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An armored vehicle escorting a MINUSMA logistic convoy from Gao to Kidal, is parked as trucks pass by, Mali February 16, 2017. Shortly after the last U.N. convoy rolled out, the ethnic Tuareg rebels announced they had taken over the base. The Tuareg rebels signed a 2015 peace agreement brokered by MINUSMA but maintained control of much of the north from Kidal. The first sign of trouble came in early August, when fighting broke out between Mali's army and Tuareg rebels around the U.N.'s camp in Ber in the north. As in Kidal, peacekeepers destroyed equipment before leaving that could have been transported in trucks earlier, if the government had allowed.

Persons: MINUSMA, Sylvain Liechti, jeopardising U.N, couldn't, Fatoumata Sinkoun Kaba, Yvan Guichaoua, Edward McAllister, David Lewis, Michelle Nichols, Mahamat, Alexandra Zavis, Daniel Flynn Organizations: UN, DAKAR, United Nations, U.N, Reuters, Authorities, Security, Islamic State, Department of Peace Operations, Department of Operational, Wagner Group, MINUSMA, University of Kent's Brussels School of International Studies, Thomson Locations: Gao, Mali, Kidal, West Africa, Malian, al Qaeda, Algeria, Mauritania, Ber, Tessalit, Algerian, Bamako, Dakar, Nairobi, New York, N'Djamena

Unable to afford a flight to Egpyt from Guinea, he drew a map of Africa in his spiral notebook and set off on a second-hand mountain bike. Four months and seven countries later, he is in Cairo with a full scholarship to Al-Azhar University, one of the world's oldest and most renowned Sunni Muslim learning institutions. Thousands of West Africans like Barry undertake risky journeys across the Sahara desert each year, searching for a better life. Barry arrived in Cairo on Sept. 5 and days later secured a full scholarship to Al-Azhar. He intends to return to Guinea when his studies are complete, to spread the faith that has taken him so far.

Persons: Mamadou Safaiou Barry, Barry, Barry pedalled, Azhar, Cooper Inveen, Alison Williams Organizations: Al, Azhar University, International Organization for Migration, CFA, Thomson Locations: Guinea, El Marg, Cairo, Egypt, CAIRO, N'DJAMENA, Egpyt, Africa, West, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Niger, N'Djamena, Chadian, Sudan

☆ Niger junta says open to talks as Putin, US stress peace
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-15 | by ( Felix Onuah | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

REUTERS/Souleymane Ag Anara/File Photo Acquire Licensing RightsAug 15 (Reuters) - Niger's junta on Tuesday said that it was open to talks to resolve a regional crisis caused by last month's military coup, while Russia and the United States called for a peaceful resolution. Singh declined to call the takeover a coup but said it "certainly looks like an attempted coup." Military leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso have kicked out troops from former colonial power France and strengthened ties with Moscow. Putin has called for a return to constitutional order in Niger, while Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin welcomed the army takeover and offered his services. Support for Russia has appeared to surge in Niger since the coup, with junta supporters waving Russian flags at rallies and calling for France to disengage.

Persons: Mohamed Bazoum, Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine, Mahamat Deby, Vladimir Putin, Putin, Assimi Goita, Sabrina Singh, Joe Biden's, Singh, Bola Tinubu, Russia's Wagner, Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Felix Onuah, Mahamat Ramadane, Idrees Ali, Nellie Peyton, John Stonestreet, Estelle Shirbon, Alexandra Hudson, Jonathan Oatis Organizations: REUTERS, West, Economic, West African States, ECOWAS, Islamic, Twitter, Military, Thomson Locations: Nigerien, Niamey, Niger, Russia, United States, Ghana, al Qaeda, Islamic State, West, Central Africa, Russian, West Africa's, Central Africa's, West Africa, Mali, Burkina Faso, France, Moscow, Bazoum, Western, U.S, Germany, Italy, Paris, Abuja, Chad, Washington

☆ Sudanese refugees in Chad risk losing aid as rainy season looms, says MSF
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-12 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

