Kenya is expected Monday to learn the outcome of its closely-fought presidential election after a long wait for results that has put the nation on edge.

Deputy President William Ruto was leading with slightly more than 51 percent of the vote against 48 percent for Raila Odinga, based on official results from more than 80 percent of constituencies, according to a tally published by the Daily Nation newspaper.

At church services on Sunday in the largely Christian country, both men had appealed for calm as the wait for final results of the August 9 vote dragged on.

Polling day passed off largely peacefully in the East African political and economic powerhouse, but memories of vote-rigging and deadly violence in 2007-08 and 2017 still loom large.

And the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is under intense pressure to deliver a clean poll in a country regarded as a beacon of stability in a troubled region.

Results must be issued by the end of Tuesday at the latest, according to Kenya’s constitution.

“I am ready for whatever outcome. Whether it is Ruto or Raila we must move on. We have waited for too long,” said Livingstone Wabwire, 27, a shoe shiner in downtown Nairobi.

Disenchantment

Ruto, 55, is deputy president but effectively ran as challenger after outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta threw his support behind his former foe Odinga, the 77-year-old veteran opposition leader making his fifth bid for the top job.

Kenyans voted in six elections to choose a new president as well as senators, governors, lawmakers, women representatives and some 1,500 county officials.

Kenyatta, the 60-year-old son of the first post-independence president, has served two terms and could not run again.

The winner of the presidential race needs to secure 50 percent plus one vote and at least a quarter of the votes in 24 of Kenya’s 47 counties.

If not, the country will be forced to hold a runoff within 30 days of the original vote.

Observers say that with the race so close, an appeal to the Supreme Court by the losing candidate is almost certain, meaning it could be many weeks before a new president takes office.

Turnout on polling day was lower than expected at around 65 percent of Kenya’s 22 million registered voters, compared with about 78 percent in the last election in 2017.

Observers blamed disenchantment with the political elite, particularly among young people in a country battling a severe cost- of-living crisis and a punishing drought that has left millions hungry.

‘At breaking point’

Lawyer David Mwaure — one of the four presidential candidates along with former spy George Wajackoyah — conceded on Sunday, endorsing Ruto, whose party won a key gubernatorial race when Johnson Sakaja secured control of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital and richest city.

The Star newspaper on Monday said “public anxiety” over the election results was at “breaking point.”

But, it noted, Kenyans had conducted themselves peacefully during and after the election with no significant incidents reported.

“The will of the people is supreme. We must all accept and respect that decision despite the pain of loss,” it said in an editorial.

The IEBC had faced sharp criticism over its handling of the August 2017 poll, which in a historic first for Africa was annulled by the Supreme Court after Odinga challenged the outcome.

Dozens of people were killed in the chaos that followed the election, with police brutality blamed for the deaths.

Kenyatta went on to win the October rerun after a boycott by Odinga.

The worst electoral violence in Kenya’s history occurred after a disputed vote in 2007, when more than 1,100 people were killed in bloodletting between rival tribes.

Source: AFP

When French President Emmanuel Macron visited Cameroon this week, he called out an entire continent for “hypocrisy.” Europe had decisively identified Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a war, he said during a news conference with Cameroonian President Paul Biya on Tuesday, but much of Africa had not.

“I have seen too much hypocrisy, particularly on the African continent,” Macron continued, “and — I’m saying this very calmly — with some not calling it a war when it is one and saying they don’t know who started it because they have diplomatic pressures.”

The French leader’s remarks, which came on the second day of a three-nation tour of Africa, showed a sharp contrast with those from another current visitor to the continent: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The veteran diplomat began his own four-nation tour of Africa on Saturday, singing praises for Africa and how the continent handled the fallout from the war in Ukraine.

“We appreciate the considered African position as to the situation in and around Ukraine,” Lavrov wrote in a column published in newspapers in Egypt, Congo, Uganda and Ethiopia, the four countries he is in the midst of touring. “Although unprecedented by its scale, the pressure from beyond has not brought our friends to join the anti-Russian sanctions. Such an independent path deserves deep respect.”

These concurrent visits from Western and Russian officials show a difficult reality for African nations. Many had sought to avoid taking a side on the war in Ukraine,, with 25 of Africa’s 54 states abstaining from a vote to condemn Russia’s invasion of its neighbor during the U.N. General Assembly in March.

