Abuja, Nigeria — Nigeria’s constitution is getting a revamp, and this time a committee tasked with the responsibility says women’s inclusion in political offices is a priority. Women hold a tiny fraction of the seats in Nigeria’s National Assembly. Three of the 109 senators and 15 of the 360 members in the House of Representatives are…
DAKAR, SENEGAL — Senegal’s Constitutional Council on Thursday ruled that parliament’s unprecedented postponement of the February 25 presidential vote was not in line with the constitution, pitching the country into a new phase of electoral uncertainty. Opposition presidential candidates and lawmakers last week filed several legal challenges to the bill that delayed the vote to December…
Yaounde, Cameroon — Leaders of Cameroon’s main opposition party say they are negotiating with more than 30 opposition leaders to present a single candidate in the next election, should 91-year-old President Paul Biya be incapacitated by ill health. The opposition reacted after Biya, who has ruled for more than four decades, made no mention of running…
PARIS — France closes 2023 with a diminished presence in Africa’s restive Sahel region, after withdrawing troops from three once-staunch allied countries collectively fighting an Islamist insurgency, and seeing its influence increasingly replaced by other powers, including Russia. The last French soldiers left Niger earlier this month, with Paris taking the unusual step of closing its…
The East African Community trade bloc admitted Somalia as its eighth member on Friday, a move Somali authorities and businesses hope will boost the country’s war-ravaged economy. The EAC common market — which consists of Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda — was set up in 2010 and currently…