Samia Suluhu Hassan is a soft-spoken, Muslim woman thrust from the obscure role of vice president to become Tanzania’s first female leader after John Magufuli’s sudden death.

Under the constitution Hassan, the country’s 61-year-old vice president, will serve the remainder of Magufuli’s second five-year term, which does not expire until 2025.

She will also become the first female President in East Africa.

After consulting with her Chama Cha Mapinduzi ruling political party, Suluhu will propose her possible successor as Vice-President – with the official appointment being confirmed by the National Assembly via votes of no less than 50% of all the Members of Parliament.

What do we know about Suluhu?

Suluhu was born in 1960 in Zanzibar, a former slaving hub and trading outpost in the Indian Ocean.

Then still a Muslim sultanate, Zanzibar did not merge formally with mainland Tanzania for another four years.

She graduated from high school but has said publicly that her finishing results were poor, and she took a clerkship in a government office at 17.

By 1988, after undertaking further study, she rose the ranks to become a development officer in the Zanzibari government.

She was employed as a project manager for the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and later in the 1990s was made executive director of an umbrella body governing non-governmental organisations in Zanzibar.

She was a parliament member for the Makunduchi constituency from 2010 to 15 and has been Minister of State in the Vice-President’s Office for Union Affairs since 2010.

In 2014, she served as the vice-chairperson for the Constitutional Assembly which was tasked with drafting Tanzania’s new constitution.

Suluhu is married to Hafidh Ameir, a retired agriculture officer, and together they have three sons and a daughter.

Their daughter Mwanu Hafidh Ameir is a member of the Zanzibar House of Representatives.

Suluhu is among a very small circle of women to lead East African nations. Burundi briefly had an acting female president in 1993, while both Mauritius and Ethiopia have had women appointed to the ceremonial role of president.

Source: Africa News

Ivory Coast’s ruling party and the main opposition both claimed victory Sunday in the West African nation’s legislative elections, with the official results still to be announced.

Saturday’s polls come as a key test of stability following violence before and after October’s presidential vote, which claimed 87 lives in the former French colony.

Adama Bictogo, number two in the ruling RHDP party, said early trends from local election commissions “clearly show that our party will emerge victorious with a comfortable majority”.

“We have achieved our goal of securing around 60 percent of the seats,” he declared.

But the centre-right Ivory Coast Democratic Party (PDCI) opposition party has also claimed to have won the vote, alleging that the preliminary results were riddled with irregularities.

Top opposition party official Niamkey Koffi told a news conference in the economic capital Abidjan that the PDCI believed it had won “around 128 seats with our allies” in the 255-seat National Assembly.

“Our concern is that the results may be manipulated,” said Koffi, warning the government against “any attempt to falsify” them.

The conflicting victory claims came after the independent electoral commission announced early provisional results, which Koffi said were “strewn with fraud, tampering and manipulation”.

Koffi alleged attempts to reverse results in several large cities including the political capital Yamassoukrou, the coastal resort of Grand-Bassam, and key districts of Abidjan.

Turnout had been a mere 20 percent, he added, citing “fear of violence”.

Bictogo, for his part, denied the opposition’s allegations of fraud.

“This is the reasoning of losers,” he said.

Shifting alliances

The PDCI, in an unprecedented move, had forged an election alliance with the centre-left coalition Together for Democracy and Solidarity (EDS), whose driving force is the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) of former president Laurent Gbagbo.

Their declared aim is to prevent President Alassane Ouattara and his RHDP party from “consolidating absolute power” in the world’s top cocoa grower, formerly a haven of peace and prosperity in troubled West Africa.

Ouattara, 79, won a controversial third term with more than 94 percent of the vote in the presidential polls, which were boycotted by the opposition.

In the last legislative vote in December 2016, the RHDP and PDCI were allied, winning an absolute majority with 167 seats on turnout of 34 percent.

Last year’s election crisis shattered that deal.

The FPI, for its part, lifted a decade-old boycott of electoral politics in order to take part in Saturday’s vote, in which more than 1,500 candidates were vying for the votes of roughly seven million people.

Abidjan Mayor Sylvestre Emmou, an opposition candidate, said that three people had been stabbed and injured in the city on an otherwise calm day of voting. Election observers reported no other major incidents.

Ouattara forced Gbagbo out of office in 2011 after a post-election civil war that claimed some 3,000 lives and left the country deeply split.

After his ouster, Gbagbo, now 75, was flown to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to face war crimes charges arising from that conflict.

He was acquitted in January 2019 and is now living in Brussels pending the outcome of an appeal.

