Al-Shabab fighters have attacked a Somali military base handed over by Kenyan forces late last month as part of an African Union troop drawdown.

Somalia regional officials said early Thursday the base in Geriley village in the Gedo region, about 12 kilometers from the Kenya border, was captured by militants.

Ibrahim Guled Adan, the district commissioner of El-Wak town, which Geriley falls under, told VOA Somali the militants seized the base after a firefight with Jubaland regional paramilitary forces.

Adan said four people — three soldiers, including two officers, and a civilian — were killed in the attack by al-Shabab.

“Today there was a fighting in Geriley between the anti-peace elements and the paramilitary forces,” he said.

He said the administration is planning to recapture Geriley.

“We are in an urgent meeting,” he said.

Geriley was handed over by African Union forces on June 29 as part of the publicized drawdown of 2,000 soldiers ahead of a full withdrawal by December 2024. The base was handed over to Somali regional forces.

Al-Shabab attempted to take over the base on July 4 but was repulsed by the regional forces.

The capture of Geriley could pose a security threat to Kenya because it’s close to the border. Al-Shabab attacks in the northeastern and coastal regions of Kenya have increased recently.

Meanwhile, the Jubaland regional intelligence agency said that security forces conducted an operation in the vicinity of Welmarow village on Wednesday evening, killing 17 al-Shabab militants.

The agency published purported photos of the dead militants.

Without providing evidence, the agency alleged that some of the militants killed in the operation included Kenyans and Ethiopian al-Shabab fighters.

Somali troops and al-Shabab militants already clashed twice this week in the Welmarow area.

On July 11, several regional forces were killed in an al-Shabab suicide car bomb while they conducted an operation. Two days earlier, Somali troops were conducting an operation when al-Shabab militants engaged them, an incident which prompted a request for air support by the Somali government.

The U.S. military in Africa then carried out three airstrikes, killing 10 al-Shabab militants.
…

your ad here

Egypt launched an attempt to mediate between Sudan’s warring factions on Thursday at a regional summit, the latest in a series of international efforts to prevent a prolonged civil war and the deepening of a humanitarian crisis.

Fighting between Sudan’s army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces broke out in the capital Khartoum in April, and has spread westward to the fragile Darfur and Kordofan regions.

More than 1,000 civilians have been killed and 3 million people have been displaced, including 700,000 to neighboring countries, according to the United Nations, which warns of a growing hunger crisis.

The United States and Saudi Arabia had negotiated a series of ceasefires, but suspended talks after violations. Earlier this week, Ethiopia hosted a regional East African summit, but the army boycotted it, claiming lead sponsor Kenya was biased.

Egypt, which has historically close ties with the Sudanese army, invited leaders of Sudan’s neighbors to the Thursday summit, which aims to stave off foreign interference in the conflict and offer a new push for peace talks, two Egyptian security sources said.

A key priority for Egypt is to reassert itself on a file it feels excluded from by other regional efforts, diplomats said.

“All of our brothers in Sudan must uphold the supreme interest and keep Sudan’s politics and unity away from external interference that seeks to achieve narrow interests,” said Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Sisi presented an initiative to the group based on a ceasefire, opening of safe passages for aid, a comprehensive dialogue, and a mechanism to communicate with the warring parties.

The Egyptian plan aims to achieve a three-month ceasefire and open aid pathways by convening meetings with military and tribal leaders, taking advantage of long-term ties, the Egyptian sources said.

Some of the leaders attending appeared to welcome the Egyptian initiative.

But Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed called for it to align with the regional IGAD initiative announced earlier this week, which generally has the same aims.

“As neighboring countries working to overcome our own internal challenges, we should not be perceived to impart wisdom to our sisterly nation, nor should we further complicate a fragile situation by extending its longevity,” Abiy said.

Relations between Egypt and Ethiopia have been strained in recent years by a dispute over the giant dam Ethiopia has constructed on the Blue Nile.

The two leaders met on Wednesday, after Abiy last week said he would delay the fourth filling of the dam and ensure Sudan and Egypt received enough water, a conciliatory move.

Previous one-day and multi-day ceasefires were quickly violated, and were described by the U.N. special envoy Volker Perthes as an opportunity for the forces to re-position.

