Gambia’s new president, Adama Barrow, finally returned to the country yesterday, his arrival formally marking the end of a six-week political crisis. Barrow was elected president on Dec. 1. He initially received a concession call from his opponent, Yahya Jammeh. But Jammeh, in power since 1994, reversed course within days. Refusing to step down, he instead attempted to use various forms of intimidation and legal maneuvering—a state of emergency, a parliamentary extension of his powers and a legal suit—to block the transition. West Africa’s regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), responded quickly and forcefully. Demanding that [...]
“It’s the same fight, the same stakes,” French President Francois Hollande said of the battle against extremism in France and Africa while meeting with Malian troops in the northern city of Gao last week. “The terrorists who attack our land, who commit acts on our soil, are allied with those who are in the Levant, in Iraq and Syria, but here as well, in the Sahel.” Just days later, a suicide attack killed dozens at an army base there. Hollande was in Mali for the final Africa-France Summit of his presidency, which took place in the capital, Bamako, amid tight [...]
On Jan. 6, soldiers in Bouake—Cote d’Ivoire’s second-largest city and the former rebel capital during the country’s civil war in the 2000s—left their barracks, firing their weapons into the air. They quickly seized control of Bouake’s main streets and announced a mutiny, the latest in a string of them in recent years in Cote d’Ivoire. Within a day, soldiers throughout the country joined the mutineers, including in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire’s largest city and commercial capital, where gunfire was reported at the army headquarters. Although the government and soldiers claim to have reached a deal to end it, the standoff proved [...]
