The African Tribune

At the 81st United Nations General Assembly, Chad issued a direct and uncompromising statement regarding recent aerial incursions into its territory. Speaking through Dr. Abdelmadjid Abdelrahim Mahamat, the country's Minister of Public Health and Prevention, Chad condemned foreign air strikes in Ennedi-Est as a clear violation of its sovereignty and warned of potential retaliation if such actions persist. Chad’s UN address: a call for accountability and regional stability The Chadian delegation highlighted the nation’s long-standing commitment to peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts across Africa. Dr. Mahamat emphasized Chad’s role in stabilizing crisis zones, including the deployment of 1,500 troops to Haiti as part of a UN-mandated security force. He also underscored the country’s sub...

US Treasury removes General François Olenga from sanctions list after nine years The United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has officially removed retired four-star General François Olenga Tete and his Safari Beach complex from its sanctions list, ending a nine-year legal and diplomatic ordeal. In a September 23 notification, Olenga’s legal representative, Aimé Kilolo Musamba, confirmed the decision: “The US Treasury has formally notified me of OFAC’s decision to delist General François Olenga Tete and Safari Club.” The move follows a lengthy legal battle in Washington, during which Kilolo argued that the sanctions were not justified by evidence. “This marks the culmination of over nine years of relentless advocacy, multiple trips to Washingto...

How a hidden reformer reshaped African commerce through legal precision Few legal minds leave a legacy as enduring as their silent restructuring of economic frameworks. Bakari Traoré, an Ivorian jurist, economist, and corporate governance specialist, has spent 30 years methodically transforming West Africa’s business legal landscape—one statute at a time. Early diagnosis: outdated laws strangling regional commerce In the late 1990s, Traoré, then a rising scholar with dual doctorates in business and economic law, identified a glaring obstacle to regional economic growth. West Africa’s commercial laws—many dating back to 1867 and 1925, remnants of colonial rule—had become obsolete. His analysis caught the attention of key policymakers, sparking a reform movement that would eventually expa...

General Célestin Simporé, Burkina Faso's defence minister, appeared on national television to praise the security record of Captain Ibrahim Traoré. What he delivered instead was a confession wrapped in an explanation: the country's armed forces, he said, had always been "poorly trained". That statement, made on the RTB set, pushes responsibility for a worsening conflict onto the officers and soldiers of earlier years. It does not survive contact with the record — and it has left one question dominating public debate: how did the supposedly defective force of yesterday hold the line better than the "new army" that Moscow retrained and that billions of dollars re-equipped? The interview that rewrote recent history By repeating on the state channel that the armed forces lacked tactical ins...

Gabon has cut 1,473 state employees from its payroll for abandoning their posts, a decision taken after a sweeping accounting and biometric audit ordered by the country's transition authorities. The move frees more than 11 billion FCFA — around €16.7 million — every year. The payroll audit in figures The government chose to act firmly. More than 1,400 public workers have now been officially dismissed for deserting their jobs, the result of a far-reaching verification exercise aimed at cleaning up the files of the public administration. The operation targeted agents whose names still appeared in the system long after they stopped turning up. How the payroll leak worked For years, a string of individuals kept collecting a monthly salary without ever setting foot in an office. Their situati...