China has offered to provide additional military aid and training to African countries as it seeks to strengthen its security ties in the face of multiple challenges on the continent. President Xi Jinping made this offer—which includes 1 billion yuan ($140.5 million) in military aid and training for 6,000 soldiers and 1,000 police officers—during a speech marking the opening of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit on Thursday, September 5. Beijing will also invite 500 young military officers to China to participate in exercises and patrols with their African counterparts and assist in demining efforts, a major concern for some countries due to past and ongoing conflicts.
Details of the package and the countries that will benefit have not yet been announced, but the commitment contained more specifics than the one made at a previous summit in 2021, which included an offer to participate in security projects and joint training exercises on counterterrorism and peacekeeping. However, unlike in 2021, Xi did not mention efforts to control the spread of small arms.
China has intensified its military engagement with African countries in recent years as it competes for influence with the United States. Last year, its military diplomacy ranked Africa second only to Southeast Asia in terms of the number of "high-level" meetings, according to the Asia Society Policy Institute think tank. In recent months, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has participated in a series of exercises with African countries, including an anti-terrorism exercise with Tanzania and Mozambique last month.
China also took part in a naval exercise with Russia and South Africa earlier this year, which drew particular scrutiny due to South Africa's role as a strategic partner of the United States. China has long been a major destination for African military training, including for hundreds of senior commanders trained in PLA institutions. It was also the largest supplier of arms to sub-Saharan Africa between 2019 and 2023, providing 19% of total arms imports and narrowly surpassing Russia, which had long held the top spot and accounted for 17% of imports during this period, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. In addition to small arms, China is a major supplier of equipment such as drones, tanks, and armoured vehicles.
China's long-term focus on Africa means it does not view the continent solely as "a source of strategic resources," but it is also "trying to build political relationships and listen to the views and interests of African elites that were not a top priority for most Western countries." China's influence also has a security dimension, reflected in its military aid. Only now is the West seriously attempting to counter China’s influence by listening to Africa’s voice... The question is whether such efforts are too little, too late. China has provided some form of military aid to nearly every country on the continent as it seeks to strengthen ties and protect its economic interests.
At the end of August 2024, the PLA donated a new set of equipment—mainly howitzers and their accessories—to Benin, which has seen an increase in militant attacks as part of the broader Islamist insurgency across West Africa. Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, is also home to China's first overseas naval base, and PLA warships regularly participate in anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia.
Military support to Africa could be part of Beijing’s use of the Belt and Road Initiative to gain greater control and presence in geostrategically important regions. Defence News Army
The initiative will be launched at the first knife crime summit aimed at addressing what the prime minister has called a national crisis
LUTHER STAR Idris Elba will join Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper at the first annual knife crime summit today (Monday September 9) to launch a new coalition aimed at tackling an issue that has been described as a ‘national crisis’.
The coalition, called the Coalition to Tackle Knife Crime, will involve campaign groups, families affected by knife crime, young people, as well as Elba’s Hope Foundation.
Solutions
It will collaborate with tech companies, sports organisations, the NHS, and the police with the aim of understanding the root causes of knife crime and developing solutions.
The government has said it hopes the coalition can help halve knife crime within the next decade.
Ahead of today’s summit, Elba expressed his support for the initiative as well as emphasising the need for long-term solutions that empower communities.
“We need to tackle the root causes of knife crime, not just the symptoms” said Elba. “The coalition is a positive step toward rehabilitating our communities from the inside out.”
Describing knife crime as a ‘national crisis, the prime minister will draw from his legal career as former Director of Public Prosecutions, where he witnessed its impact and reiterated the government’s promise to halve offences within a decade.
Devastating impact
Ahead of the meeting, he said: “As Director of Public Prosecutions, I saw firsthand the devastating impact that knife crime has on young people and their families. This is a national crisis that we will tackle head on.
“We will take this moment to come together as a country – politicians, families of victims, young people themselves, community leaders and tech companies – to halve knife crime and take back our streets.”
Ministers are working on steps to tighten regulations on dangerous weapons which includes banning ninja swords as well as strengthening laws on online knife sales.
