Africa

On the eve of the 2025 AFCON, football’s governing body in Africa create new four-year cycle and form a Nations League.

African football is getting a major shake-up with the creation of the African Nations League and conversion of the biennial Africa Cup of Nations to a four-year cycle.

Patrice Motsepe, the president of the Confederation of African Football, announced the changes Saturday during his news conference before the 2025 Africa Cup hosted by Morocco.

Motsepe said that the 2027 Africa Cup, to be hosted by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, will go ahead as planned and that the following edition – originally scheduled for 2029 – will be moved forward to take place in 2028. The next Africa Cup after that will be in 2032.

This would allow the first African Nations League to take place in 2029. Motsepe said it would involve each of the continent’s 54 members, divided into four geographical zones, with games in September and October before the finals are held in November.

“What is new is that … in Africa there’s going to be a competition every year where the best African players who play in Europe and worldwide will be with us on the continent,” Motsepe said.

CAF officials did not immediately specify if the African Nations League will be held on a biennial or annual basis.

Meanwhile, Caf has increased the prize money for the winners of Afcon from $7m (£5.2m) to $10m (£7.5m).

The surprise announcement about the future of Afcon was made by Motsepe after a meeting of Caf’s executive committee in Morocco before the start of the 2025 finals in Rabat on Sunday.

The biennial hosting of Afcon has long caused issues with the football calendar, with the vast majority of recent tournaments held midway through the European club season.

However, Caf remained committed to scheduling the tournament every two years – not least as it needs the revenue raised from the finals to reinvest in the game on the continent.

Caf had made a resolution for Afcon to be held in a June-July slot from 2019 onwards and began its new plan in Egypt that year.

But the Covid-19 pandemic and weather conditions in host nations in Central and West Africa meant the 2021 and 2023 editions in Cameroon and Ivory Coast respectively were staged in January and February instead.

Fifa’s expanded 32-team Club World Cup was held in June and July this year, forcing Caf to opt for mid-season dates once again.

As a result this year’s Afcon in Morocco will take place over Christmas and the New Year for the first time, with the final on 18 January.

The dates for the finals in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in 2027 are yet to be announced, and that will be swiftly followed by another Afcon in 2028 – with the hosts of that edition yet to be decided.

After that, the continent’s biggest tournament will become a quadrennial tournament taking place in the same year as the European Championships.

Motsepe said the decision had been made in conjunction with Fifa president Gianni Infantino and the world governing body’s general secretary Mattias Grafstrom – and that Caf “have to compromise”.

A shell company with Israeli ties exploited Palestinians desperate to flee the ongoing war in Gaza, charging them large sums of money to covertly exit the country in what may be an official plan to ethnically cleanse the territory.

In an exclusive digital investigation, Al Jazeera probed last month’s mystery flight that spirited 153 passengers from Gaza to South Africa, unearthing figures working for Al-Majd Europe, an unregistered front organisation that falsely claimed to be working for humanitarian aims.

The Palestinians arrived at OR Tambo International Airport, which serves the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria, on November 13. Refused entry by border police as they did not have departure stamps from Israel on their passports, they were stuck on the aircraft for 12 hours before being allowed to disembark.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa admitted the passengers “out of compassion”, but said at the time that his government, which has long been a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, would investigate as it seemed that they had been “flushed out” of the Gaza Strip.

Forced evacuations

Israeli officials have previously openly stated that they support what they have termed the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza, in what effectively would be their forced evacuation.

In March 2025, Israel’s security cabinet set up a controversial bureau to get Palestinians to leave Gaza voluntarily, which was headed by former deputy director of the Ministry of Defence, Yaakov Blitstein. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said at the time that 40 percent of Gaza residents were “interested in emigrating”.

The previous month, Al-Majd Europe set up its online presence with a new website stating that it focused on relief efforts in Muslim countries, specifically “for Gazans wishing to exit Gaza”, with claims that it had organised mobile health clinics in the enclave and trips for Palestinian doctors abroad that Al Jazeera later discovered to be false.

A passenger from the November flight to South Africa, whose identity was kept hidden for his own protection, said he contacted the organisation after finding the link online, which promised not only a way out of Gaza, but safety and medical treatment for injuries. “Initially, it said it was free. Then they asked for $1,400 [per person]. Then the price went up to $2,500,” he said.

Testimonies gathered by Al Jazeera showed that payments requested varied from $1,000-2,000 per person, with strict criteria for signing up. Only families would be accepted on condition that they kept their departure secret, with details on flight departures only released a few hours before takeoff.

Passengers say they were told to arrive at the Karem Abu Salem crossing (called Kerem Shalom in Israel) in southern Gaza. When they arrived, their personal belongings were confiscated, and they were put on buses to Ramon Airport, near the Israeli city of Eilat, apparently by Israeli authorities.

Nigel Branken, a South African social worker who helped tho Palestinians on the plane, previously told Al Jazeera that there were “very clearly … marks of Israel involved in this operation to take people … to displace them”.

Evacuees told Al Jazeera they were not informed of their final destination until moments before boarding. They were then escorted onto a flight registered to a brand new airline called FLYYO without exit stamps in their travel documents.

Al Jazeera discovered that FLYYO has organised a number of similar flights, all taking off from Israeli airports, headed to Romania, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya and other destinations.

False identity

Further scrutiny of Al-Majd Europe, which said it was a “humanitarian foundation established in 2010 in Germany”, with a head office located in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, later revealed its identity to be a sham.

Al Jazeera found no company registered by that name on any German or European database. The supposed address does not appear in official Jerusalem records, with the location on Google Maps corresponding to a hospital and a cafe.

While digging into the flights, Al Jazeera found two faces linked to the organisation – both Palestinians. The first was Muayad Hisham Saidam, which the organisation lists as its humanitarian projects manager in Gaza.

A search of Saidam’s name reveals that in May 2024, his wife created a public page to ask for donations to help her family leave Gaza. A year later, Saidam posted an image of himself boarding a plane chartered by Fly Lili, another Romanian airline, announcing that he was departing Gaza.

Using the angle of his shadow, time of the flight and the location of the plane on the Ramon Airport runway, Al Jazeera discovered Saidam was likely on a flight on May 27, 2025, which left Israel for Budapest, with 57 Palestinian passengers from Gaza.

It appears that Saidam’s identity is real, and that his family was likely evacuated to Indonesia. But his connection to Al-Majd Europe is unclear.

The second public face of the organisation belongs to a man named only as Adnan, though he appears to have no digital footprint.

On November 13, the day of the Johannesburg flight, a page containing a number of partner companies was deleted from Al-Majd’s website. Using open-source intelligence techniques, Al Jazeera recovered the page, which showed a number of well-known groups that Al-Majd claimed to have been working with, including the International Red Cross.

One name stood out: Talent Globus – a recruitment company established in Estonia in 2024, with a fund containing only $350. Its website lists four employees, including Director Tom Lind, a businessman with Israeli and Estonian citizenship.

Lind’s name has been linked to a number of other companies where he’s listed either as a founder or director – all without official registration or physical addresses.

Lind’s name appeared in reports by Israeli newspaper Haaretz as one of the coordinators of the flights of Palestinians leaving Ramon Airport.

In May 2025, Lind posted on his LinkedIn page that he had left Talent Globus, and was instead focused on “humanitarian efforts to support Palestinians”. He said that, alongside a network of individuals and groups, he had assisted with the evacuation of a “substantial number” of people from Gaza.

