The news in the past week was dominated by activity in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ugandan forces last week crossed the country’s western border to go into the DRC. This comes after Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni announced recently that terrorists had invited the Ugandan forces and they were ready to hunt them down from anywhere. The pronouncement followed bombings in the Uganda Capital Kampala on November 16. The government blamed a militant Islamist rebel group called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which was founded in Uganda but was then forced into DR Congo. It says it is now part of the ‘Islamic State’ group.
Last Tuesday, the Ugandan army confirmed that it had carried out airstrikes on ADF targets across the border. Then on Wednesday hundreds of Ugandan troops were seen crossing into DR Congo. The Congolese government said it had invited its neighbour’s armed forces into the country as the ADF is one of many armed groups wreaking havoc in the east of the country. The ADF, flushed out of Uganda in the early 2000s, has been attacking and looting Congolese villages, killing people and forcefully recruiting children for at least the last decade.
In the same week, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) officially handed over crucial sites to Dott Services Limited, a company contracted by the Government of Uganda to construct the long – awaited 223-kilometer road network that will open the country’s eastern region to cross border trade with Uganda. The project is branded as the Regional Connectivity Roads Project and also known as ‘DRC Roads Project.’
The handover ceremony took place in two DRC cities of Beni and Goma in the North Kivu Province on Friday, December 4th 2021.
The two ceremonies were witnessed by two delegations from Uganda and DRC, plus the Dott Services Limited leadership, a Ugandan construction firm which won the tender to build the roads.
The Ugandan delegation was led by the Minister of Works and Transport Gen. Katumba Wamala. The DRC delegation was led by the DRC Minister for Infrastructure and Public Works Mr. Alexi Gisaro Muvunyi.
The handover of the sites came on the heels of a visit to the company’s Inland Custom Deports (ICD) at Namanve Industrial Park in Uganda on Wednesday last week by the steering committee of nine members composed of technical officials from DRC, Uganda and Dott which was set up to fast track the road construction project. Following the visit, the committee was satisfied that the company was ready for the job following its display of relevant equipment and technical capacity.
In Ethiopia, the much hyped march onto Addis Ababa by rebel Tigrayan fighters seems to be dying down in the media. Ethiopia’s Government announced that it had recaptured two strategic towns from rebel fighters, the latest in a rapid series of battlefield victories claimed by forces loyal to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
The announcement marks another dramatic twist in the 13-month-old conflict where thousands of people have died. The government’s communications service said on Twitter that Dessie and Kombolcha had been ‘freed by the joint gallant security forces’ that had also taken control of several other towns on the eastern front. The two cities, which lie in the Amhara region on a highway about 400 kilometres (250 miles) northeast of the capital Addis Ababa, were reportedly taken by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) at the end of October. It was feared then that that the TPLF and its ally, the Oromo Liberation Army, would march on the capital, leading alarmed foreign governments to urge their citizens to leave the country as soon as possible.
Meanwhile Uganda’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic last week on Sunday got a new boost as the Minister of Health, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng received 3,050,400 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines donated by the Government of Germany through the COVAX facility under the dose sharing arrangement. The Germany Ambassador to Uganda Matthias Schauer Botschafter, who handed over the vaccines indicated that additional 2.4 million doses of the same vaccine will arrive next week on 9th December, 2021. Dr Aceng indicated that the J&J vaccines will be deployed in the hard-to-reach areas during the ongoing campaign regional accelerated mass vaccination campaigns.
Travel apartheid, wicked and unfair instruments of immigration control are words that have been used to describe the United Kingdom’s restrictions on travelers from African countries over the Omicron Covid-19 variant. The UK last week made Nigeria the 11th country on the red list of international travel, sparking criticism from across the globe.
Nigeria has criticised the UK’s travel restrictions after it was placed on the red list amid fears over the Omicron Covid-19 variant. UN Secretary General António Guterres used the term “travel apartheid” on Wednesday, telling reporters in New York that bans “are not only deeply unfair and punitive, they are ineffective”.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said the same week that blanket travel bans will not stop the spread of variants, and can potentially discourage countries from reporting and sharing important data.
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo also condemned the restrictions on African countries, describing them at a press conference last week as “instruments of immigration control”.
“What is expected is a global approach, not selective,” Sarafa Tunji Isola, Nigeria’s High Commissioner to the UK, told the BBC on Monday.
He also echoed comments made by the UN’s chief, who described restrictions imposed on some southern African countries as “travel apartheid”.
Travelers arriving from Nigeria and the other countries (all of them in Africa) are required to enter hotel quarantine – at their own expense – and isolate for 10 days. The only people allowed to enter the UK from these countries are UK or Irish nationals, or UK residents. They will have to pay for and self-isolate in a pre-booked government-approved hotel for 10 days. “The travel ban is apartheid in the sense that we are not dealing with an endemic,” Mr Isola told the Today programme. “We are dealing with a pandemic. Whenever we have a challenge there must be collaboration.”
The BBC has reported that Nigerians in the UK have expressed shock at the new restrictions. Olufemi Awokoya told the BBC he was trying to raise money for his wife’s quarantine, as she is due to return from a trip to attend her mother’s memorial service.
“She is being punished and our household is put in financial hardship. She is an NHS worker and tripled-jabbed, and we can’t afford the £2,280 ($3,024) hotel bill,” he said. “I think the government’s decision… is wicked, unfair and a heavy financial burden.”
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