Commander Stephen Clayman, the national policing lead for knife crime, is conducting a rapid review to understand how knives are sold and delivered to under-18s online, aiming to close legal loopholes.
He will report to the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper by the end of the year. Clayman has warned that knives are too easily accessible and hopes to collaborate with the government, retailers, and the third sector to bring long-term change.
10-year plan
The coalition’s launch marks the first step in the government’s 10-year plan to tackle knife crime, aiming to keep Britain’s streets safe and build on the Home Office’s Young Futures programme to prevent youth violence.
The summit follows meetings in June, where Elba and Sir Keir spoke with families of knife crime victims.
Pastor Lorraine Jones told Sir Keir and Elba at the meeting that she saw her son, Dwayne Simpson, killed with ‘one jab wound’ that ‘went straight through his heart’.
She said: “We want to be around the table with you, because we do have the answers right now. We’ve got patrols, Idris, volunteers that are patrolling before school and after school, because we haven’t got enough police officers.
“We haven’t got enough people in the community, we are desperate. And the most brutal thing is we’re saying it’s becoming the norm. We don’t want it to become the norm.”
The actor also met the King to discuss reducing youth violence through the King’s Trust. Having benefited from a Prince’s Trust grant as a teenager, Elba launched his own initiative, Don’t Stop Your Future, which is calling for an immediate ban on zombie knives. Source: Voice Online
George Wamae Chege, who was a Form 4 candidate during the Mpeketoni attack in 2014. [Maxwell Agwanda, Standard]
It was 8pm, June 15 2014.
Fifa World Cup had begun in Brazil. There was a match that the two teenagers desperately wanted to watch but because they were Form Four candidates they chose to sit that one out. They were day scholars and needed the school compound to study, then go back home to sleep.
As they were busy buried in their books, they heard a bang followed by sounds that were gunshots.
They had never heard gunshots before. They had never even seen a gun at close range. They grew up in a peaceful environment, the only security people they were familiar with were watchmen.
The gunshots were followed by loud screams and commotion. That is when it dawned on them that all was not well. They had to leave classes and run back home. It turned out to be a night of chaos.
The following morning bodies of neighbours and relatives lay all over with gunshot wounds and necks slit a clear sign they had been slaughtered.
That year, George Chege and John Munene were teenagers awaiting to sit their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams the following term.
‘I remember like it was yesterday. We were at school in evening studying because of KCSE, my school is a day school, we would go home, then come back in the evening to study then go back home to rest. When we heard gun shots at 8pm we were forced to vacate and we rushed back home,” said Munene
For Munene the following morning the results of the sins of the night were revealed. It was not an event anyone wants to remember. But its memory has refused to leave his mind.
“We woke up very early that day to come and see the aftermath of the attack. It was traumatizing, there were bodies allover, the bullets, fire. We lost some of our closest friends, closest relatives. It was during World Cup some students had gone to watch the game. I remember a former classmate his name was William he was killed that night,” said Munene
Everything changed. The peace they knew was bruised. “This place was very peaceful we were not used to seeing armored personnel, we were not used to seeing guns, the only people we knew were police officers. We did not know of KDF, Special units. But everything changed to seeing armored vehicles helicopters patrolling. Anytime we saw the vehicles we just wondered is there another attack. If you want to know how fresh that incident is in people minds, if people were to hear a gunshot right now, you would see how people would scatter,” Munene said
Chege was also in school studying for his national examinations. Around 8pm, the attackers arrived in a van carrying guns in boxes.
"It is a traumatizing story because we lost loved ones in the most brutal way. One of my neighbours and one of my uncles were slaughtered." said Chege adding "I don’t like remembering that story, my uncle was slaughtered like a goat his head and body were separated. The society change after that, we woke up and found bodies all over the place. I felt like I was losing my mind. It’s like the attack happened last night,”
John Munene,, who was a Form 4 candidate during the Mpeketoni attack in 2014. [Maxwell Agwanda, Standard]
Mpeketoni was a peaceful area, insecurity had never been a problem, but the attack opened a new form of fear that even after 10 years a small trigger can awaken the skeletons of that time.