Photos of the other three employees of Talent Globus from its website – James Thompson, Maria Rodriguez, David Chen – all turned out to be stock images.

And much like those employees, it appears as though Al-Majd itself is a fake humanitarian group, leading to the question of what those behind the organisation are trying to hide.

Publicly, Israel has seemed to back down from its plan to encourage “voluntary emigration”. But Al Jazeera’s investigation poses more questions – is Al-Majd part of a bigger plan, a way to quietly empty Gaza of its inhabitants, one secret flight at a time?

UN refugee agency says women and children arriving ‘exhausted and severely traumatised’ after fleeing eastern DRC.

More than 84,000 people have fled to Burundi from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) amid a Rwanda-backed rebel offensive near the countries’ shared border, according to the latest United Nations figures.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday that Burundi had reached a “critical point” amid the influx of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing a surge in violence in the DRC’s South Kivu province.

“Thousands of people crossing the border on foot and by boats each day have overwhelmed local resources, creating a major humanitarian emergency that requires immediate global support,” UNHCR said, noting that more than 200,000 people had now sought refuge in Burundi.

“Women and children are particularly affected, arriving exhausted and severely traumatised, bearing the physical and psychological marks of terrifying violence. Our teams met pregnant women, who shared that they had not eaten in days.”

The exodus began in early December when the M23 rebel group launched an assault that culminated in the capture of Uvira, a strategic city in the eastern DRC that is home to hundreds of thousands of people.

Refugees started crossing into Burundi on December 5, with numbers surging after M23 seized control of Uvira on December 10. On Wednesday, M23 said it was withdrawing after international condemnation of its attack on the city.

In Burundi, displaced families face difficult conditions at transit points and makeshift camps with minimal infrastructure, the UN said.

Many have sheltered under trees without adequate protection from the elements, and a lack of clean water and proper sanitation.

About half of those displaced are children less than the age of 18, along with numerous women, including some who are pregnant.

Ezechiel Nibigira, the Burundian president of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), reported 25,000 refugees in Gatumba in western Burundi, and nearly 40,000 in Buganda in the northwest, most of them “completely destitute”.

Augustin Minani, the administrator in Rumonge, told the AFP news agency that the situation was “catastrophic” and said “the vast majority are dying of hunger.”

Refugees recounted witnessing bombings and artillery fire, with some seeing relatives killed and others forced to abandon elderly family members who could not continue the journey.

M23 withdrawal

M23 announced earlier this week it would begin withdrawing from Uvira, with the group’s leadership calling the move a “trust-building measure” to support United States- and Qatari-led peace efforts.

However, the Congolese Communications Minister Patrick Muyaya dismissed the announcement as a “diversion”, alleging it was meant to relieve pressure on Rwanda.

Local sources reported that M23 police and intelligence personnel remained deployed in the city on Thursday.

The offensive extended M23’s territorial gains this year after the group captured the major cities of Goma in January and Bukavu in February.

The rebel advance has given M23 control over substantial territory in the mineral-rich eastern DRC and severed a critical supply route for Congolese forces along the border with Burundi.

M23 launched the Uvira offensive less than a week after the presidents of the DRC and Rwanda met with US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, to reaffirm their commitment to a peace agreement.

The rebels’ takeover of the city drew sharp criticism from Washington, with officials warning of consequences for what they described as Rwanda’s violation of the accord. Rwanda denies backing M23.

The fighting has killed more than 400 civilians in the DRC and displaced more than 200,000 since early December, according to regional officials and humanitarian organisations.

The broader conflict across the eastern part of the country, where more than 100 armed groups operate, has displaced more than seven million people, the UN refugee agency says.

For the past 25 years, Somalia’s political transitions have not succeeded by accident. They were sustained through international engagement, pressure, and mediation aimed at preserving fragile political settlements. Today, however, Somalia stands at a dangerous crossroads. The federal government’s unilateral pursuit of power, cloaked in the language of democratic reform, threatens to trigger a legitimacy crisis and undo decades of political gains and international investment.

Universal suffrage is an ideal that all Somalis share. However, deep political disagreement among groups, persistent security challenges, the looming expiry of the government’s mandate, and financial constraints make the timely implementation of universal suffrage nearly impossible.

Pursuing universal suffrage without political consent, institutional readiness, or minimum security guarantees does not deepen democracy or sovereignty; it concentrates power in the hands of incumbents while increasing the risk of fragmentation and parallel authority.

Instead of addressing these constraints through consensus, the government is engaged in a power grab, deploying the rhetoric of universal suffrage. It has unilaterally changed the constitution, which forms the basis of the political settlement. It has also enacted self-serving laws governing electoral processes, political parties, and the Election and Boundaries Commission. Moreover, the government has appointed 18 commissioners, all backed by the ruling Justice and Solidarity Party (JSP).

Meanwhile, Somaliland announced its secession in 1991 and has been seeking recognition for the last three and a half decades. Most of Somalia’s national opposition, along with the leaders of Puntland and Jubbaland Federal Member States, have rejected the government’s approach and formed the Council for the Future of Somalia. These groups have announced plans to organise a political convention in Somalia, signalling their intent to pursue a parallel political process if the government does not listen.

The Federal Government of Somalia does not fully control the country. Al-Shabab controls certain regions and districts and retains the ability to conduct operations well beyond its areas of direct control. Recently, the hardline group attacked a prison located near Villa Somalia, a stark reminder of the fragile security environment in which any electoral process would have to take place.

Given the extent of polarisation and the limited time remaining under the current mandate, the international community must intervene to support Somalia’s sixth political transition in 2026. The most viable way to ensure a safe transition is to promote an improved indirect election model. Somalia’s political class has long experience with indirect elections, having relied on this model five times over the past 25 years. However, even with political agreement, the improved indirect election model for the 2026 dispensation must meet standards of timeliness, feasibility, competitiveness, and inclusivity.

The current government mandate expires on May 15, 2026, and discussions are already under way among government supporters about a unilateral term extension. This must be discouraged. If a political agreement is reached in time, some form of technical extension may be necessary, but this should only occur while the 2026 selection and election processes are actively under way. One way to avoid this recurring crisis would be to establish a firm and binding deadline for elections. Puntland, for example, has maintained a schedule of elections held every five years in January.

The improved indirect election model must also be feasible, meaning it should be straightforward to understand and implement. Political groups could agree on a fixed number of delegates to elect each seat. Recognised traditional elders from each constituency would then select delegates. Delegates from a small cluster of constituencies would collaborate to elect candidates for those seats. This system is far from ideal, but it is workable under current conditions.

Unlike previous attempts, the improved indirect election model must also be genuinely competitive and inclusive. In past elections, politicians manipulated parliamentary selection by restricting competition through a practice known as “Malxiis” (bestman). The preferred candidate introduces a bestman, someone who pretends to compete but is never intended to win. For the upcoming election, the process must allow candidates to compete meaningfully rather than symbolically. A clear threshold of “no manipulation” and “no bestman” must be enforced.

Inclusivity remains another major concern. Women’s seats, which should account for about 30 percent of parliament, have frequently been undermined. Any political agreement must include a clear commitment to inclusivity, and the institutions overseeing the election must be empowered to enforce the women’s quota. Government leaders have also arbitrarily managed seats allocated to Somaliland representatives. Given the unique political circumstances, a separate, negotiated, and credible process is required.

