East Africa is bracing for a third outbreak of desert locusts, with billions of the destructive insects about to hatch and threaten food supplies in a region already reeling from damaging rains and the coronavirus pandemic.

Spurred by favourable weather conditions, the migratory pests have descended on East Africa in record numbers since late 2019 and another wave is about to take to the skies despite the concerted use of pesticides.

“Tens of thousands of hectares of cropland and pasture have already been damaged across the Horn and East Africa,” the International Rescue Committee said in a report this month, noting even a small swarm could devour the same amount of food in a day as approximately 35,000 people.

In Ethiopia between January and April, locusts destroyed 1.3 million hectares of grazing land and nearly 200,000 hectares of crops, resulting in the loss of 350,000 tonnes of cereals, IGAD, the East Africa regional organisation, said in a June report.

But these initial estimates — corresponding to the first and second locust waves — do not fully capture the extent of damage as field surveys have been hindered by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Until we get extended figures, I would just say Ethiopia was definitely the most affected in terms of croplands, then Somalia,” says Kenneth Kemucie Mwangi from ICPAC, the climate monitoring programme of IGAD.

Somalia, which like Kenya experienced heavy rains and flooding in recent months that left scores dead, had already declared a “national emergency” against the locust scourge in February.

So far East African neighbours Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi have been spared the insects, which travel in huge swarms billions of insects strong, and can migrate 150 kilometres (90 miles) in a single day.

– 400 billion killed –

The World Bank in May approved a $500 million (445 million euro) programme to help countries vulnerable to hunger in East Africa fight the pests eating their way across the region.

Pesticide spraying operations have been underway since February, helping wipe out staggering numbers of the insects capable of multiplying their numbers 20-fold every three months.

“About 400,000 hectares were controlled in the region between January and mid May. We estimate that 400 billion locusts have been exterminated,” says Cyril Ferrand, a Nairobi-based expert with the FAO.

“We can’t estimate the total population because we don’t have access to certain areas, especially in Somalia. But we know that it’s been seriously reduced.”

In Kenya, where swarms blotted out the sky for miles in recent months, locusts have retreated to just three semi-arid counties in the country’s far north.

Fortunately too, forecasts of dire hunger did not materialise as the first swarm to arrive from Yemen in 2019 spared the end-of-year harvest, as the crops were already too mature.

The insects, which can eat their body weight in food in a single day, strip the leaves but not seeds.

“We have not seen signs of a large scale impact on food security,” says Lark Walters of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a US-funded food security monitoring organisation.

– Disaster after disaster –

However that doesn’t mean the impact hasn’t been keenly felt on among vulnerable communities where access to food is fragile, and any shocks can cause immense hardship, he said.

East Africa has endured a string of disasters of near-Biblical proportions in 2020: surging rain and devastating floods, locusts and then amid it all — a viral pandemic.

“Somali pastoralist communities have had three years of drought, then the locusts, now Covid, which will prevent them from exporting their livestock,” said Ferrand of the FAO.

“For them it’s disaster after disaster, so their resilience is already very low. The slightest shock can push them into extreme poverty.”

These shocks can ripple too through the wider economy, where coronavirus lockdowns and border closures have already dragged on trade and caused financial hardship.

On June 11, the credit rating agency Fitch Ratings noted that while coronavirus was the primary factor affecting growth “the ongoing desert locust invasion represents significant downside risk to East Africa’s macroeconomic stability”.

The looming third wave still lies as eggs beneath the soil, but is predicted to hatch in coming weeks, just as farmers take to the fields.

“We have concerns for the June-July harvest,” said Waters.

Warmer weather, more rain and wind gusts are expected to direct the insects northwards, deep into the Horn of Africa and as far as Yemen, areas that will become more conducive to their reproduction in the coming months.

Source:  AFP

Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea have agreed to jointly map out a disputed border area after skirmishes between their troops left several wounded and property destroyed.  Officials from the two countries are asking hundreds of traders and farmers who relocated because of the clashes to return to the disputed area but, some are reluctant.

Officials from Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea agreed to work on defining their disputed border after a crisis meeting Monday night.

Cameroon’s South Region Governor Felix Nguele Nguele said in the past two weeks there have been several skirmishes along the border with Equatorial Guinea’s military.

