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File photo of Uganda’s opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party, walking with his wife Barbara Kyagulanyi,…
File photo shows Muhoozi Kainerugaba. Uganda’s military chief says 30 opposition supporters killedOpposition leader Bobi Wine remains in hidingUN Secretary-General voices concern over arrestsUganda’s military chief said yesterday that authorities had detained 2,000 opposition supporters, killed 30, and were hunting for more following a disputed presidential election in which his father, Yoweri Museveni, won a seventh term.The elder Museveni, 81, has led the East African nation for nearly four decades. He was declared to have resoundingly defeated Bobi Wine, leader of the opposition National Unity Platform (NUP), in the January 15 vote, held during an Internet blackout.Wine, a former musician whose legal name is Robert Kyagulanyi, rejected the result, alleging widespread irregularities including ballot stuffing, and went into hiding.In a series of overnight social media posts, military chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Museveni’s son, gave the first details of the arrests and killings of NUP supporters, describing them as hooligans and terrorists.”So far we have killed 30 NUP terrorists,” Kainerugaba said on X, without explaining the circumstances of the deaths. “Most NUP terrorist leaders are in hiding. We shall get them all,” he said in another post.The government has accused Wine’s supporters of violence during the election while the opposition says its members were attacked by security forces. Reuters has not been able to authenticate the allegations.A police spokesperson declined to give any further comment on the situation. Military spokesperson Chris Magezi could not be reached for comment.UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern on Thursday over the arrests and violence involving opposition figures and supporters.”He (the Secretary General) notes the importance of restraint by all actors and respect for the rule of law and Uganda’s international human rights obligations,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.Wine has alleged that hundreds of his supporters have been illegally detained in recent months for their political affiliation, and accused authorities of intimidation.Uganda’s opposition parties and rights activists say some of those arrested are held in unofficial detention centres where some are tortured.The crackdown intensified with the detention of Muwanga Kivumbi, a lawmaker and Wine’s deputy in the NUP, on Thursday. Two other senior NUP figures have been reported missing for days.Yesterday, Kivumbi appeared in court in Butambala to be charged with terrorism. He was remanded in custody until February 3, the rights group Agora Discourse said in a post on X. It did not say how Kivumbi had pleaded and the identity of his lawyer was unclear.Wine, 43, has said he fled his residence after a raid by security personnel shortly after the election.Museveni is widely believed to be grooming Kainerugaba, who has expressed presidential ambitions, as his successor. Source link
Valery Kyembo was leading an inspection of his community's protected forest reserve deep in the Democratic Republic of Congo's mining belt when two armed Congolese soldiers blocked their way.Behind the troops, a barrier restricted access to a developing mine site. One soldier brandished his weapon in a clear warning — Kyembo should turn back instead of reaching the reserve.As US and other companies jostle with China over the DRC's critical minerals, communities like Lukutwe in the southern province of Haut-Katanga fear increasing restrictions and incursions into nature reserves as they seek to protect their land. Kyembo's Lukutwe community forest reserve obtained official land titles to help avoid unauthorised exploitation, as huge metal reserves draw more investors.But community leaders fear displacement from traditional lands despite the communities' protected status.Haut-Katanga produces a host of minerals, but none more in demand than the silver-tinged cobalt, essential for electric batteries and in defence technology.The DRC produces around 70% of the world's cobalt.In Lukutwe, 70 kilometres from the mining capital Lubumbashi, community leaders said they established a forest concession to legalise customary land titles after watching mining firm SEK, a subsidiary of Australia's Tiger Resources, displace other villages a decade ago. ‘We wanted to have our own titled land,’ Kyembo said, echoing people from surrounding villages.Demand for minerals under Katanga's earth is heating up.US President Donald Trump, who has sought to broker an end to decades of conflict in eastern DRC, has made ‘mineral diplomacy’ key to his approach, looking for access for American companies in exchange.CUSTOMARY LANDFor villages like Lukutwe, which often hold land rights dating back generations but lack formal paperwork, the concessions are