Finally, widespread corruption has long tainted Somalia’s selection and election processes, undermining their integrity. In 2022, the presidents of the Federal Member States managed and manipulated the process. To curb corruption in the 2026 improved indirect election model, one effective measure would be to increase the number of voters per seat by aggregating constituencies. In practice, this would mean combined delegates from several constituencies voting together, reducing opportunities for vote buying.

The international community has previously pressured Somali political actors to reach an agreement, insisting there should be “no term extension or unilateral elections by the government” and “no parallel political projects by the opposition”. This approach, combined with the leverage the international community still holds, can be effective. Somalia’s political class must again be pushed into serious, structured negotiations rather than unilateral manoeuvres.

As before, the international community should clearly define political red lines. The government must refrain from any term extensions or unilateral election projects. At the same time, the opposition must abandon plans for a parallel political agenda, including Federal Member States conducting elections outside a political agreement.

Somalis have repeatedly demonstrated their democratic aspirations. What stands in the way is not public will, but elite polarisation and the instrumentalisation of reform for political survival. At this critical moment, the international community cannot afford to retreat into passivity. Proactive and principled engagement is essential to prevent a legitimacy collapse, safeguard the gains of the past 25 years, and protect the substantial investments made in peacebuilding and state-building in Somalia.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Two words that largely define the economy right now: Global reordering.

President Donald Trump’s Tariffs have landed as a shock to global trade. This is 2025.

Major economies are rewriting their playbooks, and alliances are being redrawn.

From Africa’s minerals boom to the global AI race, countries are scrambling for influence – even as debt piles up.

They are spending more, borrowing more and making tough choices from defence to climate policy and labour shortages.

And through it all, people are bearing high costs.

Foreign nationals arrested for illegally processing applications under Trump’s contentious programme for white South Africans.

South Africa has arrested and ordered the deportation of seven Kenyan nationals who were illegally working at a centre processing refugee applications for a highly controversial United States resettlement programme aimed at only white Afrikaners.

The arrests on Tuesday in Johannesburg followed intelligence reports that the Kenyans had entered the country on tourist visas and taken up employment despite South Africa’s Home Affairs Department having previously denied work visa applications for the same positions.

The seven individuals will be banned from re-entering South Africa for five years.

The operation has led to a new diplomatic dispute between Pretoria and Washington, adding to tensions that have escalated throughout 2025 over US President Donald Trump’s widely rejected claims that white South Africans face “genocide” and racial persecution.

The US State Department told CNN that “interfering in our refugee operations is unacceptable” and said it would seek immediate clarification.

CNN reported that two US government employees were briefly detained during the raid, though South Africa’s statement said no American officials were arrested.

The Kenyans were working for processing centres run by Amerikaners, a group led by white South Africans, and RSC Africa, a Kenya-based refugee support organisation operated by Church World Service. These organisations handle applications for Trump’s programme, which has brought small numbers of white South Africans to the US this year.

South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation said the presence of foreign officials coordinating with undocumented workers “raises serious questions about intent and diplomatic protocol” and has initiated formal engagements with both the US and Kenya.

‘If you’re not white, forget about it’

Trump launched the resettlement programme in February through an executive order titled “Addressing Egregious Actions of The Republic of South Africa”, cutting all US aid and prioritising Afrikaner refugees who he claims face government-sponsored discrimination.

In September, he set a historic low refugee ceiling of 7,500 for 2026, with most spots reserved for white South Africans.

Scott Lucas, a professor of US and international politics at University College Dublin’s Clinton Institute, previously told Al Jazeera the contrast between how Trump treats white South African refugees, and refugees of colour from other countries, showed a “perverse honesty” about Trump’s conduct and worldview.

“If you’re white and you’ve got connections you get in,” Lucas said. “If you’re not white, forget about it.”

South Africa’s government strongly rejects the persecution allegations.

Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola has said there is no data supporting claims of white persecution, noting that Afrikaners are among the country’s “most economically privileged” citizens.

Major Afrikaner organisations also rejected Trump’s characterisation.

AfriForum and the Solidarity Movement, representing some 600,000 Afrikaner families, declined his refugee offer, saying emigration would mean “sacrificing their descendants’ cultural identity”.

The Afrikaner enclave of Orania said: “Afrikaners do not want to be refugees. We love and are committed to our homeland.”

Deteriorating relations

Trump has repeatedly presented debunked evidence to support his claims, including a choreographed and televised ambush of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a White House visit.

Trump played video in May featuring images later verified as being from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and footage of a temporary memorial that Trump falsely claimed showed mass graves.

Relations between the countries have deteriorated sharply this year.

Trump expelled South Africa’s ambassador in March, boycotted Johannesburg’s G20 summit in November, and last month excluded South Africa from participating in the 2026 Miami G20, calling it “not a country worthy of Membership anywhere” in a social media post.

Just one day before the arrests, South Africa condemned its G20 exclusion as an “affront to multilateralism”.

When armed soldiers in the small West African nation of Benin appeared on national television on December 7 to announce they had seized power in a coup, it felt to many across the region like another episode of the ongoing coup crisis that has seen several governments toppled since 2020.

But the scenes played out differently this time.

Amid reports of gunfire and civilians scampering to safety in the economic capital, Cotonou, Beninese and others across the region waited with bated breath as conflicting intelligence emerged. The small group of putschists, on the one hand, declared victory, but Benin’s forces and government officials said the plot had failed.

By evening, the situation was clear – Benin’s government was still standing. President Patrice Talon and loyalist forces in the army had managed to hold control, thanks to help from the country’s bigger neighbours, particularly its eastern ally and regional power, Nigeria.

While Talon now enjoys victory as the president who could not be unseated, the spotlight is also on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The regional bloc rallied to save the day in Benin after their seeming resignation in the face of the crises rocking the region, including just last month, when the military took power in Guinea-Bissau.

This time, though, after much criticism and embarrassment, ECOWAS was ready to push back against the narrative of it being an ineffective bloc by baring its teeth and biting, political analyst Ryan Cummings told Al Jazeera.

“It wanted to remind the region that it does have the power to intervene when the context allows,” Cummings said. “At some point, there needed to be a line drawn in the sand [and] what was at stake was West Africa’s most stable sovereign country falling.”

Is a new ECOWAS on the horizon?

Benin’s military victory was an astonishing turnaround for an ECOWAS that has been cast as a dead weight in the region since 2020, when a coup in Mali spurred an astonishing series of military takeovers across the region in quick succession.

Between 2020 and 2025, nine coup attempts toppled five democratic governments and two military ones. The latest successful coup, in Guinea-Bissau, happened on November 28. Bissau-Guineans had voted in the presidential election some days before and were waiting for the results to be announced when the military seized the national television station, detained incumbent President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, and announced a new military leader.

ECOWAS, whose high-level delegation was in Bissau to monitor the electoral process when the coup happened, appeared on the back foot, unable to do much more than issue condemnatory statements. Those statements sounded similar to those it issued after the coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea. The bloc appeared a far cry from the institution that, between 1990 and 2003, successfully intervened to stop the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and later in the Ivory Coast. The last ECOWAS military intervention, in 2017, halted Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh’s attempt to overturn the election results.

