Thousands of people in Niger’s capital on Saturday protested for the immediate departure of US soldiers from the north, after the military junta in Niamey said it was withdrawing from a military agreement with Washington.

Following a July coup, the West African country said in mid-March that the 2012 cooperation agreement had been “unilaterally imposed” by the United States.

Students and several prominent figures from the military regime were amongst the crowd in front of the National Assembly Headquarters in Niamey.

The crowd was heard chanting “Down with American imperialism” and “The people’s liberation is on the march”.

French troops were expelled at the end of 2023, but about 1,000 American soldiers remain based in Agadez city in the north.

In late March, Niger said the US would submit a proposal to “disengage” its soldiers from the country. Washington declined to comment, but said it contacted Niger to “obtain clarification”. 

“They said they (the Americans) were going to leave, so let them leave in peace and quickly,” shouted Sheikh Ahmadou Mamoudou, a well-known religious leader. 

Flags from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Russia were visible but organisers asked demonstrators to refrain from slogans insulting the US or burning its flags.

In March Niger joined neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso in the creation of a joint force to battle the long-running jihadist rebellions raging in the three nations.

The three countries have turned their backs on former coloniser France and strengthened their ties with Russia.

Source: AFP

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s planning minister Judith Suminwa Tuluka was Monday appointed as the African nation’s first woman prime minister, state television announced.

An economist, she takes over as prime minister from Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, following President Felix Tshisekedi’s sweeping re-election on December 20.

Tshisekedi officially triumphed with 73.47 percent and the vote passed largely peacefully in a country long torn by violence and instability.

The opposition branded the ballot a sham.

Voting was officially extended by a day due to logistical snarls and polls were open for days after in remote areas.

Parties supporting Tshisekedi garnered more than 90 percent of the seats in parliament, allowing him to legislate with ease.

The new prime minister will be tasked with pushing the president’s declared priorities of employment, youth, women and national cohesion for the nation of about 100 million people.

He first became president in 2019 promising to improve living conditions in the DR Congo—which boasts mineral riches but has a largely impoverished population—and put an end to 25 years of bloodshed in the east.

Tshisekedi failed to keep those promises but campaigned for a second term on his achievements such as free primary medication, asking for another mandate to “consolidate” the progress.

According to the United Nations, some seven million people have been internally displaced by conflict in the DR Congo, one of the world’s poorest countries.

The security situation has worsened in North Kivu province where a Rwanda-backed rebel group M23 has seized swathes of territory over the last two years.

Source: AFP

In the closing moments of the electoral campaign, Senegal’s president-elect Bassirou Diomaye Faye stepped onto the stage holding the hands of both his wives Marie and Absa.

It was an unprecedented sight in the national politics of the West African country and a clear choice by the first-round winner who promises radical change.

Polygamy is a traditional and religious practice firmly anchored in the culture of Senegal where the overwhelming majority is Muslim.

Marie Khone, who until now had never been in the spotlight, comes from the same village as 44-year-old Faye. They married 15 years ago and have four children.

He married his second wife Absa just over a year ago.

“It’s the ultimate recognition of the tradition of polygamy at the top of the state, with a situation that will reflect Senegalese reality,” sociologist Djiby Diakhate said.

Many men praise the practice while women tend to remain “mistrustful”, he added.

Polygamy has long stirred controversy and the public appearance by BDF, as he is known, with his two wives at his side cheered on by thousands of his supporters has made it a top talking point in the media, online and at home, sparking diverse reaction.

“Being a second wife suits me better than being a first,” well-known singer Mia Guisse said proudly in a video that recently went viral.

Reputed sociologist Fatou Sow Sarr said on X, formerly Twitter, that “polygamy, monogamy, polyandry are matrimonial models determined by the history of every nation”.

“These models are now in competition with homosexual marriage,” he added, in a country where homosexuality is punishable by between one and five years in jail.

“I really think that the West has no legitimacy to judge our cultures,” Sarr added in a follow-up message on X.

Nevertheless, many Senegalese women say they find polygamy hypocritical and unfair, while the UN Human Rights Committee said in a 2022 report that it amounted to discrimination against women and should be ended.

‘Totally new’ situation

In her 1979 novel “So Long a Letter”, Senegalese author Mariama Ba was fiercely critical of polygamy, depicting the pain and loneliness of a woman after her husband took a second, younger wife.

