Day: February 17, 2023

A multinational force of troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, on Thursday handed five children rescued from Boko Haram over to Cameroon. The Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Basin Commission says scores of children were rescued last year in operations against the militant group. Cameroonian authorities are working to locate the children’s parents.

The Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Basin, or MNJTF, that is fighting the jihadist group, says the five children it handed to Cameroonian authorities on Thursday were rescued by Chadian troops.

The children were handed over to government officials in Mora, a town in Cameroon’s Far North region on the border with Chad and Nigeria.

The task force said Chadian troops found the five boys in the volatile Lake Chad basin, looking unkempt, tired, hungry and sick.

The task force commander, Nigerian Major General Abdul Kalifa Ibrahim, said the teenage children spent several months in Boko Haram captivity. He spoke on Cameroon’s state broadcaster CRTV.

“They were unfortunate to be abducted by Boko Haram, but they were able to escape,” said Ibrahim. “Chadian soldiers found out they are Cameroonian children. We are going to carry out more operations. Our hope is for the Boko Harams themselves to come out and say this is enough.”

Cameroon says 25 out of the 60 children transferred to the country by the joint forces in the past three weeks were either saved by the military during operations or escaped from Boko Haram camps and surrendered to troops from Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria fighting the jihadists.

The task force says scores of the children were rescued last year in a military operation that killed 800 militants in lake Chad basin. The children were kept in Chad about 8 months for psychological care and to determine where they were from.

The government says the children range in age from 9 to 17 years old.

The governor of Cameroon’s Far North region, Midjiyawa Bakari, says Cameroonian President Paul Biya has ordered that the children be provided with food, medical care and an education while their parents are being found. He spoke to VOA via a messaging app from Maroua, capital of Cameroon’s Far North region.

Bakari says Cameroon has well-constructed centers for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, or DDR, in Meri and Mora, northern towns on the border with Chad and Nigeria. He says the children will be enrolled in a school at the DDR center in Mora. Bakari says Cameroons medical staff members are at DDR centers ready to attend to the health needs of the children.

Bakari said in 2021, Cameroon successfully hosted more than 2,000 former Boko Haram militants including 950 Nigerians and about a hundred Chadians who defected from the jihdist group.

In June 2022, the Multinational Joint Task Force said 3,000 troops killed 800 jihadis on Lake Chad’s islands and neighboring areas between March 28 and June 4 in an operation called Lake Sanity.

Officials of the force said they were investigating the countries of origins of several hundred children who were rescued in the operations.

The troops say parents of some of the children may have been killed in battles with jihadist groups or have remained in Boko Haram camps as militants or captives.

The Lake Chad basin stretches across the borders of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

The multinational force with troops from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad says although attacks have been drastically reduced, Boko Haram and another group, the Islamic State West Africa Province, have established bases in the vast Lake Chad basin.

According to the U.N., 36,000 people have been killed and 3 million have fled their homes in Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad since 2009 when the fighting deteriorated into an armed conflict with Nigerian government troops.

Source: Voice of America

A Kenyan government operation to disarm warring parties in the troubled Rift Valley region is off to a slow start. Media reports say a three-day amnesty period for people to hand in illegal weapons resulted in the handover of just three guns. Kenyan police did arrest a local lawmaker for allegedly funding bandits and cattle rustlers, who have wreaked havoc in the region.

Kenyan government forces launched an operation this week to crack down on chronic violence in the Rift Valley. Most of the fighting is between communities over grazing land and livestock made worse by the ongoing severe drought.

The first step – a three-day amnesty for people to hand over illegal weapons – resulted in just three guns being turned in by Thursday evening.

Police and regional officials declined to respond to VOA requests for comment.

Kenyan security analyst George Musamali says the communities in the North Rift Valley region cannot give up their guns easily after decades of insecurity in the region.

“It went in with threats and if you look at these communities, these are communities that have been taking care of their own security. They don’t see the government there,” said Musamali. “They would rather keep the guns until the operation is over. Then when the security forces leave the area then, they can continue living the way they are used to because the government is not offering any solutions to the perennial security problems in those areas.”