More recently, Ouattara has reached out to his old foe, and in a bid for “national reconciliation”, issued Gbagbo with two passports, one of them a diplomatic pass.

Gbagbo’s supporters are impatient for his return, which the ex-president recently said would be “soon”.

Source: AFP

A series of explosions at a military barracks in Equatorial Guinea killed at least 15 people and wounded hundreds of others, state television reported.

TGVE read out a statement from President Teodoro Obiang Nguema which said the explosion was due to the “negligent handling of dynamite” in the military barracks located in the neighborhood of Mondong Nkuantoma in Bata. He said that the explosion occurred at 4 p.m. local time. The president said that impact of the explosion affected buildings across the city.

TVGE said that at least five explosions caused at least 20 deaths and wounded more than 400 others.

There were some discrepancies with the death toll, with TGVE reporting 20 dead, a Health Ministry tweet saying 17 were killed and the president’s statement mentioning 15.

State television showed a huge plume of smoke rising above the explosion site as crowds fled, with many people crying out “we don’t know what happened, but it is all destroyed.”

The health ministry tweeted that its health workers are treating the injured at the site of the tragedy and in medical facilities, but feared people were still missing under the rubble.

Images on local media seen by The Associated Press show people screaming and crying running through the streets amid debris and smoke. Roofs of houses were ripped off and wounded people were being carried into a hospital.

The blasts were a shock for the oil rich Central African nation. A doctor calling into TVGE, who went by his first name, Florentino, said the situation was a “moment of crisis” and that the hospitals were overcrowded. He said a sports center set up for COVID-19 patients would be used to receive minor cases.

Radio station, Radio Macuto, said on Twitter that people were being evacuated within four kilometers of the city because the fumes might be harmful.

Following the blast, the Spanish Embassy in Equatorial Guinea recommended on Twitter that, “Spanish nationals stay in their homes.”

(AP)

France is looking to reform its policy on aid to Africa – making it both more generous and more efficiently targeted – as part of a strategy to counter China’s rising geopolitical influence.

Africa’s booming economies and population have created lucrative opportunities for international players, making the continent a hotbed of geopolitical competition over the past decade. The International Monetary Fund found in 2019 that Africa had become the world’s fastest-growing region, with the World Economic Forum predicting its population would double to around 2.2 billion by 2050.

China is Africa’s biggest bilateral trading partner, having surpassed the US in 2009. Before the coronavirus crisis hit the world economy, the value of Sino-African trade reached €161 billion ($192 bn) in 2019.

“Right now you could say that any big project in African cities that is higher than three floors or roads that are longer than three kilometres are most likely being built and engineered by the Chinese,” Dave Roggeveen, the founder of specialist publication MORE Architecture, told Forbes in 2018.

As well as infrastructure, China has invested massively in media in Africa – with state-run Xinhua News Agency developing the continent’s biggest network of correspondents. Nairobi is at the centre of China’s African media presence, with Xinhua moving one of its headquarters from Paris to the Kenyan capital in 2006.

France is now also seeking to make new inroads on the African continent by tweaking its strategy towards developing nations. Paris has managed to increase its global aid budget even amid the coronavirus crisis, with development spending rising from €10.9 billion in 2019 to €12.8 billion in 2020.

On March 2, French MPs approved a bill increasing France’s aid budget to 0.55 percent of GDP by 2022. President Macron’s government is also stepping up efforts to ensure the aid money is effective. The draft law enshrines five key objectives – “to fight against poverty, to counter climate change, to bolster public health, to expand education services and to achieve gender equality” – focused on Sub-Saharan Africa and also Haiti.

“International solidarity has never been more necessary than it is now,” said Louis-Nicolas Jandeaux, a spokesman for Oxfam France. “The Covid-19 pandemic shows us how so many major challenges – like fighting poverty and protecting public health – are connected. Given that France is a leader on these multilateral issues, and given that French President Emmanuel Macron has spoken so much about boosting international co-operation, France really has to set a good example on issues like aid spending.”

The bill also seeks to give France more bang for its aid buck by merging its two development agencies. The French Development Agency – which bestows loans and grants – will be merged with France Expertise – which focuses on the nitty-gritty of development project logistics. This merger will allow French aid workers to “respond better and more directly to the needs of the countries we’re working in”, said Jérémie Pellet, director of France Expertise.

The law includes a plan to repatriate “ill-gotten” assets the French justice system has confiscated from foreign leaders. France has made efforts to go after corrupt politicians who have stashed millions on French soil. In 2020 a Paris court sentenced Teodorin Obiang, vice president of Equatorial Guinea, to three years in prison and a €30 million fine for laundering money through French properties.

