Insurgency: Burkina to install 900 surveillance cameras

File: Burkina Faso map

Burkina Faso, battling a jihadist insurgency that has claimed more than 1,500 lives, is to install 900 video cameras in two cities under a Chinese-funded surveillance system.

The “Smart Burkina” system is being installed at 220 locations in the capital Ouagadougu and 80 locations in the second-largest city of Bobo-Dioulasso, Security Minister Maxime Kone said on Thursday in a ceremony to launch the project.

The scheme will give the security forces “the means to be able to detect crime areas and follow delinquents,” Prime Minister Christophe Dabires said.

“Smart Burkina” will cost around 52 billion CFA francs CFA ($94 million / 79 million euros).

Two Chinese firms, Huawei and China International Telecommunication Construction Corporation are in charge of carrying out the project.

“Once the project is finished, the Burkinabe side, as sole beneficiary, will have independent and autonomous management over all the data and all the installations,” the Chinese ambassador in Ouagadougou, Li Jian, said.

Landlocked Burkina Faso is struggling with a six-year-old jihadist campaign that has forced 1.5 million from their homes and inflicted crippling economic damage to one of the world’s poorest countries.

Ouagadougou has been hit three times since 2016, with a loss of nearly 60 dead.

On Saturday, several thousand people rallied in the country’s major cities to protest against insecurity.

(AFP)

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Pregnant woman, five others killed as ambulance hits land mine in Burkina Faso

Six people were killed after an ambulance hit an explosive device on Tuesday in northeast Burkina Faso, government spokesman Ousseni Tamboura on Wednesday said.

"The coward and barbaric incident that occurred while the ambulance was ensuring a medical evacuation to the capital Ouagadougou claimed the lives of six people," the spokesman said.

The victims included a woman patient and her husband, two members of the nursing staff, a girl, and the ambulancier.

The government of Burkina Faso condemned on the strongest terms this criminal act perpetrated by faithless individuals and extended its condolences to the bereaved families, Ousseni Tamboura said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for laying the land mine.

Attacks in Burkina Faso by fighters linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State have risen sharply over the last three years, displacing more than a million people.

Last month, Burkina Faso’s government for the first time said that it was open to talks with Islamist militants to try to end the insurgency, a position echoed by authorities in neighbouring Mali.

 

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In Burkina Faso ‘Doctors are paying for supplies': inside a stretched Burkina Faso Covid ward

In a country where pneumonia, malaria and TB are much bigger killers, doctors say ‘resource-intensive’ Covid-19 is diverting precious resources

 

A Covid patient is transferred from Tengandogo University hospital's ICU. Photograph: Amanda Coakley

When stocks of medical equipment in the general ward of Tengandogo University hospital in Ouagadougou ran low as resources flowed to the coronavirus unit, medical staff bought the essentials themselves.

Blood pressure monitors, glucose monitors and oximeters were needed. Even the ink in the printers had to be replaced.

The hospital closed to non-Covid patients during Burkina Faso’s first wave in March but reopened in July to treat the numerous other illnesses that affect the population of approximately 20 million people. Without any emergency budget for resources, doctors faced a challenge.

“The pandemic has had a big impact on resources, especially things like oxygen that are needed for coronavirus treatment,” Dr Lassina Séré, a senior practitioner, told the Guardian. “In terms of equipment, some things that the hospital used to be able to pay for are no longer covered by the budget because it’s all been used on Covid, so what the doctors have done is start initiatives to buy what’s needed ourselves.”

Tengandogo is one of Burkina Faso’s leading health institutions. A sprawling blush pink complex, it’s eerily quiet. There is no buzz of machines or the drone of a hospital intercom. It’s a private facility that treats the country’s most critical patients, but since March it has treated people with coronavirus without charge.

Before the pandemic this landlocked country had a shortage of specialist staff, especially in rural areas where the quality of care is considerably lower. Poor salaries coupled with growing insecurity in the north and east due to militant violence have led many young professionals to leave, and deterred others from coming. In Tengandogo, the staff are overworked, and when some have had to self-isolate, it has been a struggle.

