Month: September 2026

On 17 May 2025, on the grounds of the former Conseil de l’Entente in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso inaugurated with considerable pomp the mausoleum of Thomas Sankara and his twelve companions. The ceremony, held under the patronage of Captain Ibrahim Traoré and led by Prime Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo, drew the Prime Ministers of Senegal, Ousmane Sonko, and of Chad, Allah-Maye Halina, alongside representatives of the Alliance of Sahel States and numerous pan-African figures from several continents. Twenty-one cannon shots rang out. Solemn speeches, revolutionary symbols, and an eye-shaped architectural…

The number that doesn’t add up What happens when a government celebrates a statistic that most of its citizens have never experienced? That is the dilemma facing Burkina Faso, where the transitional authorities have put forward a theoretical score of 85.38% for administrative performance in 2025. It is a figure that raises one uncomfortable question: can a state be run on paper while its people queue in vain? For ordinary Burkinabè, daily life means growing hardship and limited access to basic services. Yet the executive has decided to pat itself…

A helicopter gunship belonging to the Algerian air force opened fire on an artisanal gold-mining camp sitting astride the Niger-Algeria frontier, killing at least 48 civilians. The strike was carried out in full daylight, and the toll has left communities across this remote Saharan corridor in shock. In Niger itself, the reaction has been even more striking than the attack: the ruling military junta has yet to utter a single public word about it. Broad daylight over the goldfields: how the raid unfolded The aircraft appeared without warning over a…

In Burkina Faso, the figure of Thomas Sankara has long since ceased to be a mere chapter of national history. It now occupies a central place in the political narrative advanced by Ibrahim Traoré’s administration. Behind the official tributes, the military ceremonies and the construction of a mausoleum, one question keeps resurfacing: is the present leadership gradually appropriating Sankara’s image in order to consolidate its own legitimacy? The parallel is not merely a matter of outside interpretation. It is visible in the government’s own communication. A legacy claimed by the…

Gunfire and thick black smoke rolled across the outskirts of Gao in the early hours of Tuesday 15 september 2026, as fighters from the russian private militia Africa Corps swept through the settlements that hug the Niger river. By the time the shooting stopped, 167 civilians had been summarily executed and more than 127 motorbikes had been rounded up and set alight. For the riverside communities, this is the most brutal episode yet in a long slide into lawlessness. A dawn assault on the banks of the Niger The sun…

A showcase project that turned into an industrial wreck Sold to the public as the definitive proof that Niger had finally taken back control of its own resources, the transfer of the Société des mines de l’Aïr (Somaïr) into exclusively national hands has produced a very different outcome than the one promised from the podium. The economic note issued by the finance ministry lays out the damage in cold figures: uranium output tumbled by 83.3% during the first quarter of 2026, landing at a skeletal 31.2 tonnes, when the previous…

Eighteen months after the 26 July 2023 putsch, the patriotic showcase built by Niger’s military leadership is visibly splintering. Behind the sovereignist speeches and the parades staged by the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Homeland (CNSP), conditions on the ground describe something else entirely. Niger’s armed forces are not merely buckling under suffocating security pressure along the borders — they are crumbling from the inside. The scale of desertion now stands as the clearest proof that General Abdourahamane Tiani has lost the confidence of a large share of…