US Holds Out Hope for Partnership with Niger

Pentagon — The United States is not ruling out a continued military presence in Niger, despite a statement by the country’s ruling military junta that it was ending an agreement allowing for the presence of American forces engaged in counterterrorism missions.

U.S. defense officials said Monday the U.S. has yet to withdraw any of its approximately 1,000 military personnel from Niger and, along with officials from the White House and the State Department, said conversations with Nigerien officials are continuing.

“We remain in contact,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday, adding that Niger’s military junta has yet to share information on a possible deadline for U.S. forces to leave the country.

“We have different lines of communications at all levels of government with Niger and our government,” she said. “Again, we want to see our partnership continue if there is a pathway forward.”

At the State Department, deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said most of the talks, for now, have been centered through the U.S. Embassy.

“We continue to have our ambassador and our embassy team there, and we’re continuing to discuss with them [Nigerien officials],” he said.

“We believe our security partnerships in West Africa are mutually beneficial and they are intended [to] achieve, I should say, what we think to be shared goals of detecting, deterring and reducing terrorist violence,” Patel added.

A spokesperson for the ruling military junta announced Saturday that it had revoked, effective immediately, the status of forces agreement that allowed U.S. forces to operate in the country and cooperate with the Nigerien military against militants linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State terror group.

Colonel Amadou Abdramane said the decision was based, in part, on what he called a “condescending attitude” by U.S. officials in a high-level delegation that met with Nigerien officials in the capital of Niamey last week.

“Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism,” he said.

U.S. officials, in contrast, described last week’s talks, as “direct and frank,” providing U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee, Assistant Secretary of Defense Celeste Wallander and U.S. Africa Command’s General Michael Langley a chance to express Washington’s concerns while also hearing from Nigerien military and civilian officials.

“We were troubled on the path that Niger is on,” the Pentagon’s Singh told reporters Monday, admitting that some of the concerns centered on Niger’s “potential relationships with Russia and Iran.”

Iran hosted Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine in January and voiced a willingness to help Niger cope with international sanctions levied following the July 2023 coup.

But Niger’s military junta bristled at what it said were “misleading allegations” by U.S. officials that Niger had struck a secret deal to provide Tehran with uranium.

The junta also defended its relationship with Moscow, saying Russia partners with Niger to provide its military with equipment needed in the country’s fight against various terrorist groups.

U.S. officials, though, have previously expressed concerns about Russian defense officials making visits to Niger following the July coup.

And a top U.S. lawmaker Monday, suggested Russian influence may have played a role in the military junta’s announcement.

“Part of this is Russia’s attempt to insinuate themselves in the region dramatically and to cause us [the U.S.] problems,” said Senator Jack Reed, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Reed, a Democrat, told a virtual meeting of the Washington-based Defense Writers Group that Niger’s ruling junta has been sending the U.S. signals for months that it might seek to evict U.S. forces.

“We will have to counter that … by repositioning forces and capabilities so we can still have observation and influence in that area of the Sahel,” Reed said, noting that U.S. military officials have been considering other options.

U.S. military officials confirmed last August, following the coup, that a search for alternative sites was underway. But the Pentagon refused to say Monday how much progress had been made.

There are also concerns about getting other allies or partners in the region to agree to host a significant U.S. presence, and whether the location can provide the same kind of quick and easy access to terrorist targets, like the U.S. bases in Niger.

Most U.S. forces in Niger are currently located at Air Base 201 in the Nigerien city of Agadez, on the edge of the Sahara Desert.

The base, built about six years ago at a cost of $110 million, allowed the U.S. to conduct surveillance and counterterrorism missions with a fleet of U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones.

But the U.S. suspended all counterterrorism missions from the base following the July 2023 coup, saying personnel have been limited to conducting operations only for the purpose of protecting U.S. forces.

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Regional Analysts Concerned Over Niger’s Future Military Cooperation With US

abuja, nigeria — Analysts in West Africa are raising concerns about U.S. military operations across the Sahel after Niger ended military cooperation with the United States on Saturday. The U.S has hundreds of troops stationed at a drone base in northern Niger and has been helping with regional counterterrorism operations against jihadist groups.

Saturday’s announcement from Niger’s National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland came days after a U.S. delegation visited Niger, the second American team to visit since a group of military officers seized power last July.

It remains unclear what prompted the decision to cut military ties with Washington, but Council spokesman Colonel Abdou Ab’daramane said U.S. flights over Niger’s territory in recent weeks were illegal.

