By Rédaction Africanews with agencies After years of sidelining the Sahel’s military rulers, the United States is moving to engage more with countries in the region. Top military officials warned a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, that extremist groups had expanded their operational capacity. “Today, the epicentre of global terrorism is in Africa. ISIS leadership is African. Al-Qaeda’s economic engine is in Africa. Both of these groups share the will and intent to strike our homeland,” said General Dagvin Anderson, Commander of the United States Africa Command. Referring to militant advances in West Africa, including a recent attack…
Author: Montage Africa
By AFP Egyptian smallholders have seen their lives upended by the war in Iran, with soaring fertiliser and energy prices forcing many to lay off workers and reduce the amount of land they farm. Before the United States and Israel launched the war that would end up engulfing the region, Ashraf Abu Ragab cultivated a full acre with a small crew. Now he farms just half on his own after sacking the workers he once relied on, and has quit growing wheat, a fertiliser-intensive crop. “Everything has become more expensive,” the 45-year-old told AFP, standing among rows of maize and sesame in…
By Kwabena Adu-Gyamfi Two Ghanaian brothers and a U.S.-based woman have been indicted in the United States for allegedly running a romance fraud scheme that targeted elderly Americans and funneled money through a cross-border network, according to federal prosecutors. Jamal Abubakari, Kamal Abubakari, both 22, and 53-year-old Amanda Joy Opoku-Boachie were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. All three were arrested in Virginia and remain in custody. Prosecutors say the group used fake identities on dating sites and social media to build romantic relationships with older victims before convincing them to send money through wire transfers.…
Africa’s top health agency has declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern Ituri province. Around 246 cases and 65 deaths have been reported, mainly in the gold-mining towns of Mongwalu and Rwampara, said the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). Its statement on Friday added that it was convening a meeting with DR Congo, neighbouring Uganda and South Sudan, and other international partners to discuss priorities, including response efforts and cross-border surveillance. Ebola was first discovered in 1976 in what is now DR Congo, and is thought to have spread from bats. This is…
By Dominic Wabwireh with AP French President Emmanuel Macron has reaffirmed that Africa should lead the response to its own political and security crises, speaking in Addis Ababa after a trilateral meeting with African Union Commission chair Mahmoud Ali Youssouf and UN Secretary‑General António Guterres. During his first visit to the African Union headquarters, Macron said France fully supports mediation efforts coordinated by the AU, calling it the “legitimate body” to address the continent’s challenges. “We believe that African problems must first and foremost be resolved and coordinated by Africa,” Macron said, adding that France has consistently backed African‑led diplomacy…
By Rédaction Africanews and Agencies Rwanda’s former first lady Agathe Habyarimana will appeal last week’s court ruling that overturned a 2025 decision to dismiss an investigation into her role in the 1994 genocide. The killing spree was triggered by the assassination of her husband, former Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana. Over 100 days, more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were brutally murdered. Now 83, Agathe Habyarimana has been under investigation for complicity in the genocide since 2008. She has never been formally charged but has the status of an ‘assisted witness,’ a French legal category between a witness and a defendant. Prosecutors…
A conference on financing the African Union’s peace efforts will be held in Paris by the end of this year, French President Emmanuel Macron said while on a visit to Ethiopia. Macron has been in Africa on a five-day visit this week, including for a two-day economic summit in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. On Wednesday, he held informal talks with AU chairman Mahamoud Ali Youssouf and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “An international conference to raise additional funds and mobilise new public and private partners” for the African Union Peace Fund will be organised “in the last quarter of this year…
By Africanews with AFP Georgetown, one of present-day Washington’s most expensive neighborhoods, used to be a hub of Black life in the US capital. Little remains of this history since gentrification began in the 1930s, but remnants of its African American roots can be found in cemeteries that have suffered from decades of disrepair. The Black Georgetown Foundation is working to preserve the memories of the estimated eight-to-ten thousand people buried in two cemeteries: of Mount Zion Church, one of the oldest Black churches in the city, and the Female Union Band Society, founded in 1802 and 1842, respectively. “We…
By Rédaction Africanews Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday that M23 rebels and Rwandan forces carried out a brutal month-long occupation of Uvira in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, marked by summary executions, rape and enforced disappearances. In a report released Thursday, the rights group says the city was occupied from December 10, 2025, to January 17, 2026. HRW said it documented more than 50 summary executions, at least eight rapes and 12 enforced disappearances, along with gunfire targeting civilians as they tried to flee. The report is based on more than 120 interviews carried out in March and…
By Rédaction Africanews The body of the second of two US soldiers reported missing during an international training exercise in Morocco has been recovered, the US Army said Wednesday. The pair disappeared near a cliff on the Atlantic coast while taking part in the African Lion 2026 military exercises. The remains of the two servicemembers — including 19-year-old specialist Mariyah Collington whose body was found in a coastal cave on Tuesday — were transferred to a Moroccan military hospital and then loaded onto a US Air Force C-130 plane for repatriation. The two bodies “are en route to the United…