Indeed, ECOWAS’s success in its heyday hinged on the health of its members. Nigeria, arguably ECOWAS’s backbone, whose troops led the interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, has been mired in insecurity and economic crises of its own lately. In July 2023, when Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was the ECOWAS chair, he threatened to invade Niger after the coup there.

It was disastrous timing. Faced with livelihood-eroding inflation and incessant attacks by armed groups at home, Nigerians were some of the loudest voices resisting an invasion. Many believed Tinubu, sworn in just months earlier, had misplaced his priorities. By the time ECOWAS had finished debating what to do weeks later, the military government in Niger had consolidated support throughout the armed forces and Nigeriens themselves had decided they wanted to back the military. ECOWAS and Tinubu backed off, defeated.

Niger left the alliance altogether in January this year, forming the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) with fellow military governments in Mali and Burkina Faso. All three share cultural and geographic affinities, but are also linked by their collective dislike for France, the former colonial power, which they blame for interfering in their countries. Even as they battle rampaging armed groups like Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the three governments have cut ties with French forces formerly stationed there and welcomed Russian fighters whose effectiveness, security experts say, fluctuates.

But Benin was different, and ECOWAS appeared wide awake. Aside from the fact that it was one coup too far, Cummings said, the country’s proximity to Nigeria, and two grave mistakes the putschists made, gave ECOWAS a fighting chance.

The first mistake was that the rebels had failed to take Talon hostage, as is the modus operandi with putschists in the region. That allowed the president to directly send an SOS to his counterparts following the first failed attacks on the presidential palace at dawn.

The second mistake was perhaps even graver.

“Not all the armed forces were on board,” Cummings said, noting that the small group of about 100 rebel soldiers had likely assumed other units would fall in line but had underestimated how loyal other factions were to the president. That was a miscalculation in a country where military rule ended in 1990 and where 73 percent of Beninese believe that democracy is better than any other form of government, according to poll site Afrobarometer. Many take particular pride in their country being hailed as the region’s most stable democracy.

“There was division within the army, and that was the window of opportunity that allowed ECOWAS to deploy because there wasn’t going to be a case of ‘If we deploy, we will be targeted by the army’. I dare say that if there were no countercoup, there was no way ECOWAS would have gotten involved because it would have been a conventional war,” Cummings added.

Quickly reading the room, Benin’s neighbours reacted swiftly. For the first time in nearly a decade, the bloc deployed its standby ground forces from Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone. Abuja authorised air attacks on rebel soldiers who were effectively cornered in a military base in Cotonou and at the national TV building, but who were putting up a last-ditch attempt at resistance. France also supported the mission by providing intelligence. By nightfall, the rebels had been completely dislodged by Nigerian jets. The battle for Cotonou was over.

At least 14 people have since been arrested. Several casualties were reported on both sides, with one civilian, the wife of a high-ranking officer marked for assassination, among the dead. On Wednesday, Beninese authorities revealed that the coup leader, Colonel Pascal Tigri, was hiding in neighbouring Togo.

At stake for ECOWAS was the risk of losing yet another member, possibly to the landlocked AES, said Kabiru Adamu, founder of Abuja-based Beacon Security intelligence firm. “I am 90 percent sure Benin would have joined the AES because they desperately need a littoral state,” he said, referring to Benin’s Cotonou port, which would have expanded AES export capabilities.

Nigeria could also not afford a military government mismanaging the deteriorating security situation in northern Benin, as has been witnessed in the AES countries, Cummings said. Armed group JNIM launched its first attack on Nigerian soil in October, adding to Abuja’s pressures as it continues to face Boko Haram in the northeast and armed bandit groups in the northwest. Abuja has also come under diplomatic fire from the US, which falsely alleges a “Christian genocide” in the country.

“We know that this insecurity is the stick with which Tinubu is being beaten, and we already know his nose is bloodied,” Cummings said.

Revelling in the glory of the Benin mission last Sunday, Tinubu praised Nigeria’s forces in a statement, saying the “Nigerian armed forces stood gallantly as a defender and protector of constitutional order”. A group of Nigerian governors also hailed the president’s action, and said it reinforced Nigeria’s regional power status and would deter further coup plotters.

Not yet out of the woods

If there is a perception that ECOWAS has reawakened and future putschists will be discouraged, the reality may not be so positive, analysts say. The bloc still has much to do before it can be taken seriously again, particularly in upholding democracy and calling out sham elections before governments become vulnerable to mass uprisings or coups, Beacon Security’s Adamu said.

In Benin, for example, ECOWAS did not react as President Talon, in power since 2016, grew increasingly autocratic, barring opposition groups in two previous presidential elections. His government has again barred the main opposition challenger, Renaud Agbodjo, from elections scheduled for next April, while Talon’s pick, former finance minister Romuald Wadagni, is the obvious favourite.

“It’s clear that the elections have been engineered already,” Adamu said. “In the entire subregion, it’s difficult to point to any single country where the rule of law has not been jettisoned and where the voice of the people is heard without fear.”

ECOWAS, Adamu added, needs to proactively re-educate member states on democratic principles, hold them accountable when there are lapses, as in the Benin case, and then intervene when threats emerge.

The bloc appears to be taking heed. On December 9, two days after the failed Benin coup, ECOWAS declared a state of emergency.

“Events of the last few weeks have shown the imperative of serious introspection on the future of our democracy and the urgent need to invest in the security of our community,” Omar Touray, ECOWAS Commission president, said at a meeting in the Abuja headquarters. Touray cited situations that constitute coup risks, such as the erosion of electoral integrity and mounting geopolitical tensions, as the bloc splits along foreign influences. Currently, ECOWAS member states have stayed close to Western allies like France, while the AES is firmly pro-Russia.

Another challenge the bloc faces is managing potential fallout with the AES states amid France’s increasing closeness with Abuja. As Paris faces hostility in Francophone West Africa, it has drawn closer to Nigeria, where it does not have the same negative colonial reputation, and which it perceives as useful for protecting French business interests in the region, Cummings said. At the same time, ECOWAS is still hoping to woo the three rogue ex-members back into its fold, and countries like Ghana have already established bilateral ties with the military governments.

“The challenge with that is that the AES would see the intervention [in Benin] as an act not from ECOWAS itself but something engineered by France,” Adamu said. Seeing France instigating an intervention which could have benefitted AES reinforces their earlier complaints that Paris pokes its nose into the region’s affairs, and could push them further away, he said.

“So now we have a situation where they feel like France did it, and the sad thing is that we haven’t seen ECOWAS dispel that notion, so the ECOWAS standby force has [re]started on a contentious step,” Adamu added.

• The Africa Cup of Nations, commonly known as AFCON, will be held in Morocco this year and kicks off in the capital, Rabat, on Sunday.
• Host nation Morocco take on Comoros in the opening match of the four week tournament.
• The final will be held on January 18 at the 69,500-capacity Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium in Rabat.
• Nine venues across six cities have been selected for the continental showpiece event.
• The 24 participating teams have been drawn into six groups, with 68 matches in total.
• The group stage will run until December 31, with the knockout stage starting on January 3.

Here are the details on the teams, groups, format, match fixtures, kickoff times and venues for AFCON 2025:

Teams and groups

⚽ Group A: Morocco, Mali, Zambia, Comoros
⚽ Group B: Egypt, South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe
⚽ Group C: Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda, Tanzania
⚽ Group D: Senegal, DR Congo, Benin, Botswana
⚽ Group E: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan
⚽ Group F: Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Gabon, Mozambique

Format

The top two teams of each group, along with the best four third-placed teams, will advance to the knockout stage, beginning with the round of 16. That is followed by the quarterfinals, semifinals and the final. There is also a third-place playoff between the two losing semifinalists.