Redirecting illicit money back to the people is also part of a diplomatic strategy to boost France’s image in Africa.

“This aspect seems so morally sound that it’s almost impossible to be against it,” said Magali Chelpi-den Hamer, the head of the humanitarian and development programme at Paris-based think-tank IRIS (the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs). “However, the volume of money concerned will be relatively low.” 

Avoiding the debt trap

France has had a long and complicated relationship with Africa. It gained control of vast swaths of the continent – mainly by seizing most of western Africa – in the competitive conquest of the continent launched by European powers from the 17th century.

After a wave of successful independence movements in the 1950s and 1960s, France maintained close relations with many Francophone ex-colonies in a policy that came to be known as Françafrique. Advocates of this approach saw France as a guarantor of stability on the continent, but critics saw France as loath to give up its colonial-era influence and continuing to play a clientelist role.   

The French state’s focus on Africa waned in the 1990s as it turned its attention toward European integration. But France has once again set its sights on the continent to counter China’s rising influence.

And this time France seeks to ensure that its activities on the continent do not carry any reminiscence of neo-colonialism, with a new aid policy favouring grants over loans.

Analysts have become increasingly concerned about China creating debt traps with its hefty loans to African countries, for which it is the biggest bilateral lender. Chinese loans to underdeveloped countries are even bigger than indicated by the official figures: around half of them are not reported to the International Monetary Fund or World Bank, a report for German think-tank the Kiel Institute for the World Economy found in 2019.

Until now, France has not had a stellar record on loans either: in 2018, half of its development aid was in loans instead of grants, according to Oxfam. Nevertheless, while “Western countries also use debt to gain influence in African countries, unlike China they’re very keen to avoid setting debt traps,” said IRIS’s Chelpi-den Hamer.

“We’re fighting China in a battle for influence – and a battle over what system of government countries should see as their model,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Inter radio last month.

China’s increasing involvement in Africa threatens to “end up being negative over the medium to long term”, Macron warned at a press conference in Djibouti on his 2019 African tour.

“I wouldn’t want a new generation of international investments to encroach on our historical partners’ sovereignty or weaken their economies,” he added.

France’s aid reform bill now goes to the Senate and is expected to become law this summer.

Source: France 24

Legislative elections take place in Ivory Coast on Saturday overshadowed by a figure in distant Europe – former president Laurent Gbagbo.

Nearly a decade has passed since Gbagbo was forced out of office by today’s president Alassane Ouattara before being flown to The Hague to face war crimes charges.

Acquitted since then but living in Brussels pending an appeal, Gbagbo plans to come home, thanks to an olive branch offered by his erstwhile rival.

His Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party has ended a years-long electoral boycott, becoming the engine behind an alliance battling for seats in the National Assembly.

The elections “mark the return of Laurent Gbagbo and his political organisation in institutional politics,” said Gbagbo’s eldest son, Michel, a university academic running in a constituency in Abidjan.

“It has to be seen as the return to calmer democratic life and lasting peace,” he said optimistically.

Ouattara overture

Ouattara, 79, ignited political unrest last year when he announced he would seek a third term in office – a scheme that critics said sidestepped constitutional limits.

Clashes claimed 87 lives and left nearly 500 people injured, while most of the opposition snubbed the October 31 ballot.

Ouattara won by a landslide – but to his critics, the victory had scant credibility and the country remained deep in crisis.

Seeking a way forward, Ouattara reached out to Gbagbo, signalling his assent for his return home and issuing him with a diplomatic passport.

The runup to Saturday’s vote has seen a jolt run through Ivorian politics as the well-organised FPI strives to get out the vote.

Thousands of supporters wearing T-shirts with Gbagbo’s face took part in a campaign launch rally in Yopougon last Saturday.

“Gbagbo yesterday, Gbagbo today, Gbagbo tomorrow – Gbagbo forever, or else nothing,” were the words on a poster.

The pro-Gbagbo alliance, Together for Democracy and Sovereignty (EDS), is fielding candidates across most of the country.

The left-leaning coalition has forged an unprecedented electoral deal with the biggest centre-right party – the Democratic Party of the Ivory Coast (PDCI) headed by Henri Konan Bedie, a former president and former Ouattara ally.

The self-described goal is to win enough legislative seats to prevent Ouattara and his RHDP party from “consolidating (their) absolute power.”

The RHDP won a thumping majority in the December 2016 legislative elections with 167 out of 255 seats.

