Month: January 2023

France said on Thursday that it was recalling its ambassador from Burkina Faso, a day after agreeing to demands from the ruling junta to pull out troops from the former French colony in Africa’s Sahel region.

“In the context of the latest developments in Burkina Faso, we have decided to recall our ambassador to Paris for consultations on the state and perspectives of our bilateral relations,” the foreign ministry said.

Burkina on Monday said it had asked France to withdraw within a month its contingent of some 400 troops currently stationed in the country and on Wednesday Paris agreed to do so.

It marked the latest scaling down of France’s military presence in Africa after the junta in neighbouring Mali also insisted French troops leave and President Emmanuel Macron drew the curtain on the over decade-long anti-jihadist mission.

Both Mali and Burkina Faso fell out with Paris after a military coup brought a junta to power and the French presence became increasingly unpopular among the public.

Jihadist activity continues in the region while concern grows over the increasing influence of Russia, in particular through the presence of mercenaries from the Wagner Group run by an ally of President Vladimir Putin.

Burkina is one of the poorest and most volatile in Africa.

Thousands of troops, police and civilians have been killed and around two million people have fled their homes since jihadists launched an insurgency from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

More than a third of the country lies beyond the control of the government, and frustration within the army at the mounting toll triggered two coups last year.

From dairy farms unable to keep milk refrigerated, to chickens suffocating en masse as ventilators fall idle, an energy crisis is taking a heavy toll on South Africa’s food sector, industry groups said.

Record power cuts have caused shortages of some staples, threatening price rises that could make some popular items too expensive for poor families, agricultural industry body Agri-SA said.

“The affordability of food is going to be a challenge particularly to the lower income household, especially with chicken which is one of the cheapest protein staples in the country,” Agri-SA’s chief economist, Kulani Siweya, said.

Scheduled blackouts, known as load-shedding, have burdened Africa’s most industrialised economy for years, with state-owned energy firm Eskom failing to keep pace with demand and maintain its ageing coal power infrastructure.

But the outages reached new extremes over the past 12 months.

Poultry farmer Herman Du Preez, said at least 40,000 of his chickens were asphyxiated last week with disruptions in power supply causing the farm’s ventilation system to stop working.

“It wasn’t a pretty sight to see how much money we lost due to the fact that Eskom is so unreliable,” Du Preez said on Monday at his farm in the North West province.

Power cuts have also slowed down operations at slaughter houses, triggering chicken “shortages”, said Izaak Breitenbach, general manager of the South African Poultry Association.

“The milk industry is also having challenges with processing their milk and the load shedding does impede on their cold storage facilities,” added Siweya of Agri-SA.

In a Monday newsletter, president Cyril Ramaphosa said he was aware of the “farmers that are unable to keep their produce fresh” as a result of blackouts.

But he offered no promise of ending the scheduled cuts, anytime soon.

“We must be realistic about our challenges and about what it is going to take to fix them. While we all desperately want to, we cannot end load shedding overnight,” he wrote.

South Africa’s record power cuts are causing shortages of some staples,and  threatening price rises that could make some popular items too expensive for poor families.