Many popular TV series in recent years, like “Mistress of a Married Man” or “Polygamy”, have explored the ups and downs of family life in polygamous households.

Former culture minister and history professor Penda Mbow said the matrimonial situation at the presidential palace now is “totally new”.

“Until now, there was only one First Lady. This means the entire protocol must be reviewed,” he added.

Polygamy is widespread in Senegal particularly in rural areas and is considered a way of widening one’s family.

Islam permits men to take up to four wives providing they have the financial means. In such a case, it calls for equal, alternating time spent with the wives, of between two and three days.

‘Strong signal’

Many marriages are not registered in Senegal, making it difficult to say exactly how many are polygamous.

But according to a 2013 report by the national statistics and demographics agency, 32.5 percent of married Senegalese people were in a polygamous union.

The average age of the women at the time of their marriage was 40.4 years old and 52.9 for men, the report said.

Diakhate, the sociologist, said Faye had sent a “strong signal so that other men also accept their polgygamy and so that they demonstrate transparency like him”.

He said there was “undoubtedly a will” to end hidden polygamy — known in the Wolof language as Takou Souf — which he added would be “a good thing for the economy of the country and for the matrimonial situation”.

In response to detractors, the incoming president, who won 54.28 percent in the March 24 vote, shows nothing but pride in his family situation.

“I have beautiful children because I have wonderful wives. They are very beautiful. I give thanks to God they are always fully behind me,” he said during the presidential race.

Source:  AFP

Senegal’s anti-establishment leader Bassirou Diomaye Faye, whose weekend election victory could be officially confirmed within days, was welcomed at the presidential palace Thursday by outgoing leader Macky Sall.

The meeting, which came after weeks of crisis surrounding the vote, suggested a swift and peaceful handover in the West African nation that prides itself on democratic stability in a coup-hit region.

Faye, 44, was only freed from prison 10 days before the election, along with his mentor Ousmane Sonko, who was barred from running following a criminal conviction he says was politically motivated.

The outgoing president received both men in what his office called “a courteous meeting where they discussed at length the major issues for the state, as well as the inauguration ceremony”.

According to provisional results, Faye won the first round of the vote outright with 54.3 percent, far ahead of Sall’s hand-picked candidate, former prime minister Amadou Ba.

He came second with 35.8 percent of the vote.

Senegal’s Constitutional Court could declare Faye the official winner before the weekend, which would make a handover possible before April 2, the official end of Sall’s term.

Sall provoked a political crisis in February by suspending the presidential election just days before polls were to open, citing security concerns.

The move sparked protests and clashes that left four people dead, before the Constitutional Court ordered him to set the date for March 24.

Faye, who has never held elected office, is set to become the fifth president of the West African country of around 18 million people.

He has promised to restore national “sovereignty” and implement a programme of “left-wing pan-Africanism”.

Source: AFP

Senegal’s governing coalition candidate Amadou Ba on Monday recognised a win by anti-establishment candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye in the first-round of presidential elections and offered his congratulations, a statement said

“Considering the trends of the presidential election results and awaiting the official declaration, I congratulate the president Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye on his victory in the first round,” Ba said in the statement.

The concession came a day after Senegal’s presidential election Sunday, which followed months of uncertainty and unrest that tested the West African nation’s reputation as a stable democracy in a region rife with coups.

This is Senegal’s fourth democratic transfer of power since gaining independence from France more than six decades ago. It took place one month later than initially scheduled after President Macky Sall tried to delay it until the end of the year. Sall is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term and is expected to step down on April 2 when his mandate ends.

After the polls closed Sunday, voters praised the peaceful outcome amid concerns after months of deadly protests ignited last summer by the jailing of the popular opposition leader Ousmane Sonko and concerns that the president wanted to stay in power. Rights groups said dozens were killed, while hundreds more were jailed.

In a move that defused tensions just ahead of the election, Sonko was released after months in prison along with Faye, to jubilant celebrations on the streets of Dakar. Sonko was barred from the race in January due to a prior conviction and Faye ran in his place.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)

The Senegalese government has set March 24 as the new date for the country’s delayed presidential election, according to an official statement issued Wednesday after a meeting of the Council of Ministers.

President Macky Sall who faces term limits at the end of his second period in office, said in early February that he was postponing an election for 10 months, just weeks before it was set to take place on Feb. 25.

But Senegal’s highest election authority, the Constitutional Council, rejected that move and ordered the government to set a new election date as soon as possible.