After the attack they had to seek shelter at a school for security reasons.
“The whole community moved to a school, while there the police provided security. One day they opened the gate and they stood in one line, we were so scared and thought the attackers were back. We all ran through the barbed wire,” said Chege
That year candidates who sat for national exams in the area did not perform as they had expected. Since the attackers targeted men, boys were forced to wear dresses to protect themselves.
“They were scary times. Since they targeted men we had to wear dresses, so that if the attackers came they would think that we were girls. It was not a good place to be.
Moses Njoroge, an elder in Mpeketoni said they had to find a way of saving their boys from imminent death.
“The situation was so bad that in the evening we had to dress our boys in dresses just to protect them,”
Njoroge said after the attack he went to the morgue to look for one of his friends and the images of what he saw remain fresh in his mind to this day.
“Woii woiii! They were about 62 bodies in that mortuary, lying on the ground because the numbers were overwhelming" Said Njoroge "Bullets on the head, because most were close range shots and others cut in the necks and separated from bodies. It was sad,” he said.
Apart from the psychological trauma the attack brought a huge rift in the community. A people that would live in peace and harmony now feared each other. They could not sleep at night and were forced to stay alert. The killings brought a lot of hatred amongst the people where they felt one community was after the other community.
"We had a lot of fear, it reached a point where we scared of some vehicles, because the attackers would stop a vehicle and attack Christian Men. There was rift between the Christian and the Muslim. Because the target was male Christians,” said Njoroge
Mohammed Ali, a former teacher, had a movie shop that showed matches during the World Cup season. The night of the attack since it was during the World Cup season, his shop had more than 200 people.
At around 8pm he was called by security officers that there was an attack and he should warn his customers. He went and told his customers that there was an attack but they did not believe him, he said
They walked out to the main road and that is when they saw a vehicle of men chanting “Allah Wakbar” "When it got closer a man walked out with a gun and fired shots. Everything broke lose. One of my customers called Gitau came on a motorbike telling me to run, he had gunshot wounds. Almost 60 people followed me to my house,” said Mohammed
From his house, they could hear the attackers chanting and singing. They later burned down the shop and nearby buildings and resumed shooting.
“There was a nearby guest house called Mama Monica, they took out all the guests and started slaughtering the men. Women and children were left. It was a very traumatic night, I don’t even want to recall. When they were done, they started singing again and then left at around 2am. From 8pm to 2pm they did a lot of damage,” Mohammed said.
Mohammed faced backlash from his community, since the attackers had targeted Christians and he was Muslim. Most christians that had been affected said his religion killed members of the other. Mohamed once walked into a friends hotel and they refused to serve him saying he was part of the attackers.
"It really affected me emotionally and economically. We had to move to my sisters house in Malindi,” said Mohammed
After a few years in Malindi Mohammed decided to go back and rebuild himself. He had lived in Mpeketoni since 1987, and that is the home he knew. He is now rebuilding his shop and tells people that Mpeketoni has healed.
A health specialist Junior F. Mukudi, describes the psychological effects that terror attack has on affected people and society.
“ They develop what we call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD),there’s fear of such attack might happen again,” said Mukudi
Mukudi adds that terror effects can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms
“What helps one person might not help the other. The healthy mechanism involves going for therapy, and social groups. Unhealthy coping mechanism can involve self-harm, or engaging in unhealthy sexual behavior,” he said
According to Director Disaster management in Lamu County, Shee Kupi, efforts have been made to heal society following the incident.
“From the time the attacks happened and people moved. We started sensitizing the community, on matters peace and safety. Lamu is a tourist destination and right now the safety is back. We came up with Lamu County Peace Building and Conflict Management Policy, that has involved the whole community,” said Shee Kupi
Kupi adds that they have a disaster docket called Emergency Operation Center that deals with drought, floods, fires. The community is sensitized on the disasters and how to manage.