He also said the U.S. delegation had accused Niger of a secret deal to supply uranium to Iran and showed “condescending attitude against the government and people of Niger.”

Niger plays a pivotal role in the U.S counterterrorism operations in Africa’s Sahel region and hosts a major military air base in the city of Agadez.

Security expert Saheed Shehu of says there will be implications for regional security.

“Certainly we’ll see a spike of insecurity in those areas because the bad guys are also looking at the development,” Shehu said. “But I believe it’s not going to last because America is not going to sleep. America is going back to the drawing table to see how they can accommodate the complaints that were made by Niger.”

The U.S. has invested millions of dollars in its security operations in the region and has helped train Niger’s military — some of whom took part in the ousting of President Mohammed Bazoum last July.

The U.S. State Department Sunday said in a post on X that it was in touch with Niger’s military junta.

In October, U.S. authorities officially designated the military takeover in Niger as a coup and curbed security and development support to the nation.

Sam Amadi, a director at the School of Social and Political Thoughts, said Niger’s government could be looking elsewhere for a security alliance.

“It’s a loss because they’ve spent time, money by investing in that capability in Niger,” Amadi said. “I think they’ll lean towards Russia, but the question is nobody knows how effective it will be.”

Niger, like neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, turned to Russia for security support after last July’s coup.

In December, Niger ended its security partnership with the European Union, prompting France to withdraw its troops from the country.

Shehu said the various moves by the junta are a negotiation strategy.

“It will affect the general security in the area but at the same time I think the earlier agreement was more in favor of the United States,” Shehu said. “I do not see this as the end of Niger-U.S. relationship but they’re sending a signal that we need more of collaborations of equals going forward. What I see happening later is that the kind of cooperation has to be the kind that is mutually beneficial. The signal that Niger is sending is to tell America that ‘Look, we could go elsewhere.’”

The U.S. and France had a combined force of 2,500 troops in Niger before the military takeover.

It’s not clear when or if Niger will ask the U.S. will withdraw its troops as it did with France.

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Chad Expects Some 20 Candidates to Compete With Military Ruler in Elections

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Officials in Chad say close to 20 candidates will be challenging military ruler General Mahamat Idriss Deby in Chad’s May 6 presidential election. The final list of candidates for the polls expected to end three years of military rule in the central African state will be officially declared on March 24, according to Chad’s Constitutional Council.

Among the presidential hopefuls is Ndjelar Koumadji Mariam, president of the National Union for Alternation in Chad, the only female candidate.  

Mariam said she is committed to bringing social justice and ensuring parity between men and women as stated in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. She spoke to VOA by telephone from Chad’s capital N’djamena on Monday.

Mariam said she intends to fight widespread corruption that has plunged a majority of Chad’s close to 17 million people into abject poverty. If Chad’s resources are equally distributed, she said, several million hungry women and children will have food, water and basic humanitarian needs.  

Mariam said corruption breeds hatred and is responsible for the anger, proliferation of armed groups and killings in Chad. 

Opposition leader and pro-democracy figure Success Masra, who was appointed transitional prime minister in January, said he is the candidate of The Transformers, a party he heads.  

Masra told Chad’s state TV that he agreed to be a candidate to mend hearts and reunite Chad’s citizens. 

Transitional president General Mahamat Idriss Deby is the nominee of Chad’s former ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement, or MPS party, which says he has the support of a coalition of over 200 opposition parties and about 1,000 civil society groups. 

Mbaiodji Ghislain, secretary general of the Alliance of Chad Civil Society Groups, said civil society groups believe that if given the opportunity, Deby will continue bringing back peace, stability, security, national concord and development, as he has done since he took power three years ago after the death of his father. 

But candidates Nasra Djimasngar, national secretary of A New Day party, and Bruce Mbaimon of the Movement of Chad Patriots for the Republic say Deby is manipulating civil society groups to stay in office. The two men accuse Deby of stoking political tensions and allowing what they call persistent social injustices to degenerate into violent conflicts in Chad. 

Chad’s opposition and civil society groups say the elections will be taking place in a very difficult political context following the killing of opposition leader Yaya Dillo, who was the president of the opposition Socialist Party Without Borders and Deby’s cousin. 

Dillo was killed during an exchange of fire with security forces on February 28, according to Chad’s government. But opposition and civil society groups say Dillo was eliminated because he was widely viewed as a strong challenger to Deby.  

The MPS party denies Deby is responsible for the several crises Chad is facing and says the transitional president will hand over power if beaten in the polls. 

But opposition candidates say voters should be vigilant before, during and after the polls. They say voters should be ready to defend their votes and report fraud or irregularities for legal action. 

