Free Republic

China may soon start dictating the grounds of functioning in most countries in Africa because of the growing surveillance that it has created in the continent. An astounding number of government buildings have been constructed by the Chinese for over 35 African nations. In 2018, a French newspaper broke the news of Chinese entities stealing sensitive data from the African Union's building in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, according to a report in The Singapore Post. Computers in the building were found to have rigged clusters of servers that enabled the data transfer back to Shanghai in China. It was reported...

For quite a long time now, China has been behaving like a power that owns Africa and all its resources. Having debt trapped countries, the red rogue nation has been looking to seize control of their strategic assets, with the ultimate goal of establishing bases for itself across the continent. China has been pursuing a neo-colonial agenda for quite some time, but countries of Africa are now coming together to kick China out of the continent. An interesting phenomenon is beginning to make a comeback in Africa. The vast continent is no novice when it comes to military rule and...

An apparent coup is underway in Guinea, with heavy military presence and gunfire reported in the country’s capital of Conakry. Guinean President Alpha Conde has seemingly been detained by the military.The fate of Guinea's President Alpha Condé is unclear after an unverified video showed him surrounded by soldiers, who said they had seized power. They appeared on national TV claiming to have dissolved the government. However, the defence ministry said the attempted takeover had been thwarted by the presidential guard. This follows hours of heavy gunfire near the presidential palace in the capital, Conakry. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres and the...

Senior Biden Administration Officials Participating in High-Level Vatican Conference on FridayVATICAN CITY — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, President Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry, and the heads of the IMF, World Bank, and African Union will be taking part in a high-level Vatican conference on Friday on the theme “Dreaming of a Better Restart.” Hosted by the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, the one-day meeting, which includes the participation of finance ministers from the US, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Argentina, aims to build on recent inter-governmental efforts to combat inequality, climate change, and hunger following...

CAIRO: Egypt and Sudan suspended talks with Ethiopia after it proposed linking a deal on its newly constructed reservoir and giant hydroelectric dam to a broader agreement about the Blue Nile waters that would replace a colonial-era accord with Britain. The African Union-led talks among the three key Nile basin countries are trying to resolve a years-long dispute over Ethiopia’s construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile. Ethiopia says the dam will provide electricity to millions of its nearly 110 million citizens, while Egypt, with its own booming population of about 100 million, sees the project...

Addis Ababa (AFP) - The chairman of the African Union Commission on Wednesday defended the World Health Organization (WHO) and its leadership from attacks by US President Donald Trump, who on Tuesday threatened to cut funding for the UN body. "Surprised to learn of a campaign by the US govt against WHO's global leadership," Moussa Faki Mahamat said in a Twitter post. "The African Union fully supports WHO and Dr Tedros," he added, referring to the WHO's director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian. Faki was later joined by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Namibian President Hage Geingob, who took to...

People walk past the building that houses the offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London, March 20, 2018. Share WASHINGTON — Long before its controversial roles in the 2016 Brexit vote and U.S. presidential election, Cambridge Analytica influenced elections in Africa. The data mining company, under fire for its alleged use of 50 million Facebook accounts to shape campaign messages for then-candidate Donald Trump, also played a role in elections in Kenya and Nigeria, according to new reports. The company's first involvement in Africa dates to the general election in South Africa in 1994. That election marked the end of...

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — In Barack Obama’s landmark speech before the African Union in July 2015 – the first by a sitting U.S. president – he told the assembled heads of state and delegates that the United States was ready to be a development partner with the continent, while warning that would come along with American promotion of human rights, whether they liked it or not. “You are kind of stuck with us – this is how we are. We believe in these things and we’re going to keep talking about them,” he said to applause and laughter from the...

While most of the press has focused on Obama's military machinations in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, the administration has also been quietly expanding its secret wars and assassination programs across Africa. From training the militaries of various unsavory regimes and boosting the military capabilities of the so-called African Union, to establishing drone bases to facilitate espionage and extrajudicial killings, the White House is literally treating the continent as a vast battlefield in need of perpetual U.S. "intervention." And the consequences have been deadly.

Ghanaian Archbishop Charles G. Palmer-Buckle of Accra, right, shown here with Cardinal Polycarp Pengo of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Just like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, it’s easier to sort through items in the news when you know what the big picture is supposed to look like. It’s already clear that one of the Catholic megatrends of our time is the coming of age of the Church in Africa, which gives three recent storylines special importance. In late February, the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), the continent-wide assembly of African bishops, announced the appointment of a...