N'DJAMENA, June 12 (Reuters) - Thousands of Sudanese refugees who fled to Chad to escape fighting in their country could be cut off from humanitarian and medical aid during the approaching rainy season, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Monday. Rains will also bring a higher risk of waterborne and infectious diseases given poor access to clean water and sanitation, she said. Nearly 30,000 refugees are in Sila, where they lack shelter, water and food due to deficiencies in humanitarian assistance. One of the poorest countries in the world, Chad was already hosting close to 600,000 refugees before the latest Sudanese crisis. This has caused food and commodity prices to soar in areas already suffering from high levels of malnutrition, MSF said.

Persons: MSF's, Audrey van der Schoot, Rains, Chad, Mahamat, Sofia Christensen, Mark Heinrich Our Organizations: United Nations, MSF, UNHCR, Thomson Locations: N'DJAMENA, Chad, Sudan, Sila, Central

They are among 90,000 people who have escaped to Chad since fighting broke out in Sudan in mid-April - a major extra burden on one of the world's poorest countries. Even before this emergency, Chad was hosting 600,000 refugees from its war-torn neighbours and grappling with a fourth consecutive year of acute food shortages. Overall, around 2.3 million people are in urgent need of food aid, the World Food Programme warned earlier in May. Squeezed into the open-air compound, the women cook together over small braziers in the sand as children play around them. Hamit said she tried to help "even the refugees who have set up shelters nearby .... they come to us for water".

Now, according to an internal U.N. estimate obtained by Reuters, 5 million additional people in Sudan will require emergency assistance, half of them children. Even before the latest crisis, U.N. humanitarian appeals for Africa faced a $17-billion funding gap this year, risking leaving millions without lifesaving assistance. Last year, it spent a third of its overseas aid budget housing refugees inside the UK, a British aid watchdog said in March. Sudan was hosting over 1 million refugees, mainly from South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Syria, before the outbreak of fighting last month. Aid workers have been killed, food aid looted, and WFP says it's running out of stocks.

☆ Nightmare in Sudan: African expats struggle to find way out
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Macdonald Dzirutwe | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Thousands piled into buses and trucks for the 800 km (500 miles) journey by road from Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea to board ships. He had to wait four more days for transport to Port Sudan, an overnight trip. After a week, word reached them that there would be transport leaving from their embassy for Port Sudan. RSF fighters stopped the family along the way but let them pass when he said he was looking for food for his son. From Port Sudan, they travelled via cargo ship to Saudi Arabia.

☆ In flight from Sudan, refugees in Chad give birth alone without shelter
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Mahamat Ramadane | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

KOUFROUN, Chad, May 1 (Reuters) - At a refugee camp in remote eastern Chad, Amné Moustapha is close to giving birth. But many of the countries hosting new arrivals, including Chad, face their own problems including food shortages, drought and high prices, creating a humanitarian crisis beyond Sudan's borders that international agencies are struggling to contain. I hear that there are midwives but since we took refuge here several women have given birth without medical assistance. Her husband said that eight other women had given birth without help in the camp in Koufroun, where temperatures soar to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit). "Several women have given birth here but have no shelter," said Moustapha's husband Khamis Asseid Ahmat Haron beside the unfinished stick frame of their new home.

☆ A Sudanese woman's race to the border after giving birth
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-29 | by ( Mahamat Ramadane | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/5] Sudanese refugees who have fled the violence in their country gather to receive food supplements from World Food Programme (WFP), near the border between Sudan and Chad, in Koufroun, Chad April 28, 2023. Residents and sources in the western Darfur region have reported looting, ethnic reprisal attacks and clashes between the army and the RSF which evolved from the janjaweed militias. "In our village, armed people came and burned and looted houses and we were forced to flee," said Adam. I cut the child's umbilical cord and we cleaned her up," Adam's sister Souraya Adam, 27, told Reuters. The wave of arrivals places an additional burden on Chad's meagre resources, which were already strained by hosting 400,000 refugees who fled earlier conflict in Sudan.