The central African state’s constitutional council says campaigning for the first round of the presidential election begins April 14 and ends May 4.  

Chad’s electoral commission says May 6 presidential polls will mark a return to constitutional order and the end of Deby’s transitional period, now in its third year. 

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WHO: World Ignores Catastrophic Humanitarian Situation in Sudan

Geneva — April marks the one-year anniversary of the war in Sudan, sparked by a power struggle between two rival generals. Aid organizations say the war is having catastrophic consequences for the population of nearly 49 million people — more than half of whom need life-saving humanitarian assistance.

Since the conflict began April 15, 2023, tens of thousands of people have been killed and injured, millions have been forcibly uprooted from their homes and among the 18 million people suffering from acute hunger, 5 million are on the brink of famine, according to the World Food Program.

“And yet this catastrophic humanitarian situation in Sudan today hardly receives the international attention that it warrants,” said Dr. Richard Brennan, the regional emergency director for the World Health Organization’s regional office for the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Cairo-based Brennan, who went on his first mission to an emergency country early last week since assuming his post just over a month ago, noted that he has visited Sudan multiple times over the past 25 years and seen the country through many crises — such as floods, displacement, conflict and political turmoil.

Nevertheless, Brennan said he was taken aback by “the devastation that decades of fragility, and nearly a year of brutal war, have wreaked on the country.”

“In fact, I was just reading the report from my 2014 mission which described a desperate situation with over 6.1 million in need of humanitarian assistance.

“It is extraordinary to reflect that today over 24.8 million people are in need — four times what we observed 10 years ago,” he said, adding that the health needs are massive.

“We estimate that almost 14,000 have been killed and 28,000 injured; there are ongoing outbreaks of cholera, measles, dengue fever, and malaria; around 3.4 million children are acutely malnourished; and 70 percent of health facilities in conflict-affected areas are non-functional or only partially functional,” he said.

Early last week, Jill Lawler, chief of field operations and emergency for UNICEF in Sudan, led a team of 12 UNICEF staff on a mission to Omdurman – in the greater Khartoum area. Omdurman is a region that has been under near-constant fire since the war broke out.

She described the intolerable conditions under which millions of children are forced to live and told journalists in Geneva Friday about the difficulties of providing medical care to children in need.

She said, “At Al Nau Hospital, one of the only hospitals in Khartoum with a functional and very crowded trauma ward, we met with two young people who had recent amputations — two young lives changed forever — and we learned from the hospital director that about 300 had limbs amputated in the hospital in just the past month alone.”

She said Al Nau and other hospitals she and her team visited were overcrowded, with two or three patients having to share the same bed. She said medicine and equipment were in short supply, health care workers were overworked, exhausted, and that most “have not been paid regular salaries in months.”

“During our visit, we learned that women and girls who had been raped in the first months of war are now delivering babies — some of whom have been abandoned to the care of hospital staff, who have built a nursery near the delivery ward,” she said.

UNICEF projects nearly 3.7 million children in Sudan will be acutely malnourished this year, including 730,000 who need lifesaving treatment. “The scale and magnitude of needs for children across the country are simply staggering,” said Lawler, noting that Sudan is the world’s largest displacement crisis, adding, “Some of the most vulnerable children are in the hardest-to-reach places.”

The World Health Organization reports escalating fighting is preventing desperately needed humanitarian aid from reaching millions of people across the country.

“We are especially concerned about the situation in Darfur states, where no direct humanitarian access has been possible for several months, and only limited aid is reaching people in these areas,” said Dr. Hanan Balkhy, WHO regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean Region, in a statement Friday.

Balkhy, who went on the mission to Sudan early last week with her colleague, Richard Brennan, said, “Most health facilities have been looted, damaged, or destroyed. In West Darfur, the local health system has essentially ground to a halt.”

“We have consistently shown that when we are provided with sufficient access and resources, we achieve good health outcomes.

“During my meetings with the deputy prime minister and minister of health, I received reassurances that all efforts will be made to facilitate the scale up of the health response throughout Sudan,” she said.

UNICEF is appealing to the warring parties to enable rapid, sustained, and unimpeded humanitarian access both across conflict lines within Sudan and across borders with Sudan’s neighboring countries.

“Chad has provided a crucial lifeline to communities in Darfur, and access through its border remains absolutely critical, along with access through South Sudan,” Lawler said, adding that providing a lifeline for millions of destitute people will require generous support from the international community.

“We need a massive mobilization of resources by the end of March so that humanitarian partners can get the supplies and capacity on the ground, in time, to limit the impending humanitarian catastrophe that we are seeing,” she said.

