Click here for political map of Africa (source: UTexas).
A quick news tour of the African continent:
Northern Africa:
Morocco politely turns down US requests to detain and arrest Guinean President Dadis Camara, trying to stay out of other countries’ affairs while maintaining a “terror-free atmosphere.” Good luck with that.
West Africa:
It is reported that when Dadis Camara was declared leader of the 32-member junta in December 2008, Konate who was then head of an elite unit of specially trained commandos did not even appear on the list. Someone who witnessed the event at the main barracks said Konate initially challenged Camara over the presidency, which led to Konate, Camara and a third officer agreeing to draw lots from a mayonnaise jar to settle who would get to be president. Camara won but disputed the mayonnaise-jar story, saying soldiers threatened him and Konate with death unless they agreed to lead the country. Konate was then named vice president, and in a period of one year moved through the military ranks from colonel to general, while Dadis Camara remained a captain.
Be our leader or we kill you? O-kay. Who am I to argue with such logic?
Moving right along to Nigeria…
The radical Jamaican cleric who was deported to Gambia last week has been spotted in Kenya, officials reported on Sunday. Abdullah Al-Faisal, a Jamaican Muslim cleric was flown to Lagos, Nigeria, on Thursday in a private jet after airlines decline to have him board their planes. It was the second time the east African nation had tried unsuccessfully to deport the cleric. On Tuesday, the Kenyan authorities reportedly drove him to the border of Tanzania because he had entered Kenya from there, but Tanzania refused him entry as well. According to a Muslim and human rights group in Kenya, Al-Faisal is being held in a remand prison in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. How he found his way back in Kenya remains un-clear….Kenyan officials have said Al-Faisal had traveled to Kenya from Nigeria through Angola, Malawi, Swaziland, Mozambique and Tanzania. Kenyan Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang pointed out that Al-Faisal is in the watch-list of persons not allowed to visit the East African nation since 2007. Mr. Faisal was convicted in Britain in 2003 of inciting racial hatred for urging his followers to kill Hindus, Christians, Jews and Americans. Britain deported him to Jamaica in 2007.
Hmm. I bet we haven’t heard the last of him.
Southern Africa:
Angolan rebels attack Togo soccer team “by mistake.”
Rodrigues Mingas, secretary general of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (Flec), said his fighters had meant to attack security guards as the convoy passed through the Angolan province of Cabinda, which sits wholly inside Congo. Today, Angolan state media reported two arrests in connection with Friday’s attack, which came as the Togo team travelled to the Africa Cup of Nations. Three people were killed ? the team’s assistant coach, its official spokesman and the bus driver….Through a spokesman Zuma dismissed speculation that the incident raised questions over security for the World Cup in South Africa five months from now. Sajjan Gohel, the international security director of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London-based thinktank, said many people had been looking to the Angola tournament as a litmus test for the World Cup. “Although it is not in South Africa it is in southern Africa, so I suppose many people were looking at it in a similar light,” he said.
I suppose.
The profile of Angola’s new elite are people who studied abroad, in Europe or the USA, who have no connection whatsoever with the people they are supposed to represent and who turn their backs on their African origins, native languages and culture. Yet despite the flagrant lack of democracy in Angola, despite the dreadful living conditions of vast swathes of the population while the corrupt elite perpetuates its existence through a system of bribes and commissions (in collusion with Europeans), countries and companies are lining up to sign lucrative contracts with one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
Beta says it is their right to claim 20 percent of all national resources claiming that the “war veterans are some of the poorest people around despite the work that they have done for this country.”…In the last decade, the veterans were in the forefront of farm invasions that left scores of people, mostly white’s, dead.
Long time ruler President Mugabe started the often-violent seizure of white-owned farms in 2000, after he suffered his first defeat at the polls over a referendum to entrench his presidential powers. He said the farms would go to poor blacks but many of the 5,000 seized farms went to his friends and cronies, however. The seizures touched off an economic collapse in the southern African country that used to thrive on exports of food, minerals and tobacco….During colonial times, white settlers who came to what was then called Rhodesia to seek their fortunes in agriculture and mining forced blacks off ancestral lands. Mugabe insists he is trying to correct the wrongs of Zimbabwe’s colonial past.
East Africa:
Al-Qaeda’s proxy in Africa stationed in Somalia, Al-Shabaab, has suffered a big blow as one of its top-ranking commanders has been reportedly executed by another rebel group in the fight for control of the central regions of Somalia….Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Abu Yusuf a spokesman for the group told reporters “We don’t normally kill al Shabaab members. We arrest them and make them understand that Islam means peace. We have detained and then released many of them,”
The Spokesman went on to say “This commander insisted that all people were infidels except his group, We will execute Al-Shabaab members who insist that it can be right to kill the innocent. What else are we supposed to do to those who believe they will go to paradise for killing us and the whole human race?” This was the first known execution by the Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca which is aligned with Somalia’s pro-west government.
US embassy raises coy warning for aviation travel between Sudan and Uganda:
A warning has been issued by the U.S. embassy in Khartoum, Sudan that terrorists in the East Africa region were planning a deadly attack on Air Uganda flights that ply the routes between southern Sudan and Uganda. Embassy officials in Khartoum did not name the potential attackers but has said in the past that terrorist groups were active in Sudan. They published a warning late on Friday on the embassy website of potential threats against commercial aviation transiting between the two countries.
Returning to North Africa:
Egypt is the latest country to purchase large tracts of Ethiopian agricultural land:
Ethiopia’s policy shift made last year, allowing foreign entities to grab huge commercial farmlands, has attracted a lot of attention from both foreign companies and countries. The Government of Djibouti was the first to obtain 3,000 hectares of farmland in Bale, a suitable agricultural zone in the Oromia region located some 400 kilometers south of Addis Ababa. Karaturi, an Indian company, and Saudi Star, established by Sheik Mohamed Al Amudi, a Saudi national billionaire, have equally obtained lands with the aim of growing export crops for their respective countries. The land deals were made directly with the central government.