In the knockout stages, if a match is level at the end of normal playing time, teams will play 30 minutes of extra time and, if required, a penalty shootout.

Match schedule

⚽ Group Stage

December 21

Group A: Morocco vs Comoros (Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, 8pm/19:00 GMT)

December 22

Group A: Mali vs Zambia (Stade Mohammed V, 3:30pm/14:30 GMT)

Group B: Egypt vs Zimbabwe (Adrar Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Group B: South Africa vs Angola (Marrakesh Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

December 23

Group C: Nigeria vs Tanzania (Fez Stadium, 1pm/12:00 GMT)

Group C: Tunisia vs Uganda (Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, 3:30pm/14:30 GMT)

Group D: Senegal vs Botswana (Ibn Batouta Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Group D: DR Congo vs Benin (Al Barid Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

December 24

Group E: Algeria vs Sudan (Moulay Hassan Stadium, 1pm/12:00 GMT)

Group E: Burkina Faso vs Equatorial Guinea (Stade Mohammed V, 3:30pm/14:30 GMT)

Group F: Ivory Coast vs Mozambique (Marrakesh Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Group F: Cameroon vs Gabon(Adrar Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

Rest day on Christmas

December 26

Group A: Morocco vs Mali (Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, 1pm/12:00 GMT)

Group A: Zambia vs Comoros (Stade Mohammed V, 3:30pm/14:30 GMT)

Group B: Egypt vs South Africa (Adrar Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Group B: Angola vs Zimbabwe (Marrakesh Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

December 27

Group C: Nigeria vs Tunisia (Fez Stadium, 1pm/12:00 GMT)

Group C: Uganda vs Tanzania (Al Barid Stadium, 3:30pm/14:30 GMT)

Group D: Senegal vs DR Congo (Ibn Batouta Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Group D: Benin vs Botswana (Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

December 28

Group E: Algeria vs Burkina Faso (Moulay Hassan Stadium, 1pm/12:00 GMT)

Group E: Equatorial Guinea vs Sudan (Stade Mohammed V, 3:30pm/14:30 GMT)

Group F: Ivory Coast vs Cameroon (Marrakesh Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Group F: Gabon vs Mozambique (Adrar Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

December 29

Group A: Comoros vs Mali (Stade Mohammed V, 6:30pm/17:30 GMT)

Group A: Zambia vs Morocco (Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, 6:30pm/17:30 GMT)

Group B: Angola vs Egypt (Adrar Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

Group B: Zimbabwe vs South Africa (Marrakesh Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

December 30

Group C: Tanzania vs Tunisia (Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Group C: Uganda vs Nigeria (Fez Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Group D: Benin vs Senegal (Ibn Batouta Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

Group D: Botswana vs DR Congo (Al Barid Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

December 31

Group E: Equatorial Guinea vs Algeria (Moulay Hassan Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Group E: Sudan vs Burkina Faso (Stade Mohammed V, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Group F: Gabon vs Ivory Coast (Marrakesh Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

Group F: Mozambique vs Cameroon (Adrar Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

Rest days on January 1 and 2 

⚽ Round of 16

January 3

Winner Group D vs 3rd Group B/E/F (Ibn Batouta Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Runner-up Group A vs Runner-up Group C (Stade Mohammed V, 8:30pm local/19:30 GMT)

January 4

Winner Group A vs 3rd Group C/D/E (Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Runner-up Group B vs Runner-up Group F (Al Barid Stadium, 8:30pm local/19:30 GMT)

January 5

Winner Group B vs 3rd Group A/C/D (Adrar Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Winner Group C vs 3rd Group A/B/F (Fez Stadium, 8:30pm local/19:30 GMT)

January 6

Winner Group E vs Runner-up Group D (Moulay Hassan Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Winner Group F vs Runner-up Group E (Marrakesh Stadium, 8:30pm local/19:30 GMT)

Rest days on January 7 and 8

⚽ Quarterfinals

January 9

Quarterfinal 1 (Ibn Batouta Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Quarterfinal 2 (Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

January 10

Quarterfinal 3 (Marrakesh Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Quarterfinal 4 (Adrar Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

Rest days on January 11, 12 and 13 

⚽ Semifinals

January 14

Winner QF1 vs Winner QF4 (Ibn Batouta Stadium, 6pm/17:00 GMT)

Winner QF3 vs Winner QF2 (Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, 8:30pm/19:30 GMT)

Rest days on January 15 and 16

⚽ Third-place playoff

January 17

Loser SF1 vs Loser SF2 (Stade Mohammed V, 8pm local/19:00 GMT)

⚽ Final

January 18

Winner SF1 vs Winner SF2 (Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, 8pm local/19:00 GMT)

The United States has ended temporary legal protections for thousands of Ethiopian nationals, ordering them to leave the country within 60 days or face arrest and deportation.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the decision on Friday, determining that conditions in Ethiopia “no longer pose a serious threat” to returning nationals despite ongoing violence in parts of the country.

The move affects approximately 5,000 refugees who fled armed conflict and is the latest action in the administration’s hardline crackdown to remove legal protections from at least one million people across multiple countries.

The termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Ethiopia takes effect in early February 2026, giving current beneficiaries two months to either leave voluntarily or find another legal basis to remain in the United States. Those who force authorities to arrest them “may never be allowed to return,” according to a Department of Homeland Security statement.

The decision comes despite the State Department’s own travel advisory for Ethiopia, which urges Americans to “reconsider” travel to the country due to “sporadic violent conflict, civil unrest, crime, communications disruptions, terrorism and kidnapping”.

The advisory, still in effect, warns that multiple regions remain off-limits and that the US embassy is “unlikely to be able to assist with departure from the country if the security situation deteriorates”.

Federal authorities justified the termination by citing peace agreements signed in recent years, including a 2022 ceasefire in Tigray and a December 2024 deal in Oromia. Analysts have also warned of the risk of renewed fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The Federal Register notice acknowledged that “some sporadic and episodic violence occurs” but claimed improvements in healthcare, food security and internal displacement figures demonstrated the country’s recovery.

However, the notice also cited national interest concerns, including Ethiopian visa overstay rates that exceed the global average by more than 250 percent and unspecified national security investigations involving some TPS holders.

The Ethiopian termination is part of a broader pattern under President Donald Trump, whose administration has moved to end protections for nationals from Haiti, Venezuela, Somalia, South Sudan and other countries since returning to office.

His administration has dismissed many nations as “Third World” countries, a term largely no longer used given its pejorative impetus for developing nations.

Over the past two weeks, Trump has escalated inflammatory racist attacks on Minnesota’s large Somali community in particular, including calling Somali immigrants “garbage” and directing a surge of ICE agents into the state, alarming residents and drawing criticism.

As of March 2025, approximately 1.3 million people held TPS in the United States, according to the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based research and advocacy organisation.

Trump has identified immigration control as central to his national security strategy, with the document published this month describing migration policies in Europe and elsewhere as contributing to what they term “civilizational erasure,” a far-right theory which is has been comprehensively debunked.