a way to secure land titles and protect the region's vast savannah forest systems.Since 2016, forest concessions, known as CFCL by their French acronym, have been part of the DRC's strategy to let communities manage their forests.They ‘effectively constitute a safeguard against pressure over their land… relocations and expropriations by mining companies,’ said Heritier Khoji, a specialist in the region's forests and an agronomy professor at the University of Lubumbashi.In Haut-Katanga, there are now 20 reserves, covering 239,000 hectares (60,000 acres). Twelve more are in the process of approval.The DRC's south is covered in what are known as Miombo forests, the largest dry tropical forest ecosystem in the world. But, as in other parts of Africa, forests are shrinking due to agriculture, deforestation and mining.From 2001 to 2024, the Lualaba and Haut-Katanga provinces lost 1.38mn hectares of tree cover, much of it along the copper-cobalt belt, according to Global Forest Watch.The DRC's mining registry shows the copper-cobalt belt has one of the country's highest concentrations of exploration and mine licences.Overseen by Indigenous and local communities, the forest reserves allow environmental management through sustainable projects, reforestation and controlled charcoal production, and set aside specific areas for conservation and rural development.In theory, mining companies that overlap with or impact the reserves can pay royalties to communities for their operations.Each reserve has a volunteer brigade to monitor access points and boundaries, said Kibole Kahutu, vice-president of the CFCL Katanga.MINING PRESSUREEnvironmentalists and rights groups meanwhile worry over threats to waterways, farming and health.A leak of waste from a facility run by Congo Dongfang Mining (CDM), a subsidiary of China's Huayou Cobalt, flooded suburbs of Lubumbashi in November, prompting the Congolese government to suspend the miner's operations.Many of the Haut-Katanga reserves are surrounded by or overlap with mining companies.For example, the Kambala forest initiative, which is yet to be fully approved, overlaps with the exploration permit of MMG Kinsevere SARL, a subsidiary of Australia-based MMG Limited, whose main shareholder is the Chinese company China Minmetals.Khoji, the agronomy professor, said community forest concessions are not perfect. Sometimes, even communities mine in environmentally destructive ways.Companies can operate in a concession after obtaining community consent. But local communities complain miners still obtain licences on secured lands even without consent or benefit-sharing agreements.For communities, ‘obtaining the concession is a safeguard against land pressures, but the difficult application of laws, decrees, orders… is an obstacle,’ Khoji said.Politics also plays a role, with poor communities lacking clout.In villages like Lukutwe, forestry concessions often do not generate immediate returns, and the lack of funds discourages some residents, said Veronique Sebente, representative of a committee managing collective land ownership.Katanga also faces incursions and attacks by loggers from Lubumbashi who come to produce charcoal to sell in the regional capital.’These people sometimes surprise us by surrounding us and attacking. We have difficulty securing the concession,’ said Kahutu, the vice-president of the CFCL Katanga.Community members say forest concessions with the government offer at least some protection.But a road built across the CFCL Katanga to reach a mining site is a reminder that one day a mining company may try to come for their land.’Our only support in this case consists of the CFCL documents obtained from the government,’ Kahutu said.The DRC's environment and mines ministers as well as mining companies SEK and MMG were contacted, but none responded before publication.This article is part of a reporting project between Mongabay and Agence France-Presse (AFP). Source link
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni won a seventh term in office Saturday after an election marred by violence and an Internet shutdown, with African observers saying arrests and abductions had “instilled fear”.Museveni, 81, won 71.65% of the vote in Thursday’s election, the Electoral Commission said, amid reports of at least 10 deaths and intimidation of the opposition and civil society.His victory allows the former guerrilla fighter to extend his 40-year rule of the east African country.He defeated Bobi Wine, 43, a former singer who styles himself the “ghetto president” after the Kampala slum areas where he grew up, but has faced relentless pressure including multiple arrests before his first run for the presidency in 2021. Ugandan Electoral Commission (EC) Chairperson Justice Simon Byabakama announces the final presidential results following the general elections at the Tally Centre in Lubowa, Wakiso district…
