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French troops who have been fighting Islamist militants in Burkina Faso will have to leave the West African nation, the country’s communications minister said Monday, dealing another blow to Europe’s presence in a region where Russia’s influence is growing. The decision by the government in Ouagadougou to abandon its military alliance with its former colonial power comes five months after France completed its withdrawal from neighboring Mali, which in 2021 hired the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group to support its war against jihadists affiliated with al Qaeda and Islamic State.

SAN LUIS, Ecuador—Built near a spewing volcano, it was the biggest infrastructure project ever in this country, a concrete colossus bankrolled by Chinese cash and so important to Beijing that China’s leader, Xi Jinping , spoke at the 2016 inauguration. Today, thousands of cracks have emerged in the $2.7 billion Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, government engineers said, raising concerns that Ecuador’s biggest source of power could break down. At the same time, the Coca River’s mountainous slopes are eroding, threatening to damage the dam.

☆ Russian Ship’s Secretive South Africa Stop Prompts U.S. Questions
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Gabriele Steinhauser | Benoit Faucon | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Lady R last month at South Africa’s largest naval base, where according to witnesses a crane moved cargo off and onto the merchant vessel. JOHANNESBURG—A Russian merchant ship whose owner has allegedly carried weapons for the Kremlin turned off its transponder last month before surreptitiously docking at South Africa’s largest naval base, where it delivered and loaded unidentified cargoes, according to witnesses and a senior U.S. official. South Africa has declined to say what the ship was carrying or what was loaded onto it at the Simon’s Town navy base. The country’s defense minister shrugged off U.S. concerns, saying Washington “threatens Africa, not just South Africa, of having anything that is even smelling of Russia.”

☆ South African President Ramaphosa Is Re-Elected as Party Leader
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Gabriele Steinhauser | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

JOHANNESBURG—South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was resoundingly re-elected as the leader of the ruling African National Congress on Monday, shrugging off a parliamentary investigation that found he may have violated the country’s constitution, as well as a forceful challenge by allies of his disgraced predecessor. Mr. Ramaphosa, who has been president of Africa’s most developed economy since 2018, beat his former health minister, Zweli Mkhize, gaining 2,476 votes out of 4,384 cast at the ANC’s elective conference that sets the party’s direction for the coming five years. Perhaps more important, officials backed by Mr. Ramaphosa won four out of the other six positions in the party’s leadership team, giving him a stronger hand in picking his cabinet and pushing through his chosen economic policies.

☆ Global Poor Lose Services as Developing Countries Face Higher Debt Payments
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Gabriele Steinhauser | Alexander Saeedy | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Pakistani cities like Karachi suffered rolling power outages this summer after the government cut energy imports to preserve dollars for debt payments. Pakistan turns the power off for up to six hours a day across the country. Ghana’s government has frozen payments to contractors, stalling road construction and prompting schools to warn they may have to stop serving student lunches. El Salvador is limiting hospital services and programs for the elderly. Across much of the developing world, cash-strapped governments are having to cut spending and freeze investments so they can pay creditors, as the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes drive up borrowing costs.

☆ Plans to Shut Down Coal Face Headwinds as South Africa Says It Needs More Cash
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Gabriele Steinhauser | Ed Ballard | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

JOHANNESBURG—A group of rich countries plans this week to announce a deal to help Indonesia pay for a transition away from coal, part of a series of moves governments are trying to finalize during the past week of a United Nations summit on global warming in Egypt. But the newly announced terms of a similar agreement, reached last year with South Africa, have attracted criticism from several of the country’s politicians, including its president, for burdening the country with more debt and containing too few outright grants.

At least 100 people died when two car bombs tore through a busy Mogadishu intersection on Saturday, Somalia’s president said Sunday after visiting the site of the attack, the same place where the largest terrorist attack in the country’s history killed more than 500 people almost exactly five years ago. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said at least 300 people were hurt in Saturday’s twin bombings, which he blamed on the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab group that has been trying to overthrow Somalia’s U.S.-backed government for more than a decade and a half. He said the number of victims was likely to increase as rescue workers continued to sift through the rubble. Mogadishu hospitals urged the public to donate blood to help treat the injured, and anxious relatives were frantically searching for their missing loved ones.

South Africa will allow sanctioned Russian steel magnate Alexey Mordashov to pull his superyacht into Cape Town, making it the latest port stop on a controversy-laden voyage that shows the limits of Western sanctions. The journey of the 465-foot Nord—from the Seychelles to Vladivostok in Russia, Hong Kong and now en route to Cape Town—has become a closely watched barometer for the effectiveness of U.S. and European sanctions on its owner, Mr. Mordashov, one of Russia’s richest men and the largest shareholder of Severstal PAO, among the world’s biggest steelmakers.

Few African regions have the nerve to say no to China. Independence-minded Somaliland is one. “We’re not going to allow anyone to dictate who we can have a relationship with,” said its foreign minister.

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