 

A small clinic in Gampela village on the outskirts of Ouagadougou. Photograph: Sam Mednick/AP

“We had to create a new Covid area in the hospital. We couldn’t hire new personnel, so we had to take from the regular staff, which means there are shortages on the other services,” says Dr Moussa Kabré, head of the general ward. The slight 41-year-old is exhausted, and says recent months have been among the most challenging of his career.

Respiratory diseases such as pneumonia are the leading cause of death in Burkina Faso. Dr Christian Jules Wenl Minoungou, head of respiratory medicine at Tengandogo, has struggled to access resources. One patient under his care, 23-year-old Philomon, has been in the general ward for two months with an undisclosed respiratory disease. His body has wasted away and speaking has become uncomfortable. On the floor next to him sits his tired mother, Delphin. “My only hope is for my son to get better and recover,” she says.

“There are only 30 lung specialists in this country,” says Minoungou. “Pneumonia is the first cause of death here and if you don’t act quickly the situation deteriorates. We need more resources to deal with it. People are always coming in from the countryside in an advanced condition because they are unable to get care there.”

The director of Tengandogo, Ferdinand Tiendrébéogo, agrees: “When you look at the figures, coronavirus is not a priority. It’s very small compared to, say, malaria. That said, you do need to keep an eye on Covid because you never know what can happen with it, but overall it’s been a very resource-intensive disease for this hospital.”

Crossing the threshold into the ICU at Tengandogo, the quiet is replaced by the steady beat of heart monitors. A handful of nurses care for four Covid patients and the 12 other patients who are at the other end of the ward. Some of the staff are in full PPE, others wear only mask and gloves. In the corner by the door is a pile of discarded garments.

Head ICU nurse Ally Ouattara. Photograph: Amanda Coakley

 

Ally Ouattara, the unit’s head nurse, is six hours into his shift. The smile behind his mask reaches his eyes and he stands out in brightly patterned scrubs. He carefully recounts the details of each of his Covid patients. Two men in their 60s with underlying health conditions. A middle-aged woman with a history of TB. The fourth, Ismail, 50, is being moved to the recovery ward after eight days. It’s a moment of celebration for the staff in a ward where the Covid survival rate is 50%.

According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 11,847 lab-confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Burkina Faso and 139 deaths. The true figure is thought to be higher as testing is limited to about 2,000 rapid tests a day.

Track and trace is nonexistent and daily life for millions of people continues as normal despite some earlier restrictions. Since late November the Burkinabé have seen a second wave that led to a spike in admissions and renewed fears that hospitals could be overrun. Dr Brice Wilfried, the director of Corus, Burkina Faso’s health emergencies organisation, says the second spike is in decline, after a fall in cases over the past two weeks.

 

Getting the Covid message across in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Photograph: Legnan Koula/EPA

Dr Jerry-Jonas Mbasha, health cluster coordinator for the World Health Organization in Burkina Faso, says: “We need to understand the fragility of the health system here before Covid-19 and what’s happened over the last year is a significant amount of extra stress. There already was a strategy to identify specific respiratory diseases across the country and what we did to ensure that continued to function was integrate Covid testing into that structure and that’s been quite effective.”

For Séré, Covid is more of an economic problem than a health emergency. “It’s changed our access to resources and the attention it’s getting here is disproportionate compared to the impact,” he says.

Like his colleagues, he believes that quality care has to continue for all patients even if it means financing it from their own pockets.

 

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Students in Burkina Faso says to fear extremists more than COVID-19

Balkissa Barro’s been waiting for months to go back to school, but now that she has, the 10-year-old fears classes might once again stop.

Children returning to school in Burkina Faso’s volatile Sahel region have to practice safety drills to prepare for potential jihadist attacks that have ravaged the West African nation, killing more than 2,000 people this year. For Barro, the simulation of dropping to the ground and hiding under desks brings up memories of when gunmen stormed her village last year and killed seven relatives, forcing her family to flee.

“I’m afraid of being chased away from school,” said Barro as she slung a bag on her back and walked hesitantly to class in Dori town, where she now lives.