“We don’t share the same ideology” with the EDS, said Djedri N’Goran, a senior PDCI official.

“But whether you like it or not, Gbagbo has an aura – there are whole areas, including Abidjan, where it’s ‘Gbagbo or nothing’.”

Outsider

Gbagbo was president from 2000 to 2010, a time of turmoil, division and economic destruction in this major cocoa and coffee producer.

He was ousted by force of arms in April 2011 after a months-long conflict that claimed several thousand lives, sparked by his refusal to accept electoral defeat at Ouattara’s hands.

His long trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague was over charges that he abetted the post-electoral violence.

Despite Gbagbo’s turbulent record, he remains for many Ivorians a plucky and inspirational figure, said political analyst Rodrigue Kone.

He likened Gbagbo’s odyssey to that of “a poor child fighting the bourgeois system represented by leaders from aristocratic families.”

Reconciliation Minister Kouadio Konan Bertin last month paid tribute to Gbagbo, 75, as “a major player” in national politics, “whose views should be taken into account.”

Exactly when Gbagbo will make his return is unclear.

The ICC has authorised him to make foreign trips if the host country accepts him, pending the outcome of the appeal, which is due by March 31.

He previously said he hoped to return in December, but his increasingly frustrated supporters now say it will be in mid-March and have set up a committee to prepare a spectacular welcome.

(AFP)

Leaders of France and five Sahel countries on Monday begin a two-day summit to discuss the G5-Sahel grouping’s anti-insurgency operations amid mounting local dissatisfaction over the military-heavy approach that has failed to stabilise the poorly administered region.

Leaders of the so-called G5 Sahel – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – are attending the two-day summit in the Chadian capital N’Djamena, with French President Emmanuel Macron joining via videolink.

The meeting comes a year after France boosted its Sahel deployment, seeking to wrench back momentum in the brutal, long-running battle.

But despite touted military successes, jihadists remain in control of vast swathes of territory and attacks are unrelenting.

Six UN peacekeepers have been killed in Mali this year alone, and France has lost five soldiers since December.

Islamist fighters in the Sahel first emerged in northern Mali in 2012, during a rebellion by ethnic Touareg separatists which was later overtaken by the jihadists.

France intervened to rout the insurgents, but the jihadists scattered, taking their campaign into the ethnic powder keg of central Mali and then into Burkina Faso and Niger.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, according to the UN, while more than two million people have fled their homes.

Calls for a course correction strategy

The crushing toll has fuelled perceptions that the jihadists cannot be defeated by military means alone.

At a summit in the French city of Pau last year, G5 Sahel leaders agreed to step up military cooperation to tackle the threat. “We have no choice. We need results,” said Macron at the end of the January 2020 summit.

But some experts believe there is a choice between focusing on a solely military strategy or viewing it as a component of a strategy that includes governance, political representation, fiscal reforms, anti-corruption as well as human rights issues.

In a report published February 1, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) called on G5 Sahel leaders to “reorient their approach to one rooted in efforts to prioritise governance, notably by soothing the escalating tensions among communities and between communities and the state in rural areas, which jihadists exploit, and by improving governments’ delivery of basic services to citizens”.

Jean-Herve Jezequel, the ICG’s Sahel director, said conventional military engagement had failed to deliver a knockout blow.

The jihadists “are capable of turning their backs, bypassing the system, and continuing,” he said.

Last Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called for a “diplomatic, political and development surge” to respond to the situation.

Last year, France upped its Barkhane mission in the Sahel from 4,500 troops to 5,100 – a move that precipitated a string of apparent military successes.

French forces killed the leader of the notorious Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Abdelmalek Droukdel, as well as a military chief of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM).

Troop drawdown?

But the latest attacks have also brought the number of French combat deaths in Mali to 50, prompting soul-searching at home about Barkhane’s cost and usefulness.

Macron last month opened the door to a drawdown, suggesting France may “adjust” its military commitment.

Despite persistent rumours, France is not expected to announce any troop withdrawal at N’Djamena.

Instead, to lighten the load, France is hoping for more military support from its European partners through the Takuba Task Force which assists Mali in its fight against jihadists.

The Sahel armies, for their part, are unable to pick up the slack.

In 2017, the five countries initiated a planned 5,000-man pooled force, but it remains hobbled by lack of funds, poor equipment and inadequate training.

Chad, which reputedly has the best armed forces among the five, promised a year ago to send a battalion to the “three border” flashpoint where the frontiers of Mali, Niger and Burkina converge. The deployment has still not happened.