Nguele said while nobody was killed, several troops were wounded, and goods were destroyed on both sides of the border.

After the meeting Monday, he said Cameroon instructed local officials and traditional rulers to meet with their Equatorial Guinean peers to map out a proposed border.

Nguele said after local officials agree on a proposed new border, the central governments in Malabo and Yaoundé will be able to decide if there will be a new demarcation or not.  But for the time being, he said, people should go about their daily activities peacefully.

Farmers and traders last week fled the border town of Kye-Ossi after tensions with troops on both sides.

Justo Javier Ndong Engon is governor of Equatorial Guinea’s Kie Ntem Province on the border with Cameroon.

He said at the meeting the two sides agreed to return troops to their barracks while waiting for the governments to find a lasting solution to the border dispute.

Engon said the crisis meeting resolved that border authorities ask community leaders and chiefs to urge farmers to return to their farms and traders to their shops.  He said both sides ordered an end to the destruction of goods and asked that farm produce like maize, cassava, tomatoes and vegetables – which were stuck at the border – be given access into Equatorial Guinea.

Engon did not say how many Equatorial Guineans were affected by the conflict.

Cameroon said on its side about 350 farmers and traders had fled the border in the last few weeks but that many were returning.

Cameroonian vegetable seller Derric Sama said despite the assurances that troops have pulled back, he will not return to Kye-Ossi.

He spoke via a messaging application from the town of Ebolowa, where he relocated.

“It is not the first time the military from Equatorial Guinea cross over to destroy our goods or seize vegetables and fruits from us.  Cameroon government tell us every time that they will solve the problem, but no solution seems to be coming,” said Sama.

It’s not the first time tensions have erupted along the two countries’ border.

In August, Equatorial Guinea began to erect a wall along the 183-kilometer border, sparking condemnation from Cameroon.

Cameroon said Equatorial Guinea constructed markers on its territory and instructed the military not to tolerate any unlawful intrusion.

Equatorial Guinea has also often sealed its border with Cameroon, complaining of security threats posed by illegal immigration.

In December 2017, Equatorial Guinea said it had arrested 30 foreign armed men from Chad, the Central African Republic and Sudan on the border who planned to destabilize the government.

Cameroon said at the time it also arrested 40 additional heavily armed men but gave no details.

Source: VOA

Burundi’s government says President Pierre Nkurunziza has died of a heart attack at age 55.

A statement says the president was admitted to a hospital overnight Saturday after not feeling well. He appeared better Sunday but “to very great surprise” his health abruptly worsened Monday morning, and several hours of effort failed to revive him.

Nkurunziza took office 15 years ago, and his decision to run for a disputed third term in 2015 led Burundi into turmoil that left hundreds of people dead. Facing allegations of widespread abuses, his government angrily rejected scrutiny, becoming the first country to leave the International Criminal Court.

 His death comes on the heels of elections on May 20 in which his hand-picked successor, Evariste Ndayishimiye, secured a seven-year term as president — a result confirmed by the constitutional court last Thursday.

Ndayishimiye was due to be sworn in in August.

The statement from Burundi’s presidency on Tuesday the country would observe seven days of mourning beginning Tuesday.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Two persons were feared dead when groups of Cameroonian and Nigerian traders clashed in Deira, Dubai this week, a witness told The Guardian on Tuesday.

The two persons killed were Cameroonians, two witnesses said in separate voice notes the witness sent to our correspondent.

A video the witness sent showed a man suspected to be Nigerian bleeding profusely from his head.

The fight broke after Cameroonian traders accused Nigerians of selling beers at cheaper rates, thereby drawing more customers to their stores.

“Nigerians are selling beer at a cheaper price than they do,” one person familiar with the crisis said in one of the voice notes. “That was the cause of the serious crisis, although they said the situation is under control. People are still fighting in other places.”

The chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission Abike Dabiri-Erew did not respond to the SMS sent to her phone on Tuesday evening.

Cameroon News Agency, however, reported that the fight broke after Nigerians attacked a Cameroonian trader identified as Tasso. It said both communities have been having a cold war in a place where they both sell beverages.

“Last night after beating Tasso to near death, about 10 Cameroonians stormed the streets looking for their aggressors. One person was seriously beaten as others escaped,” the Douala-based news website said in a post on its Facebook page.