In Burkina Faso, worries over the COVID-19 pandemic come second to threats of attacks by extremists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

More than 5 million children have been affected by school closures in the country due to coronavirus and violence, according to the U.N. Even as schools began to reopen in October, many remained shut due to insecurity, especially in hard-hit regions like the Sahel, the epicenter of the crisis.

Some 65% of the region’s more than 1,000 schools are closed, according to the U.N, and those that are functioning lack the resources to open safely.

President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who has been declared the winner of last week’s election and will serve another five years, has promised that his next term would focus on empowering women and youth.

On a visit to Dori last month, one of the last safe havens in the region, educators told The Associated Press that the number of students in class had doubled due to the influx of internally displaced people, putting the teacher to student ratio at one to 100 children.

Physical distancing is impossible. Students sit crammed in makeshift tented classrooms, poking their heads through the cracks for fresh air.

While the government earlier this year said it was procuring 12 million masks and soap for students, teachers in Dori said they have not received anything. At Wendou school, 1,400 children use 14 hand-washing stations and no one has masks, said Dofiko Kone, the headmaster.

But, like the students, he’s more concerned about the violence than the pandemic.

“It is really difficult for children, because there are children who saw their parents killed in front of them, there are children who ran away and couldn’t even take anything with them, they have nothing to eat, there are children who are here without families,” he said.

Humanitarians warn that the combination of overcrowded and shuttered schools is shrinking available safe spaces for children. Organizations need to find new ways of teaching in emergencies, so that children can “get a foot in the door before it shuts on their future,” said Tom Peyre-Costa, spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council.

UNICEF launched educational radio programs and online teaching to reach children unable to attend class, said Hamadou Diallo, head of education for the group in Dori. UNICEF is also providing tents, desks and school materials, but it’s short 75% of this year’s funding, or some $72 million dollars.

Education in Burkina Faso has been under attack since violence engulfed the country after the ouster of long time President Blaise Compaore in 2014, which left a security vacuum. Human Rights Watch documented more than 120 attacks and threats against students, teachers and schools by Islamist groups opposing the country’s secular curriculum between 2017 and 2020, according to a report in May.

At least 13 schools were burned in Tansarga commune in the east in July and September, and more than 40% of schools in the Sahel’s Oudalan province were destroyed, according to an October report from ACAPS, a humanitarian analysis organization.

While struggling families in the Sahel are happy their children can continue learning, many still can’t shelter or feed them.

Hama Ousseni Diallo’s been living in a makeshift displacement site on the outskirts of Dori since he was chased from his village by gunmen one year ago. When the pandemic hit, he sent six of his children — the youngest was 8 — to work in a restaurant so they wouldn’t starve because they were no longer being fed at school, he said.

Although they’ve now returned to class, school meals haven’t yet started and the little support he gets from aid groups is not enough to sustain them.

“The children go to school but when they come back ... there is no food, there is no place to sleep,” he said.

 

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Burkina Faso gunmen 'kill dozens' at cattle market in Kompienga

The security forces are struggling to end violence in Burkina Faso

Some 30 people have been killed in eastern Burkina Faso in a gun attack on a cattle market, reports say.

Gunmen on motorbikes fired into the crowded market in Kompienga town around lunchtime on Saturday, eyewitnesses and residents said.

It is unclear who was behind the attack, but Burkina Faso has seen a recent sharp rise in jihadist violence and inter-communal clashes.

The violence has forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

Local media earlier reported 20 killed, while quoting sources as saying the death toll could be considerably higher. AFP news agency quoted local residents as saying 30 died.

On Friday at least 15 people were killed when suspected Islamist militants attacked a convoy of traders in the north, near the border with Mali.

The government blamed the attack on "terrorists", a phrase usually used to describe al-Qaeda and Islamic State-linked jihadists Burkina Faso has been battling in recent years.

Despite occasional government claims of success against the Islamist militants, the insecurity in the north and east of Burkina Faso has dramatically escalated.

Jihadists have often targeted schools, forcing about 300,000 children out of education.

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Twenty-four killed in Burkina Faso church attack: governor

Gunmen have killed 24 people and wounded 18 in an attack on a Protestant church in a village in northern Burkina Faso, officials said Monday.