The approach has drawn sharp criticism for its racial selectivity. While terminating protections for Ethiopians who fled documented armed conflict, the administration simultaneously opened a refugee resettlement programme for white South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity, claiming “race-based discrimination”. That discrimination has been rejected by the South African government and by numbers of Afrikaners themselves.

Scott Lucas, a professor of US and international politics at University College Dublin’s Clinton Institute, told Al Jazeera the contrast revealed a “perverse honesty” about the administration’s priorities.

“If you’re white and you’ve got connections you get in,” he said. “If you’re not white, forget about it.”

Legal challenges have mounted against several TPS terminations, with courts temporarily blocking some decisions.

Ethiopian TPS beneficiaries can continue working during the 60-day transition period, but after the deadline, anyone without an alternative legal status becomes subject to immediate arrest and removal.

The administration has offered what it calls a “complimentary plane ticket” and “$1,000 exit bonus” to those who depart voluntarily using a mobile app to report their departure.

The United States and the United Nations have warned that violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo could escalate into a regional conflict.

Hundreds of people were killed as Rwandan-backed M23 rebels seized another city, just over a week after the US brokered a peace deal.

How dangerous is the situation?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Gatete Nyiringabo – Political commentator and governance and advocacy consultant

Kambale Musavuli – Analyst at the Center for Research on the Congo-Kinshasa

Richard Moncrieff – Project director for the Great Lakes region at the International Crisis Group

Eight people also injured in fighting with ‘terrorists’ in disputed region between Sudan and South Sudan.

At least six Bangladeshi peacekeepers were killed in a “terrorist” attack on a United Nations base in Abyei, a disputed region between Sudan and South Sudan, the Bangladesh army said.

The attack on Saturday also injured another eight people, the army stated.

“The situation in the area is still unstable and clashes with terrorists are ongoing,” the army said in a statement, adding that the authorities were working to provide medical treatment and rescue operations for those injured.

There was no immediate comment from the UN mission.

The attack comes just a month after the United Nations Security Council voted to renew a UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA), the peacekeeping mission in the oil-rich disputed region between Sudan and South Sudan, for another year.

Bangladesh is one of the largest contributors to UN peacekeeping missions, and its troops have long been deployed in Abyei, a volatile region disputed between Sudan and South Sudan.

UNISFA’s peacekeeping mission was first deployed in 2011.

The 4,000 police and soldiers of UNISFA are tasked with protecting civilians in the region plagued by frequent armed clashes.

The Abyei region is split between two different groups with different loyalties.

The Ngok Dinka tribe have strong ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties to the Dinka of South Sudan, while the Misseriya are a nomadic Arab tribe with links to Sudan.

Abyei’s future was a critical feature of the 2005 peace deal that was signed between the Sudanese government and rebels that ended the civil war then and led the way to South Sudan’s independence.

However, unrest in the disputed area with South Sudan also continues at a time when Sudan is devastated by a more recent civil war that erupted in April 2023, when two generals started fighting over control of the country.

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been committing atrocities in Darfur and other regions, have also been active in Abyei.

A cautious calm has settled over the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) city of Uvira in South Kivu province, as residents begin emerging from their homes following its capture by M23 rebels.

The capture earlier this week threatens to derail a United States-brokered peace agreement, signed with much fanfare and overseen by President Donald Trump a week ago, between Congolese and Rwandan leaders, with Washington accusing Rwanda on Friday of igniting the offensive.

Regional authorities say at least 400 civilians, including women and children, have been killed in the violence between the cities of Bukavu and Uvira, both now under M23 control.

Al Jazeera is the only international broadcaster in Uvira, where correspondent Alain Uaykani on Saturday described an uneasy calm in the port city on the northern tip of Lake Tanganyika, which sits directly across from Burundi’s largest city, Bujumbura.

Uaykani said government and allied militias, known as “Wazalendo”, which had been using the city as a headquarters, began fleeing even before M23 fighters entered.

Residents who fled as the Rwanda-backed group advanced have begun returning to their homes, though most shops and businesses remain shuttered.

“People are coming out, they feel the fear is behind them,” Uaykani said, though he noted the situation remains fragile with signs of intense combat visible throughout the city.

Bienvenue Mwatumabire, a resident of Uvira, told Al Jazeera he was at work when fighting between rebels and government forces broke out, and he heard gunshots from a neighbouring village and decided to stop, but said that “today we have noticed things are getting back to normal.”

Baoleze Beinfait, another Uvira resident, said people in the city were not being harassed by the rebels, but added, “We will see how things are in the coming days.”

M23’s spokesperson defended the offensive, claiming the group had “liberated” Uvira from what he called “terrorist forces”. The rebels say they are protecting ethnic Tutsi communities in eastern DRC, a region that has seen fighting intensify since earlier this year.

The offensive, which began on December 2, has displaced more than 200,000 people across South Kivu province, according to local United Nations partners.

Rwanda accused of backing rebels

South Kivu officials said Rwandan special forces and foreign mercenaries were operating in Uvira “in clear violation” of both the recent Washington accords and earlier ceasefire agreements reached in Doha, Qatar.

At the UN Security Council on Friday, US ambassador Mike Waltz accused Rwanda of leading the region “towards increased instability and war,” warning that Washington would hold spoilers to peace accountable.

Waltz said Rwanda has maintained strategic control of M23 since the group re-emerged in 2021, with between 5,000 and 7,000 Rwandan troops fighting alongside the rebels in Congo as of early December.

“Kigali has been intimately involved in planning and executing the war in eastern DRC,” Waltz told the UNSC, referring to Rwanda’s capital.

Rwanda’s UN ambassador denied the allegations, accusing the DRC of violating the ceasefire. Rwanda acknowledges having troops in eastern DRC but says they are there to safeguard its security, particularly against Hutu militia groups that fled across the border to Congo after Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

The fall of Uvira has raised the alarm in neighbouring Burundi, which has deployed forces to the region. Burundi’s UN ambassador warned that “restraint has its limits,” saying continued attacks would make it difficult to avoid direct confrontation between the two countries.

More than 30,000 refugees have fled into Burundi in recent days.

The DRC’s foreign minister urged the UNSC to hold Rwanda accountable, saying “impunity has gone on for far too long”.

A report by the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats project said Rwanda provided significant support to M23’s Uvira offensive, calling it the group’s most consequential operation since March.

Al Jazeera’s UN correspondent Kristen Saloomey said UNSC members were briefed by experts who noted that civilians in DRC are not benefitting from the recent agreements negotiated between Kinshasa and Kigali.

More than 100 armed groups are fighting for control of mineral-rich eastern DRC near the Rwandan border. The conflict has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with more than seven million people displaced across the region.

The M23 group is not party to the Washington-mediated negotiations between DRC and Rwanda, participating instead in separate talks with the Congolese government hosted by Qatar.

Congolese refugees have recounted harrowing scenes of death and family separation as they fled intensified fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where Rwanda-backed M23 rebels captured a strategic city despite a recent United States-brokered peace agreement.

M23 has cemented control over Uvira, a key lakeside city in DRC’s South Kivu province that it seized on Wednesday, despite a peace accord that President Donald Trump had called “historic” when signed in Washington just one week earlier.

Al Jazeera, which is the first international broadcaster to gain access to the city since M23’s takeover, saw residents tentatively returning home after days of violence, amid a heavy presence of rebel fighters on Friday.

The day before, M23 fighters combed the streets to flush out remaining Congolese forces and allied militias – known as “Wazalendo” – after taking over key parts of the city.