Speaking on Wednesday, he described mediation attempts as “emergency diplomacy.”

“The two warring parties still think they can win the war so they accept diplomatic initiatives when they think it can help their aims,” he said. Representatives for the RSF and army did not speak at the summit, but the army had previously welcomed it. 
…

your ad here

Hopes of ending hunger by the end of this decade have all but evaporated as multiple crises — climate change, the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts, including the war in Ukraine — have pushed more than 122 million people into hunger since 2019 to reach an unprecedented high of 735 million.

While progress in reducing hunger is occurring in Asia and Latin America, a new report by five United Nations specialized agencies finds hunger is still on the rise in Western Asia, the Caribbean and throughout all subregions of Africa.

The latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, launched Wednesday, says Africa remains the worst affected region, with “one in five people facing hunger on the continent, more than twice the global average.”

Marco Sanchez Cantillo, deputy director of the agrifood economics division at the Food and Agriculture Organization, said the situation of global hunger would have been better “had it not been for the rising food and energy price increases, the conflicts, the weather-related events, and deep inequalities that we observed in the last years.”

He said the report warns that the world is not on track to achieve one of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals of ending hunger by 2030 and instead predicts that nearly 600 million people will be chronically undernourished by then.

Cantillo adds that an estimated 2.4 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure in 2022 and did not know from where their next meal was coming.

“These are people who faced uncertainties about their ability to pay for food and have been forced to reduce, sometimes during the year, the quantity or the quality of the food that they consume due to lack of money or other resources.”

Gian Carlo Cirri, head of the Geneva office of the World Food Program, said data on acute food insecurity show “we are facing the most complex and one of the biggest crises of modern times when it comes to food insecurity.”

He noted that in the 79 high burden countries in which WFP operates, 345 million people are facing food insecurity. He said this was a major increase of 200 million when compared to 2020.

“It is a staggering number,” Cirri said.

The report notes that more and more people are leaving rural areas and moving to cities. It predicts that almost seven in 10 people will live in cities by 2050, and that this increased urbanization is driving changes in agrifood systems.

Helene Papper, director for global communications and advocacy at the International Fund for Agricultural Development, said food insecurity afflicts urban and rural households. However, she said it was strongest in rural areas “where 80 percent of the world’s poorest people live. Yet, they are the people behind our plates.”

She explains that many of these people are small-scale farmers who produce one-third of the world’s food — 70% of the food in Africa and Asia.

“Meanwhile, they struggle to feed themselves, and they bear the brunt of tremendous challenges we all face today, the least being climate change. But they only receive 1.7 percent of global climate finance. This is wrong. We must shift this terrible dichotomy,” Papper said.

She said that urbanization offers opportunities as well as challenges.

“Access to food does not always mean access to nutritious food,” she said. “Urbanization facilitates access to cheap and processed foods contributing to malnutrition and diet-related diseases, and this requires our attention and action.”

The World Health Organization reports that eight to 10 million people die every year because of unhealthy diets. Among the major victims are children and women.

This year’s SOFI report shows that conflict, climate change and increasing inequality are leaving millions of children and women without access to nutritious, safe, affordable and sustainable diets.

“And this also coincides with the increasing availability and consumption of processed foods that do not meet children’s nutritional needs,” said Chika Hayashi, statistics and monitoring senior adviser for UNICEF.

She said that last year, about 22% — 148 million children under five — were stunted; 7%, about 45 million children under five were wasted — a child who is too thin for his or her height and has an increased risk of death if not treated for the condition; and about 6%, or 37 million children, were overweight.

“Ideally, we want these numbers to be less than three percent for it not to be a public health problem. So, we are quite far from where we would like it to be and to meet our SDG goal.”

She said that “the scale of the food and nutritious crisis demands a much stronger response for women and children, especially the most vulnerable.”

To remedy these problems, Hayashi said policy actions should include prioritizing access to nutritious and affordable diets for children and women; providing nutritious support and services; protecting families from nutrient poor or ultra-processed food; and strengthening nutritious supply chains, including the provision of therapeutic foods.
…

your ad here

Environmental activists in Nigeria are raising alarms after the military this week burned a ship with more than 800,000 liters of stolen crude oil.