In a separate incident, five Burkinabe soldiers in the troubled region were killed by a roadside bomb, security sources said.

A group of “armed terrorists” raided the village of Pansi, in Yagha province “and attacked the peaceful local population after having identified them and separated them from non-residents”, the governor, Colonel Salfo Kabore, said in a statement sent to AFP.

The assault occurred on Sunday during a weekly service at a Protestant church, security officials said.

“The provisional toll is 24 killed, including the pastor… 18 wounded and individuals who were kidnapped,” Kabore said.

A resident of the nearby town of Sebba said Pansi villagers had fled there for safety.

Christians and churches in northern provinces have become frequent targets by armed Islamists.

On February 10, suspected jihadists in Sebba seized seven people at the home of a pastor. Five bodies were found three days later, including the pastor, according to the local governor.

One of the poorest countries in the world, Burkina Faso is on the front line of a jihadist insurgency advancing in the Sahel.

Since 2015, around 750 people have been killed in Burkina and around 600,000 people have fled their homes.

Also in the north of the country, five soldiers were killed on Sunday when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device near Banh, in Loroum province, security sources said.

“Three of the five were killed instantly and the two others died later from serious injuries,” one of the sources said.

Thirty people in Burkina Faso have died in four attacks by highway bombs since the start of the year, according to an AFP toll.

They include seven schoolchildren in the northwest of the country who were among 14 killed aboard a bus that had taken a road that had been banned because of the security risk.

According to UN figures, jihadist attacks in Burkina and neighbouring Mali and Niger left nearly 4,000 people dead last year.

Their armed forces are weak, struggling with poor equipment and lack of training and funding.

In Niger, a policeman was killed on Sunday at a police post near Ayorou, in the western region of Tillaberi, in the second attack in the area in a week, a security official said.

The escalation of jihadism in the Sahel has sparked concerns in coastal countries to the region’s south — Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast.

Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe, in a trip to the north of the country ahead of presidential elections next Saturday, told AFP on Monday, “The threat is real and the pressure is very strong.”

“We have recently had fighting within seven kilometres (four miles) of our border,” he said, in a visit to military positions near the border with Burkina.

“We see that the attacks (in Burkina) are more and more deadly, unfortunately, Benin has also suffered, so we feel this pressure a little more each day,” he said.

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Suspected jihadist attack kills more than 30 in northern Burkina Faso

Officials say that between 10 and 30 people were killed in the northern Soum province

Soldiers from Burkina Faso patrol on the road of Gorgadji in the country's Sahel area on March 3, 2019. © Luc Gnago/REUTERS

Thirty-nine people were killed in northern Burkina Faso on Saturday, in what the government called a terrorist attack on a village in Soum province.

The weekend attack followed less than a week after militants killed 36 civilians in a neighbouring province, part of a surge in violence in the West African country that has killed hundreds, forced more than half a million from their homes and made much of the north ungovernable over the past two years.

The government did not provide further details on the latest attack in the village of Silgadji, describing it in a statement on Tuesday as “cowardly and barbaric”.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible.

Islamist groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State have carried out increasingly brazen raids against civilian and military targets in Burkina Faso in recent months, including an attack on a mining convoy in November that killed nearly 40 people.

The rising insecurity has forced people from their homes.  The number of displaced increased tenfold in 2019 to more than 560,000 people, making it the world’s fastest-growing displacement crisis, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The flight of refugees into other parts of the country is straining local resources and leaving authorities struggling to cope.

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Burkina Faso president calls for two days of mourning after 'terrorist group' kills dozens

Militants killed 36 civilians when they attacked villages in northern Burkina Faso, the government said Tuesday, appealing for local volunteers to bolster its fight against jihadists.

Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore (pictured in November 2018) © AFP/File

 A "terrorist group" killed 32 civilians when they attacked and burned the market in Nagraogo village before killing four more people in Alamou village on Monday, the government said.

Three other people were wounded in the attacks, it added.