Rahfa Mohammed the Chairperson of Lamu Women Alliance, said different groups have been sensitizing the community on ways to improve security, peace and improve tourism.
“We’ve had programs that enlighten our children and prevent them from joining terrorist groups,” said Mohammed
The Mpeketoni attack caused a huge rift between religions. Area priest Father, Evangelos Thiani said the attack brought a disconnect among communities in the area.
“Inter religious dialogue is important. It is for the religious leaders to talk to each other, see how they used to live before, what brought the attack, why it happened. For sure radicalization was involved and it is normal people who were influence. When leaders join hands then the community comes together,” said Thiani
Thiani said sensitization should be used to rebuild what was lost.
“Religion can be used for good or for bad, depending on who is using it. If you look at the Muslim and Christian religions all are about peace, cohesion, love, people working together. The attack took everything to square zero,” he said
A muslim cleric Sheikh Abubakar Bini said it is paramount for religious leaders to preach peace.
“The attackers hid the Muslim religion, and it is up to us as Muslim leaders to sensitize the community to make sure such groups are not encouraged. Religious leaders should meet and plan ways to sensitize the masses,” said Sheikh Bini. By Rosa Agutu, The Standard
After the village of Bogoro, in the Ituri region of north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, our correspondent went to Bunia to interview other beneficiaries of the International Criminal Court’s Trust Fund for Victims. These are victims of Thomas Lubanga, the other Congolese militia commander convicted by the ICC. Their experience is different from that of Katanga’s victims, and the reparations programme there is not yet over.
The Bogoro massacres were committed in February 2003 against a backdrop of inter-ethnic violence between Lendu and Hema in the province of Ituri, north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Germain Katanga’s militia, the Force de résistance patriotique de l’Ituri (FRPI), supported by the Lendu, went on a punitive expedition against Thomas Lubanga’s militia, the Union des patriotes congolais/réconciliation et paix, which had set up a base in that village inhabited mainly by Hema.
But before convicting Katanga in 2014 of crimes against humanity and war crimes, the International Criminal Court (ICC) convicted Lubanga in 2012 of recruiting child soldiers. And at the end of 2017, the judges set Lubanga’s collective reparations obligation at $10 million. As Lubanga was declared indigent, the court ordered the ICC Trust Fund for Victims to implement these reparations for 2,500 victims, including 2,100 direct victims (former child soldiers) and 400 indirect victims (parents and close relatives).
Unlike the reparations in the Katanga case, which were implemented by the Fund itself, those in Lubanga’s were carried out by organisations deployed in Ituri. The woman we will identify by the initials NND for security reasons is a former child soldier who was forcibly recruited in 2002 in Nyangarayi, a village in the neighbouring territory of Djugu, when she was selling bananas to help her mother feed her family. Barely 12 at the time, she was raped, conscripted and sent to fight in Lubanga’s UPC.
“This rape fills me with emotion every time I remember it and makes me want vengeance. They stole my virginity and gave me gynaecological problems,” she told Justice Info in Bunia, the capital of Ituri, where we met her in July.
The limitations of business support
NND fought in the UPC for a year and, according to witnesses, served as an escort girl to Lubanga, then to Bosco Ntaganda, another Congolese warlord convicted by the ICC. She managed to escape when the rival Lendu militia came to attack the UPC in Nyangarayi, enabling the young girl as she was then to join her family in Bunia before finding refuge in Beni, in North Kivu. “In Beni, people who had seen me going around as an escort girl in Lubanga’s entourage alerted the security services, who threw me in prison, calling me a spy for the Ituri militia. When I was less than 15 years old, I spent three days in prison,” says this young woman who went all the way to The Hague to testify against Lubanga.
Since 2021, NND has been one of the 2,500 beneficiaries of collective reparations linked to the Lubanga case. Under the auspices of the Italian NGO Coopération Internationale (COOPI), which is implementing the programme, NND has received $850 in support for an income-generating activity (IGA) that has enabled her to open a business selling food (beans and rice) and drinks. “When we started up, we had too many expenses. Out of the $850, we had to pay rent, electricity and various state taxes. The business seemed to be doing well, but the capital was insignificant in the face of the difficulties.