Nigerian officials said the ship was caught smuggling the oil to Cameroon and was destroyed to set an example for would-be criminals. But critics pointed out the damage to the environment and questioned the circumstances of the ship’s interception by a controversial security outfit run by a former militant leader.

Nigeria’s National Petroleum Company Ltd., or NNPC, said the oil had been stolen from a well in southwest Ondo state and that the vessel had operated undetected for up to 12 years.

Officials said the vessel had no documentation to justify the cargo it was carrying.

The discovery was the latest in a flurry of oil busts by NNPC-contractor Tantita Security Services, a company run by Government Ekpemupolo, also known as Tompolo.

A military helicopter operated by the Nigerian military’s joint task force Operation Delta Safe on Tuesday bombarded the vessel, dumping its content into the water.

Environmentalists said authorities need to find ways of handling looted oil that do not harm nature.

Olumide Idowu, executive director of the International Climate Change Development Initiative, a Nigerian NGO, said the burning of the vessel “is actually jeopardizing the source of drinking water and agricultural irrigation, and this contamination can also affect our aquatic ecosystem and disrupt the balance of plants and animals in our population.”

Nigerian authorities have been struggling to stem oil theft from pipelines and wells in the Niger Delta region for decades.

The trend is a major issue for new President Bola Tinubu, who has been making drastic economic changes in a bid to improve the country’s economy, including ending expensive fuel subsidies.

In April, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a government effort to increase transparency and accountability and reduce corruption in resource management, said the country had lost about $46 billion to oil theft in twelve years.

Saint Mienpamo, a field operator with a local security service in the region, said the strict measures applied by authorities are a necessary sacrifice to address a bigger problem.

“Now, if you drive through the creeks of the Niger Delta, even those hot bunkering spots, you will not find anybody there,” Mienpamo said. “At least 85 percent success has been recorded so far.”

However, Emmanuel Afimia, owner of oil and gas consulting firm Enermics Consulting, said destruction of the vessel could make prosecution of offenders more challenging.

“This vessel has been parading the Nigerian waters and stealing crude oil for, like, 12 years,” he said. “You need to ask: What quantity have they stolen so far and what’s the monetary value of that? A lot of questions need to be asked, but then, now that the vessel has been burned, how are we able to prosecute this set of people?”

Nigeria’s government made a deal in August 2022 with Tantita and said months of an intense crackdown on oil thieves have significantly reduced oil theft in the Niger Delta.

In October, security operatives were criticized for burning another vessel carrying stolen oil.
…

your ad here

Some three dozen South African firefighters, clad in their bright yellow jackets and dark blue pants, danced, sang and cheered in a sprawling parking lot near the majestic woods of central Alberta. The mood was light as the men and women smiled and clapped, some taking out smartphones to record video of their dancing colleagues before heading off to another day battling the fires raging through Canada.

The group gathered on an early July day in the small town of Fox Creek had traveled nearly 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) to help fight the hundreds of devastating wildfires that have burned homes and wild lands in the region, destroying an area about the size of the U.S. state of Virginia. They chanted and worked through drills before signing a Canadian flag presented to them as a token of thanks.

In a record-breaking year for Canada’s wildfires, with crews coming from around the world to help, the South Africans are a familiar and uplifting sight. This year’s deployment is the fifth — and largest — for the men and women in Working on Fire, a public works program for young people that serves as South Africa’s wildland fire agency.

Their rich harmony and movement travel with them everywhere they go, said Trevor Abrahams, Working on Fire’s managing director. It was on display in early June, when more than 200 firefighters were filmed singing and clapping in the Edmonton airport after arriving to help with the fires, drawing millions of views on TikTok.

“That part is part of our tradition,” Abrahams said. “At work they will be singing to a rhythm during the busy work. All the teams sing and make up songs as they go along.

The company has had as many as 428 firefighters in Canada this summer, when rampaging wildfires have sent dangerous levels of smoke pollution south across big swaths of the United States and as far as Europe. Their tours of duty run 35 days, hard work on different terrain and with different tools than those used at home.

“The fires in Canada are very different from fires in South Africa,” said Thuto Ganya, one of the firefighters. He said his crew was not familiar with smoldering peat fires that can burn below ground in the Canada woods, and they are still getting used to “all those diggings.”