"The Burkina government has learned with consternation and anger of the deaths of 36 Burkinabe in Sanmatenga province, after a terrorist attack," communications minister Remis Fulgance Dandjinou said.

Hundreds of people have fled the area and taken refuge in the city of Kaya, in Sanmatenga province, according to residents contacted by AFP. 

President Roch Marc Christian Kabore announced a two-day period of mourning, for Wednesday and Thursday, during which flags will be flown at half-mast and festivals will be prohibited. 

Volunteer plan 

Faced with these "repeated attacks" against civilians, the government launched an appeal for the people's "frank collaboration" with the defence and security forces.

The Burkina parliament on Tuesday adopted unanimously a law allowing for the recruitment of local volunteers in the fight against jihadists.

According to a document seen by AFP, volunteers aged over 18 will be recruited in their regions in agreement with local populations. 

They will be given 14 days military training, after which they will be given small arms and other communication equipment. 

The recruits would be expected to conduct surveillance and provide information and protection for their local communities in the event of an attack while waiting for security forces to deploy, according to Defence Minister Cheriff Sy. 

Burkina Faso, as well as neighbouring Mali and Niger, has seen frequent jihadist attacks which have left hundreds of people dead since the start of 2015 when Islamist extremist violence began to spread across the Sahel region.

According to the UN, around 4,000 people were killed in jihadist attacks in the three Sahel countries last year.

The Burkina Faso army is ill-equipped and poorly trained to deal with the threat posed by jihadists in the country.

However, in recent months they have enjoyed a series of successes, claiming to have killed a hundred jihadists in many operations.

There are 4,500 French troops deployed in the Sahel region as well as a 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Mali to fight insurgents, backing up national forces of the G5 -- Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. 

In the wake of the latest attack European Commission diplomatic spokeswoman Virginie Battu-Henriksson said it was a reminder of the "urgency" of a plan to increase European security and development action in the region. 

"Thoughts for the families of the victims of this new terrorist attack in a market in Burkina Faso," she said on Twitter.

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Wife of SA man held captive in Burkina Faso hopes for news after release of fellow hostage

Christo Bothma and his wife, Amanda Bothma. Image: Bring Christo Bothma Back Home/Facebook

The family of mineworker Christo Bothma, who was abducted in Burkino Faso in 2018, are hopeful they will receive information about him after the release of a man who was taken hostage with him.

On a Facebook page titled “Bring Christo Bothma back home", his wife, Amanda, posted: “Patel's son was released on Saturday. We are waiting to hear from the son what happened to Chris."

She was reacting to a Reuters report that Kimar Akoliya, the son of Akoliya Patel, an Indian gold mine owner in Burkina Faso, had been released. He was kidnapped by unidentified assailants with two colleagues in September 2018, one South African and one from Burkino Faso.

Amanda has previously shared her anxiety about her husband's circumstances. In November 2018 she heard he had been released, which turned out to be untrue. In September last year she received news that he had died, but refused to believe it. 

On the one-year anniversary of his abduction, Amanda told TimesLIVE: “It may not be today, tomorrow, next month, but one day he will return home. Only then will I believe that he’s dead or alive. Until I see his body, he is not dead."

When asked how she’d been coping, she said: “Days are not the same. On some days I sleep, on some I don’t. It's just not easy."

The couple have six children, aged between 20 and 30.

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Burkina Faso: 5 soldiers killed in roadside bomb attack

Reinforcements sent to area while wounded evacuated, local media reports

James Tasamba

Five Burkina Faso soldiers were killed Friday after their vehicle was hit by a roadside explosive in a northern province, a security source said.

"A homemade explosive was used in an attack Friday morning against a military unit on patrol in a wildlife reserve in the Sahel a few kilometers west of Arbinda in Soum province, leaving five dead,” local media quoted a security source.

It added that reinforcements were sent to the zone to clear the area while the wounded were evacuated.

No group claimed responsibility for the latest attack on the country's armed forces.

But the Sahel region is home to many terrorist groups, including AL-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Daesh/ISIS.

Last week, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the head of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), said the region was in the midst of a devastating surge in terrorist attacks against civilian and military targets.

