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Niger's official narrative of economic emancipation collides with a stubborn set of figures. At the close of 2024, the country's international investment position showed a heavily negative balance — a reading that lays bare just how much the national economy leans on capital held beyond its borders. Where the country's foreign commitments really sit on the map Begin with geography, because it answers the question political speeches tend to sidestep. Of everything Niger owes to the outside world, the category labelled "other countries" — partners outside both the euro area and the West African Economic and Monetary Union, with China heading that list — accounts for 78% of the total. The euro area has been reduced to roughly 18%, while financial integration inside the UEMOA region stays m...

Half a million extra pupils join the school meal scheme When classes resumed for the 2026-2027 school year, roughly 1.9 million children in Benin sat down to a hot meal on every teaching day. Twelve months earlier, that figure stood at 1.4 million. In practice, some 500,000 additional pupils entered the system in a single year — a leap that confirms how central school feeding has become to the country's social policy. The figures tell a story of steady expansion rather than a one-off push. Benin's aim is to keep hunger out of the classroom, ease the pressure on household budgets and, at the same time, generate demand for food grown at home. From 30% coverage to a nationwide rollout Rewind to 2016: only about 30% of schools offered a canteen service. By 2022, coverage had climbed to 75%, wi...

Algeria's prime minister, Sifi Grine, spent Monday in Bamako, standing shoulder to shoulder with the man who runs Mali by decree, army general Assimi Goïta. The encounter was packaged as a milestone, a decisive step toward binding two Sahelian neighbours closer than they have been in years. Yet the choreography of the day could not quite hide how fragile the ground beneath it really is. Behind the firm handshakes and the polished speeches, memories of a bitter falling-out and the long shadow of the Algiers accord still hang over a relationship that has rarely been this strained. A handshake staged inside the Koulouba palace The setting was chosen for its symbolism. Inside the reception rooms of the Koulouba palace, the Algerian head of government and Mali's military strongman sat down to ...

Since Captain Ibrahim Traoré assumed power, a particular narrative has taken hold in official communication: that of a Burkina Faso which has reclaimed command of its own destiny, curtailed its external dependencies and resolved to finance its own campaign against armed groups.Politically, the message lands well. Rearmament is cast as the tangible expression of sovereignty. Military acquisitions are showcased, the Patriotic Support Fund is presented as proof of a collective national effort, and appeals for citizen contributions serve to demonstrate that the country relies first and foremost on its own means.One question nevertheless remains, and it is far less ideological in nature: what does this sovereignty actually cost, and who ultimately bears the bill?A defence budget that has change...

A dawn raid that gutted a garrison in central Mali Gunfire broke the silence in Dioura before first light. On the morning of Thursday 10 September 2026, fighters of the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims — the al-Qaeda-aligned coalition generally referred to as JNIM — threw themselves at the town's military camp in the Tenenkou circle. For hours the base was shelled, stormed and then methodically emptied of its equipment, before the attackers withdrew with heavy weapons and a long file of captives. Hours of shelling, then a camp stripped bare Residents of the Tenenkou area describe an operation mounted with unusual coordination: one group pinning the garrison down while others pushed into the compound. When the firing finally stopped, the defences had given way and the armouries ha...

Niger's tax inspectors show tireless energy when the target is a market stall, a roadside vendor or a tiny workshop. The same officers become strikingly cautious the moment the file belongs to a conglomerate. A backlog of unpaid taxes amounting to 334 billion FCFA, documented jointly by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and Niger's ministry of economy and finance, exposes that contradiction in full. This mountain of uncollected revenue is no accounting accident. It is the direct outcome of institutional timidity and of a government under Tiani that has never found the will to confront the players who matter. Where the pressure lands, and where it magically stops Niger's tax machinery applies two entirely different standards, and the gap between them is glaring. Small and ...

When the 2026-2027 academic year opened, thousands of Aspiring Teachers in Benin — the Aspirants au Métier d'Enseignant, or AME — walked into a different stage of their working lives. After a run of decisions aimed at lifting their earnings and living standards, the government has now started the gradual absorption of these teachers into the public service. The reform promises firmer job security and steadier purchasing power, and its effects stretch well beyond individual pay slips. A status that is finally moving forward September 11, 2026 will be remembered by the country's AME as a milestone. At the Palais de la Marina, senior officials sat down with AME representatives and the trade union confederations and announced that this category of teachers would be integrated into the civil ...

General Yacouba Isaac Zida could hardly have been more pointed when he argued that genuine sovereignty has nothing to do with selecting which foreign power to lean on, and everything to do with acquiring the means to lean on nobody at all. That remark cuts straight into the political fiction promoted by Captain Ibrahim Traoré within the Alliance of Sahel States. A one-time head of Burkina Faso's transitional executive, later dismissed from the army for desertion and now in exile, Zida also personifies the paradoxes of a Burkinabè military class that cannot break out of its cycle of instability and unkept promises. Ouagadougou's headlong dive into Moscow's orbit, packaged as an "anti-imperialist rupture", amounts to nothing more than a crude renegotiation of the terms of subordination. Bene...

Thousands of water sachets, meant for Africa Corps fighters, were slit open and stamped into the ground in the middle of a Niamey street. The gesture was blunt, public and deliberate — and it laid bare the widening rift between ordinary Nigeriens, the Russian troops stationed in the country and the military government of General Abdourahamane Tiani. Torn plastic piled up on the pavement while drinking water soaked into the arid soil of the Sahel, all of it drowned out by the shouts of an angry crowd. Filmed and shared widely online, the scene has become the clearest illustration yet of how fast public opinion in the capital has turned. That cargo did not spill by accident. It was a vital supply consignment bound for a base housing Russian personnel from Africa Corps, the outfit that took ...

Apollinaire Kyélem de Tambèla, a former prime minister of Burkina Faso, has been stopped from leaving the country. The measure was taken by the authorities headed by Captain Ibrahim Traoré. It is the latest sign of tightening control by the transitional government over figures from political and public life. Appointed to head the government by Ibrahim Traoré in October 2022, Kyélem de Tambèla ran the Burkinabè executive until his departure in December 2024. An exit ban imposed after he left office The restriction therefore lands at a moment when he no longer sits in government. That timing raises an unavoidable question: what reasons do the authorities now consider strong enough to limit where a former head of government can travel? Beyond the personal case, the affair touches the state of...

Cameroon's government is running against the clock to assemble the money needed to take back Société Générale Cameroun, the lender now referred to in Yaoundé as the former subsidiary of the French group. Figures made public put the bill at as much as 432 million dollars, close to 260 billion CFA francs. That sum has to cover two things at once: the price of the shares held by the Paris-based parent and the capital injections required once the transaction closes. The stated aim is to avoid any break in continuity at an institution ranked among the country's leading commercial banks. A retreat that redraws the banking map of Central Africa The Cameroonian file sits inside a wider pullback by Société Générale from the African continent. The French group, deep into a streamlining drive, has a...

The Burkinabè government has approved a 104.175 billion CFA franc package to strengthen electricity transport and distribution infrastructure, connect more than 250,000 households, and raise the electrification rate to 70% by 2030. The initiative falls under the National Energy Pact and the RELANCE 2026-2030 plan. On paper, the announcement is compelling. But it raises a far more practical question: with what resources and what financial credibility does Burkina Faso intend to fund this new energy ambition? The financial credibility test The challenge is not limited to the cost of new infrastructure. The country must also contend with financial commitments already accumulated. In its latest report on Burkina Faso, the International Monetary Fund notes $52.6 million in arrears owed to Cô...