Abrahams said the overseas deployments are a prestigious assignment for the crews.

“Coming to assistance on an international platform is certainly something they take with more than a pinch of pride,” he said.

They adjust to the differences fast. As their crews are divided into smaller teams for work in different areas, they try to team experienced firefighters with those new to North America, Abrahams said. They learn how to load heavy equipment into a helicopter safely and how to carry a shovel near the chopper — even when it’s not running. They have to be vigilant for the danger of shallow-rooted trees toppling at any moment.

In South Africa, wildland fires are typically much smaller than those seen in Canada and without nearly as much fuel. They’re usually fought by men and women carrying backpacks with 20 liters of water and tankers nearby to resupply them, Abrahams said.

Canada arms its firefighters with more advanced and detailed weather forecasts, and with information on moisture content in vegetation. Firefighters also use infrared scans to spot hot spots — technology not routinely used in South Africa. And South Africa firefighting doesn’t rely on the massive water-carrying planes nor the kilometers of hose that are routinely laid to fires in Canada, Abrahams said.

The Canadian deployments have become routine enough that Working on Fire trains its firefighters in how to operate a particular pump that is a fixture in fighting Canadian fires but little used back home.

Ganya, who has a girlfriend and a 2-year-old back home, said his team had just come back from two days of rest, when they visited a mall and saw fireworks.

“I’d love to come here as often as I could because I love this place. It’s a very quiet place. I’m in love with it,” he said, smiling. “It’s just a lot of peace of mind.”
…

your ad here

South African business groups are pushing the government to make strong diplomatic efforts to ensure the country is not stripped of its duty-free access to the U.S. market.

A group of U.S. senators recently questioned South Africa’s status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, citing Pretoria’s ties with Moscow. South Africa has invited Russia President Vladimir Putin to an August summit despite his invasion of Ukraine and his being wanted by the International Criminal Court.

Relations between Pretoria and Washington have so deteriorated in recent months that South African business groups are now scrambling to try and make sure the country isn’t kicked out of an important U.S. tariff-free program.

The war in Ukraine has divided the two countries after South Africa refused to condemn Russia’s invasion, even going so far as hosting Russian warships for joint military exercises earlier this year. In May, the U.S. ambassador to South Africa alleged the country had secretly supplied arms to Moscow — something Pretoria denies.

It is unclear whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will be attending the summit of the BRICS group of emerging economies in Johannesburg in August. His visit would place South Africa in a quandary. As a signatory to the International Criminal Court, it is obliged to arrest him should he set foot in the country.

The U.S. Congress is beginning to review the renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, known as AGOA, with a decision expected by the end of the year. Some U.S. senators recently wrote a letter saying South Africa should no longer host an AGOA forum set for later this year. They also raised the prospect that the country could lose access to its trade benefits entirely.

Busisiwe Mavuso, CEO of Business Leadership South Africa, an independent association of some of South Africa’s largest businesses, said she was preparing a submission urging the U.S. to renew South Africa’s participation in AGOA.

“There’d be dire financial consequences if we were to lose this,” Mavuso said. “And loss of this trade relationship would mean billions of rand of economic activity as well as tens of thousands of jobs, which depend on those exports, would be lost. It would be devastating for employment, especially in a country where we’re currently sitting with 70 percent youth unemployment.”

Mavuso said South Africa is the largest single beneficiary country under AGOA, with 25% of the country’s exports going to the U.S. and nearly a billion dollars’ worth of exports to the U.S. in the first three months of this year alone.

Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, said being removed from AGOA would have far-reaching implications, not just on the tariff side but in terms of investor sentiment.

“The AGOA benefits, there are certain industries that really enjoy those,” Sihlobo said. “In the absence of them there could be economic consequences, particularly in the automobile industry and of course the agricultural sector, specifically wine as well as the fruit sector.”

South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance, which has expressed strong support of Ukraine, is also worried the country could lose access to AGOA, said the party’s shadow finance minister Dion George.

“If the view is that South Africa is in fact not acting in the interests of the United States and may well be a threat to the national security of the U.S., then yes, of course that will become an issue and may very well be a factor in carving South Africa out of AGOA next year,” George said.