Schools across parts of northern Nigeria started reopening Monday, after months of closure triggered by the abduction of hundreds of students in November.The abductions last year had underlined the vulnerability of education facilities in a region plagued by criminal gangs and insurgents.Schools resumed academic activities this term after the federal government said in a circular last month that enhanced security measures had created a safer environment for students to return. It did not provide details.In northern Kaduna state, a 17-year-old student said it was difficult for her to return to school after two months away. Students buy school items near the gate of Government Girls Secondary School Maimuna Gwarzo, Tudun Wada, as schools across northern Nigeria reopen nearly two months…
Christian worshippers raise their hands as they praise and pray for a peaceful election at Victory church in Kampala, Sunday, ahead of the 2026 Ugandan general…
A scramble for gold reserves dug up in illegal mines is fuelling violence by criminal gangs in parts of Nigeria, officials, expert reports and local residents say, with much of it smuggled to a Middle Eastern destination.Northwestern and central Nigerian states have long been terrorised by criminal gangs locally called “bandits” who raid villages, abduct residents and loot and burn homes.While the decades-long violence started as clashes between herders and farmers over limited grazing land and water resources exacerbated by climate change, the conflict has since morphed into organised crime — at a time when the price of the precious metal has been soaring.Nigeria is well known for its oil, yet also has significant gold deposits of some 754,000 ounces (21.37 tonnes), worth $1.4bn, accounting for 0.5% of global production, according to the 2023 Gold Mining Industry report.A recent wave of kidnappings, including hundreds of school children, brought the violence into fresh international focus.Local artisans extract gold for their livelihoods, attracting others from neighbouring countries, officials, including Kebbi State Governor Nasir Idris, say.The bandits tax the miners and demand a cut from the extracted ore as a levy to allow them access to the pits, villagers and experts say.”Gold has become an increasingly important revenue stream for armed bandit groups in north-west Nigeria since 2023,” said the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime in an October report.Nigeria’s political and business elite use mining companies as proxies to buy artisanal miners’ gold through middlemen.Most of the illegally-mined gold is smuggled out to a Middle East nation, from where it is laundered into the global supply chain in Europe, the US, Asia and South Africa.”This gold is almost entirely smuggled out of the country and shipped to a Middle East nation,” said a 2024 SwissAid report.Solid Minerals Minister Dele Alake said Nigerian gold often ends up in the Middle East “unlawfully”.Alake has previously said illegal miners sponsor “banditry and terrorism”.Nigeria’s counter-terrorism boss Major General Adamu Garba said recently that illegal mining “intersects with banditry, insurgency, arms trafficking and cross-border smuggling”.Against the backdrop of recent kidnappings, governors and traditional chiefs from 19 northern states recently dubbed illegal mining a “major contributory factor to the security crises”.They want a six-month suspension of mining to clean up the sector.But umbrella union the Nigerian Miners Association warns a blanket mining ban would disrupt locals’ livelihoods, “deepen poverty and increase insecurity”.Miners who resist paying levies come into the bandits’ firing line. In October bandits killed 16 miners and villagers while in April 19 people were killed in different parts of the region.Supported by bandits, some miners raid gold-rich villages, pushing out residents to access deposits, said Mamman Alassan, who fled his village in Niger’s Shiroro district three years ago following raids.”People usually protest and the miners respond by launching deadly raids to take over the area,” Alassan said after resettling in Minna city.The villages also sit on deposits of other minerals including tantalite, copper and lithium, in strong demand for its use in electric vehicles and clean energy tech.Intelligence sources say even licensed companies are forced to pay bandits to gain access to mining sites.Niger State governor Umar Bago recently questioned how miners can “freely access” sites in remote areas without getting attacked.Officials also blame the influx of foreigners for the worsening insecurity, with Kebbi state governor Idris singling out illegal miners from Mali, Chad and as far afield as Tanzania.The violence has been exacerbated by the increasing alliance between bandits and militants from the northeast who have in recent years established a strong presence in northwest and central regions, security officials and analysts say.Although they have no ideological leanings and are mainly motivated by financial gains, the bandits’ alliance with militants has exposed them