Paris also hopes last year’s successes can strengthen political reform in the Sahel states, where weak governance has fuelled frustration and instability.

In Mali, the epicentre of the Sahel crisis, army officers overthrew president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita last August after weeks of protests over perceived corruption and his failure to end the jihadist conflict.

The interim government has pledged to reform the constitution and stage national elections, but critics say the pace of change is slow.

A 2015 regional deal between Mali’s government and northern rebel groups has also barely advanced, yet it is one of the country’s few options for escaping the violence.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Two years after his election, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi has finally taken control, loosening his predecessor Joseph Kabila’s seemingly indestructible iron grip on power behind the scenes.

It seemed impossible for Tshisekedi to climb out from underneath Kabila’s shadow when he acceded to the top job in January 2019 – one month after coming out ahead in presidential elections amid doubts from electoral observers that he had really won more votes than Kabila’s arch-rival Martin Fayulu.

Tshisekedi had little room for manoeuvre: in power since 2001, Kabila had tightened control of DR Congo’s major institutions: the army, the intelligence services, the constitutional court and the electoral commission. Kabila’s party the Common Front for Congo (FCC) controlled two-thirds of parliamentary seats, forcing Tshisekedi to form a coalition government with his own party in the minority.

But two years later, Tshisekedi has managed to loosen Kabila’s lingering grip. The pro-Kabila head of the Senate resigned on Friday as MPs prepared a censure motion against him. Then the vast majority of FCC MPs switched their allegiances and joined Tshisekedi’s new political group the Sacred Union, giving it a large majority in the lower chamber.

‘Never any trust’

These MPs pushed out pro-Kabila Prime Minister Sylvestre Ilunga Ilunkamba with a censure motion on January 27 – a month after they ousted the head of the National Assembly.

“There was never any trust between Tshisekedi and Kabila,” said Trésor Kibangula, an analyst at research foundation the Congo Study Group. “Each side has always been trying to diminish the other.”

Hence a year and a half of backbiting and power plays followed Tshisekedi’s inauguration. In 2020 the president’s camp banned some Kabila family members, including his once-powerful twin sister Jaynet, from travelling. Tensions rose to boiling point in July, when Tshisekedi appointed three new judges to the Constitutional Court amid the then prime minister’s absence. Kabila’s camp was outraged and refused to attend the swearing-in ceremony. In early December, Tshisekedi announced the end of the ruling coalition that combined his presidency with an FCC-controlled parliament.

Tshisekedi had already prepared for this. His camp set up meetings in the summer to persuade Kabila supporters to back him. “We set out to bring disillusioned FCC MPs to our side,” said an anonymous member of Kabila’s camp.

Anger had been brewing there for several months. “The FCC was controlled by a clique who didn’t want to see new people rise to the fore,” said MP Patrick Munyomo, who has joined the Sacred Union.

In December, Tshisekedi threatened to dissolve the National Assembly if he did not get a majority – causing many MPs to worry about losing their jobs. “It was a good move, psychologically,” said MP Nsingi Pululu.

Tshisekedi and his allies deployed the carrot after this deft use of the stick. The head of his party the UPDS, Jean-Marc Kabund said he would “look out for the interests” of MPs defecting from the FCC.

“Many of them left out of opportunism, keen to get jobs,” said Marie-Ange Mushobekwa, a member of the FCC’s pro-Kabila “crisis committee”.

“I didn’t ask for a job – but I hope I get one,” Pululu said.

A range of corruption allegations emerged against both sides amid the defections – with each side accusing the other of “buying” parliamentarians with bungs of thousands of dollars and 4×4 cars.

“It is going on, although I refused to accept anything,” one FCC defector said. “I’m not saying there haven’t been any bank notes going around, but we haven’t been buying people’s consciences,” said a senior member of Tshisekedi’s camp.

Kabila redux?

Kabila has remained silent throughout this process. Since the dismissal of close ally Jeannine Mabunda as head of the National Assembly, he has been living in his farm in Katanga province near the Zambian border, far away from the political turmoil in the capital Kinshasa.

He had warned Tshisekedi that the National Assembly is a red line, but realised that “he’s not capable of reacting yet”, Kibangula said.

Kabila remains a powerful figure in DR Congo. He and his family control a nexus of more than 80 companies operating in almost every sector of the economy. Gécamines – the country’s largest mining company and biggest contributor to the state’s budget – is headed by one of the ex-president’s most loyal lieutenants, Albert Yuma.

Meanwhile Kabila enjoys significant support within the rank and file of the army and intelligence service: “Tshisekedi has more and more backing within the security forces, but it’s still not much compared to the support for Kabila,” Kibangula said.