But whether they like it or not, Africa has been dragged into the conflict. The most glaring issue has been economic, with many countries already shaken by the pandemic now facing a food crisis. African nations once relied heavily on Ukrainian grain — now they are facing soaring prices after Russia blocked ports by the Black Sea fleet. Steep oil prices, meanwhile, have increased economic pressure on many households.

Macron also addressed the issue of food prices during his visit to Cameroon, though he dismissed claims that he was visiting the continent just because of the Ukraine war.

“European economic sanctions on Russia that are now affecting Africa are intended to stop Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty and not to punish Africans,” Macron said Wednesday. “France will assist African countries to face the shocks caused by the war by encouraging local investments in agriculture to increase food production.”

U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Mike Hammer is also visiting Egypt and Ethiopia this week, where he is due to meet with leaders of the African Union. The State Department has described the main objective of the talks to provide U.S. support for a diplomatic solution over a dam project that has put the two countries at odds over water supplies.

Last week, the United States announced a $1.3 billion “surge” in aid for countries in the Horn of Africa, pointing to the fallout from an enormous drought across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. But there are fears that the current level of aid from Europe is not enough: Devex reported last week that an internal document from the European Union delegation to the African Union saw “the EU losing the battle for hearts and minds in Africa over the conflict.”

African nations have been inundated with counter-information backed by the Kremlin. In the column that presaged the visit, Lavrov said the food crisis hitting Africa was partly due to Western sanctions on Russia, but also amounted to a global economic system that supported the West at the expense of others.

“I would like to emphasize that the speculations of Western and Ukrainian propaganda that Russia allegedly ‘exports hunger’ are completely unfounded. In fact, these are yet another attempt to shift the blame to others,” Lavrov wrote, adding that Russia would live up to obligations in “exports of food, fertilizers, energy and other goods vital for Africa.”

Russia has recently sought to ally itself with Ethiopia — once a steadfast partner of the West. The country now faces strained relations with the United States and Europe due to alleged human rights abuses during the war in Tigray.

Russian officials have used the conspiratorial concept of a “golden billion” elite in the West to seek international support. On Wednesday in Addis Ababa, Lavrov gave a speech to African Union diplomats at the Russian Embassy in the Ethiopian capital where he offered an anti-colonial explanation for Moscow’s decision to invade Ukraine and the subsequent international backlash.

“I am sure the overwhelming majority of world countries do not want to live as if the colonial times (have) come back,” Lavrov said.

While Russia does not have the same colonial legacy in Africa, Moscow has a lengthy relationship with many nations that goes back to Soviet support during the Cold War. Some countries that abstained from the General Assembly votes on Ukraine have allegedly done so based on anti-colonial movements with close links to the Soviet Union, according to one analysis.

Macron’s strongest argument against Russia may be his claim that the country is “one of the last imperial, colonial powers.” Speaking in Benin on Wednesday, the French president said the invasion of Ukraine was “a territorial war, the likes of which we thought had disappeared from European soil. It’s a war from the early 20th, even the 19th century.”

France, however, is in the midst of coming to terms with its presence in West Africa, ending Operation Barkhane — a task force that has tried to combat violent jihadist movements in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Macron said Wednesday that despite this change, France remained “resolutely committed” to security in Africa.

Meanwhile, Russian mercenaries, most notably the Wagner Group, have spread their influence across much of West Africa. The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington says 18 countries now have a Russian mercenary footprint, with groups like Wagner supporting the controversial 2020 coup d’etat in Mali which led France to draw back from the country.

Contrary to what Macron claimed in his current visit to the continent, the majority of African nations have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during the U.N. General Assembly vote in March. The day after the invasion, all three African representatives on the 12-member Security Council voted in favor of a motion to end the war. Russia, a permanent member of the council, vetoed it.

And even before that, Kenyan Ambassador Martin Kimani gave a powerful speech where he likened Russian ambitions to take back Ukrainian land to the colonialism that casts a long shadow over his continent.

“This situation echoes our history,” Kimani said on Feb. 22, echoing Macron’s later comments. “Kenya and almost every African country was birthed by the ending of empire.”

Source: The Washington Post

French President Emmanuel Macron has called on his ministers and army chiefs to work on the country’s military postures in Africa, amid the complete withdrawal of thousands of its troops from Mali.

Macron made the statement while addressing French troops ahead of the July 14 Bastille Day parade in the capital, Paris, on Thursday, saying he wanted a “rethink of all our (military) postures on the African continent.”

His remarks come as French officials are heading to Niger to purportedly redefine the country’s strategy to allegedly fight armed groups in the Sahel region.