“Police in Dubai have been notified but the situation remains tense.”

A Nigerian said indiscriminate arrest by the police has not helped to douse the tension.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with the head of the police. We are complaining about the situation of things, they’re doing a different thing,” he said.

An email sent to the Dubai Police on Tuesday night was not immediately replied.

Source: The Guardian

A close adviser to the head of Sudan’s sovereign council and a key figure behind burgeoning clandestine relations between the Northeast African country and the Israeli regime has died of the novel coronavirus after being flown to Occupied Territories to receive treatment.

English newspaper the Jerusalem Post, citing a report published by Israel’s Channel 13 television network, said Najwa Gadaheldam had passed away, just days after contracting the highly contagious virus.

Channel 13 added that an Israeli plane landed in Khartoum International Airport on Tuesday morning with senior diplomatic officials, medical personnel and equipment, after learning of Gadaheldam’s condition.

The Israeli medical team arrived too late when the Sudanese diplomat was already in critical condition. Gadaheldam later died from complications stemming from the coronavirus.

Earlier this week, the office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that the 70-year-old chairman of the Likud party and Sudanese leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had a telephone conversation on the first day of Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marked the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

The two official apparently discussed ways to strengthen mutual ties during the phone call.

Source: Presstv

Takfiri militants have launched a brutal attack on a village in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo near the Ugandan border, killing at least 40 civilians.

The massacre was perpetrated by the armed militants from the so-called Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) early on Tuesday when they attacked Samboko Village, located about 100 kilometers southwest of the city of Bunia in the DR Congo, with machetes and looted the villagers’ food and valuables.

The ADF, which was driven out of Uganda and moved into the DR Congo in the late 1990s, had a day earlier killed at least 17 in the nearby village of Makutano.

More than 400 people have reportedly lost their lives in attacks by the ADF since the Congolese army began an offensive to oust the group from its bastions last year.

The ADF has pledged allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, and the latter has claimed responsibility for some ADF attacks in the DR Congo.

Over the past two months, about 200,000 people have fled their homes in Ituri Province — where the two villages recently attacked are located — due to the widespread violence by a variety of armed groups.

A United Nations (UN) report said in January that more than 700 people had been killed in Ituri since late 2017, adding that some of the killings might constitute a “crime against humanity.”

Researchers and rights groups say some Congolese soldiers have been involved in the killings since 2014 for a variety of motives often related to competition for power in the country’s lawless zones dominated by dozens of militia groups.

The UN warned on Wednesday that widespread and systematic killings, beheadings, sexual assaults, and other barbaric acts by militia mostly from the ethnic Lendu community in the northeastern DR Congo may constitute “crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

The United Nations Joint Human Rights Office (UNJHRO) said in a report that in the six months to April 2020, at least 296 people had been killed, 151 wounded, and 38 raped, including women and children, mostly by militia linked to the CODECO rebels form the Lendu ethnic group.

“The persistence of this violence is likely to push members of the communities targeted by the attacks, who have so far shown restraint, to form self-defense militias,” UNJRHO said. “This could increase the likelihood of large-scale inter-communal violence in the region.”

“There is a high risk that leaders with more radical positions will emerge and plunge the area into a more serious cycle of violence, with even more attacks against (the army) and civilians,” UNJRHO added in the report. Since October last year, the DR Congo’s army has launched a crackdown on armed groups and the ADF in particular to contain the violence and restore calm in the country’s eastern region.

Source: Presstv

Lesotho’s beleaguered prime minister, Thomas Thabane, finally resigned on Tuesday, ending a months-long crisis that engulfed the kingdom after he was accused of having a part in his ex-wife’s murder.

“I come before you today to announce that the work that you assigned me may not be over but the time to retire from the great theatre of action, take leave from public life and office has finally arrived,” he said in nationwide TV address.

The tiny southern African state has been plagued by instability since early this year, when police accused Thabane of having a hand in the killing of his estranged wife in June 2017.

Thabane and his then wife Lipolelo Thabane, 58, were in the midst of a bitter divorce when she was shot dead outside her home two days before her husband’s inauguration.

Police have since found Thabane’s mobile number in communications records from the crime scene.