Hemedti and Burhan have both excluded the idea of negotiating with each other in public comments since the fighting began. An aide to Hemedti did not respond to questions from Reuters about whether he was ready to negotiate or hold peace talks. "What are they going to talk about that wasn't on the table before the conflict started?" said the diplomat, adding that neither side could win a decisive military victory or control of all Sudan's territory. The RSF, which has bases across Sudan, has meanwhile depicted the army as "extremists", an apparent reference to the influence Hemedti says Islamists wield in the military.

☆ UN agency in Chad expects more refugees fleeing from Sudan
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-22 | by ( Mahamat Ramadane | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

N'DJAMENA, April 22 (Reuters) - The head of the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) in Chad said it expects to see more refugees fleeing across the border from Sudan to escape the fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Around 10,000 to 20,000 Sudanese have already crossed the border into Chad a week after the fighting began in Khartoum and other areas of the country. Honnorat said 400,000 Sudanese refugees who had already fled Sudan during previous conflicts are spread around the Chad border area in 14 camps. In the Sudan capital of Khartoum, desperate residents are trapped in their homes under bombardment and fighters roaming the streets. He added that most of those who arrived in recent days from villages along the border were women and children.

☆ Chad recalls envoy to Cameroon as dispute over Exxon's asset sale escalates
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Exxon closed the sale of its operations in Chad and Cameroon to Africa-focused oil and gas producer Savannah in a $407 million deal in December. Chad has nationalized the assets on its side of the border, including Exxon's share of the over 1,000 km (621 miles) Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline. Savannah Energy has said it will pursue its legal rights over Chad's decision to nationalize Exxon's assets it had acquired. The company said on Wednesday that it had sold a 10% stake of the share capital of the Cameroon Oil Transportation Company which owns and operates the 903km Cameroon section of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline to Cameroon national oil company (SNH). Chad said in its statement that it was not informed of this sale which was contrary to the status of the pipeline company.

☆ Chad's freed rebel prisoners call for leader's release
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Mahamat Ramadane | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Mahamat RamadaneN'DJAMENA, April 19 (Reuters) - With the midday sun high over Chad's capital N'Djamena, Alhadj Barh embraced his wife for the first time in more than two years. It marked a new start for a man who, until earlier that day, had been in jail for fighting in a rebel army accused of killing the president. Barh was among a group of pardoned detainees to be released near the capital in early April. Another newly released detainee, former maths teacher and FACT member Ouckonga Guelmine Kemnda, said calls for unity would ring hollow without their release. Reporting by Mahamat Ramadane; Writing by Cooper Inveen; Editing by Alex RichardsonOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Chad disarmed Sudanese contingent which entered its territory on Monday - defence minister
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

N'DJAMENA, April 19 (Reuters) - Chad's army stopped and disarmed a Sudanese contingent of 320 soldiers who entered the West African country on Monday, Defence Minister Daoud Yaya Brahim said on Wednesday. Brahim told a press conference that the confrontation between the Sudanese might create new waves of refugees and added that maintaining security would become difficult. Chad's government closed its border with Sudan on Saturday and called for calm amid an apparent coup attempt in Khartoum by Sudan's main paramilitary group. The West African country's defense minister said that the country had hosted more than 400,000 Sudanese refugees in the past. Reporting by Mahamat Ramadane; Writing by Anait Miridzhanian; Editing by James Macharia ChegeOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Chad orders German ambassador to leave the country
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

N'DJAMENA, April 8 (Reuters) - Chad's government ordered the German ambassador to leave the country within 48 hours, it said in a statement, a decision sources said was motivated by his comments about Chad's delayed transition to civilian rule after a 2021 coup. "This decision of the government is motivated by the discourteous attitude and the non-respect of diplomatic customs," the country's Communication Ministry said on Twitter late on Friday. Two Chadian government sources said on Saturday that Ambassador Gordon Kricke had criticised delays in holding elections after the coup, and a ruling last year that will allow interim military leader Mahamat Idriss Deby to run in elections in 2024. Military leaders in the Central African country originally promised an 18-month transition to elections when Deby seized power after his father, President Idriss Deby, was killed on the battlefield during a conflict with insurgents, ending decades of authoritarian rule. Reporting by Mahamat Ramadane, Tom Sims and Joel Honore Kouam; Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Toby ChopraOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Chad approves bill to nationalise assets ExxonMobil sold to Savannah Energy
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

