Benin’s school canteens now feed 1.9 million children every school day
School feeding in Benin has moved onto a different scale. When classes resume for the 2026-2027 year, close to 1.9 million pupils will sit down to a hot meal on every day of teaching, compared with 1.4 million twelve months earlier. That is roughly half a million extra children brought into the scheme in a […]
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Sifi Grine in Bamako: Mali’s junta bows to Algiers after months of defiance
Bamako put on its full ceremonial face on Monday. Inside the salons of the Koulouba palace, Algeria’s prime minister, Sifi Grine, appeared side by side with the man who holds Mali’s levers of power, army corps general Assimi Goïta. The choreography was meant to look historic and soothing: two Saharan neighbours mending a broken bond. […]
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Burkina Faso: the true price of sovereignty on credit
Since Captain Ibrahim Traoré took power, an official narrative has steadily taken hold: that of a Burkina Faso which has reclaimed command of its own destiny, trimmed its reliance on foreign partners and resolved to bankroll its war against armed groups from its own pocket. As political messaging, it works. Rearmament is cast as sovereignty […]
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Dioura assault: 130 Malian soldiers killed and 70 taken prisoner in JNIM’s deadliest strike
The military base at Dioura, a town in the Tenenkou circle of central Mali, was overrun in the early hours of Thursday 10 September 2026. Fighters of the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), Al-Qaeda’s Sahel branch, breached the compound, pounded it for hours and then pulled out with captured hardware and […]
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Niger’s 334 billion CFA franc tax gap: the state’s surrender to corporate giants
In Niger, the tax office has a well-documented habit: it pursues the small trader with tireless energy, then freezes the moment it faces the real heavyweights of the economy. A stock of unpaid taxes estimated at 334 billion CFA francs, jointly documented by the United Nations economic commission for Africa and the country’s ministry of […]
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Benin’s AME teachers: integration, pay and social gains in 2026-2027
When classrooms reopened for the 2026-2027 school year, thousands of Benin’s aspiring teachers — the corps known as AME — walked into a chapter that looks markedly different from the one they entered just a few years ago. After a string of measures designed to lift their incomes and living standards, the government has now […]
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Swapping patrons is not freedom: the sovereignty mirage in Burkina Faso
“True sovereignty is not about choosing whom you depend on — it is about giving yourself the means to depend on no one.” With that sentence, General Yacouba Isaac Zida has taken direct aim at the political narrative built around Captain Ibrahim Traoré inside the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). It is a pointed intervention, […]
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Niamey turns on Russia’s mercenaries after Niger’s own soldiers were shot
Torn plastic sachets lay strewn across a dusty street in Niamey, their contents sinking into the parched soil of the Sahel while an enraged crowd pressed around the wreckage. Thousands of water bags destined for the Russian paramilitaries of Africa Corps had been slit open and stamped flat, an act of popular sabotage that exposes […]
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Burkina Faso blocks former prime minister Apollinaire Kyélem de Tambèla from leaving the country
Apollinaire Kyélem de Tambèla, who ran Burkina Faso’s government for more than two years, has been barred from leaving the country. The decision was taken by the authorities of Captain Ibrahim Traoré, the man who had appointed him to the premiership. The exit ban adds a fresh chapter to the gradual tightening of control that […]
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Burkina Faso’s 104 billion CFA electricity bet meets a wall of unpaid bills
A 104 billion CFA push to widen access to electricity The authorities in Burkina Faso have approved a 104.175 billion CFA franc programme intended to accelerate the country’s electrification. The funding is meant to reinforce electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure, extend service to households still off the grid and raise the national coverage rate. It […]
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Au Bénin, la stratégie de délocalisation scolaire face à la menace jihadiste au nord
Le Bénin a choisi de ne pas attendre que les groupes armés dictent leur loi. Confronté à une pression terroriste persistante aux confins septentrionaux de son territoire, l’État béninois a décidé de fermer et de transférer plusieurs écoles situées dans les « zones rouges » de l’Atacora et de l’Alibori vers des sites sécurisés. Une […]
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Au Niger, le général Barmou paie le prix d’une souveraineté sous influence russe
La mise à l’écart du général Moussa Salaou Barmou, à peine deux semaines après la tentative de putsch des 28 et 29 août, soulève une interrogation qui dépasse le cadre d’un simple ajustement dans la hiérarchie militaire. Dans cette tourmente, Barmou incarne une ligne de faille : jusqu’où le Niger peut-il tolérer qu’une puissance étrangère […]
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