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US Military Operations Across the Sahel at Risk After Niger Ends Cooperation 

DAKAR, Senegal — The United States scrambled on Sunday to assess the future of its counterterrorism operations in the Sahel after Niger’s junta said it was ending its yearslong military cooperation with Washington following a visit by top U.S. officials.

The U.S. military has hundreds of troops stationed at a major airbase in northern Niger that deploys flights over the vast Sahel region — south of the Sahara Desert — where jihadi groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group operate.

Top U.S. envoy Molly Phee returned to the capital, Niamey, this week to meet with senior government officials, accompanied by Marine Gen. Michael Langley, head of the U.S. military’s African Command. She had previously visited in December, while acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland traveled to the country in August.

The State Department said Sunday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that talks were frank and that it was in touch with the junta. It wasn’t clear whether the U.S. has any leeway left to negotiate a deal to stay in the country.

Niger had been seen as one of the last nations in the restive region that Western nations could partner with to beat back growing jihadi insurgencies. The U.S. and France had more than 2,500 military personnel in the region until recently, and together with other European countries had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance and training.

But that changed in July when mutinous soldiers ousted the country’s democratically elected president and months later asked French forces to leave.

The U.S. military still had some 650 personnel working in Niger in December, according to a White House report to Congress. The Niger base is used for both manned and unmanned surveillance operations. In the Sahel the U.S. also supports ground troops, including accompanying them on missions. However, such accompanied missions have been scaled back since U.S. troops were killed in a joint operation in Niger in 2017.

It’s unclear what prompted the junta’s decision to suspend military ties. On Saturday, the junta’s spokesperson, Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, said U.S. flights over Niger’s territory in recent weeks were illegal. Meanwhile, Insa Garba Saidou, a local activist who assists Niger’s military rulers with their communications, criticized U.S. efforts to force the junta to pick between strategic partners.

“The American bases and civilian personnel cannot stay on Nigerien soil any longer,” he told The Associated Press.

After her trip in December, Phee, the top U.S. envoy, told reporters she had “good discussions” with junta leaders and called on them to set a timeline for elections in return for restoring military and aid ties. But she also said the U.S. had warned Niamey against forging closer ties with Russia.

Neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, which have experienced two coups each since 2020, have turned to Moscow for security support. After the coup in Niger, the military also turned to the Russian mercenary group Wagner for help.

Cameron Hudson, who served with the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department in Africa, said the incident shows the diminution of U.S. leverage in the region and that Niger was angered by Washington’s attempt to pressure the junta to steer clear of Russia. “This is ironic since one mantra of the Biden Administration has been that Africans are free to choose their partners,” he said.

The U.S. delegation visit coincided with the start of Ramadan, a month of dawn-to-dusk fasting and intense prayer for Muslims. Niger’s junta leader, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, refused to meet them. A U.S. press conference at the embassy in Niger was canceled.

The junta spokesperson, speaking on state television, said junta leaders met the U.S. delegation only out of courtesy and described their tone as condescending.

Aneliese Bernard, a former U.S. State Department official who specialized in African affairs and director of Strategic Stabilization Advisors, a risk advisory group, said the recent visit had failed and the U.S. needs to take a critical look at how it’s doing diplomacy not just in Niger but in the whole region.

“What’s going on in Niger and the Sahel cannot be looked at continuously in a vacuum as we always do,” she said. “The United States government tends to operate with blinders on. We can’t deny that our deteriorating relationships in other parts of the world: the Gulf, Israel and others, all have an influential impact on our bilateral relations in countries in West Africa.”

 

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European Union Announces $8 Billion Package of Aid for Egypt

Cairo — The European Union on Sunday announced a $8 billion aid package for cash-strapped Egypt amid concerns that economic pressure and conflicts and chaos in neighboring countries could drive more migrants to European shores.

The deal is scheduled to be signed during a visit by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and the leaders of Belgium, Italy, Austria, Cyprus and Greece, according to Egyptian officials. 

The package includes both grants and loans over the next three years for the Arab world’s most populous country, according to the European Union Mission in Cairo. 

According to a document from the EU mission in Egypt, the two sides have promoted their cooperation to the level of a “strategic and comprehensive partnership,” paving the way for expanding Egypt-EU cooperation in various economic and non-economic areas. 

The EU will provide assistance to Egypt’s government to fortify its borders especially with Libya, a major transit point for migrants fleeing poverty and conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, and will support the government in hosting Sudanese who have fled nearly a year of fighting between rival generals in their country. 

