The international conference on saving the Lake Chad was held in Abuja, Nigeria on 25-28 February 2018. The theme of the meeting was “Saving the Lake Chad to revitalise the Basin’s ecosystem for sustainable livelihood, security and development.” With over 1600 participants and presenters attending, this meeting grappled with the issues of how to go about saving Lake Chad. It was concluded that the Transaqua project, which would take water from the right tributary of inter-lacustrine region, and the River Congo, conveying the 2,000km water channel to Chari River is the preferred feasible option to save the Lake. 

Although the Nigerian military repeatedly overthrew civilian governments to combat corruption, its reign of terror was wasteful and institutionalised corruption in Nigeria left the country more divided than ever. To build a world-class military that Nigerians deserve, President Buhari, a former military officer, must first purge the military of corruption.

In this interview, Her Excellency Hanna Simon, Ambassador of the Republic of Eritrea to France talks to Pambazuka News correspondent, Sarraounia Mangou Tete, in Paris on wide-ranging issues, key among which include the sanctions imposed on this young horn of Africa nation by Western imperialist powers.

Denmark is fighting for a place on the United Nations Human Rights Council while supporting an European Union fisheries agreement with Morocco that includes Western Sahara, in violation of international law and the ruling of the European Union Court of Justice. 

This article is transcription from a lecture, which Abayomi Azikiwe delivered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit, Michigan on Sunday 18 February 2018. Abayomi Azikiwe presented the message for the day on the history and contemporary significance of mass incarceration and the enslavement and continued national oppression of the African American people.

The Oromo people have not been able to dominate the politics of Ethiopia, as the Amhara and Tigrinya people have dominated the empire's  governance. Nonetheless, the Oromo's ancestral principle of democracy--a transitional principle of eight years as a generational unit--has influenced many countries and could one time influence Ethiopia's politics.  

Oppressed and humiliated people responding to racism cannot be illegitimate. It is racism that is illegitimate. It is the oppressed who feel the weight of violence on their shoulders and it is them who must decide their own best possible method to escape their dehumanisation. 

A plan to fund, to the tune of over US $14.5 billion, the project of water transfer from the Congo River to Lake Chad as a way of saving the lake and the livelihoods of millions of people living around the lake could have been another reason that the former Libyan leader Gaddafi was assassinated.  

African Americans and their children need to tell their own stories, instead of enabling misguided bigots to seize the narrative – a false narrative that misrepresents them, as a people and threatens their uniqueness, as individuals.

Swaziland is Africa's last absolute monarchy. While some foreigners might have problems while visiting the kingdom and get or seek for help from their governments; Swazi people seem to have nowhere to seek for help. The story of Peter Kenworthy confirms that. 

The US informal empire, through the US African Command (AFRICOM, is expanding the US economic-frontier by discursively securitising Africa using exceptional speech acts.

The attempt to make the public believe that the Allied Defense Forces, a small, beleaguered Ugandan Islamist militia, attacked a United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 7 December 2017, killing 15 heavily armed and highly trained Tanzanian peacekeepers and wounding 55 more, raises more questions than it answers. 

Patrice Lumumba, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s independence hero and first Prime Minister, famously wrote to his wife Pauline from captivity in 1960, shortly before his assassination: “We are not alone. Africa, Asia, and the free and liberated peoples in every corner of the globe will ever remain at the side of the millions of Congolese who will not abandon the struggle until the day when there will be no more colonisers and no more of their mercenaries in our country.” But is anyone on the side of the Congolese now?

The West and African leaders share the blame for slave trade reported in Libya. Serious human rights violations have been perpetrated against the youth of Africa: violation of their right to work, violation of their right to life, violation of their dignity, violation of their right to be protected against slavery and slave trade. This must stop.

A basic feature of today's imperialist world – the division of the globe into the feasting and the fed upon – has become so unbearable that millions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America would rather risk death than accept the future that a country oppressed by imperialism can offer them. This, in turn, is seen as a threat to the serenity and stability of Europe.

Kagame runs a brutal, US-backed regime with the ninth highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. State surveillance is so pervasive that Rwandans fear to trust their own family and neighbours. Latest investigative reports about African deportees to Rwanda from Israel reveal horrific abuses. Does that sound like a government ready to open its arms to its African brothers and sisters?

Burundi formally withdrew from the International Criminal Court. But the ICC has announced an investigation into alleged crimes in the country. Burundi has stated that it will neither cooperate nor allow in ICC investigators. What the ICC is doing is an ugly and dangerous attempt to destabilize and destroy the government of Burundi.

As the African Union troops prepare to leave Somalia, the Al Shabaab militants will likely rebuild their capacities and intensify attacks. Already recent mass bombings in Mogadishu are a worrying sign. The Somali national security services, despite receiving some international support, remain weak. The extremist organization is still a serious threat in Somalia and the region.

Operations in Niger are part of a broader strategic plan to further dominate Africa military and economically. The Sahel is a treasure trove of valuable minerals and other natural resources. U.S. military occupations, although said to be based on cooperative efforts between the host governments and Washington, clearly represent the interests of international finance capital based on Wall Street.

Mechanisation and automation have been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But these are not inevitable or neutral economic realities. They are political weapons of oppression under capitalism. It is a war against the working classes to increase profits. It is no an accident that bosses choose to mechanise and automate in the context of the massive crisis of capitalism.