France’s new foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, and Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu are due to arrive in Niger on Friday to seal a regional redeployment.

“Beyond Mali, the democratic decline in West Africa is extremely worrying with successive putsches in Mali twice, in Guinea in September 2021, in Burkina Faso in January of this year,” Colonna told a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday. “France will nevertheless continue despite these events, this withdrawal from Mali, to help West African armies fight against terrorist groups,” he said.

Niger will now become the hub for French troops, with some 1,000 soldiers based in the capital, Niamey, with fighter jets, drones, and helicopters.

Some 300-400 soldiers would be dispatched for special operations with Nigerien troops in the border regions with Burkina and Mali, French officials told reporters in a briefing.

Another 700-1,000 would be based in Chad, with an undisclosed number of special forces operating elsewhere in the region.

The officials said that at this stage, there had been no formal request for further military assistance, amid concerns about whether French and European troops will also support countries in the coastal Gulf of Guinea nations, such as Benin, Togo, and the Ivory Coast, where there is an increase in militant attacks.

Some European countries had shown an interest in continuing regional operations post Mali, the officials said.

Lecornu will travel to the Ivory Coast, which also hosts French troops, on Saturday, while Macron is likely to travel to Benin at the end of July, Colonna said.

Back in February, France declared that it would withdraw thousands of its troops from Mali due to a breakdown in relations with the country, a decade after launching a war without the initial approval of the United Nations or the French parliament.

The decision applies to the 2,400 French troops in Mali, where France first deployed forces to in 2013, and a European force of several hundred soldiers that was created in 2020.

France has been a former colonizer in Africa, which, after many years of outright colonization, still controls countries spread over more than 12 territories and treats their people as second-class citizens. It has had more than 50 military interventions in Africa since 1960, when many of its former colonies gained nominal independence.

France currently has 5,100 troops in the arid and volatile Sahel region. Under a new plan, they will be reduced to 2,500-3,000.

Although France remains the only Western country with a significant military presence in the Sahel, its relationship with its former African colonies has grown increasingly tense in recent months, with an evident increase in anti-French sentiment.

Sources

Tunisian President Kais Saied published a planned new constitution on Thursday that he will put to a referendum next month, expanding his own powers and limiting the role of parliament in a vote that most political parties have already rejected.

Saied has ruled by decree since July, when he brushed aside the parliament and the democratic 2014 constitution in a step his foes called a coup, moving towards one-man rule and vowing to remake the political system.

His intervention last summer has thrust Tunisia into its biggest political crisis since the 2011 revolution that ousted former autocrat Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and introduced democracy.

Voters will be asked to approve the new constitution in a July 25 referendum for which there is no minimum level of participation.

With most of the political establishment opposed to his moves and urging their supporters to boycott the vote, analysts say the measure is likely to pass, but with only limited public involvement.

Many Tunisians are far more focused on a growing economic crisis and threats to public finances that has caused salary delays and threatens shortages of key subsidised goods.

The draft constitution published in the official gazette late on Thursday says Saied would continue to rule by decree until the creation of a new parliament through an election expected in December.

The new constitution would also allow him to present draft laws and have sole responsibility for proposing treaties and drafting state budgets, the gazette said.

It would create a new ‘Council of Regions’ as a second chamber of parliament.

Previously, political power was more directly exercised by the parliament, which took the lead role in appointing the government and approving legislation.

Under the new constitution the government would answer to the president, not to the parliament, though the chamber could withdraw confidence from the government with a two-thirds majority.

The president could serve two terms of five years each and has the right to dissolve parliament. A separate electoral law laying out how voting would work under the new political system will be published later, the draft constitution said.

However, judges, police, army and customs officials would not have a right to go on strike. Judges have recently been on strike for weeks in protest at Saied’s moves to curtail judicial independence.

In a move that may chafe with conservatives, Islam will no longer be the state religion, though Tunisia will be regarded as part of the wider Islamic nation.

However, Saied has maintained most parts of the 2015 constitution that enumerated rights and liberties, including freedom of speech, the right to organise in unions and the right to peaceful gatherings.

Source: REUTERS

Belgium on Monday handed over the last remains of slain Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba — a tooth — to his family, turning a page on a grim chapter in its colonial past.

Chief prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw gave the relatives a small, bright blue box containing the tooth in a televised ceremony, and said legal action they had taken to receive the relic had delivered “justice”.

The tooth was placed in a casket that was then draped in the flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which celebrates Lumumba, who was murdered by separatists and Belgian mercenaries in 1961, as an anti-colonial hero.