With more than 100 MPs remaining loyal to the ex-president, the FCC is becoming DR Congo’s main opposition force. This would provide a springboard for Kabila to leap back into the fray. “Kabila has not left the world of politics,” said FCC spokesman Alain Atundu. “We’re now starting to put a battle plan in place.”

Source: France 24

Police in Chad fired tear gas and made several arrests as hundreds protested  President Idriss Deby’s nomination on Saturday to run for a sixth term in April.

Deby, 68, who came to power in a 1990 rebellion, pushed through a new constitution in 2018 that reinstated term limits but would let him stay in power until 2033. His opponents accuse him of crippling the country’s institutions in a bid to hold on to power.

In the capital N’Djamena, hundreds of protesters set tyres on fire and chanted “No to a sixth term!” and “Leave, Deby!”, according to witnesses.

Police fired tear gas and arrested several people, including Mahamat Nour Ibedou, a prominent human rights activist. Protests were also held in the cities of Moundou, Doba, Sarh and Abeche, witnesses said.

The protests followed the announcement that the ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS) party had backed Deby’s bid for a sixth term in office.

Accepting the nomination, Deby said, “The people’s confidence has a sacred value for me.”

Deby, who took the title of field marshal last August, said he responded “favourably to this call of the people” after “a mature and deep introspection”.

Poverty, corruption and landslide election victories

Chad is an ally of Western nations in the fight against Islamist militants in West and Central Africa and one of the largest contributors to the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali.

Deby has faced strikes and protests in recent years over economic woes caused by low oil prices and armed rebellions in the desert north, where former colonial power France has intervened in support of the government.

Since ousting the autocratic leader Hissene Habre in 1990, Deby has been re-elected every five years in landslide election victories. But he has drawn on his effective control of state media and institutions to maintain political dominance.

During his rule, Deby has been accused of appointing relatives and cronies to key positions and failing to address the poverty that afflicts many of Chad’s 13 million people despite oil wealth.

The country ranks 187th out of 189 in the UN’s Human Development Index.

Banned opposition demonstrations, arbitrary arrests and severed access to social networks raise regular objections from human rights groups, which have also accused the ruling class of endemic corruption.

Opposition forms an alliance

Ahead of the April election, 12 opposition parties last week said they would field a joint single candidate. They also signed a deal creating an electoral coalition called Alliance Victoire (Victory Alliance).

Signatories include two prominent opposition figures – Saleh Kebzabo, the runner-up in the 2016 election with about 13 percent of the vote, and Mahamat Ahmat Alabo.

The opposition manifesto says other opposition parties can join, although it does not set a date for when the single candidate will be named.

The alliance’s coordinator, Alladoumngar Tedengarti, said “the lesson has been learned” from 30 years of elections in which Deby has been able to cruise past a fragmented opposition.

Other leaders who have yet to join include Laokein Kourayo Medar, who placed third in 2016, and Succes Masra, whose campaign group, The Transformers, has joined with NGOs to call for protests.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

It is true that Africa is the home to many of the world’s longest-ruling heads of state. According to Claire Felter, some postcolonial leaders in the 1960s and 1970s sought to become “president for life,” with several managing to remain in power for three or more terms. Yet today, by the dawn of 2021, it is still quite pathetic that the trend of enrooted leadership had propagated like the gospel of Jesus Christ across the region, instigating corruption, vice, debauchery, political unrest, economic instability, societal fractures, and many more.

Just 16 January 2021, the electoral commission of Uganda announced that Museveni won re-election for a sixth term with 58.6% of the vote. For the umpteenth time, promoting long rulership in Africa is still actively surviving, while mending this, we still expect, more compelling leadership in Africa. Wherein, this piece shall take a look at the Oldest and longest actively serving Presidents in Africa.

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo – Equatorial Guinea

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is the 2nd president of Equatorial Guinea since August 1979. He ousted his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema in a military coup that took place in August 1979 and has overseen Equatorial Guinea’s emergence as an important oil producer, beginning in the 1990s. Nguema Mbasogo is the second-longest consecutively serving current non-royal national leader in the world.

According to The Economist, the Equatorial Guinea leader has been widely accused of corruption and abuse of power. In marked contrast to the trend toward democracy in most of Africa, Equatorial Guinea is currently a dominant-party state, in which Obiang’s Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) holds virtually all governing power in the nation.

The constitution provides the 77-year-old Obiang sweeping powers, including the right to rule by decree, effectively making his government a legal dictatorship. Yet more, according to US News, He has held onto power ever since, relying on the repression of political opponents and revenues from the country’s offshore oil reserves.