Egypt has for decades been a refuge for migrants from sub-Saharan Africa trying to escape war or poverty. For some, Egypt is a destination and a haven, the closest and easiest country for them to reach. For others, it is a point of transit before attempting the dangerous Mediterranean crossing to Europe. 

While the Egyptian coast has not been a major launching pad for people smugglers and human traffickers sending overcrowded boats across the Mediterranean to Europe, Egypt faces migratory pressures from the region, with the added looming threat that the Israel-Hamas war will spill across its borders. 

The package drew criticism from international rights groups over Egypt’s human rights record. Amnesty International decried the deal and urged European leaders not to be complicit with human rights violations taking place in Egypt. 

“EU leaders must ensure that the Egyptian authorities adopt clear benchmarks for human rights, said Amnesty International’s Head of the European Institutions Office, Eve Geddie in a statement. Geddie pointed to Egypt’s restrictions on media and freedom of expression and a crackdown on civil society.

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South Sudan Shutters All Schools as It Prepares for Extreme Heat Wave 

JUBA, South Sudan — South Sudan’s government is closing down all schools starting Monday as the country prepares for a wave of extreme heat expected to last two weeks.   

The health and education ministries advised parents to keep all children indoors as temperatures are expected to soar to 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), in a statement late Saturday.

They warned that any school found open during that time would have its registration withdrawn, but didn’t specify how long the schools would remain shuttered.   

The ministries said they “will continue to monitor the situation and inform the public accordingly.”   

Peter Garang, a resident who lives in the capital, Juba, welcomed the decision. He said that “schools should be connected to the electricity grid” to enable the installation of air conditioners.   

South Sudan, one of the world’s youngest nations, is particularly vulnerable to climate change with heatwaves common but rarely exceeding 40C. Civil conflict has plagued the east African country which also suffered from drought and flooding, making living conditions difficult for residents.   

The World Food Program in its latest country brief said South Sudan “continues to face a dire humanitarian crisis” due to violence, economic instability, climate change and an influx of people fleeing the conflict in neighboring Sudan. It also stated that 818,000 vulnerable people were given food and cash-based transfers in January 2024. 

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Extermination Planned for Island Mice Breeding Out of Control, Eating Birds

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Mice accidentally introduced to a remote island near Antarctica 200 years ago are breeding out of control because of climate change, and they are eating seabirds and causing major harm in a special nature reserve with “unique biodiversity.”

Now conservationists are planning a mass extermination using helicopters and hundreds of tons of rodent poison, which needs to be dropped over every part of Marion Island’s 297 square kilometers (115 square miles) to ensure success.

If even one pregnant mouse survives, their prolific breeding ability means it may have all been for nothing.

The Mouse-Free Marion project — pest control on a grand scale — is seen as critical for the ecology of the uninhabited South African territory and the wider Southern Ocean. It would be the largest eradication of its kind if it succeeds.

The island is home to globally significant populations of nearly 30 bird species and a rare undisturbed habitat for wandering albatrosses — with their 10-foot wingspan — and many others.

An undisturbed habitat, at least, until stowaway house mice arrived on seal hunter ships in the early 1800s, introducing the island’s first mammal predators.

The past few decades have been the most significant for the damage the mice have caused, said Dr. Anton Wolfaardt, the Mouse-Free Marion project manager. He said their numbers have increased hugely, mainly due to rising temperatures from climate change, which has turned a cold, windswept island into a warmer, drier, more hospitable home.

“They are probably one of the most successful animals in the world. They’ve got to all sorts of places,” Wolfaardt said. But now on Marion Island, “their breeding season has been extended, and this has resulted in a massive increase in the densities of mice.”

Mice don’t need encouragement. They can reproduce from about 60 days old and females can have four or five litters a year, each with seven or eight babies.

Rough estimates indicate there are more than 1 million mice on Marion Island. They are feeding on invertebrates and, more and more, on seabirds — both chicks in their nests and adults.

A single mouse will feed on a bird several times its size.

Conservationists snapped a photo of one perched on the bloodied head of a wandering albatross chick.

The phenomenon of mice eating seabirds has been recorded on only a handful of the world’s islands.

The scale and frequency of mice preying on seabirds on Marion has risen alarmingly, Wolfaardt said, after the first reports of it in 2003. He said the birds have not developed the defense mechanisms to protect themselves against these unfamiliar predators and often sit there while mice nibble away at them. Sometimes, multiple mice swarm over a bird.

Conservationists estimate that if nothing is done, 19 seabird species will disappear from the island in 50 to 100 years, he said.