Chambas told the UN Security Council terrorist attacks have increased five-fold in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger since 2016, with more than 4,000 deaths reported in 2019 compared to roughly 770 deaths in 2016.

In Burkina Faso, deaths surged from about 80 in 2016 to north of 1,800 in 2019, he said.

Last December Burkina Faso witnessed a wave of attacks in which 35 civilians were killed, mostly women, and dozens of soldiers in an attack on a military base and a town in the north.

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UN envoy: 'Devastating surge' of attacks in Sahel and West Africa

Attacks increased five-fold in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger since 2016 with more than 4,000 deaths reported in 2019.

 

In Burkina Faso, deaths rose even more dramatically from about 80 in 2016 to more than 1,800 in 2019, he said. [File: Sunday Alamba/AP Photo]

The United Nations envoy for West Africa and the Sahel says the region has experienced "a devastating surge in terrorist attacks against civilian and military targets" in recent months.

Mohamed Ibn Chambas told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that the "unprecedented terrorist violence" had shaken public confidence in the region.

He said attacks have increased five-fold in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger since 2016 with more than 4,000 deaths reported in 2019 compared with an estimated 770 deaths three years before.

In Burkina Faso, deaths rose even more dramatically from about 80 in 2016 to more than 1,800 in 2019, he said.

"Most significantly, the geographic focus of terrorist attacks has shifted eastwards from Mali to Burkina Faso and is increasingly threatening West African coastal states," Chambas said.

The UN envoy said attacks are often "deliberate efforts by violent extremists to capture weapons and trafficking routes" and engage in illicit activities including illegal mining that sustain their operations.

Among the latest attacks was a rocket attack on Thursday on a base in northern Mali's restive Kidal region that wounded 20 people, including 18 UN peacekeepers, according to the UN spokesman in Mali.

Residents and a military source told the Reuters news agency that about 20 soldiers were killed and nearly 1,000 people made homeless on Tuesday evening in an attack on a town in Borno state in northeastern Nigeria.

Another one was Monday's roadside bombing in Mali's central region of Alatona, near the border with Mauritania, that left at least five soldiers dead. More than 140 Malian soldiers have been killed in armed attacks since September.

On Saturday, a roadside bomb attack in Burkina Faso also killed 14 people, including seven children and four women.

On Christmas Eve,  35 civilians, mostly female, were killed following an attack on a military outpost in Burkina Faso's northern Soum Province.

Chambas said governments, local "actors," regional organisations and the international community are mobilising to respond to the violence across West Africa and the Sahel.

Chambas urged leaders in the region to follow through on pledges to tackle "terrorism", saying now "is the time for action."

In November ISIL fighters attacked a hotel in Mali's capital and largest city, Bamako [File: Jerome Delay/AP]

In a report to the Security Council in late July, UN experts said "the most striking international developments" during the first six months of 2019 included "the growing ambition and reach of terrorist groups in the Sahel and West Africa" where fighters from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and al-Qaeda armed groups were collaborating to undermine fragile countries.

Chambas said the attacks were also often intertwined with organised crime and violence among competing groups.

With close to 70 percent of West Africa's population dependent on agriculture and livestock, he said, clashes between farmers and herders "remain some of the most violent local conflicts in the region."

In the months ahead, he said, six West African countries will choose leaders in democratic elections.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Some West African nations that need to decolonize their currency

The CFA Franc has always seen as a vestige of colonialism, but now eight West African countries are aiming to decolonise and start their own currency.

Eight West African countries have proposed to withdraw their currency reserves from the French central bank.

The proposal would look to replace the euro-linked CFA franc with a new common West African currency: eco. The French-regulated CFA franc is currently used by 155 million people across the African continent in 14 West and Central African countries.

The CFA franc is currently used by eight West African nations, but its days could be numbered (Thierry Gouegnon / Reuters)

The CFA was specially created in 1945, after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, which saw the world usher in a new global monetary system with the US dollar replacing the gold standard. The French-regulated CFA franc was for the French colonies of Africa, it is linked to the euro and its convertibility is guaranteed by France. According to the arrangement, described by analysts as a colonial relic, these African countries had to deposit half of their foreign currency reserves in the French central bank.