Meanwhile, at Nyarushishi refugee camp in Rwanda’s Rusizi district, Akilimali Mirindi told the AFP news agency she fled South Kivu with just three of her 10 children after bombs destroyed her home near the border.

“I don’t know what happened to the other seven, or their father,” the 40-year-old said, describing corpses scattered along escape routes as about 1,000 people reached the camp following renewed clashes this month.

Regional officials said more than 413 civilians have been killed since fighting escalated in early December, with women and children among the dead.

The offensive has displaced about 200,000 people, and threatens to drag neighbouring Burundi deeper into a conflict that has already uprooted more than seven million across eastern DRC, according to United Nations figures.

Uvira sits on Lake Tanganyika’s northern shore, directly across from Burundi’s largest city, and serves as South Kivu’s interim government headquarters after M23 seized the provincial capital, Bukavu, in February.

Al Jazeera correspondent Alain Uaykani, who gained access to the city on Friday, reported a tenuous calm and the heavy presence of M23 soldiers but described harrowing scenes on the journey there.

“Here in Uvira, we have seen different groups of the Red Cross with their equipment, collecting bodies, and conducting burials across the road,” Uaykani said.

He added that the Al Jazeera crew saw abandoned military trucks destroyed along the road to Uvira, and the remains of people who were killed.

Residents who fled Uvira told AFP of bombardment from multiple directions as M23 fighters battled Congolese forces and their Burundian allies around the port city.

“Bombs were raining down on us from different directions,” Thomas Mutabazi, 67, told AFP at the refugee camp. “We had to leave our families and our fields.”

‘Even children were dying’

Refugee Jeanette Bendereza had already escaped to Burundi once this year during an earlier M23 push in February, only to return to DRC when authorities said peace had been restored. “We found M23 in charge,” she said.

When violence erupted again, she ran with four children as “bombs started falling from Burundian fighters”, losing her phone and contact with her husband in the chaos.

Another refugee, Olinabangi Kayibanda, witnessed a pregnant neighbour killed alongside her two children when their house was bombed. “Even children were dying, so we decided to flee,” the 56-year-old told an AFP reporter.

M23 spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka announced on Wednesday that Uvira had been “fully liberated” and urged residents to return home.

Fighting had already resumed even as Trump last week hosted Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame at a widely attended signing ceremony.

The December 4 Washington agreement obliged Rwanda to cease supporting armed groups, though the M23 was not party to those negotiations and is instead involved in separate Qatar-mediated talks with Kinshasa.

DRC’s government accused Rwanda of deploying special forces and foreign mercenaries to Uvira “in clear violation” of both the Washington and earlier Doha agreements.

The US embassy in Kinshasa urged Rwandan forces to withdraw, while Congolese Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner called for Washington to impose sanctions, saying condemnation alone was insufficient.

Rwanda denies backing M23 and blames Congolese and Burundian forces for ceasefire violations.

In a statement on Thursday, President Kagame claimed that more than 20,000 Burundian soldiers were operating across multiple Congolese locations and accused them of shelling civilians in Minembwe.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the escalation “increases the risk of a broader regional conflagration” and called for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

South Sudan’s military has moved into the Heglig oilfield under an unprecedented agreement between the country and neighbouring Sudan’s warring parties to safeguard critical energy infrastructure from the country’s civil war.

The deployment on Wednesday came after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured the strategic site on December 8, compelling the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) units to retreat across the border into South Sudan, where they reportedly surrendered their weapons.

The agreement aims to neutralise the facility from combat operations as fighting intensifies across Sudan’s Kordofan region, threatening both countries’ primary revenue source.

Official Sudanese government sources revealed to Al Jazeera that high-level contacts have taken place between the Sudanese and South Sudanese leaderships since the beginning of this week, after the RSF mobilized to attack the “Heglig” area. Understandings were reached to secure the evacuation of workers in the field and avoid military confrontations to ensure that the oil field and its facilities are not subjected to sabotage and destruction, and tribal leaders also played a role in that.

The deployment of South Sudan forces was based on a previous oil and security cooperation agreement signed between Khartoum and Juba, which stipulates the protection of oil fields, pipelines and central pumping stations for South Sudan’s oil, in addition to the electricity interconnection project and strengthening cooperation in the energy sector.

The new factor is the involvement of the RSF.

South Sudan People’s Defence Forces Chief of Staff Paul Nang said at Heglig that troops entered under a “tripartite agreement” involving President Salva Kiir, SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti, according to state broadcaster SSBC News.

The pact requires both Sudanese forces to withdraw from the area.

Nang stressed that South Sudanese forces would maintain strict neutrality.

“The primary goal is to completely neutralise the Heglig field from any combat operations”, he said, because it “represents an economic lifeline not only for South Sudan but for Sudan as well”.

The deployment followed a deadly drone attack on Tuesday evening that killed dozens, including three South Sudanese soldiers.

SAF confirmed using a drone to target RSF fighters at the facility, though the exact death toll remains unclear. Local media reported that seven tribal leaders and numerous RSF personnel died in the attack.

Approximately 3,900 Sudanese soldiers crossed into South Sudan’s Rubkona County after evacuating Heglig, handing over tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery to South Sudanese authorities, according to Unity State officials in South Sudan.

Thousands of civilians have also fled across the border since Sunday.

Heglig houses a central processing facility able to handle up to 130,000 barrels per day of South Sudanese crude destined for export through Sudanese pipelines. The site also includes Block 6, Sudan’s largest producing field.

Jan Pospisil, a South Sudan expert at Coventry University, explained the strategic calculus behind the unusual arrangement.

“From the SAF’s perspective, they don’t want the RSF to find another possible revenue stream, and it is better from their perspective for South Sudan to take control of the area,” he told Al Jazeera.

He added that the RSF “can’t really defend against air attacks by the SAF, as we saw with this drone strike, and they don’t need money right now”.

The seizure of Heglig marks the latest RSF advance as the conflict’s centre of gravity shifts from Darfur to the vast Kordofan region. The paramilitary force secured complete control of Darfur in October with the fall of el-Fasher, prompting international alarm over mass atrocities.

Activists at the Tawila camp told Al Jazeera that refugees continue arriving, with some forced to sleep outdoors due to insufficient resources.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk repeated a warning he issued last week that he was “extremely worried that we might see in Kordofan a repeat of the atrocities that have been committed in el-Fasher”, amid RSF advances in the region.

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect echoed his warning, with Executive Director Savita Pawnday stressing that Sudan faces “one of the world’s gravest atrocity crises”, where civilians are enduring “unimaginable harm while the international community fails to respond”.

The fighting has triggered displacement, with the International Organization for Migration reporting more than 1,000 people fled South Kordofan province in just two days this week as combat intensified around the state capital, Kadugli.

In el-Fasher, the Sudan Doctors Network reported this week that the RSF is holding more than 19,000 detainees across Darfur prisons, including 73 medical personnel.

The medical advocacy group said cholera outbreaks are killing people due to overcrowding and the absence of adequate healthcare, with more than four deaths recorded weekly from medical neglect.

Mulanje and Lilongwe, Malawi — Ireen Makata sits in her white nursing uniform on a weathered bench at a health post in Malawi’s southern Mulanje district.

The facility is one of 13 in the district, located within a seminomadic, predominantly agricultural community 65km (40 miles) east of Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial capital, near the Mulanje mountain range.