Spokespeople for the presidency and South Africa’s ministry of international relations did not reply to requests for comment. However, they have previously said there’s no evidence South Africa is going to lose access to AGOA, after President Cyril Ramaphosa recently sent a delegation to lobby U.S. officials.
…

your ad here

The United Nations food agency says thousands of people are crossing the border into the central African nation of Chad from neighboring Sudan to escape the nearly three-month-old violence that the world body’s humanitarian chief has described as a civil war “of the most brutal kind.”

The World Food Programme said in a statement Tuesday that 20,000 people from Sudan’s Darfur region have arrived in the small Chadian border town of Adre in the last week alone. The agency said many of the people arriving from Darfur are seriously wounded amid reports that fleeing civilians are being deliberately targeted “with an increasing ethnic dimension to the violence.”

The WFP statement says it estimates that about 10% of children crossing from Darfur into Chad are malnourished.

“People are running across the border, wounded, scared, with only their children in their hands and the clothes on their backs,” said Pierre Honnorat, the WFP’s country director in Chad. “They need safety, security, and humanitarian assistance.”

The WFP says its relief efforts along the Chad-Sudan border have become increasingly challenging due to the annual rainy season. It has deployed two all-terrain vehicles that can each carry up to 1,200 kilograms of food and can cross multiple “wadis,” or large gullies filled with rainwater.

More than 230,000 refugees and 38,000 returnees have crossed into Chad from Sudan since fighting began in April between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces after months of rising tension over the country’s political future and plans to integrate the RSF into the national army.
…

your ad here

An unidentified armed group attacked a United Nations peacekeeping patrol Monday in the Central African Republic, killing a peacekeeper from Rwanda, the U.N. said. 

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said initial reports indicated the U.N. patrol returned fire and killed three of the assailants. 

The attack happened as the peacekeepers were providing a protective presence around the town of Sam-Ouandja, in the Haute Kotto prefecture in the Central African Republic’s east, Dujarric said. 

Peacekeepers were deployed to Sam-Ouandja last week in response to an attack on the town by an armed group, which fled after the peacekeepers intervened, he said. He said the U.N. mission had expanded the security perimeter around the town over the past five days to protect the community and support aid deliveries. 

Valentine Rugwabiza, head of the U.N. mission, strongly condemned the attack. She said the peacekeepers will remain in Sam-Ouandja and the mission is engaging with authorities to deploy national forces to the area, according to Dujarric. 

Fighting for a decade

The mineral-rich but impoverished Central African Republic has faced deadly intercommunal fighting since 2013, when predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power and forced President Francois Bozize from office. Mostly Christian militias later fought back, also targeting civilians in the streets. Untold thousands were killed, and most of the capital’s Muslims fled in fear. 

Peacekeepers deployed in 2014

A U.N. peacekeeping mission known as MINUSCA was deployed in 2014 and now has nearly 17,500 uniformed personnel in the country. Its mandate was extended for 12 months until November. 

After the constitutional court rejected Bozize’s candidacy to run for president in December 2020, President Faustin-Archange Touadera won a second term with 53% of the vote. But he continues to face opposition from a rebel coalition linked to Bozize. 

Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, whose leader led a short-lived mutiny in Russia last month, have helped keep Touadera in power. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the state-run RT television network after the mutiny that hundreds of Russian fighters would remain in Central African Republic. 
…

your ad here

Sudan appears to be in a civil war “of the most brutal kind” and the world needs a new forum for talks in pursuit of a cease-fire, the United Nations humanitarian chief told The Associated Press Monday.

Martin Griffiths spoke as regional leaders met in neighboring Ethiopia following the breakdown of peace talks in Saudi Arabia in June. Egypt says it will host leaders from Sudan’s neighbors Thursday in search of peace, with few details.

“We don’t have a place, a forum, where the two parties are present … where we can broker the kind of basic agreements that we need to move supplies and people,” Griffiths said. He called Sudan the toughest place in the world for humanitarian workers in terms of access and warned that the crisis will only worsen as the fighting spreads to new areas.