It wasn’t enough to feed you or clothe you. You had to struggle to survive,” she recounts. “We were promised support, but there was no financial backing, so it was worthless. I was forced to sell my items before my rent ran out,” she continues as she welcomes us into her former shop, converted into a dormitory while waiting for her landlord to reimburse her for remaining months.
In addition to the IGA support, NND has also received medical treatment for a fracture she sustained while fleeing the violence, as well as educational support. The reparations programme is financing further education for this former child soldier, who fears unemployment in a country where finding employment is a headache.
Upar Waron is another former child soldier who lost his older brother and father in the ethnic violence in Ituri. He benefited from education and IGA support that helped him finance his medical studies in Bunia. Although the 33-year-old has now finished his studies, he faces a new obstacle. “All the support invested is in danger of being wasted, because I’m struggling to find the money to register with the Order, which is a prerequisite for working as a doctor. The pharmacy that the Fund helped me to open only worked for five months because I had to sell it to finance the rest of the costs not covered by the Fund: they only agreed to pay us 400 dollars a year, whereas we need more than 1,000 dollars for the final year alone,” he explains.
In the Katanga case, some beneficiaries told us that the Fund agreed to support the schooling of children or relatives of the victims who had reached school age. But in the Lubanga case, the situation seems different. “Now they are insisting that they will only provide university education for the victims. But I’m already the father of a whole family, I have children, and what concerns me is feeding them rather than going back to university. Couldn’t they rather finance university studies for our children? We are no longer young nor have the time.
The trials took a long time and now reparations are available, but we’re no longer in a position to study,” explains Bienvenu Baraka, who is in his late thirties and served as a child soldier from the age of 12. During our visit to Bunia, Bienvenu confirmed that he had also received $850 in aid for an IGA, training in plumbing and physical care. “In my six months as a child soldier, I fought in Katoto, Iga Barrière and Komanda. It was on the Komanda front that I fell into a gold mine. I suffered a fracture that kept me in pain for more than ten years. Thanks to the Fund, which has given me treatment, I now have prostheses,” he says with satisfaction.
Ruth’s satisfaction
Like Baraka in Bunia, Ruth Biangire, whom we met in Bogoro, is one of the victims of Lubanga who is delighted to have been given something to rebuild her life. She also received $850, which enabled her to start a bean business, sell fuel and open a butcher’s shop in this cattle-breeding village. “I've managed to diversify my sources of income. Every week, I’m able to slaughter a cow, and every day I can sell 600 litres of fuel (1 litre costs 1.5 dollars). My income helps me to meet my needs properly,” says this satisfied young woman as we pass her sitting on an “azunu”, a seat made from pieces of wood, behind the display of her fuel bottles on the road near Bogoro’s main crossroads.
David Sabiti Mugeni, chief of Babiase, of which Bogoro is the capital, says that the reparations have helped many. “Some may say that the reparations are not proportional to the damage suffered, but they should be pleased that they have at least helped many beneficiaries. Had it not been for the reparations, many would be living as beggars. Reparations can’t cover everything, the important thing is to manage the little you have received well,” says this traditional leader.
What the victims in the Lubanga case, for whom the ICC Reparations Fund programme is due to end in 2026, do not know is whether they will receive the symbolic individual allowance of $250 that was allocated to all Katanga victims.
Women left without care and victims ignored
“My big problem, like that of many women, is gynaecological care,” continues NND. “At the hospital, I was told that the rape I suffered during the war had reduced my chances of giving birth. The same is true for several women who have endured the same situation. But when we ask the people supporting us to provide us with appropriate gynaecological care, they say they have limited resources, even though this is the most important need for us women. Putting this aside troubles us. We don’t feel healed.”
Bienvenu Baraka and Upar Warom are concerned about former comrades with whom they fought in the UPC militia who have received no assistance from the reparations programme. “We need to think about those who have not been identified as victims.