N'DJAMENA, March 29 (Reuters) - Chad's parliament on Wednesday approved a bill to nationalise oil assets and rights acquired last year by Savannah Energy (SAVES.L) from ExxonMobil's (XOM.N) affiliate, Esso Exploration and Production Chad. In December, ExxonMobil closed the sale of its operations in Chad and Cameroon to Africa-focussed oil and gas producer Savannah Energy in a $407 million deal, but the Chadian government challenged the agreement. Out of 175 lawmakers present, 172 backed the law to nationalise the assets - a move Savannah vowed last week to contest. Chad's energy and hydrocarbons ministry said last week that all the relevant assets and rights would be nationalised, including hydrocarbon permits and exploration and production authorisations that belonged to the Exxon Mobil subsidiary. Reporting by Mahamat Ramadane Writing by Anait Miridzhanian Editing by Mark PotterOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Chad says it has nationalized all assets owned by Exxon Mobil
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

N'DJAMENA, March 23 (Reuters) - Chad has nationalized all the assets and rights including hydrocarbon permits and exploration and production authorisations that belonged to a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), the Central African nation's energy and hydrocarbons ministry said in a statement on Thursday. Exxon Mobil said in December that it had closed the sale of its operations Chad and Cameroon to London-listed Savannah Energy (SAVES.L) in a $407 million deal, but the Chadian government contested the agreement, saying the final terms were different from what Exxon Mobil had presented. It warned that it may ask courts to block Savannah's purchase of Exxon's assets in the country and take further steps to protect its interests. Exxon's assets included a 40% stake in Chad's Doba oil project, which comprises seven producing oilfields with combined output of 28,000 barrels per day (bpd). Exxon Mobil and Savannah Energy were not immediately available for comment.

☆ Chad agrees debt plan with creditors, including Glencore, minister says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Mahamat Ramadane | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

N'DJAMENA, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Chad has reached agreement on a plan with creditors, which includes Swiss commodities trader Glencore (GLEN.L), for its $3 billion external debt, which could pave the way for more IMF funding. It is also China's first participation in a finalised joint debt treatment deal with other creditors, a source close to the negotiations told Reuters. A third of the central African country's external debt of nearly $3 billion is commercial and concentrated in an oil-backed loan from Glencore. "We are pleased that all stakeholders have agreed on how Chad's external debt should be treated," a Glencore spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Chad's statement did not specify the terms of the debt relief agreement.

☆ Kidnapped French-Australian environmentalist freed in Chad, president says
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-30 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

N'DJAMENA, Oct 30 (Reuters) - A conservationist with dual French and Australian citizenship has been freed after he was taken hostage in Chad earlier this week, interim President Mahamat Idriss Deby said on Sunday. The man, who manages an oryx park on behalf of a conservation group, was kidnapped by unknown individuals in the northeastern Wadi Fira province on Friday. Deby announced his release on Twitter without providing any details on how it was achieved. "I am delighted with this happy ending," he said. Reporting by Mahamat Ramadane Additional reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris Writing by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Barbara LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Hundreds flee massive flooding in Chad capital
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

N'DJAMENA, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Hundreds of inhabitants of Chad's capital N'Djamena have fled their homes due to massive flooding that has hit since Thursday, leaving parts of the city navigable only by boat. "I drove the children to school this morning and on my return our house was completely flooded with river water. In one area women have built an emergency camp out of thin wooden branches and cloth to provide shelter for their families. Floods are not uncommon during the central African country's rainy season, which usually runs from May to October in its southern regions. But this year the rains came early and were the heaviest in decades, quickly overwhelming drainage channels and waterways.

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