to better arms, tactics and brutality, they say.INEFFECTIVE BANSAround 35% of Nigeria’s gold deposits lie beneath impoverished northwestern villages, according to Ismail Suleiman, who owns a mining company that extracts minerals across the northwest.Some state governments have at various times banned mining to curb banditry but the violence has continued unabated.In October, Niger state’s Bago announced an indefinite ban on mining, with plans to recruit 10,000 government-sponsored militia to protect Niger’s rural communities.In 2019, the federal government imposed a five-year mining ban in Zamfara state but lifted it in January, citing “improved security” despite increased killings and kidnappings there.Artisanal mining has continued on a much larger scale since the ban was lifted and violence has raged, said the miners’ union. 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23///*Guinea has world’s largest reserves of bauxiteVillagers living near mine report air, water pollutionFarmers say yields are lower and they are losing outTala Oury Sow has to wash her kitchen utensils and clothes in brown, murky water in the village of Koussadji in Guinea’s western Kindia region.”Do you think we can cook and wash with this? We have no other choice,” the 28-year-old farmer said, gesturing to the water she collected from a nearby river, 500 metres from her home in the Telimele prefecture of the West African nation.Sow blames the state of the water on the Indian mining company Ashapura Minechem, which opened a bauxite mine about 2km from Koussadji in 2019.Bauxite, the raw material in aluminium, is in high global demand because it plays a key role in enabling the clean energy transition, and Guinea holds the world’s largest reserves.But the people of Koussadji and nearby villages say they are not benefitting from the bauxite boom, but instead suffer from the environmental consequences of large-scale mining, including water and air pollution.Their complaints resonate across Africa, where many governments and activists are pushing for more domestic control — and economic benefits — of the critical minerals vital for the energy transition away from polluting fossil fuels.Aluminium is used in solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles, as well as energy-efficient appliances and insulation materials in greener buildings.”Look at this water, look at the gift they’ve given us. With this water, do you think life is possible?” said Sow, who grows rice, cassava, groundnut and cashews and blamed her falling crop yields on pollution.Ashapura did not respond to three emails requesting comment on the villagers’ allegations of pollution.The company did build a borehole in the nearby village of Bembou Silaty a year ago, but the water does not cover people’s needs, according to Souleymane Bah, a teacher from the village.Ashapura has also faced allegations of environmental pollution in India.In Bembou Silaty, Tokpa Fehand, a nurse working at the Poste de Sante health centre, said the village is adversely affected by mining activity, both in the dry and wet seasons.”There are respiratory illnesses from the dust, the village is surrounded by the mine, and the machinery hardly ever stops working,” he said.A 2023 community audit of the environmental and social impacts of mining in the nearby region of Boke linked bauxite mining to water pollution, a drop in agricultural productivity and a rise in air pollution.Oumar Totiya Barry, executive director of the independent Guinean Observatory for Mines and Metals, said the problems experienced in Bembou Silaty were typical.”Bauxite waste contains heavy metals and acid; in cases of pollution, it is sedimentation linked to drainage during the rainy season,” he said.JUST TRANSITION?Guinea exports some 3.7mn tons of bauxite per week and produced about 146mn tons last year.The country ships most of its exported bauxite to China.The military-led government, which took power in a 2021 coup, is pushing foreign mining companies to add more value to bauxite before shipping the ore overseas for processing.As part of this drive, it has revoked licences and pressed mining companies to build alumina refineries, joining countries from gold producer Mali to oil-rich Nigeria that are looking to boost domestic refining capacity in recent years.Despite a push by several African countries at November’s COP30 UN climate talks, the issue of a just transition for communities in resource-rich countries was not addressed in the final text.China and Russia, among others, opposed any explicit reference to minerals, participants said.”Talk of a just transition rings hollow so long as governments ignore the minerals required by the energy systems of the future,” said Antonio Hill, an advisor at the policy organisation Natural Resource Governance Institute.”By looking the other way, governments are feeding delay, forfeiting leadership and forsaking the chance to anchor equity and justice at the heart of the global energy