Benin’s President Patrice Talon announced last Thursday that the West African Monetary Union wants to take back control of its currency. Eight African countries including Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Niger and Guinea Bissau have reached an agreement to pull the reserves from France. 

"We all agree on this, unanimously, to end this model," Talon told French media last Thursday.

The move, if it happens, could also have serious implications for the French economy.

Decolonization?

The CFA franc has been the currency used by French colonies since 1945, and despite the subsequent independence of several African nations, it is still in use. The system is seen as one of the last vestiges of colonialism and the CFA franc has always been a target of criticism. 

Talon said that the decision may take time, but it has been adopted at the meeting of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

"The injustice has gone for too long. It is time to discuss issues with France to clarify many things, to allow us to have our monetary sovereignty. We do not have it today,” Chadian President Idris Debby said during a media briefing last Monday.

An agreement was made to introduce a single currency, eco, for the entire region by 2020. 

According to the plan, as a first phase, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, which currently have their own currencies, will launch the eco. Then in the second phase, the eight countries which use the CFA franc will replace their currencies.

The eco first came to the fore in 2003, however, it has been delayed several times. 

Will it be any different this time? 

Nassir M A Doutoum, an Africa Researcher at the Association of Researchers on Africa (AFAM) told TRT World that as part of a decolonisation process, most leaders of African countries have attempted to realise moves like this in the past. Leaders like Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita, Sylvanus Olympio and Thomas Sankara criticised the colonial policy of the CFA, and some of them even stopped using it. 

Doutoum Said: “But somehow, the leaders who tried to give on up on CFA were eliminated or killed. In the past, African countries were not ready to realise it, however, today’s circumstances are different. As of today, the struggle against CFA is not just based on leaders and intellectuals, also most of the African public supports the idea.”

According to Doutoum, France has tried to prevent several NGOs in various African countries that have been protesting CFA and trying to raise awareness about the damage it does to Africans. 

There have already been protests in the past to say no to the CFA and the issue may be gaining even more momentum among the public. Doutoum sees that the developments as a whole may allow this attempt to succeed.

AFAM Researcher Kaan Devecioglu described Talon’s statement during an interview with TRT World as both courageous and divorced from reality as he believes that the statement was mainly political. 

He says that whoever criticises the CFA in the continent gains sympathy and support, but it is just rhetoric. He says every country has to form a consensus, which is no easy task.

How will France’s future in Africa be shaped?

Professor Ahmet Kavas, an African expert, Turkey’s former ambassador to Chad and founder of the Association of Researchers on Africa (AFAM), said: “Even France recognises the independence of the African countries which it colonised in the past, but France still keeps deep political, cultural, economic, and social ties with these countries.” 

In this context, Kavas stated that for Africa’s natural resources to reach markets, France stipulates the CFA (also known as west-middle African franc) be used as the mandatory currency in its previous colonies. He adds that to maintain competitiveness in the international arena and to sustain its current position, France doesn’t want to abandon opportunities provided by its colonies.

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Burkina Faso Lawmaker Killed by Militants

By Simon Gongo
Assisted by Katarina Hoije

Attack comes as Burkina Faso grapples with Islamist insurgents
Militant attacks in the Sahel region doubled last year
A Burkinabe Parliament member, who was also one of the last authorities in a region ravaged by militants, was killed in a suicide bomb attack in the northern Djibo region on Sunday, security and government officials said.

The lawmaker, Oumarou Dicko, who had gone to officiate the launch of a Red Cross program to tackle youth employment, was traveling back to the capital Ouagadougou when his car hit a roadside bomb that killed the driver before gunmen opened fire and killed the lawmaker, a civil servant and Dicko’s cousin.

The assault comes as Burkina Faso grapples with an Islamist insurgency that has displaced more than half a million people, according to the U.N. Over 200,000 people have been displaced in the last four months, most of them from the West African nation’s northern regions.