Lumumba’s assassination — and the brutal history of Belgian control of the Congo — have been enduring sources of pain between the two countries.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo reiterated that his country’s authorities bore a “moral responsibility” over the killing.

“I would like, in the presence of his family, to present in my turn the apologies of the Belgian government,” he said.

“A man was murdered for his political convictions, his words, his ideals.”

Lumumba’s son Francois told Belgium’s RTBF broadcaster that his relatives had been waiting “more than 60 years” for this event.

“I think it will provide solace for the family and the Congolese people,” he said.

“We are opening a new page in history.”

A fiery critic of Belgium’s rapacious rule, Lumumba became his country’s first prime minister after it gained independence in 1960.

But he fell out with the former colonial power and the United States and was ousted in a coup a few months after taking office.

He was executed on January 17 1961, aged just 35, in the southern region of Katanga, with the support of Belgian mercenaries.

His body was dissolved in acid and never found.

But the tooth was kept as a trophy by one of those involved, a Belgian police officer.

The tooth was seized by Belgian authorities in 2016 from the daughter of the policeman, Gerard Soete, after Lumumba’s family filed a complaint.

‘National mourning’

The casket containing the tooth is set to be flown back to the DRC where it will be officially laid to rest at a memorial site.

The country is set to hold three days of “national mourning” from 27 to 30 June — its 62nd anniversary of independence — to mark the burial ceremony.

Lumumba’s older son Francois filed a complaint in Belgium in 2011, pointing the finger of responsibility for his father’s killing at a dozen Belgian officials and diplomats.

The investigation for “war crimes” is still ongoing but only two of the targeted officials are still alive.

A Belgian parliamentary commission of enquiry in 2001 concluded that Belgium had “moral responsibility” for the assassination and the government presented the country’s “apologies” a year later.

De Croo said Belgian officials “chose not to see, chose not to act” to stop the killing, even if they had not directly intended it to happen.

Lumumba’s children were also received Monday by Belgium’s King Philippe, who this month travelled to DR Congo to express his “deepest regrets” over the colonial past.

Historians say that millions of people were killed, mutilated or died of disease as they were forced to collect rubber under Belgian rule. The land was also pillaged for its mineral wealth, timber and ivory.

Source: AFP

Belgium’s King Philippe on Wednesday decorated the last surviving Congolese World War II veteran, an AFP correspondent said, during a historic visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Belgian sovereign landed in DRC’s capital Kinshasa on Tuesday afternoon for a six-day visit billed as an opportunity for reconciliation between the vast central African country and its former colonial master.

On Wednesday morning, Philippe visited a memorial for combat veterans in Kinshasa and laid a wreath.

He also decorated 100-year-old Corporal Albert Kunyuku, who enlisted in Belgium’s colonial Force Publique in 1940 and saw service in Burma — the former name of Myanmar.

Kunyuku, the last surviving Congolese veteran of World War II, shook hands with the king for a long time.

Belgium’s colonisation of the Congo was one of the harshest imposed by the European powers that ruled most of Africa in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

King Leopold II, the brother of Philippe’s great great grandfather, oversaw the conquest of what is now DRC, governing the territory as his personal property between 1885 and 1908 before it became a Belgian colony.

Historians say that millions of people were killed, mutilated or died of disease as they were forced to collect rubber under his rule. The land was also pillaged for its mineral wealth, timber and ivory.

In 2020, Philippe wrote a letter to Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi to express his “deepest regrets” for the “wounds of the past.”

Near the combat veterans’ memorial on Wednesday, some bystanders suggested that decorating Kunyuku was a cosmetic gesture.

“We should also compensate the families of these veterans who lost their lives in a war that did not concern them,” said Madeleine Yowa, a 43-year-old nurse.

Marie-Therese Bakuku, a street vendor, also urged financial reparations and called the ceremony hypocritical.

“There were thousands of them,” she said, referring to Congolese WWII veterans.

“Now there’s one left and they’re trying to save the day.”

Source: AFP

West African leaders on Saturday opened a meeting in Ghana’s capital Accra to decide whether to ease or ramp up sanctions against junta-ruled Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is expected to decide whether to keep, lighten or lift retaliatory measures on Mali, imposed in January after its military regime announced an intention to rule for another five years.

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo Ado opened the summit, attended by the heads of state of most of the 15-member countries but without any representative from Mali, Burkina Faso or Guinea visible in the audience.