“This incredibly important island as a haven for seabirds has a very tenuous future because of the impacts of mice,” Wolfaardt said.

The eradication project is a single shot at success, with not even a whisker of room for error. Burgeoning mice and rat populations have been problematic for other islands. South Georgia, in the southern Atlantic, was declared rodent-free in 2018 after an eradication, but that was a multiyear project; the one on Marion could be the biggest single intervention.

Wolfaardt said four to six helicopters will likely be used to drop up to 550 tons of rodenticide bait across the island. Pilots will be given exact flight lines and Wolfaardt’s team will be able to track the drop using GPS mapping.

The bait has been designed to not affect the soil or the island’s water sources. It shouldn’t harm the seabirds, who feed out at sea, and won’t have negative impacts for the environment, Wolfaardt said. Some animals will be affected at an individual level, but those species will recover.

“There’s no perfect solution in these kinds of things,” he said. “There is nothing that just zaps mice and nothing else.”

The eradication project is a partnership between BirdLife South Africa and the national Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, which designated Marion Island as a special nature reserve with the highest level of environmental protection. It has a weather and research station but is otherwise uninhabited and dedicated to conservation.

The department said the eradication of mice was “essential if the unique biodiversity of the island is to be preserved.”

Wolfaardt said the amount of planning needed means a likely go-ahead date in 2027. The project also needs to raise about $25 million — some of which has been funded by the South African government — and get final regulatory approvals from authorities.

Scientists have tried to control the mice of Marion in the past.

They were already a pest for researchers in the 1940s, so five domestic cats were introduced. By the 1970s, there were around 2,000 feral cats on the island, killing half a million seabirds per year. The cats were eliminated by introducing a feline flu virus and hunting down any survivors.

Islands are critical to conservation efforts, but fragile. The Island Conservation organization says they are “extinction epicenters” and 75% of all species that have gone extinct lived on islands. About 95% of those were bird species.

“This really is an ecological restoration project,” Wolfaardt said. “It’s one of those rare conservation opportunities where you solve once and for all a conservation threat.”

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Niger Says Announces End to Military Cooperation With US

Niamey, Niger — Niger’s government announced Saturday that it was breaking off “with immediate effect” its military cooperation agreement with the United States.  

The declaration came a day after a senior U.S. delegation left Niger, following a three-day visit to renew contact with the military junta that ousted the president and moved closer to Russia. 

The statement said the government had decided to “denounce with immediate effect” the agreement relating to U.S. military and civilian employees of the U.S. Department of Defense inside Niger.  

It was read out Saturday evening on national television.  

The United States still stations about 1,000 troops in Niger at a desert drone base built at a cost of $100 million. 

Movements there have been limited since the July 2023 coup and Washington has curbed assistance to the government. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid a rare visit to Niger a year ago in hopes of shoring up President Mohamed Bazoum, a stalwart ally in Western security efforts against jihadis. 

Four months later, the military deposed Bazoum and put him under house arrest.  

The junta took a hard line against former colonial power France, forcing the withdrawal of French troops in place for nearly a decade. 

Niger’s military had in the past worked closely with the United States. 

But the junta has sought cooperation with Russia, while stopping short of the full-fledged embrace of Moscow by military-run neighbors Mali and Burkina Faso.  

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Number of Chinese Workers in Africa Drops Substantially

Johannesburg, South Africa — The number of Chinese workers across Africa has hit its lowest level in more than a decade, new data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics show.

From a record high of 263,696 workers on the continent in 2015, only 88,371 were recorded in 2022, the most recent year on record.

The China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, which analyzed data from 2009 to 2022, attributed the drop in numbers partially to the pandemic as Chinese workers left during that period and the country only reopened in early 2023.

But the plummeting numbers are also due to a variety of other factors, experts said, including oil prices and the downscaling of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s global Belt and Road Initiative, which initially saw thousands of Chinese sent out across the continent to work on large infrastructure projects.

Uptick expected?

“We have no data for 2023, but anecdotally we hear that more postponed projects are resuming. Yet we are unlikely to see the high numbers of the past,” said Deborah Brautigam, director at the China Africa Research Initiative, when asked whether the numbers could have rebounded last year and might continue to do so.

Yunnan Chen, a researcher at ODI Global, a U.K.-based research group, was also bearish.

“It might be that some construction has restarted since 2022, but we know the number of overall Chinese-financed projects has been in decline for a number of years, and the last few years have put a damper on any new project deals. So I wouldn’t expect any dramatic increases in these numbers anytime soon,” she told VOA.