transition,” he said in a statement after the talks. In the meantime, Guinea is taking unilateral action. Mamady Doumbouya, the general, has acted to force companies to add value to bauxite in Guinea.Mines Minister Bouna Sylla said in November the country would fast-track the development of alumina refineries and iron ore pellet plants to end decades of raw ore exports.NEW APPROACHBauxite mines, which involve surface level or “strip” mining, can contaminate rivers and streams by removing vegetation and facilitating erosion, Human Rights Watch said in a 2021 report on aluminium production and mining that also referenced Guinea.Barry said the noxious consequences of mining is a factor driving young Guineans to migrate, many opting for risky boat journeys to Spain’s Canary Islands.”(Guinea is) rich in resources, but has not managed to turn them into national wealth, rather into a tool used to consolidate state power,” he said, adding that mining revenues are used to pay policemen, soldiers and civil servants.He said legislation is needed to guarantee Guinean citizens a decent standard of living.The employment benefits are limited too, as many young people do not have the training needed to secure permanent jobs.The women of Allawalli, a farmers’ association in Bembou Silaty and Koussadji, said pollution from the nearby mines has decreased food production.Rice production in Telimele plunged by 90% between 2018 and 2022, according to data from Guinea’s national institute of statistics.Binta Boye, 35, grows rice, groundnuts and cassava in Bembou Silaty and is a member of Allawalli.”What I produced before was enough to feed my family. Now it’s not enough anymore. We’re in God’s hands, if we want this to change,” she said. Source link
A billboard depicting Guinea President Mamady Doumbouya, with the message “the best choice” written on it, is seen on an empty street after provisional results declared…
Abdoul Aziz Balde sobbed as he spoke of his son Idrissa, who left Guinea in search of a better future, but has not been heard from since capsizing off the Moroccan coast.”I know that the boat my son was on sank, but we haven’t been shown his body, so to say that the boy is dead, I just don’t know,” the desperate father said.Thousands of young undocumented migrants from Guinea have disappeared along migration routes in recent years, leaving their families in a state of uncertainty and helplessness.Although it affects families across west Africa, the problem is particularly bad in Guinea, which has become one of the main departure points for those heading to North Africa and Europe.One day they are in touch; the next seemingly gone forever.Some disappear after boarding overcrowded boats, others after crossing the desert with smugglers who have been known to abandon migrants.Still others have gone missing following police raids in North Africa, due to imprisonment in Libya or even once in Europe, disappearing voluntarily out of shame over having failed in their dream.Families are left to scour Facebook or watch macabre WhatsApp clips showing young people in morgues or corpses after shipwrecks.The Guinean Organisation for the Fight Against Irregular Migration (OGLMI) has pioneered a way to help families by collaborating with migrant aid associations around the world over the last year.The NGO estimates the number of missing Guineans to be in the thousands.”Out of 100 migrants who leave, at least 10 will never return,” said OGLMI executive director Elhadj Mohamed Diallo.”People have been missing for a long time but the issue has never been discussed at the civil society, government or international institution level,” he said.AFP accompanied Diallo as he navigated the streets of a Conakry suburb on his motorcycle to visit the parents of Idrissa, who disappeared more than a year ago.The Balde family lives in a house shared with other tenants where the poverty is striking.With every family, it is the same ritual when Diallo visits: Idrissa’s parents scrolled through WhatsApp to find the last virtual trace of their child.One of the last photos was a smiling selfie.”He left to save us, and to save his little sister. But God didn’t want it to be,” Abdoul Aziz Balde, a 62-year-old driver, said, breaking down in tears.Despite being bright at school, Idrissa — who would now be 29 years old — saw no opportunity in Guinea, a recurring theme among many young people.From 2023, he made three unsuccessful attempts to migrate to Europe, reaching as far as Morocco. Each time, his father tried to stop him.Last year his parents financed his master’s studies in Senegal, but he was lured by others who did manage to reach Europe and left for Morocco again.In August his father received a fateful phone call: “Are you Mr Balde? Do you have a son who is in Morocco?” the voice on the other end asked. “My deepest condolences. They boarded small boats… they drowned.”Balde said he was “devastated” and had to break the news to his wife. “The whole family wept,” he said.They