– NEWS –
Islamist party claims victory in municipal elections in Tunisia: Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda party claimed victory in the country’s first free municipal elections since the revolution in 2011. Polling stations closed late on Sunday although the official result was yet to be announced. A top official from the party said it was more than five percent ahead of its nearest rival, the secularist Nidaa Tounes, although the two parties are coalition partners in the national government. The turnout in the 350 districts was relatively low, according to the Independent High Authority for Elections. The vote has been touted as another milestone on the road to democracy in the North African country, putting an end to the political transition of the last seven years. That move towards democracy has been marred by an underperforming economy.
euronews.com
Mozambique’s opposition leader Dhlakama has died: Afonso Dhlakama, the leader of Mozambique’s main opposition group, who was held responsible for exceptional brutality by its often young soldiers during a civil war that claimed up to a million lives, died on Thursday at his hide-out in the Gorongosa mountains in southeast Africa. He was 65. The Mozambican authorities confirmed the death but did not specify the cause. News reports said it was either diabetes or a heart attack. President Filipe Nyusi, who had been negotiating a rapprochement with Dhlakama, a former guerrilla commander, said he had tried to have him evacuated by helicopter for medical treatment. The impact of Dhlakama’s death on a frail truce, negotiated in advance of elections scheduled for 2019, was not immediately clear.
nytimes.com
German Foreign Minister Maas in Tanzania: At a memorial in Tanzania’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas laid a wreath in commemoration of African victims of World War I. Maas, who was on his first trip to the continent, seven weeks after taking office, laid a wreath for the “askari,’’ the African fighters, who fought as part of the German army against British, Belgian and Portuguese troops. He said: “A hundred years after World War I, there is too little remembrance of African victims. Tanzania was part of German East Africa from 1885 until 1918, when Germany was defeated in World War I.
nigerianwatch.com, dw.com
Mali ripe territory for islamists, local militias: Malians woke up to a state of emergency after Friday’s assault on the Radisson Blu Hotel in the capital killed 20 people plus two assailants, according to a military commander. Mali’s minister of foreign affairs, Tieman Hubert Coulibaly, said he was concerned that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, would redeploy to Africa as the US-led coalition quashes the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria. Mali already has an active chapter of al-Qaeda, which drove a car bomb into a military base near Timbuktu on April 14, killing a United Nations peacekeeper and wounding seven French soldiers.
usatoday.com
Chad parliament approves new constitution expanding president’s powers: Chad’s parliament has overwhelmingly approved a new constitution that expands President Idriss Deby’s powers and could allow him to stay in office until 2033, in a vote boycotted by most opposition lawmakers. The new constitution reimposes a two-term limit scrapped in a 2005 referendum. But it will not be applied retroactively, meaning Deby could serve two terms after the next election in 2021. Deby’s opponents say that the constitution, which eliminates the post of prime minister and creates a fully presidential system, is aimed at installing a de facto monarchy in Chad, an ally of Western nations fighting jihadist groups in West Africa.
reuters.com
EU-Africa relations under scrutiny: In April, the relationship between Africa and the EU was under scrutiny at a meeting in Venice. The workshop „Afropean Bridges – Identity, Representation, Opportunities“ discussed the status quo of the partnership and formulated goals of a common economic and political future. Afropean Bridges aims to open a discussion about the achievements of the Africa-EU partnership and to address social and cultural issues related to the post-colonial relationship between European and African countries. Guests included Cecile Kyenge, Member of the EU Parliament, and Brother Mussie Zerai, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015. The workshop was part of the International Decade of the United Nations for People of African Descent and was organized by Ca ‚Foscari University of Venice in collaboration with the NGO Progressi.
afropeanbridges.org, facebook.com, progressi.org
African billionaire: Money earned in Africa should stay in Africa daily.spiegel.de
More than 60 dead after terrorist attack in Nigeria nytimes.com
Surprise: More wild gorillas and chimpanzees in Central Africa than previously thought spiegel.de
– BACKGROUND –
Foundations promote renewable energy: Many European foundations are involved in renewable energy projects in Africa. The foundation We-Hubs distributes Water Energy Hubs in Kenya, which are kiosks for water and electricity. Solar lamps can be borrowed as well and batteries can also be recharged. But not every project is successful. Especially if social standards are not met, a project quickly comes into disrepute. While the foundations are sensitized and apply stringent criteria when they are carried out, not everything can be controlled and there are no guarantees.
bizz-energy.com
African literature repositions itself: African literature still has a difficult time in Germany. Not a single African nation has ever been host to the Frankfurt Book Fair. But there’s a lot to discover: the wonderful Africa series published by Wunderhorn, which publishes three novels each year by authors related to Africa. The Frankfurt Book Fair has founded the association Litprom, which also organizes events revolving around African literature. The African Book Festival, which premiered in Berlin’s Babylon Cinema at the end of April, aims to bring a different geographic region to the fore each year. This time, the focus was on West Africa and Nigeria. The country is part of an exciting repositioning of the literary scene. Publishers themselves take control of the means of production, with offices in the United States and the United Kingdom.
tagesspiegel.de
Hydropower supply dries up with climate change: Civilizations have used water as a source of energy for millennia, and it has been used to generate electricity for nearly 150 years. Water powers around 70 percent of the world’s renewable electricity, and more than 15 percent of the world’s total power supply. It’s cheap, and unlike solar and wind, can produce electricity on demand. But building hydroelectric dams also reshapes ecological systems, inundates landscapes, and has forced millions of people to abandon their homes. And now, water power faces an added complication: Climate change means some countries are experiencing severe droughts and reservoirs are drying up. This is a serious concern for southern and eastern African countries. Malawi relies on hydropower for 98 percent of its electricity supply. Last year, it suffered prolonged blackouts. According to the World Bank, less than 10 percent of Malawians have access to a power supply anyway, but key public infrastructure, such as hospitals, was badly hit.
dw.com
– NUMBER –
About 100,000 former miners and their relatives will receive 330 million euros in compensation after they reached a compensation agreement in their class action lawsuit against mining companies. Gold miners in South Africa got lung diseases while working underground over many decades.
spiegel.de, kiro7.com
– QUOTE –
„A great expectation was aroused among our friends in Africa, and we have the impression here, as they do, that nothing much has been been done yet.“
Stefan Liebig, the chairman of the German-African Business Association, has criticized that after being at the center of attention in 2017, Germany’s Africa policy has somewhat stagnated.
dw.com
– AT LAST –
Little trace of Marxism in Africa: On the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx‘ birth on 5 May 1818, numerous commemorative events were held to remember the German philosopher and author of works such as Capital (Das Kapital), which laid the foundation for the worldwide expansion of communism. The influence of Marx on Africa’s liberation movements was once so widespread that several post-colonial states defined themselves as Marxist. What remains of African socialism today? There were other African thinkers who sought political reforms based on the model of European Socialism, especially Tanzania’s founding father Julius Nyerere. In the wake of independence from Britain in 1961, and with the help of Ujamaa — a concept that translates to ‚extended family‘ or ‚brotherhood‘ in Swahili — he tried to force economic autonomy. According to Jennings, African socialism took the deepest hold in Tanzania where it held sway into the 1980s. Even today on the island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania, apartment blocks which were once billed as „modern living spaces“ and intended to provide their occupants with the advantages of socialism, still stand.
dw.com