog systems, and to translate it into digital ecosystems is a challenge.

“Our challenge is how do you transform our existing staff to have a mindset change to understand the operations of digital media,” he said.

The International Telecommunication Union, or ITU, says digital broadcasting allows stations to offer higher definition video and better sound quality than analog. Digital broadcasting also offers multiple channels of programming on the same frequency.

In 2006, the ITU set June 2015 as the deadline for all broadcast stations in the world transmitting on the UHF band used for television broadcasting to switch from analog to digital. A five-year extension, to June 2020, was given for VHF band stations, mostly used in FM broadcasting, to switch over.

But the International Radio and Television Union says most of Africa missed the deadline, did not turn off analog television signals and is missing the advantages of digital broadcasting.

Mauritius, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are among the first African countries to complete the switch.

South Africa said in 2022 it would switch to digital TV on March 31, 2023. Jacqueline Hlongwane, programming manager of SABC, South Africa’s public broadcaster who attended the Yaounde meeting, said the switchover process is still ongoing after the deadline.

“Towards the end of last year, just before the soccer World Cup, we were able to launch our own OTT platform,” she said, referring to “over the top” technology that delivers streamed content over the internet.

“We are really, really excited about this because it’s been something that we’ve been working on for a very, very long time,” she said. “South African audiences for now can get access to content, which means that as a public broadcaster, we are also moving towards digitization of content.”

Public broadcasters say governments and funding agencies should help them with infrastructure and human and financial resources to increase digital penetration on the continent, which is estimated at between 30% and 43%, below the global average of about 70%.
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A recent Wall Street Journal report said the United Arab Emireates was supplying weapons to the paramilitary group allegedly carrying out many of the atrocities in neighboring Sudan. The UAE denies the accusation. Henry Wilkins reports from Adre, Chad.
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Civil society organizations in Ethiopia on Wednesday called for a peaceful resolution to conflicts in the country that have caused thousands of deaths over the past 12 months.  

Dan Yirga, executive director at the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, said this request was directed to all stakeholders in the country’s peace-building process.

He said that most of the conflicts were started or aggravated because of a long-standing culture of using force to settle tensions. To create a lasting solution for this problem, a nationwide peace convention that includes all members of society needs to create a road map for solving current conflicts and avoiding new ones.

The call by the organizations highlighted the past year’s many clashes, as well as encouraging steps toward peace building.

Over 1,000 political conflicts have been reported over the past year, according to data from the Ethiopian Peace Observatory, a local data collection project run by the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

Meseret Ali, from the Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia, said fighting had displaced a lot of people from their homes. Civilians have died. Women and children have been raped. In the Benishangul-Gumuz region, elections were bypassed for a sixth time.

Armed opposition in the country’s Oromia and Amhara regions, referendums held for the creation of new regional states, and protests over a schism in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church were some of the conflicts that took place.

The civil society organizations also addressed the government’s common response to these conflicts, such as partial or full internet shutdowns; widespread, unlawful arrests; and restrictions on the rights and freedoms of citizens.

In April, Ethiopian government officials attended peace talks in Tanzania with members of the Oromo Liberation Army, a rebel faction. The talks ended with no agreement reached.
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China pledged to help South Africa with its crippling energy crisis during the recent BRICS summit in Johannesburg. At the same time, South Africa said it wants to correct a trade imbalance with China and export more finished products — but manufacturing in South Africa is currently hampered by the unreliable power grid. Kate Bartlett spoke to business owners in Johannesburg about the challenges they face. Video editor: Zaheer Cassim
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An appeals court in Nigeria was to rule Wednesday on whether President Bola Tinubu’s election victory in February was legitimate — a highly anticipated decision that has put Africa’s most populous country on edge.

The election results were challenged by the opposition, which claimed that Tinubu, who has now been in office for 100 days, was not qualified to run because he, among other things, allegedly did not have a required high school certificate or a college or university diploma.

Security was tight in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, where five judges at the Court of Appeal were to hand down their ruling. Under the law, the tribunal is empowered to either uphold Tinubu’s election win, declare someone else the winner, annul the vote or order a new election. Its decision can be appealed before Nigeria’s Supreme Court.

The opposition has hinted at possible protests if the court rules in favor of Tinubu.

Analysts say Wednesday’s ruling will be significant for this country of more than 210 million people. If the February presidential election is annulled, it would be a first in Nigeria’s history. If upheld, the ruling would boost the role of the election commission, which the opposition claims violated the law. It could also open a path for the body to decide on its own when and how election results are announced in the future.

Under the law, a presidential election can be annulled only on evidence that the national electoral body did not follow the law and acted in ways that could have changed the result.