A security operation aimed at disarming the communities began Friday after the end of the amnesty period.

On Thursday, officers from Kenya’s Department of Investigation unit arrested a Pokot South member of parliament, David Pkosing, for allegedly financing the banditry in West Pokot County.

The legislator was later released and denied the claims of supporting the bandits.

Danstan Omari is a lawyer representing Pkosing. He says his client will appear at the offices of the criminal investigation unit to respond to more questions about his source of wealth.

“We agreed that we would take him there at 4 PM today so that he can respond to those allegations because we were told they have expanded the allegations,” said Omari. “Now they want us to respond to the allegations that the member of parliament is involved in money laundering and that the helicopter he has they will want to take a photo of the helicopter and lastly, they want to see how he has benefited from banditry, the commercial aspect of banditry.”

Pkosing told VOA some politicians from rival communities closer to the government were inciting authorities against him and his community.

He says the government needs to create a program where the warring communities can feed and move their animals freely in the region.

“We want the government to approach it in a structural manner. Let us allow the Turkanas, the Samburus, the Pokots, and the Marakwets,” said Pkosing. “The entire of this place where there is distress, let us bring order in terms of access to grass and water. If there is order, there is no conflict at all, but for now, there is no government.”

The communities in Baringo, West Pokot, Elgeyo Marakwet, Samburu, Laikipia and Turkana have been stealing animals from each other, leading to communal tensions and conflict.

Experts are urging the government to change its approach to dealing with the banditry threat and begin improving the lives of the communities by constructing roads, schools, and water points, as well as encouraging the community to start farming as another source of income.

Source: Voice of America

Luanda – Angola ambassador to Cuba Maria Cândida Teixeira Thursday discussed aspects of bilateral cooperation during an audience granted by Cuban Foreign Affairs minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla.

According to a note issued by the Angolan Embassy in Cuba, the meeting also served to assess the possibility of exchanging visits between the two countries’ foreign ministers.

The note adds that the two diplomats considered the state of bilateral relations “excellent” and expressed the will to deepen political dialogue and expand economic and commercial ties.

The Cuban top diplomat twitted that “both peoples and governments maintain relations based on historical ties of fraternity, solidarity and cooperation.”

Rodriguez Parrrilla congratulated Angola on holding the 10th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OEACP), in December in Luanda, adding that Cuba participated in the Summit with a high-level delegation.

While, the Angolan diplomat expressed the southern African nation’s commitment to support the Cuban presidency at the group of 77+ China.

This is a group of 134 countries, representing two-thirds of the members of the United Nations system and 80 percent of the world’s population.

Angola and Cuba have ties in several strategic sectors and cooperate in education, health, agriculture and culture.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – Angola and Namibia central banks signed Friday a memorandum of understanding to facilitate trade between the two countries and combat money laundering.

The memorandum, signed by the governors of the National Bank of Angola (BNA), José de Lima Massano, and of the Bank of Namibia, Johannes Gawaxab, updates the existing one on matters related to activities carried out by the two central banks.

José de Lima Massano, said the memo includes issues related to control of financial flows between the two countries and banking supervision, adding that the BNA has been working on the improvement of the payment system to enable commercial and private transactions to be easier.

” (…) What we understand is to take a bigger step, not only cash, the exchange of the Kwanza for the Namibian Dollar, but to have more modern payment instruments, including the debit cards of the ATM network and also to allow commercial transactions such as appeals to letters of credit to take place in the currency of the two countries,” Massano said.

The BNA governor said the path taken is technically more demanding, “because we want the payment infrastructures to work and dialogue, allowing transactions to occur quickly, safely, and the decision we took was to have the Kwanza as currency of the payment system in our region.

We will start with Namibia, but our intention is to have the Kwanza as a payment currency in our region”, Massano said.

As for the intention of creating a single currency for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, the BNA governor said the path would take some time, adding that the region has a payment system that has the rand as the payment currency, and that the aim is to have other currencies of the countries that make up the region, with Kwanza seeking to be one of those currencies.

The Governor of the Bank of Namibia, Johannes Gawaxab, on the other hand, said this is a job that has been done for some time, pointing out that the focus of the memorandum is on trade facilitation, illicit flows of capital that happens at the borders of the two countries and all the challenges that emerges from it.

