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The display of unity around the latest employers' consultations and the planned prefiguration cell for media self-regulation does little to mask what is really happening in the field. Behind the support in principle and the lukewarm 'yes, but' voiced by the Cadre de concertation des faîtières — ASSEP, the Groupement patronal and UNAJEP — this meeting is no spontaneous clean-up operation. It is the inevitable endpoint of several years of muffled discontent, turf wars and deep disagreements within Mali's press sector. A decade of infighting, not a sudden conversion If the employers' leaders now hammer home the urgency of revisiting the journalists' collective bargaining agreement and regulating the media space, the genesis of the movement deserves a closer look. This series of meetings and c...

Tiani looks beyond Niamey as Wardougou rises in the Fezzan General Abdourahamane Tiani, for years absorbed by the defence of his own power in Niamey, is now casting his gaze past Niger's borders. In southern Libya, the ascent of Mohamed Wardougou — a former ally of Khalifa Haftar who has turned into one of his fiercest opponents — is opening a fresh arena of confrontation. Niger could end up as one of its central players. Across the Sahara, state frontiers have never managed to contain political and military rivalries. They run through communities, trade routes and armed networks stretching from Niger to Libya and Chad. It is inside this landscape that the Niamey regime now appears intent on shaping the realignments shaking Khalifa Haftar's camp. The shift remains discreet, yet its outline...

Behind the official security measures, a fierce contest is unfolding over manpower, money and control of the state apparatus. A decree signed. Billions potentially at stake. A new defense architecture. Shifting responsibilities. And then another mobilization mechanism emerges. Taken separately, these events can be dismissed as routine administrative or military decisions. Taken together, they raise a far more sensitive question: who really controls the men, the resources and the levers of national defense in Niger? Caught in this tangle are three major figures of the regime: General Abdourahamane Tiani, General Salifou Mody and former Prime Minister Lamine Zeine. At the heart of the matter lies the Command of Protection and Development Forces (CFPD) and, more recently, the community se...

Mali and the United States are moving back toward a security arrangement that would put American aircraft and drones over Malian territory again. The talks center on surveillance of jihadist groups and come after a February 2026 US decision to lift sanctions on Mali's defense minister and several senior officials. Bamako, for its part, has not broken with Moscow.That combination — tighter intelligence ties with Washington and an intact Russian military presence — defines Mali's 2026 posture under General Assimi Goïta: keep Russia, and add options.What is actually changing in 2026For years the story was linear. After pushing out French and European forces, Mali turned to Russia, welcomed Wagner fighters and then the Africa Corps, and severed ties with Western partners one after another. In ...

Mali's drone campaign has killed 731 civilians in three years. Between September 2023 and September 2026, 199 air strikes hit mostly civilian targets, according to a three-year investigation that cross-referenced satellite imagery, video, photographs, munitions debris, witness testimony and geolocation data. The scale of those losses places Mali's air war among the most costly for civilians anywhere in the Sahel. 199 Strikes, 731 civilian deaths: the three-year record The tally covers September 2023 through September 2026. Conflict-monitoring data compiled for the investigation records 199 strikes that primarily struck civilians, and 731 civilian deaths over that period. Those numbers do not mean every victim has been individually named, nor that the legal responsibility for each strike h...

With Nigeria's presidential election drawing closer, the security of the ballot has moved to the front of the national conversation. Public anxiety over political violence, fraud and insecurity in several parts of the country — echoed well beyond its borders — has pushed the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) high command, under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, into a run of reassuring public statements. A pledge of strict neutrality from the top The Inspector General of Police, Olatunji Disu, together with regional commands, has publicly restated a commitment to a "free, fair and transparent" vote. Acknowledging long-standing accusations of bias or leniency towards the ruling party, the leadership says its officers will remain strictly neutral from the campaign trail through to the counting of ballo...

Mali's prison system is being crushed by a wave of arrests rather than by a wave of convictions. The country's detention centres, strained for years by structural neglect, have slid into outright saturation since the political transition, as police sweeps and military security operations funnel thousands of new detainees into facilities that were already full.Bamako's central jail: 10,000 detainees in a space built for 600The Maison Centrale d'Arret in Bamako tells the story in a single figure. Designed to hold 600 people, it now houses more than 10,000, leaving it at nearly 17 times its official capacity. The driving force behind that number is a security doctrine built around locking down major urban centres and a loosely defined campaign against crime and terrorism, which has turned arr...

A bitter reality behind Burkina Faso's sovereignty discourse In Tougan, the observation is stark. Beyond the rhetoric of sovereignty, industrialisation, and national production, agricultural producers state that they continue to confront a far less glorious reality alone: selling their harvests at a loss, repaying their credits, and, at times, considering crossing the border to survive. “Last year, maize yielded well. They capped the price, and producers made no profit. This year, others will cross the border because of the credits,” reports a testimony from Tougan. A situation captured by a particularly telling phrase: “The producer weeps when harvests are good, and he weeps when harvests are bad.” This contradiction raises a fundamental question: where has the priority granted to those w...

The Front Populaire pour la Justice (FPL) has gone public with a direct appeal to Niger's youth, inviting them to join its ranks against the military government in Niamey. The message was released as a video carried across social networks and delivered in several languages, including Arabic, at a moment when the junta is struggling to contain a security crisis that keeps striking civilians. What the FPL said, and who it was addressing The wording from the group's spokesperson was short and pointed at a single target. "We have no problem with the people of Niger. Our main and only problem is the current regime in Niger. We are making a special call to the youth to join us on the FPL front against this regime," the spokesperson declared. The framing is deliberate: rather than confronting th...

At least 43 civilians were killed and many more wounded when air and ground operations hit vital water infrastructure around Kidal in northern Mali on 15 and 16 September 2026. By striking the wells that keep nomadic communities and their herds alive in an arid landscape, the offensive has pushed an entire region into a deepening humanitarian crisis. Two days of strikes, one target: the region's water Water decides everything in Mali's northern desert. On Tuesday 15 September 2026, a Su-24 bomber struck Amassine, a locality in the Kidal region. The target was the village well, the single watering point used by the nomadic herders living around it. Tassik hit the following day Military pressure escalated at Tassik on 16 September. Mali's armed forces, supported by Russian paramilitary uni...

When Bloomfield Investment Corporation moved Benin's long-term sovereign rating from A+ to AA- on 15 September, it did more than adjust a number on a local scale. The Abidjan-based agency pushed the country across the symbolic threshold into investment territory, triggering immediate reactions among regional investors, bankers and public finance watchers. A decision that reshapes the conversation in the UEMOA zone The upgrade, awarded with a stable outlook, tells subscribers across the West African Economic and Monetary Union that Benin's sovereign risk is now seen as extremely low at the regional level. That message lands at a moment when global economic uncertainty still weighs on sentiment — and it positions Cotonou as a pole of stability in West Africa. But the immediate fallout exten...

Brigitte Tchede's two-medal breakthrough at the 12th African University Games in Cairo has sparked fresh debate across Benin about how far the country's athletics programme can go — and how quickly. The 24-year-old from Porto-Novo became the first Beninese athlete to reach the podium at this edition, taking silver in the discus with a personal-best throw of 47.08 metres before adding a second medal in a different event. Within hours of the result, coaches, university sports officials and fans were asking the same question: is this a one-off, or the start of something bigger?What actually happened in CairoThe Egyptian capital is hosting the 12th African University Games from 8 to 16 September 2026, drawing student-athletes from across the continent in a wide range of disciplines. For Benin,...