Paul Barthélemy Biya’a bi Mvondo – Cameroon

Paul Barthélemy Biya’a bi Mvondo also known as Paul Biya has been the Cameroonian president since 6 November 1982. According to Emvana, Michel Roger, He rose rapidly as a bureaucrat under President Ahmadou Ahidjo in the 1960s, serving as Secretary-General of the Presidency from 1968 to 1975 and then as Prime Minister of Cameroon from 1975 to 1982.

He succeeded Ahidjo as president upon the latter’s surprise resignation in 1982 and consolidated power in 1983–1984 staged attempted coup in which he eliminated all his rivals. Notes from www.cameroonvoice.com say that Biya introduced political reforms within the context of a one-party system in the 1980s. Under serious pressure, he accepted the introduction of multiparty politics in the early 1990s.

He won the contentious 1992 presidential election with 40% of the plural, single-ballot vote and was re-elected by large margins in 1997, 2004, 2011 and 2018. Opposition politicians and Western governments have alleged voting irregularities and fraud on each of these occasions. Many independent sources have provided evidence that he did not win the elections in 1992 and that subsequent elections were rampant with fraud. The 87-year-old is today the second-longest-ruling president in Africa (after Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea ), the longest-ruling non-royal leader in the world, and the oldest head-of-state in Africa.

Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Kaguta Museveni – Uganda

Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Kaguta Museveni has been serving as the President of Uganda since 1986. Museveni was involved in rebellions that toppled Ugandan leaders Idi Amin (1971–79) and Milton Obote (1980–85) before he captured power in the 1980s. According to US News, Museveni, 75, declared himself president in January 1986 when he seized Kampala after a five-year guerrilla struggle. The ruling party endorsed him as its candidate in the 2021 election after he scrapped a 75-year age limit that would have barred him from standing again.

Obviously, Museveni’s presidency has been marred by involvement in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other Great Lakes region conflicts; the rebellion in Northern Uganda by the Lord’s Resistance Army, which caused a humanitarian emergency; and the suppression of political opposition and constitutional amendments scrapping presidential term limits (2005) and the presidential age limit (2017). On 16th January 2021, the electoral commission of Uganda announced that Museveni won re-election for a sixth term with 58.6% of the vote.

Denis Sassou Nguesso – Congo

Denis Sassou Nguesso has been President of the Republic of the Congo since 1997. He was previously president from 1979 to 1992. During his first period as president, he headed the single-party régime of the Congolese Party of Labour (PCT) for 12 years. Research showed that under pressure from international sources, he introduced multiparty politics in 1990 and was then stripped of executive powers by the 1991 National Conference, remaining in office as a ceremonial head of state.

According to the Reuters, he stood as a candidate in the 1992 presidential election but was defeated, placing third. According to the Reuters, Sassou Nguesso was an opposition leader for five years before returning to power during the Second Civil War (1997–1999), in which his rebel forces ousted President Pascal Lissouba.

Following a transitional period, The 76-year-old won the 2002 presidential election, which involved low opposition participation; he was re-elected in the 2009 presidential election. The introduction of a new constitution, passed by referendum in 2015, enabled Sassou Nguesso to stand for another term. He was re-elected in the 2016 presidential election with a majority in the first round.

Idriss Déby – Chad

Idriss Déby Itno has been the President of Chad since 1990. He took power at the head of a rebellion against President Hissène Habré in December 1990 and has since survived various rebellions and coup attempts against his own rule. He won elections in 1996 and 2001, and after term limits were eliminated he won again in 2006, 2011, and 2016. According to Douglas Farah, he added “Itno” to his surname in January 2006.

He is a graduate of Muammar Gaddafi’s World Revolutionary Center and has been described as authoritarian by several international media sources. Since the 67-year-old man took power at the head of an armed rebellion, he has since abolished presidential term limits in 2005 before reimposing a two-term limit in 2018. It will not be applied retroactively, however, meaning he could serve two terms after the next election in 2021.

Isaias Afwerki – Eritrea

Isaias Afwerki has been the first and current president of Eritrea, a position he has held since after the Eritrean War of Independence in 1993. He led the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) to victory in May 1991, ending the 30-year-old war for independence. He has been cited for human rights violations by the United Nations and Amnesty International.

In 2015, Reporters Without Borders ranked Eritrea under the government of Afwerki last in its Press Freedom Index for the eighth year running. Afwerki, 74, since his rule since it gained independence from Ethiopia. There have never been national elections in Eritrea, which rights groups consider one of the most repressive states in the world.