“We have to re-create the architecture that we had for a little while in Jeddah,” he said of the Saudi- and U.S.-mediated talks. He criticized those discussions as “very clunky, very time consuming,” but said at least “it did produce some real movements” in facilitating aid access.

Sudan descended into chaos after fighting broke out between top army Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and his rival, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, on April 15.

The army and RSF have agreed to at least 10 temporary cease-fires, but all have failed. Riyadh and Washington, in adjourning negotiations, accused both forces of failing to respect the agreements.

The conflict has killed over 3,000 people and wounded over 6,000 others, Sudan Health Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said last month and warned that the true death toll is likely to be far higher. More than 2.9 million people have fled their homes.

“If I were Sudanese, I find it hard to imagine that this isn’t a civil war … of the most brutal kind,” the U.N. humanitarian chief said. “Part of that is it’s not limited to one place, it’s spreading, it’s viral … it’s a threat to the state itself … and if that doesn’t qualify for being a civil war, I don’t know what does.”

Griffiths said there is a pressing need to create a forum to facilitate humanitarian access and local cease-fires so trucks and goods can get into specific areas. Any new forum should have greater representation for humanitarian organizations, he said.

In Sudan’s capital, RSF troops appear to have the upper hand in the streets, having commandeered civilian homes and turned them into operational bases. The army has retaliated with airstrikes that have struck residential areas and sometimes hospitals.

In the western Darfur region, the conflict’s other epicenter, entire villages have been overrun by RSF fighters and their allied militias, forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee to neighboring Chad.

In the province of West Darfur, the fighting has morphed into ethnic violence, U.N. officials have said, with the RSF and Arab militias reportedly targeting non-Arab tribes. Activists and tribal leaders from the province say residents have been killed, women and girls raped, and properties looted and burned.
…

your ad here

Health officials are reporting a deadly outbreak of cholera in the South African province of Gauteng.

Authorities say nearly 50 people have died, with most of the deaths concentrated in the Hammanskraal area. Cases have been reported in other areas as well.

Medical officials have urged residents to be vigilant about what they consume and to practice good hygiene, like hand washing.

Cholera mainly spreads through contaminated water or food.

Symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting and dehydration.
…

your ad here

The Gambia has repatriated 296 migrants in a two-week period, more than half of whom had been stranded in Libya, the ministry of foreign affairs said on Sunday.  

One hundred and forty Gambians were repatriated between June 21 and July 4 after authorities in Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco each intercepted boats carrying citizens of the west African nation, a ministry spokeswoman confirmed.  

A total of 231 Gambians had been aboard the three boats, the ministry said in a statement, but many had “absconded” before being returned.  

Meanwhile, 156 Gambians were on June 24 repatriated from Libya, where they had been stranded, it said.  

On Thursday, Human Rights Watch accused Tunisia of expelling hundreds of sub-Saharan Africans to a desert area near the Libyan border since July 2, following violence against migrants in the city of Sfax.  

“Regarding the disturbing video of migrants in Tunisia circulating on social media, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is closely working… to ascertain their numbers and verify their nationalities as part of the evacuation procedures,” the statement said.  

Earlier this year, West African nations including Burkina Faso, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal repatriated hundreds of citizens from Tunisia amid a wave of racist attacks there.  

It followed a tirade by the Tunisian president blaming “hordes of illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa” for crime and alleging a “criminal plot” to change the country’s demographic make-up. 
…

your ad here

Gabon’s President Ali Bongo will run for reelection in August, he said on Sunday, in a bid to extend his family’s 56-year grip on power in the central African country.

“Because nothing matters more than your success, I am announcing today that I am a candidate,” Bongo told a small crowd of cheering supporters.

Elections are scheduled for Aug. 26.

Bongo, 64, has been president of the oil-producing nation for two seven-year terms since succeeding his father Omar, who died in 2009 after ruling since 1967. Gabon has no constitutional term limits.

Both of Bongo’s election wins were disputed by the opposition, which said he won fraudulently. His 2016 victory triggered deadly clashes between police and protesters during which the parliament building was gutted by fire.

Bongo’s reelection bid was thrown into doubt when he suffered a stroke in October 2018 and was flown to Morocco for medical treatment. He spent three months abroad but returned shortly after a coup attempt was thwarted in his absence.
…

your ad here