The Sahel, a semi-arid region on the southern fringe of the Sahara, stands out as a region where violent extremism is on the rise in contrast to progress made fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The spike in violence has lead to increasing discontent with how President Roch Marc Christian Kabore’s government is tackling the situation. Senior opposition politicians have called for Kabore step down.

On Saturday 20,000 people gathered at a stadium in Ouagadougou to show support for the country’s security forces, according to the organizers.



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Escalating Violence in Burkina Faso Displaces 500,000

Displaced children that fled from their villages in northern Burkina Faso, following attacks by assailants, push carts loaded with water at a school in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, June 15, 2019.

This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Andrew Mbogori – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is joining its partners to warn about the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Burkina Faso’s central and northern regions where each day the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians are being disrupted by insecurity and violence. Some 486,000 have been forced to flee within the country, 267,000 of whom in the past 3 months alone. A further 16,000 are refugees in neighbouring countries.

The escalating armed violence is causing an unprecedented humanitarian emergency in the Sahel. While visiting Kaya, northeast of Ouagadougou, and Barsalogho, in the central Sanmatenga Province, we witnessed firsthand the dramatic impact of these tragic events on the affected population.

Thousands of people are on the move, exhausted and trying to find safety among host families or at transit and official travel sites. Many have been repeatedly displaced.  The prospects for their immediate return to where they come from are poor. As a result, their needs and those of host families, already vulnerable by food and nutrition crises in the region, are growing. Women and adolescent girls face particular threats given that health and other essential services are lacking. 

People we met had endured horrifying and traumatic events, with reports of more than 500 being killed in 472 attacks and counter-military operations since last year. We heard reports that basic services such as health care and education, as well as freedom of movement, have been severely affected by the attacks and by generalized insecurity.

Currently, all of Burkina Faso’s 13 regions host people fleeing violence. The Centre-Nord region hosts the largest number of displaced people - more than 196,000 in Sanmatenga province alone - followed by the Sahel region - 133,000 in Soum province. Some 1.5 million people are now in urgent need of humanitarian assistance in the country. We also remain extremely worried about 31,000 Malian refugees also affected by the ongoing conflict.

One thing was absolutely clear. Humanitarian needs are rising fast as conflict and insecurity continues to devastate hundreds of thousands of lives. Hosting communities are already impoverished, living on margins themselves. Food, water, shelter, and healthcare has to be arranged and reinforced immediately if we want to avoid another tragedy within this tragedy. Malnutrition and starvation are a real threat. 

We need urgent resources to launch a coordinated humanitarian response – an immediate necessity to save lives.

Armed groups have also intensified attacks in Burkina Faso neighbouring countries of Mali and Niger. Regions around the three countries’ borders are new hotspots of violence. Operating in sparsely populated, impoverished regions with little Government presence, armed groups are roving across borders and expanding areas of influence. Attacks have already spilled over into Benin in 2019. Overall, 5.4 million people in the affected regions need urgent assistance, including 3.2 million in Mali, and 700,000 people in western Niger.

On the sidelines of our annual Executive Committee meeting this week, the High Commissioner witnessed Government representatives from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad and Mauritania reaffirm their commitment to work together to address displacement issues, ensuring people fleeing violence are able to seek unhindered safety in their own country and across the borders. Such commitments were drawn from the conclusions of the Protection Dialogues on the Sahel, organized in Bamako last month by UNHCR and the Government of Mali.

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Armed attacks kill 10 in Burkina Faso

9 civilians, 1 soldier killed in attacks carried out by unidentified assailants

Alaattin Dogru  

    

DAKAR

At least 10 people, including a soldier, were killed in two terrorist attacks in Burkina Faso, state media reported Sunday.

An unidentified group of motorcyclists carried out an armed attack Saturday on the Dungeon village of Bam province in the northern part of the country, Burkina Faso Information Agency reported.

Nine civilians were killed in the attack.

Separately, a soldier was killed in an attack targeting patrol troops in Deou village of Soum province.

Security forces launched an operation in the region after the attacks.

The state of emergency continues in seven of the 13 regions of the country.

More than 500 people have been killed in the attacks organized by terrorist organizations in Burkina 

Faso in the last four years.

*Writing by Burak Bir

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