King Charles III and Queen Camilla will host Nigeria’s president in the country’s first state visit to the UK in 37 years, Buckingham Palace has announced. Bola Tinubu and First Lady Oluremi Tinubu have accepted an invitation to be guests of the King at Windsor Castle from 18 to 19 March. State visits are considered a form of soft-power diplomacy, using the pomp of royal hospitality to strengthen relations with important international partners. The last Nigerian state visit to the UK took place in 1989, when military ruler Gen Ibrahim Babangida travelled to meet the late Queen Elizabeth II for…
Author: Montage Africa
Jihadist groups are increasingly carrying out drone strikes in West Africa, raising alarm that they are building the capacity to wage a “war from the skies”. A leading violence monitoring organisation, Acled, has recorded at least 69 drone strikes by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Burkina Faso and Mali since 2023, while two Islamic State (IS) affiliates have carried out around 20 – mostly in Nigeria, which has been battling numerous insurgent groups for almost 25 years. The latest drone attack took place in Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno state on 29 January, when jihadists carried out a two-pronged assault – with multiple…
By Rédaction Africanews and AFP Namibia has slammed an offshore exploration deal between TotalEnergies and Petrobras in the Luderitz basin, saying the government has not been notified, as required by law. The two oil giants announced on Friday that they’d each acquired stakes in an exploration licence for an offshore field within Namibia’s territorial waters. Namibia’s national oil company Namcor would hold 10 percent stakes alongside the French and Brazilian companies, according to Total’s press release. Namibia’s ministry of industries, mines and energy said on Sunday that it wasn’t notified of the sale and that any transfer of licence requires…
Eritrea has hit back at its neighbour Ethiopia describing accusations that its troops were on Ethiopian territory as “false”. On Sunday, a letter sent from Ethiopia’s foreign minister to his Eritrean counterpart demanded that the soldiers withdraw. It also accused Eritrea of “outright aggression” saying it was conducting joint manoeuvres with Ethiopian rebels in the north and supplying them with weapons. In its response Eritrea said this was part of a “spiral of hostile campaigns against Eritrea for more than two years”. There has long been a history of tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which split off from its larger…
By Africanews with AFP A bitter war of words has escalated further after Ethiopia ordered neighbouring Eritrea to “immediately withdraw its troops” from Ethiopian territory, with the pair seemingly inching towards a new conflict. Relations between the two Horn of Africa countries have long been fraught. In recent months, Addis Ababa has accused Eritrea of supporting insurgents on Ethiopian soil — allegations Asmara denies. “Developments over the last few days indicate that the government of Eritrea has chosen the path of further escalation,” Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos told his Eritrean counterpart in a letter dated Saturday. He demanded that…
Ebo Taylor, the Ghanaian guitarist, composer and band leader whose work helped define the highlife genre and influenced generations of African musicians, has died at the age of 90, his family has announced. Born Deroy Taylor in the city of Cape Coast in 1936, he rose to prominence during the late 1950s and early 1960s as highlife became Ghana’s dominant musical form. Over a six-decade career, he fused Ghanaian rhythms with jazz, funk, soul and early Afrobeat and went on to inspire musicians beyond the continent. Presidential spokesperson Felix Kwakye Ofosu said the government and people of Ghana were “deeply…
By Rédaction Africanews and AFP Police in Senegal say they have broken up a paedophile gang operating between France and the West African country. Investigators “carried out a major operation, dismantling a transnational organised criminal group,” the force said in a statement on Sunday. Fourteen people appeared in court on Friday, charged with “organised paedophilia, pimping, rape of minors under 15, sodomy, and intentional transmission of HIV/AIDS,” the statement said. All the defendants are Senegalese. Four of them are accused of having acted on the instructions of a Frenchman arrested in northern France last year. Police say the group has…
By Rédaction Africanews with agencies Turkey said on Thursday that it will reinforce its military presence in Somalia as Mogadishu faces a renewed surge in al-Shabaab terrorist attacks. Security officials said Ankara is expanding its air and ground units amid reports that it has deployed US-made F-16 combat aircraft to the country. Turkey’s Air Component Command will continue to improve Mogadishu’s counterterrorism capacity through military assistance, training, and advisory activities. Ankara has emerged as one of Somalia’s closest security partners, operating a major military training base in the capital and providing extensive support to the Somali National Army. Thousands of…
By Rédaction Africanews with AFP A global hunger monitoring group says famine is spreading in Sudan’s war-torn North Darfur state, impacting two more towns there. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative says the latest data shows “thresholds for acute malnutrition have now been surpassed” in Um Baru and Kernoi, near the border with Chad. Its experts say the famine spread after the fall of the state capital, el-Fasher, to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in October last year. This, the alert published on Thursday says, led to a “massive displacement of residents and displaced persons into surrounding areas”.…
By Rédaction Africanews and AP Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has deployed an army battalion to Kwara State after gunmen killed as many as 162 people in one of the country’s deadliest attacks in recent months. The assault targeted Woro village late Tuesday, just days after the military launched operations in the area against suspected terrorist groups. Gunmen stormed the community in the evening, burning shops and the traditional ruler’s palace as residents fled into nearby bushes. Casualty figures remain unclear, with officials giving conflicting tolls. Local authorities say the number of dead has continued to rise as search teams…