Thabane, 80, who has denied any involvement in the murder, had been under mounting pressure to resign.

Source: AFP

Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga was arrested on Saturday in the Paris region, the French Justice Ministry said.

Kabuga, 84, who was living under a false identity in a flat in Asnieres-Sur-Seine, near Paris, had been pursued by international justice for 25 years, the ministry said in a statement.

French gendarmes arrested him at 0530 GMT on Saturday, the ministry said.

Kabuga is Rwanda’s most-wanted man and the United States has put a $5 million bounty on his head.

A Hutu businessman, he is accused of funding the militias that massacred some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus over a span of 100 days in 1994.

The arrest paves the way for bringing the fugitive in front of the Paris Appeal Court and later to the International Court in The Hague.

(REUTERS)

Nearly 2000 students from Chad have returned home from neighbouring Cameroon after COVID-19 spread there.

Many reached the border on foot, crossing into the Chadian provinces of Logone Occidental and Mayo-Kebbi Ouest.

Joint initiative

They were supported in their journey home after a joint initiative from the European Union (EU) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) was launched to help them return.

The EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration is the first comprehensive mechanism to protect migrants in West and Central Africa.

The fund made a special allocation of 50,000 Euros through the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa that allows these students to return home.

Quarantined

Upon their arrival, the students were quarantined for 14 days along the border.

None tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. Nonetheless, most now find themselves without resources to continue their journeys to the capital N’Djamena, 450 kilometres from the quarantine centres.

IOM, at the request of the government of Chad, supported the students with transportation, chartering special buses headed back to their communities of origin.

With 46 cases of COVID-19 — yet no fatality- confirmed as of 27 April — Chad, too, has closed its land and air borders, schools, universities, religious buildings and non-essential businesses.

Enforcing curfews

Public transport is strictly limited and several provinces are enforcing curfews.

IOM said it is working closely with Chad’s government and other partners to ensure that the most vulnerable population groups are protected and assisted.

Anne Kathrin Schaefer, IOM Chief of Mission in Chad said: “Since the borders closed, we have been informed of regular arrivals of Chadian nationals in the country.”

She continued: “This worries us as most here have no opportunities to safely return to their families after having used their meagre resources to purchase food, water and other essentials during their quarantine period.”

Source: Voice-online

Egypt on Tuesday flew a plane of medical supplies to the United States to assist in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, a role reversal for a top US aid recipient.

Egypt’s general-turned-president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has been eager to cement relations with President Donald Trump, and his country has already shipped medical goods with fanfare to China and Italy.

A video statement from Sisi’s office showed crates in wrapping that read in English and Arabic, “From the Egyptian people to the American people,” being loaded into a military cargo plane.

Dutch Ruppersberger, who leads a group in the US House of Representatives that promotes relations with Egypt, said the plane landed at Andrews Air Force base outside Washington.

The plane brought 200,000 masks, 48,000 shoe covers and 20,000 surgical caps among other supplies, said Ruppersberger, a Democrat who heads the bipartisan group.

“This is why international diplomacy and maintaining relationships with allies like Egypt are essential not in times of crisis, but every day,” he wrote on Twitter.

The US ambassador in Cairo, Jonathan Cohen, also voiced appreciation for the “generous” shipment.

Egypt has reported 250 deaths from COVID-19 and some 3,300 cases, according to the World Health Organization.

It is far below the nearly 45,000 deaths recorded in the United States, which has been scrambling to provide supplies and tests.

Still, some questioned whether Egypt, where one-third of the population lives on about $1.50 or less a day, was in a position to offer relief.

“Egyptians who are happy and proud that Egypt sent medical supplies to Italy, UK and the US are probably the ones who can afford to pay 10 EGP for a mask,” tweeted a prominent blogger who goes by The Big Pharaoh. Ten Egyptian pounds is more than half a dollar.

Egypt last month revoked the press credentials of a journalist from The Guardian who wrote that the country’s COVID-19 infections were higher than reported.

Trump has voiced enthusiastic support for Sisi, who toppled Egypt’s elected Islamist president in 2013 and has backed strong relations with Israel.

The United States gave Egypt more than $1.2 billion in the 2018 fiscal year, largely in military aid that goes back to US contractors.

Source:  AFP