were able to contact a young girl on the same boat but she had lost consciousness when they were hit by a wave and did not see what happened to Idrissa.”Is he dead? Is he not dead?” Balde asked, his voice filled with anguish.Between 2014 and 2025, at least 33,220 migrants died or went missing in the Mediterranean and 17,768 in Africa, according to the International Organisation for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project.However, the figures are likely underestimated. In 2024 alone, the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras recorded 10,457 people dead or missing at sea on the western European-Africa border.Guinean researcher Mahmoud Kaba is working on a study to shed light on “the large-scale phenomenon” of families who have lost loved ones during attempts to migrate from Guinea.Some “suffer strokes upon hearing the news, others experience insomnia and amnesia”, he told AFP.Families feel isolated due to increasingly restrictive border policies and controls in Europe, general indifference and the criminalisation of migrants.Abdoulaye Diallo, 67, told AFP he felt “abandoned”. His eldest son Abdou Karim, who would now be aged 25, went missing two years ago.”He stopped communicating with me in March 2023 which was unusual for him and that’s when the worry set in,” Diallo said.The family found some of Abdou’s last traces of life on Facebook.He had already left once, in 2018, barely aged 18, reaching Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, where he was imprisoned, but ended up back in Conakry.On a second attempt, while working in Rabat he told a friend he was leaving for Tangier and then on to Spain.Just east of Tangier, the massive Gourougou forest has become a base for thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking to enter the nearby Spanish enclave of Melilla illegally.Moroccan authorities often carry out raids to dislodge them.”There is violence against migrants in Morocco, especially from the security forces. It’s a country where lives are senselessly lost,” Diallo said, breaking down in tears.One of Abdou’s brothers said he received information that he was in a detention centre in the Tangier region.Diallo said he tried to contact the authorities to inform the Guinean embassy in Morocco but had received no news.There is “no shame” in being the parents of a young migrant who has gone missing, he insisted.”It’s a wind that has swept through every home in Africa because of bad governance,” he said.OGLMI has set up WhatsApp groups in local languages to connect Guinean families, as well as a support group.Even when relatives try to report their child’s disappearance, there is often no follow-up, Diallo said.Guinea’s ruling junta, which took power in 2021, is reluctant to allow public discussion of illegal migration.”Admitting that we are losing our citizens at sea is also admitting a political failure and that we are not doing enough for our citizens,” Kaba, the researcher, said.But the head of the Directorate General for Guineans Living Abroad, Mamadou Saitiou Barry, said that the term “disappeared” should be used with “great caution”.He said there were “many situations” other than death that could cause a migrant to disappear.They include “those who have not succeeded and refuse to communicate, those who are hospitalised, those who are under arrest or detained,” he said.He added that Guinean authorities had helped families of shipwreck victims that they know about, often the few that gain media attention.”Families have the right to the truth and to file a complaint, the missing have the right to be searched for, and the deceased have the right to be buried with dignity,” Helena Maleno, founder of Caminando Fronteras, told AFP.”But getting states to recognise this is very complicated,” she said.After receiving a report of a disappearance, OGLMI contacts relatives and creates an identification file, including the migration route.The information is transmitted to associations in North Africa and Europe and to activists as far away as Mexico, Argentina and the US.The search might even involve visiting unmarked graves in the migrant sections of cemeteries or morgues.Some families do manage to trace their loved one, such as Tahibou Diallo, 58, who had no news of her son Thierno for two years.AFP went along with OGLMI’s Diallo when he met Tahibou for the first time.The mother became visibly distraught as she recounted how she had helped fund Thierno’s journey to Spain.”He told me he was going to study there,” she said, explaining he instead went to France then disappeared. In October, OGLMI was able to locate the young man, alive but homeless in the western city of Nantes.He was not doing well but his mother was able to speak to him and re-establish contact. However, other families who have sought the NGO’s help are still without news after more than a year. “These families must be helped to grieve,” Diallo said.”We must not forget all these missing people.” Source link