Ismaïl Omar Guelleh – Djibouti

Ismaïl Omar Guelleh has been the current president of Djibouti since 1999. According to CBS News, Guelleh was first elected as President in 1999 as the handpicked successor to his uncle, Hassan Gouled Aptidon who had ruled Djibouti since independence in 1977. Guelleh was re-elected in 2005, 2011 and again in 2016; the 2011 election was largely boycotted by the opposition amid complaints about widespread irregularities.

Guelleh has been characterized as a dictator, and his rule has been criticized by some human rights groups. Guelleh, 72, was handpicked to succeed his uncle, independence leader Hassan Gouled Aptidon. He was elected to a fourth five-year term in 2016.

Paul Kagame – Rwanda

Very Tall Paul Kagame is the 6th and current president of Rwanda, having taken office in 2000. Kagame previously commanded the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), an Uganda-based rebel force which invaded Rwanda in 1990 and was one of the parties of the conflict during the Rwandan Civil War and the Rwandan genocide.

He was considered Rwanda’s de facto leader when he served as Vice President and Minister of Defence under President Pasteur Bizimungu from 1994 to 2000. Kagame, 62, was widely seen as the real power in Rwanda after leading the rebel army that ended the 1994 genocide. He was formally elected president by the national assembly in 2000 and changed the constitution in 2015 to extend term limits, a move that could let him stay in power until 2034.

Culled from Qwenu.com

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni won a decisive re-election victory on Saturday, elections officials said, but his main rival Bobi Wine alleged widespread fraud and said citizens should reject the result.

Museveni won 5.85 million votes, or 58.6%, while main opposition candidate Wine had 3.48 million votes (34.8%), the Electoral Commission said at a news conference on the final results from Thursday’s election.

Earlier, Wine accused Museveni of fabricating the results and called the poll “the most fraudulent election in the history of Uganda”. In a phone interview before the final results were announced, he urged citizens to reject the results.

Wine, a singer-turned-lawmaker, also said his home in the capital, Kampala, was surrounded by hundreds of soldiers and that the military was not allowing him to leave.

The army’s deputy spokesman, Deo Akiiki, told Reuters that security officers at Wine’s house were assessing threats he could face by going out: “So they might be preventing him in the interest of his own safety.”

Soldiers and police were out in force patrolling Kampala on Saturday.

Museveni, 76 and in power for 35 years, campaigned for another term arguing his long experience in office makes him a good leader and promising to keep delivering stability and progress.

Wine, 38, galvanised young Ugandans with his calls for political change and pledged to end what he calls dictatorship and widespread corruption.

Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, said on Friday he had video proof of voting fraud, and would share the videos as soon as internet connections were restored. The government ordered the internet shut down the day before the election, and the blackout was still in place.

Electoral Commission Chairman Simon Byabakama said on Friday that under Ugandan law, the burden of proof rested with Wine.

Reuters has not independently verified Wine’s claims.

No international observers

The United States and the European Union did not deploy observer teams, but the U.S. State Department’s top diplomat for Africa, Tibor Nagy, said in a tweet early on Saturday that the “electoral process has been fundamentally flawed”.

He cited fraud reports, denial of accreditation to observers, violence and harassment of opposition members, and the arrest of civil society activists.

The African Union and East African Community sent observer teams to the election, but neither group of officials responded to requests for comment about possible irregularities.

Police recorded 42 election-related offences nationwide during voting and tallying so far, police spokesman Fred Enanga said on Friday night on local NBS TV. Offences included assaults, voter bribery, and theft and damage of electoral materials, he said.

The run-up to Thursday’s election was more violent than in previous polls. Security forces cracked down on opposition candidates and their supporters during the campaign, and more than 50 people died in protests in November on one of the multiple occasions when Wine was arrested.

Parliamentary wins

In addition to the internet blackout, the government on Tuesday banned all social media and messaging apps. Wine and his supporters often used Facebook to relay live coverage of his campaign.

In the parliamentary election, where candidates were vying for 529 seats, results were still coming in but Ugandan media reported that 56 candidates from Wine’s National Unity Platform (NUP) had won their races, while the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), previously the largest opposition party, has so far won 34 seats.

The country’s vice president, Edward Ssekandi, was one of a number of senior ruling party MPs who lost their seats, according to broadcaster NTV Uganda.

The FDC won 35 seats in the 2016 election, but the NUP had no seats in the previous parliament – Wine was elected as an independent and joined the party last year.

(REUTERS)