On Tuesday, police in Abuja issued a statement warning citizens “to be cautious in their actions and statements,” saying security forces would not “condone activities capable of inciting violence or causing a descent into anarchy.”

The 71-year-old Tinubu won the election with less than 50% of the vote, also a first in Nigeria’s history. The election results are being contested by three opposition candidates, including Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s former vice president who came in second, and Peter Obi of the Labor Party, who finished third.

Both opposition candidates filed separate petitions arguing that Tinubu was not qualified to become president and claiming the electoral commission did not follow due process in announcing the winner. The delays in uploading and announcing election results could have given room for the ballots to be tampered with, critics say.

The opposition has also alleged that Tinubu was indicted for drug trafficking in the United States, that he is a citizen of Guinea which disqualifies him to run in presidential elections in Nigeria, and that his academic qualifications were forged.

Tinubu has denied all the allegations. Since taking office, he has introduced measures that he said would reform the ailing economy but that have over the past months further squeezed millions of poor and hungry Nigerians.

On Tuesday, Nigeria Labor Congress workers launched a two-day “warning strike” to protest the growing cost of living due to the removal of gas subsidies, threatening to “shut down” Africa’s largest economy if their demands for improved welfare are not met.

It was their second strike in over a month.

Since Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999, all presidential elections but one have been contested in court. None has been overturned.
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A senior U.N. official said Tuesday that the humanitarian situation has severely deteriorated in the eastern Congo, where 8 million people need assistance in three provinces and sexual violence has become endemic.

“What we saw and heard was shocking, heartbreaking and sobering,” Edem Wosornu, director of operations and advocacy in the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters. “We have seen that in the past 18 months, the situation in eastern Congo has deteriorated to an alarming extent.”

Wosornu is just back from the region, following a mission with officials from several U.N. agencies and NGOs.

She said 8 million people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri provinces, where scores of armed groups terrorize villages. Overall, more than 26 million Congolese across the country need food assistance. In a country with huge numbers of displaced persons, an additional million people have been forcibly displaced since the start of this year.

“This is not business as usual. This is an acute crisis on top of an already super-sized one,” said Gabriella Waaijman, humanitarian director for Save the Children Global, who was also part of the mission. “And behind every one of these staggeringly large numbers are individuals enduring immense levels of suffering.”

This year, humanitarians have been able to assist about 1.4 million people in Congo but are hampered by insecurity, a lack of access on poor roads and a huge funding shortfall. The United Nations has appealed for $2.3 billion but received only $764 million so far, with just a few months left in the year.

Wosornu said sexual violence is being perpetrated “on a massive and distressing scale.”

“In the first six months of 2023 alone, more than 35,000 survivors have sought access to services for gender-based violence across the three provinces alone,” she said, adding that the real number is likely higher as survivors often do not report sexual crimes.

The U.N. has warned that such violations may amount to atrocity crimes.

Women and girls are at particular risk from armed men when they search for food, water and firewood in areas around camps for the displaced. They are also often forced to engage in what the U.N. calls “survival sex,” including inside the camps for internally displaced people.

Wosornu said the stories she heard from victims and their families in eastern Congo were “absolutely horrific.”

“Transactional sex at 20 cents is what is being perpetrated in the camps,” she said, adding that the U.N. and its partners are working on prevention and offering psychosocial and medical support to women who have been raped.

Unfortunately, funding for gender-based violence is often the least funded in emergencies, Wosornu said, at around 5%. While protection programs only receive about 10% of donor funds.
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Jihadi insurgents in Burkina Faso’s Yatenga province killed 36 volunteer fighters and 17 soldiers, the country’s army confirmed Tuesday. The massacre is among the worst strategic defeats since interim President Ibrahim Traore wrested power from the previous junta a year ago. 

“This act of extreme cowardice will not go unpunished. Every effort is being made to disable the remaining terrorist elements on the run,” the army said in a statement, adding that several dozen rebels already have been killed. 

Since 2015, Burkina Faso’s army has been fighting extremist groups in its desert north. Some of those groups hold ties to al-Qaida and the Islamic State. Understaffed and at times outgunned, the impoverished West African nation has had to rely on a network of ragtag volunteers that watchdog groups have accused of killing civilians, including children. 

The jihadi insurgents have killed thousands and displaced upward of 2 million people as they move closer to Ouagadougou, the nation’s capital. Civilians under terrorist rule are barred from traveling and accessing vital goods and services. 

Conflict analysts say that half of the country lives in lawlessness.

“This violence, coupled with the geographic spread of extremist activities effectively surrounding Ouagadougou, puts Burkina Faso more than ever at the brink of collapse,” a report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies said. 