“This present summit will re-examine and assess the situations in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso in light of recent developments within the region and global context,” he said.

“Our objective has always been to find ways to help these countries return to constitutional order.”

Guinea, Burkina Faso and Mali are currently suspended from ECOWAS bodies.

While Mali has already been slapped with sanctions, the other two countries risk further punitive measures from the bloc after ruling juntas in their respective capitals vowed to hold onto power for another three years.

West Africa has seen a succession of military coups in less than two years — two in Bamako, followed by Conakry last September and Ouagadougou in January.

Insurgency

ECOWAS, keen to limit political instability spreading further, has held summits and piled on the pressure to shorten the juntas’ so-called transition periods before a return to civilian rule.

But strongmen Colonel Assimi Goita in Mali, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya in Guinea and Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba in Burkina Faso, have all flouted that pressure and since been sworn in as presidents.

They invoke the severity of domestic crises — that span jihadist insurgency to social problems — and claim they need time to rebuild their states and organise elections.

A UN report published last week said the West African sanctions had contributed to worsening living conditions, particularly for the poor.

One of the most volatile and impoverished countries in the world, Mali is battling a decade-old jihadist revolt, which began with a regional insurrection and then spread to Niger and Burkina Faso.

ECOWAS closed borders and suspended trade and financial exchanges, except for basic necessities.

In Guinea, the military overthrew president Alpha Conde last September and has vowed a return to civilian rule in three years.

Burkina Faso’s government was overthrown in January, when disgruntled colonels ousted elected president Roch Marc Christian Kabore.

Source: AFP

African Union head Macky Sall on Friday urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to take into account the suffering in African countries from food shortages caused by the conflict in Ukraine.

Sall, the Senegalese president, told Putin on a visit to Russia to “become aware that our countries, even if they are far from the theatre (of action), are victims on an economic level” of the conflict, adding that food supplies should be “outside” of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over Ukraine.

Source: AFP

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government has reportedly sent a letter to prominent MPs in the South African parliament, calling on the government of President Cyril Ramaphosa to take measures to stop the Biya French Cameroun regime forces from killing innocent civilians including women and children in Ambazonia.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that in the letter to the South African lawmakers, Dabney Yerima called on the ANC administration to take immediate, concrete steps to stop the ongoing war in Southern Cameroons.

The exiled Southern Cameroons leader has also met with heads of parliamentary groups in South Africa including the much respected Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters party urging all to immediately take action against the despotic Biya French Cameroun regime in Yaoundé.

Yerima told an anti French rally recently in South Africa that the international community must hold the Biya Francophone government in Yaoundé accountable for its atrocities against the people of Southern Cameroons.

By Isong Asu

Mali said Sunday it was withdrawing from a west African force fighting jihadists to protest its being rejected as head of the G5 regional group, which also includes Mauritania, Chad, Burkina and Niger.

“The government of Mali is deciding to withdraw from all the organs and bodies of the G5 Sahel, including the joint force” fighting the jihadists, it said in a statement.

The G5 Sahel was created in 2014 and its anti-jihadist force launched in 2017.

A conference of heads of state of the G5 Sahel scheduled for February 2022 in Bamako had been due to mark “the start of the Malian presidency of the G5”.

But nearly four months after the mandate indicated this meeting “has still not taken place”, the statement said.

Bamako “firmly rejects the argument of a G5 member state which advances the internal national political situation to reject Mali’s exercising the G5 Sahel presidency”, the statement said, without naming the country.

The Mali government said “the opposition of some G5 Sahel member states to Mali’s presidency is linked to manoeuvres by a state outside the region aiming desperately to isolate Mali”, without naming that country.

Mali has been since January 9 the target of a series of economic and diplomatic sanctions from west African states to punish the military junta’s bid to stay in power for several more years, following coups in August 2020 and May 2021.

The junta has opted for a two-year transition while the Economic Community of West African States has urged Bamako to organise elections in 16 months maximum.

Beyond Mali and Burkina, the G5 Sahel, composed of around 5,000 troops, includes Mauritania, Chad and Niger.

The military coups in Mali and Burkina Faso are undermining the regional force’s operational capacity, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a report to Security Council on May 11.

“I am deeply concerned by the rapidly deteriorating security situation in the Sahel, as well as by the potentially debilitating effect the uncertain political situation in Mali, Burkina Faso and beyond will have on efforts to further operationalise the G5-Sahel Joint Force,” Guterres’ report said.

Source: AFP