The five countries with the most Chinese workers in 2022 were Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While still leading in the number of workers, Algeria and Angola also saw the biggest drops.

Algeria had more than 91,000 Chinese workers in 2016 while Angola had a peak of 50,000. By 2022, only about 7,000 workers remained in each country.

Brautigam told VOA the huge drops “are explained by the price of oil. They’re both highly reliant on oil exports and they use this oil to pay for nearly all government spending.”

In Angola, after its civil war ended in 2002, the Chinese helped the country rebuild, with the Export-Import Bank of China pledging $2 billion in oil-backed loans. But then global oil prices fell and Angola become mired in debt.

The country’s president, Joao Lourenco, who was first elected in 2017, has sought to diversify the economy and reduce reliance on China, resulting in fewer Chinese projects and workers.

But more Chinese workers may soon be in Angola’s future. During a visit to Beijing on Friday, Lourenco and China’s Xi agreed to upgrade bilateral ties, which will allow for more trade and investment.

Bucking the trend

Not all countries in Africa have seen recent declines in Chinese workers, however, with the DRC, Egypt and Zimbabwe being the most notable outliers.

Egypt had more than 7,000 Chinese working in 2022, compared with around 2,000 pre-pandemic. The DRC had more than 8,000 in 2022, a rise from around 3,000 in 2012. Zimbabwe, meanwhile, has been stable with around 1,000 Chinese workers over the past four years.

“Zimbabwe is especially interesting as there is a big near-completion steel plant and other minerals processing going on,” said Lauren Johnston, an expert on China with the University of Sydney, noting China was becoming less dependent on African oil and was shifting toward green energy and minerals.

Zimbabwe has huge deposits of lithium, one of the critical minerals needed for the move to electric vehicles, and China has invested heavily in the industry there.

“There are large value-added mineral-processing facilities being constructed in Zimbabwe and also power projects which are needed for mining and mineral processing,” Brautigam noted.

The DRC is likewise rich in minerals, particularly cobalt, and in Egypt, the Chinese are building the government a whole new capital outside Cairo.

Local jobs boost?

China has often been criticized for failing to aid job creation in Africa or equip locals with new skills, despite its massive projects. While large numbers of local workers have indeed been employed, it’s often been in the most basic of roles, while more senior jobs have been reserved for Chinese.

“Generally, Chinese projects do hire local laborers,” said Chen.

“Usually at the beginning of projects there is a higher proportion of Chinese engineers and skilled labor, but over time this tends to shift, as more local laborers are hired,” she said, noting however that the majority are in unskilled roles.

Even as China sends fewer of its own people to Africa, hiring Africans for higher-paid, skilled jobs by Chinese companies may not happen immediately, said Brautigam.

“What they need to increase is hiring managers locally,” said Brautigam. “But this will take time and the development of Chinese language skills among local managers.”

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UN Says 5 Million at Risk of Starvation in Sudan

United Nations — The United Nations appealed Friday for Sudan’s battling factions to allow delivery of humanitarian relief to fend off looming catastrophic hunger.

About 5 million Sudanese could face calamitous food insecurity in coming months as a nearly yearlong war between rival generals continues to tear the country apart, according to a U.N. document seen Friday by AFP.

The war between army chief Abdel Fattah Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has since April last year killed tens of thousands, destroyed infrastructure and crippled the economy.

It also has triggered a dire humanitarian crisis and acute food shortages, with the country teetering on the brink of famine.

Noting that 18 million Sudanese are facing acute food insecurity — a record during harvest season — U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned in a letter to the Security Council that “almost 5 million people could slip into catastrophic food insecurity in some parts of the country in the coming months.”

He noted that nearly 730,000 Sudanese children, including more than 240,000 in Darfur, are thought to suffer from severe malnutrition.

“Aid organizations require safe, rapid, sustained and unimpeded access, including across conflict lines within Sudan,” said U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman, Stephane Dujarric. “A massive mobilization of resources from the international community is also critical.”

The U.N.’s World Food Program has warned that the war risks “triggering the world’s largest hunger crisis.”

Jill Lawler, the emergency chief in Sudan for the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, said there were enough aid stocks in Port Sudan, but the problem was getting the aid from there to the people in need.

Lawler said that last week that she led the first U.N. mission to reach Khartoum state since war erupted 11 months ago.

They had seen firsthand that “the scale and magnitude of needs for children across the country are simply staggering,” she told reporters in Geneva via video link from New York.

The war “is pushing the country towards a famine” with hunger “the number one concern people expressed.”

