First Independent Mena Newspaper
Mali’s military leader and interim president, Assimi Goita, had a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday about the escalating situation in Niger, amid growing concerns in the West that Africa’s latest coup undermines its influence while presenting an opportunity to expand Russia’s presence in the West African region. The Kremlin said Mali’s […]
The new Sahel nation states have obviously failed to embrace diversity and integrate the Tuareg people whose leaders in Mali and Niger consider a return to the armed struggle against the centralized states. The Tuareg are a nomadic Amazigh people scattered in the greater Sahara notably in what is now southern Algeria and Libya to […]
The number of people killed in Africa’s central Sahel region by insurgents, armed groups, state forces and foreign mercenaries has surged this year, according to data by The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), contradicting the claims by the military rulers of Mali, Burkina Faso and now Niger that they are tackling insecurity. […]
Morocco has called, on Thursday in Addis Ababa, before the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (AU) for a coherent and viable regional response to counter terrorism and violent extremism in the Sahel. “A coherent and viable regional response is needed to counter terrorism and violent extremism in the Sahel. In this […]
A dizzying array of illegal weaponry dots market stalls across the Sahel, fueling violence and insecurity in this 6,000-km-wide belt in the middle of Africa, where smuggling networks exploit the ensuring desperation of people, leading to such deadly disasters as the recent shipwreck off the coast of Greece, according to the latest series of reports […]
Drug trafficking continues to thrive in the Sahel, home to 300 million people and a buyer’s market for guns, because of non-state armed groups which are very active there, according to a new 2023 report published Monday June 26 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The report explores the fight against […]
The recent joint operation between dozens of troops from Niger and France’s legendary Foreign Legion reflects the new approach President Emmanuel Macron wants to use for his country’s mission in West Africa’s deeply troubled Sahel region. The joint operation has been symbolic of France’s new mode of cooperation with Niger, part of a strategy which […]
International and regional efforts to combat armed groups linked to al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other extremist groups have failed to stop their expansion in Africa’s Sahel region, a senior United Nations official has warned. The joint force set up in 2014 to combat groups linked to al-Qaida, ISIL (ISIS) and others in the Sahel, […]
Germany’s Defense Minister, Boris Pistorius, Wednesday said the European country will use Niger as base as it remains committed to the Sahel region flagged by ramp insecurity. “Our future military engagement in the Sahel will focus on Niger,” he said as he embarked on a visit to the African country. “Security in the Sahel region […]
Reporters Without Borders fears reporting in Africa’s Sahel region will soon be ‘mission impossible’, as the international NGO reveals in its latest report published on Monday (3 April) where it describes a deterioration in the working conditions of journalists. Local and international media are caught between jihadist threats and pressure from the authorities, as was […]