Chadian forces scored a key victory over Nigeria's Boko Haram on Tuesday, wresting control of the border town of Gamboru within hours of launching a ground offensive against the jihadist group. Around 2,000 Chadian troops backed by armoured vehicles crossed the border into Gamboru from the Cameroonian town of Fotokol . ... The ground intervention by Chad came after the African Union last week backed a regional five-nation, 7,500-strong force to take on the extremists amid growing fears about their threat to regional security. Nigeria has drawn fierce criticism for failing to hold back the insurgents, who have stepped up...

The absence of strong Western leadership against the Boko Haram terror state has created an opportunity Iran seems ready to exploit. The Premium Times of Nigeria reports that Iran is stepping forward to offer assistance to the African Union against the savage caliphate spilling out of northern Nigeria into Cameroon and menacing the entire region: ... Abdollohian said the activities of the Boko Haram militants and that of Al-Shabaab in the Somalia were similar to that of Al-Qaeda and the ISIS and other terrorist groups in the Middle East. ... Iran was willing to share its experiences on terrorist activities...

Mugabe recently accused Mujuru of plotting to assassinate him and branded her a witch. The ministers of energy, education, public service and social welfare, presidential affairs, communication and postal services are among the other members of Cabinet who were fired.

The government of Zimbabwe’s core business appears to have been reduced to paying civil servants’ salaries, abandoning other responsibilities, as the economy becomes President Robert Mugabe’s biggest undoing, one year after sweeping to power in 2013. Last week Zanu PF celebrated its victory anniversary notwithstanding the attendant economic collapse since Mugabe retained the keys to State House in a controversial election. Zanu PF promised when campaigning that it would create over two million jobs by 2018. Of that figure, 222 800 were supposed to have been created in the first year. The glaring fact on the ground however is that...

Sadly what did make front page news this week were the shocking words: “Don’t sup with whites: Mugabe.” Mr Mugabe said that people who had been given seized farms were leasing them out to white Zimbabweans and accused his own officials of being involved. “Some of my ministers are being mentioned here. They are refusing to remove white farmers from their constituencies… we are told that Chiefs are also involved in land deals,” Mr Mugabe said. “What annoys us... is where our own indigenous farmers sub-lease to the very same white farmers we took our heritage from yesterday,” he added....

Whites in Zimbabwe can own businesses and urban apartments but not land, according to the country’s president, Robert Mugabe, who called for the removal of white farmers in a fiery speech to a group of supporters on Wednesday. “We say no to whites owning our land and they should go,” the 90 year-old Mugabe told the crowd, gathered in Mhangura, a farming village, according to the Christian Science Monitor. “They can own companies and apartments…but not the soil. It is ours and that message should ring loud and clear in Britain and the United States.” “Don’t be too kind to...

“I have been given a list of 35 white farmers in Mashonaland West alone,” Mr. Mugabe told an emotional crowd in what was billed a patriotic speech. “We say no to whites owning our land and they should go. … Mugabe, reelected last summer to his fifth consecutive term, “There are white farmers who are still on the land and have the protection of some cabinet ministers and politicians as well as traditional leaders. That should never happen. They [whites] were living like kings and queens on our land and we chucked them out. Now we want all of it.”...

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has called on the country's remaining white farmers to cede land to black people. "We say no to whites owning our land and they should go," Mr Mugabe told his supporters at a rally. The white farmers union said it was regrettable that racial tensions were flaring up again. The president's critics say his policy of seizing most of Zimbabwe's white-owned farms caused the country's economic collapse from 2000-2009. Mr Mugabe, 90, has governed Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. He was re-elected president last year with 61% of the vote, defeating his long-standing rival Morgan Tsvangirai....

Earlier Tuesday, NBC News reported that President Barack Obama had shaken hands with Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe. However, the UK Telegraph's Josie Ensor reported that Obama "was asked to take his seat just before reaching Mugabe." Complicating matters, another article in the UK Telegraph also claimed that Obama had shaken hands with Mugabe--in very similar terms to those used in the NBC article. Breitbart News caught the discrepancy--and suddenly the NBC News article was corrected, with no notice. Before: On his way to the rostrum, Obama also shook the hand of Robert Mugabe, the strongman ruler of Zimbabwe, and hugged...

Zimbabwe’s long-serving president on Sunday threatened to expel foreign-owned companies over what he said was the West’s interference in the politics of the country he has led since 1980. President Robert Mugabe said he wanted no “ideas from London or Washington,” speaking before supporters at the funeral of a top military chief in Harare. He warned the Western powers that although his government hasn’t “done anything to your companies, time will come when we will say tit for tat.” He said: “You hit me, I hit you. We have a country to run and we must be left free to...