Mandeep O’Brien, UNICEF representative in Sudan, said 14 million children needed humanitarian aid and 4 million were displaced.

There was only a “small window left to prevent mass loss of children’s lives and future,” she warned on X, formerly known as Twitter.

World Health Organization regional director Hanan Balkhy, who recently returned from Sudan, underlined the acute needs in Darfur, saying most health facilities had been looted, damaged or destroyed.

Griffiths, the U.N. aid chief, lamented that fighting continued to rage during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan despite a Security Council resolution calling for a cessation of hostilities.

“This is a moment of truth,” he wrote on X. “The parties must silence the guns, protect civilians and ensure humanitarian access.”

The U.N. on Friday called for more financial support for aid operations in Sudan.

U.N. spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci told reporters in Geneva that the world body had appealed for $2.7 billion to provide aid this year but had received 5% of that amount so far.

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Kenyan Doctors Strike; Patients Left Unattended or Turned Away

NAIROBI, Kenya — Doctors at Kenya’s public hospitals began a nationwide strike Thursday, accusing the government of failing to implement a raft of promises from a collective bargaining agreement signed in 2017 after a 100-day strike that saw people dying from lack of care.

The Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union said they went on strike to demand comprehensive medical cover for the doctors and because the government has yet to post 1,200 medical interns.

Davji Bhimji, secretary-general of KMPDU, said 4,000 doctors took part in the strike despite a labor court order asking the union to put the strike on hold to allow talks with the government. And Dennis Miskellah, deputy secretary general of the union, said they would disregard the court order the same way the government had disregarded three court orders to increase basic pay for doctors and reinstate suspended doctors.

Miskellah said medical interns make up 27% of the workforce in Kenya’s public hospitals, and their absence means more sick people are being turned away from hospitals. Some doctors, however, have remained on duty to ensure patients in the intensive care units don’t die.

In an interview with broadcaster Citizen TV, Miskellah said doctors were committing suicide out of work-related frustration, while others have had to fund-raise to get treated for sickness due to a lack of comprehensive health coverage.

The impact of the strike was felt across the country with many patients left unattended or being turned away from hospitals across the East African nation.

Pauline Wanjiru said she brought her 12-year-old son for treatment on his broken leg, which had started to produce a smell, but she was turned away from a hospital in Kakamega county in western Kenya.

In 2017, doctors at Kenya’s public hospitals held a 100-day strike — the longest ever held in the country — to demand better wages and for the government to restore the country’s dilapidated public-health facilities. They also demanded continuous training of and hiring of doctors to address a severe shortage of health professionals.

At the time, public doctors, who train for six years in university, earned a basic salary of $400 to $850 a month, similar to some police officers who train for just six months.

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Namibia to Begin HPV Vaccine Rollout in April

Windhoek, Namibia — A top Namibian health official tells VOA the southern Africa country is set to begin distribution of the HPV vaccine to adolescent girls in April as a preventative measure in the fight against cervical cancer.

Namibia has a population of about 1 million women ages 15 years and older who are at risk of developing cervical cancer.

Each year, about 375 women in Namibia are diagnosed with the disease, and the fatality rate is over 50%.

The Human Papillomavirus Vaccine, known as HPV, has been proven to greatly lessen the chance of getting cervical cancer.

Ben Nangombe, executive director at Namibia’s Ministry of Health and Social Services, says health workers will begin vaccinating about 183,000 girls between the ages of nine and 14 next month.

He says the ministry has been allocated $7 million to procure single dose vaccines for this purpose.

Mehafo Amunyela, who works at the #Be Free Youth Program in the capital’s Katutura Township, told VOA that vaccine hesitancy could be a hurdle to fully immunizing the target population. She said she hopes that through awareness campaigns, children and their families can be educated about the advantages of getting the vaccine.

“We saw the reaction of the public toward the COVID vaccine when it came out, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves and remember that the reason we don’t have illnesses like polio is because of vaccines, that they worked then, and they still do now,” she said.

The Cancer Association of Namibia says the vast distances between most towns and villages in Namibia could present another logistical challenge in the immunization program.

The association says to achieve the target of immunizing 183,000 girls, awareness campaigns should be undertaken in the different indigenous languages spoken in the country.

With the rollout of the HPV vaccine, Namibia is on the path to do its part in meeting the World Health Organization’s goal of vaccinating 90% of girls worldwide by 2030, with the long-term goal of eliminating cervical cancer within the next century.

Although cervical cancer is preventable and curable, the disease claimed 350,000 lives worldwide in 2022 according to the WHO. 

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