Two military coups last year promised to restore order and national sovereignty, but the crisis continues to spiral. Since the first coup in January 2022, extremist killings have nearly tripled, according to the Africa Center report, when compared to the year and a half before the coup.

In late January, President Traore struck down an accord allowing the French military to battle insurgents on Burkina Faso’s soil. Now, he may want to enlist Russia’s support. Last week, he met with a Russian delegation to discuss potential military cooperation. 

Some information from The Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report. 
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Rising tension in Ethiopia’s Amhara region from sporadic fighting between the federal government and local militia groups, known as Fano, is causing shortages of goods and reducing health care services.

Towns across the Amhara region have come to a standstill following the fighting. 

A health worker in Dembecha town, in the West Gojjam Zone, said federal troops had initially camped at the town’s hospital for days, making it difficult for staff to provide health services.

The worker said the troops eventually left the hospital, but remained in town, checking on residents and making it difficult for residents to feel free to move around.

The Ethiopian government declared a state of emergency in the Amhara region in early August, restricting movement and transferring the region’s administration to a military command post.

In Mezzezo town, 200 kilometers from Addis Ababa, there has been relative calm, but the insecurity has resulted in price hikes on basic goods. Goods are not coming in from Addis Ababa, one Mezzezo resident said, and the prices of merchandise and edible oil have shot up, making it hard to live. 

Fighting between Fano forces and federal troops reached its peak in early August, after months of skirmishes, following government orders to re-integrate the militia into the formal security structure.

A recent U.N. report says that has resulted in the deaths of over 180 people since July. The report adds that more than 1,000 people have been arrested across the country since the declaration of a state of emergency. 

A resident of Debre Tabor in the South Gonder Zone said a lot of young people were arrested last week after federal troops took over the town following days of fighting. Troops were going house to house on August 30 and 31, the resident said, going around searching for weapons and Fano. The resident added that people are still in danger. 

In a briefing given September 1, Ethiopian Defense Force Field Marshall Berhanu Jula said the situation in the Amhara region is no longer posing a security threat.  
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General Brice Oligui Nguema took the oath of office as Gabon’s interim president at the presidential palace in the capital, Libreville, amid a cheering crowd of supporters and a military display.

But experts say the ceremony marks the beginning of an uncertain future in the Central African nation.

Oligui, who promised to hold free and transparent elections to return the country to civilian rule, did not say when he’ll cede power. He says a new constitution must first be adopted by referendum.

Godbless Otubure is the founder of the nonprofit pro-democracy group, Ready To Lead Africa.

“The military knows that they do not have the capacity to run a democratically run country, so when he’s not giving a timeline, it’s because he might also not be free from the curse of hanging on to power,” Otubure said. “I do not believe that he has the best interest of the country at heart if he is not making a commitment to when he will be transitioning back to democratic rule.”

It is questionable whether Gabon had democratic rule in the past. Omar Bongo and his son Ali ruled the country for 56 years.

Still, on Friday, Gabon’s military leaders said they were not in a hurry to return to democracy and repeat past mistakes.

Last week, Oligui and his men overthrew Ali Bongo shortly after he was declared the winner of the disputed presidential polls. The military cited corruption and serious institutional, political and economic problems as grounds for the overthrow.

It was the eighth coup d’état in West and Central Africa in three years and comes one month after the ousting of Niger’s president, Mohammed Bazoum.

The coup has drawn global criticisms, including from the United Nations and the African Union, which suspended Gabon and threatened to impose sanctions if coup leaders fail to restore constitutional order.

Chris Kwaja, a member of the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries, says sanctions would make coup leaders more compliant.

“Even for Niger, the three years they agreed on was based on pressures from ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] and other actors,” Kwaja said. “At the initial stage, there was no clear-cut timeline, and what we see in Gabon is also taking that shape. When international pressure comes in, they will now unveil a timetable. And this has become a typical feature of military rule —they only act on the basics of pressure.”

Experts say the growing trend for military takeovers is triggered by poor governance in Africa.

Paul James is the elections program officer at the Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement, or YIAGA Africa.

“When governments are removed forcefully, and you begin to see citizens jubilate, what that points to me is that quality of leadership is declining. And that’s why we’re having what we have at the moment,” James said.

Otubure, of Ready To Lead Africa, goes further, saying, “What we’re seeing is the failure of the democratic experiment in Africa.”
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The first African Climate Summit began on Monday in Kenya, with heads of state and international organizations advocating for a stronger voice and more financing to combat the impact of climate change on the continent. Mohammed Yusuf reports from Nairobi. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo
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