“We have the issue of illicit flows of capital, working groups are being set up, to adjust matters in relation to facilitation and illicit flows of capital,” Gawaxab said.

The memorandum will enable exchanges between the two financial institutions at a time when the two central banks have agreed to improve trade facilitation by using current and regional cross-border payment system arrangements to ensure faster remittances.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – The secretary of the ruling MPLA party’s politburo for International relations Manuel Augusto Friday received the deputy president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, Víctor López, to whom he briefed on the country’s intention to strengthen cooperation in several fields.

After the meeting, the Cuban official told the press that the visit to Angola aimed at reinforcing the existing friendly relations between the two countries.

Víctor López highlighted Angola’s participation in the different stages of solidarity with the Cuban people and government.

He announced the Cuban institute’s plans to intensify the exchange of experiences and visits with Angola this year.

López also met with the first national secretary of the ruling party’s youth wing (JMPLA), Crispiniano dos Santos, having highlighted the performance of the youth organisation in solidarity with Cuba.

Angola and Cuba, which have maintained historic and friendly ties for several decades, have cooperation agreements in the health, education, defence and security, construction, industry and oil sectors. FMA/AL

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Addis Ababa – African needs about USD 25 million for the work of coordinating research centers on studies to identify suitable areas for the implementation the Common African Agro-Parks Programme (CAAPs).

The appeal was launched by the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Economy for the African Union (AU) Josefa Correia Sacko on friday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The diplomat was speaking at a roundtable of investors for the development of common agro-African parks, on the sidelines of the AU Summit of Heads of State and Government.

Josefa Sacko explained that the programme has the goal to collectively transform the continent’s agriculture and boost the integration and industrialisation of the continent.

“It is a great starting point for achieving the continent’s ambition of tripling intra-African trade in agricultural goods and services, as stipulated in the June 2014 Declaration of Malabo, capital of Equatorial Guinea, by the AU Heads of State. And I am convinced that we can do it”, stressed the AU Commissioner.

She noted that CAAPs are common cross-border agro-industrial zones and food supply corridors, which will be established in suitable agro-ecological areas, in each of Africa’s geographic regions.

Josefa Sacko stated that each zone will be dominated by specific agricultural goods, from which continental value chains will be developed, to produce and process selected goods, which can be traded between African states, to gradually offset the import bill.

“The implementation of CAAPs is no longer an option and we will not allow any distraction from the realization of this important vision for Africa,” she warned.

The list of commodities selected for this purpose and discussed by the CAAPs Working Group includes: rice, maize, wheat, yams, cassava, horticulture, poultry, livestock and cocoa.

She explained that there is a $5.5 million programme proposal led by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) to support the preparation of business cases and feasibility studies for demonstration projects of the already identified CAAPs.

This time, she considered that the African Development Bank (ADB) will have an important role for the implementation and promotion of initiatives for the development of special economic zones for agribusiness and CAPPs at national level.

On the other hand, she announced that due to the critical role of the private sector in this process, the African Union is working to designate two private sector champions for the CAAPs who will lead the advocacy across Africa.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – More than 15,000 kg/month of coffee, produced by the Angolan VEMS company, will begin to be exported, as of March this year, to European markets.

The pledge came from the company’s manager, Vladmir Satula, who said that the initiative is intended to boost the export diversification process and the country’s image overseas.

The plan results from a partnership between the firm and the Angola – Spain Trade Chamber, the manager said at the 2nd edition of the exhibition and parade of jewelry with embedded diamonds from Angola, held Thursday.

Satula clarified that the respective exports will be made through the supply of coffee to the international business group AZ, which distributes this product to large commercial areas in Europe.

With a billion dollars investment, this company produced close to 100, 000 kilograms of coffee in the 2022 campaign, which corresponded to approximately eight exportable containers.

In this period, stressed the source, the revenue obtained stood at around 50% return.

The businessman predicts to expand his production to around a million kilograms/year and reach other international markets, as part of the 2022/2027 strategic plan. QCB/AC

Source: Angola Press News Agency