I know two of my former comrades in the UPC who have never got anything, even though we endured the same ordeal,” says Warom. “My two brothers were also in the movement, but the identification took place while they were away digging for gold, far from Bunia,” says Baraka. “So they missed the opportunity to benefit from the reparations. I also know people who were identified to benefit from reparations but whose names were never sent to Bunia.”
In Bogoro, in the Katanga case, local notable Etienne Kagwahabi told us that identification had been carried out while many were still refugees in Uganda. “For the sake of social peace, the court should look into ways of including all these victims who have been left out in the cold,” he says.
Other victims left out are those considered undeserving because they suffered crimes that were not considered by the ICC judges. This is the case of Maki Tchetchu Olivier, who was severely tortured while trying to defend his sister, NND. He met us while we were interviewing her. “When they took my sister from Nyangarayi, I chased them. They also arrested me and took us to Rwampara [UPC headquarters],” he says.
“They isolated my sister in a house where I heard her screaming as she was still being raped. While I was running to the house to try and help her, they took me and tortured me. I was tied up for two days, full of blood. I was taken to a hospital where I spent three months in a coma. Today, I have prostheses in my arms. I also suffered, but I’ve never understood why I was left out of the reparation process for crimes that ruined my life.”
“An apology would be enough”
NND claims they were assured in The Hague that on their return to Ituri, Katanga and Lubanga would ask the victims for forgiveness for the harm they caused. But since the two former warlords’ return to Ituri in May 2020 after their surprise release in Kinshasa as part of a pacification move, “they have never asked us for forgiveness”, she says.
“I get angry whenever their names are mentioned. They ruined my life, they stole my childhood,” says NND. “I didn’t have a normal school education. They destroyed my virginity, my fertility.” But, she adds, “for me, an apology would be enough”.
NND and her brother Olivier explain that the violence of the early 2000s destroyed the social fabric in Ituri and that, in their view, real dialogue is needed to reconcile the many families that have been torn apart. “We are Lendu, but I served as an escort girl for a Hema [Lubanga]. This has never been accepted by members of my family, who still believe that my father sent his daughter to fight with the Hema to kill her Lendu brothers. But no, I was conscripted by force. At home in our village, in Djugu, our family do not visit us because they still think we served the opposing camp,” says NND, tears in her eyes.
In the end, everyone would probably agree with Mrs. Tibelio, in Bogoro, who believes that “the best reparation is peace, because if there is peace, we will be able to develop all our activities, including those supported by the ICC.” ByClaude Sengenya, Justice.info
Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan has denounced the brutal killing of a senior member of the main opposition party Chadema, who was kidnapped, beaten and doused with acid.
On Friday, Mohamed Ali Kibao, 69, was forced off a bus by suspected security agents while travelling from the country's biggest city, Dar es Salaam, to his hometown Tanga. His body was found in Ununio, the waterfront district of Dar es Salaam, local media reported.
The post-mortem found that Mr Kibao had been “severely beaten and had acid poured on his face,” party chairman Freeman Mbowe told AFP.
President Samia condemned the “brutal acts” and called for an investigation into the murder.
“I have ordered the investigation agencies to bring me detailed information about this terrible incident and others like this as soon as possible,” she said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Our country is a democracy, and every citizen has the right to live,” she added.
Mr Kibao's killing comes amid concern by the opposition and rights groups of a clampdown on political activity.
“We cannot allow our people to continue disappearing or being killed like this. The lives of Chadema leaders are currently at risk,” Mr Mbowe told AFP.
Mr Kibao was a retired military intelligence officer and joined Chadema in 2008. He will be buried on Monday in the Darigube district of Tanga city.
The killing of Mr Kibao has sparked widespread condemnation across Tanzania, with many asking the government to take action over reports of several other people being abducted and killed.
Many people fear Tanzania could be returning to the repressive rule of late President John Magufuli, despite his successor Ms Samia lifting a ban on opposition gatherings and promising to restore competitive politics.
In August, Human Rights Watch said the increase in arrests of opposition activists was a "bad sign" with the 2025 presidential elections around the corner. By Alfred Lasteck, BBC
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