“The President of the Republic informed the Council of Ministers of the setting of the date of the presidential election for Sunday March 24, 2024,” government spokesperson Abdou Karim Fofana said in the statement. “The President of the Republic also informed the Prime Minister and ministers of the formation of a new Government.”

Source: AP

A leading opponent of Chad’s ruling junta Yaya Dillo Djerou has been killed in an army assault on his party headquarters, a government spokesman told AFP Thursday.

Dillo died on Wednesday “where he had retreated, at the headquarters of his party. He didn’t want to surrender and fired on law enforcement,” Abderaman Koulamallah, who is also communications minister, said.

The prosecutor general earlier spoke of “dead including Yaya Dillo” without detailing the circumstances.

Dillo, who led the opposition Socialist Party Without Borders (PSF), was accused of having led an attack against the offices of the internal security agency overnight on Tuesday to Wednesday.

It came after the arrest of a PSF member accused of an “assassination attempt against the president of the supreme court”.

Speaking to AFP on Wednesday, Dillo denied any involvement in the incident, denouncing the claim as a “lie” and politically motivated.

“I wasn’t present,” he said.

Dillo also condemned an attempted attack against the supreme court president as  “staged”.

On Tuesday, Chad announced it would hold a presidential election on May 6, which both transitional president Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno and Dillo — who were cousins — planned to contest.

Source: AFP

After months of wrangling following coups d’etat in Mali Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger, the West African regional bloc has lifted most sanctions imposed on Niger over last year’s coup, in a new push for dialogue following a series of political crises that have rocked the region in recent months.

A no-fly zone and border closures were among the sanctions being lifted “with immediate effect”, the president of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, Omar Alieu Touray, said on Saturday.

The lifting of the sanctions is “on purely humanitarian grounds” to ease the suffering caused as a result, Touray told reporters after the bloc’s summit in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

The summit aimed to address existential threats facing the region as well as implore three military-led nations that have quit the bloc – Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso – to rescind their decision.

The three were suspended from ECOWAS following recent coups.

Since then, they have declared their intention to permanently withdraw from the bloc, but ECOWAS has called for the three states to return.

Speaking in his opening remarks at the start of the summit, ECOWAS chairman and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said the bloc “must re-examine our current approach to the quest for constitutional order in four of our Member States”, referring to the three suspended countries, as well as Guinea, which is also military-led.

Tinubu urged Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso to “reconsider the decision” and said they should “not perceive our organisation as the enemy”.

ECOWAS also said it had lifted certain sanctions on Malian individuals and some on junta-led Guinea, which has not said it wants to leave the bloc but has also not committed to a timeline to return to democratic rule.

Touray said some targeted sanctions and political sanctions remained place for Niger, without giving details.

However, ECOWAS placed “some conditions” on the lifting of the sanctions, he added. “They want the immediate release of President Mohamed Bazoum and members of his family.”

Niger’s President Bazoum was deposed in a military coup last July, prompting ECOWAS to suspend trade and impose sanctions on the country. He is still imprisoned in the presidential palace in Niamey. On the eve of the summit, his lawyers urged ECOWAS to demand his release.

Earlier this week, ECOWAS co-founder and former Nigerian military leader General Yakubu Gowon also called for the bloc to lift “all sanctions that have been imposed on Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger”.

“Even before today’s summit, there has been a change in tone, in language and also the approach of ECOWAS entirely to the sanctions and embargoes imposed on these three West African countries,” Idris said.

Easing sanctions is seen as a gesture of appeasement as ECOWAS tries to persuade the three states to remain in the nearly 50-year-old alliance and rethink a withdrawal. Their planned exit would undermine regional integration efforts and bring a messy disentanglement from the bloc’s trade and services flows, worth nearly $150bn a year.

ECOWAS on Saturday gave the three military-led countries “an opportunity to be members of the organisation once again”, Idris said, adding that they asked them to be part of “technical discussions of the ECOWAS bloc” without restoring them as full participating heads of state at summits or major conferences.

After Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger announced that they would permanently withdraw from the alliance and formed a grouping called the Alliance of Sahel States, “the ECOWAS institution itself was shaken”, Idris said.

“[ECOWAS] is an organisation that is gradually losing its steam, and there is the danger of it being fragmented … There is also the concern that unless ECOWAS brings these people back into the fold, there is the danger of coups spreading in West Africa,” he added.

Compiled by Alain A. Ebot

Source: Al Jazeera