The beige-painted facility stands out from the dozens of huts around it made of red bricks, with straw roofs. To the right of the main entrance is a supply room with diminishing medical supplies. On the other side is an ambulance that Makata says is now rarely used.

Health posts like this were set up to serve remote communities and alleviate pressure on district hospitals. They were crucial in providing communities with basic healthcare, antenatal care, family planning and vaccines.

The clinic in Mulanje used to see dozens of women a day, providing maternal care, including helping women give birth, dispensing medicines and, when needed, transport to the hospital. But now, since funds were cut, it is open only around once every two weeks, stretching its supplies for as long as it can and unable to regularly transport visiting healthcare workers.

Health posts like this are facing closure – 20 have already shuttered in the country – due to the Trump administration cutting United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding in February. This is forcing the country’s health system to withdraw critical services, placing further stress on hospitals, and leaving thousands of women and children without needed care in a region burdened by poverty and long distances to hospitals.

Makata, a nursing officer specialising in maternal and newborn care, usually based at the district hospital, says she used to visit the post two or three times a week. Now she rarely comes and no longer sees most of the patients she used to care for.

“Most of the women who relied on this post now find the distance to access a district hospital too far,” she tells Al Jazeera.

It would take a large chunk of a day, travelling on the bumpy dirt roads of Mulanje district, to reach one. That long visit “takes them away from their day-to-day activities, which bring income or food to their table,” she explains.

Many cannot afford to do that and now go without care.

“They are failing to get the ideal treatment for antenatal care services, especially during the first trimester of pregnancy,” Makata says.

‘Baby and mother in jeopardy’

USAID funding was all-encompassing. It funded remote medical outposts, covering everything from the training of new staff and the provision of drugs and supplies for pregnant women to petrol for ambulances.

The US government provided close to 32 percent of Malawi’s total health budget before the cuts.

USAID funded the health posts through a programme called MOMENTUM in 14 of Malawi’s 28 districts, starting in 2022, helping strengthen existing clinics and set up new ones. As of 2024, there were 249 posts. The programme also provided medical outreach to communities and equipment. About $80m was being invested in the programme by Washington.

Early this year, US President Donald Trump issued stop-work orders on USAID-funded programmes as part of an executive order to pause and re-evaluate foreign aid.

With that move, MOMENTUM was shelved, and the two dozen mobile posts were shuttered as a result. Medical trainees were left in limbo, and life-saving equipment was sold off in fire sales by Washington.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) still provides technical and financial support to several remote districts for maternal and newborn health, but the available resources are not enough to cover the sites funded by MOMENTUM. There are fears that the UNFPA sites will run out of resources and supplies in the coming months.

In the wake of Trump’s funding cuts, health experts in Malawi have raised urgent concerns that new mothers and children will face the greatest impact, with many lives potentially lost as a result.

Makata has set up a WhatsApp group for women to contact her with concerns and questions, but she is frustrated that she cannot work as she used to.

“We would go to where people resided and give them permanent and long-term care,” she says, referring to the posts. “It’s not easy for me to see this. We can’t help those who need the services the most.”

Massitive Matekenya, a community leader for the Musa community in Mulanje district, dressed in a black blazer and oversized chequered-green tie, is at the vacant Mulanje health post.

These days, he says, it is hard to put on a brave face for the people he represents.

“Women in our community are now giving birth on the way to the district hospital since it’s such a long distance away,” says Matekenya. “That puts baby and mother in jeopardy with the potential of the mother bleeding out.”

Matekenya struggles to boost morale as he is constantly faced with community anger over the fact that medical outreach has ended.

He says a 40-year-old woman from his community recently died from malaria. “She had no quick referral to the nearest health facility due to issues of transport,” Matekenya says, noting that the community reached out to a politician but that his assistance came too late.

“I’m worried,” he says. “With family planning services not being offered any more, we are expecting to see a spike in pregnancies, and we are anticipating a possible rise in maternal deaths.”

Impact on fistula care

In a health clinic in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, a woman dressed in black with a golden brooch shuffles from hall to hall. Margaret Moyo is tending to her daily responsibilities as head coordinator at the Bwaila Fistula Centre.

Obstetric fistula occurs when a hole between the birth canal and bladder or rectum is formed during an obstructed and extended labour. Women who do not receive medical treatment can be left incontinent.

Beyond the physical pain, women suffering from obstetric fistula also face social stigma due to the constant leaking and are often ostracised from their communities.

The Bwaila Fistula Centre receives more than 400 patients a year from all over the country, as well as from districts in neighbouring Mozambique. It has 45 beds, one doctor and 14 specialised nurses, and some 30 patients were at the centre when Al Jazeera visited in August.

With fewer resources, individuals will not be seen as often during pregnancy, which could lead to undetected maternal health issues, including more cases of fistula, Moyo argues. She is also concerned that conversations around prevention and education will take a backseat.

“The focus should be on training midwives, access to care and education to delay pregnancy in younger women since they are often most at risk of fistula,” says Moyo.

Before the USAID cuts, Malawi’s government had already forecast a $23m shortfall for reproductive, maternal, and newborn health funding for 2025 owing to drops in foreign aid.

‘I am able to help them’

For the past five years, Moyo has been running what she calls an “ambassador” programme at her facility. Patients who undergo successful fistula repair and are reintegrated into their communities are trained and sent out into their communities.

So far, 120 fistula survivors have become patient ambassadors who educate through community outreach to bring in new patients for treatment.

One such ambassador is Alefa Jeffrey. Wearing a grey “Freedom from Fistula Foundation” T-shirt, the 36-year-old mother of four crosses her arms and gazes towards the floor as she talks about being ostracised after she gave birth and developed a fistula.

“I wasn’t allowed to go to church because the other girls made fun of me and said I smelled bad because I was leaking urine and stool,” she says. “My family told me to go to a traditional healer, but he wasn’t able to help.”

Jeffrey could deal with the physical pain, but she was tormented by the negative interactions with friends and family.

“I got used to dealing with fistula, but it was what people were saying that was giving me the most pain,” recounts Jeffrey, who says she even contemplated suicide.

But she also started looking for answers, asking the traditional healer and then eventually meeting an ambassador who came to her community to speak to women.

Having successfully undergone treatment, involving surgery and follow-up patient and educational care, Jeffrey now advocates for fistula education.

She has set up a WhatsApp group for people to chat with her for information about the condition. She has also brought in 39 mothers from her community to the clinic.

“I’m an expert now. I’m able to convince people to come, which isn’t easy,” says Jeffrey. “Some women have lived with a fistula for so long they don’t believe they can be repaired, and they have already given up, but I am able to help them.”

Lessons from the past: ‘We didn’t panic’

Although health experts are worried about the future of a system without USAID in a country where more than 70 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, government leaders say they have been there before.

Back in 2017, during his first presidency, Trump halted funding for the UNFPA and several groups that provided family planning. Malawi’s government approached NGOs and other countries to alleviate the gaps in funding.

Through community and grassroots innovations, they believe they can weather the storm again.

“We didn’t panic when we heard about the USAID cuts,” says Dr Samson Mndolo, Malawi’s secretary of health. “Instead, we looked at how to be more efficient and get more services for our money.

“We looked at areas where we could maximise resources, so for example if an officer goes to a community to do immunisations, they can now provide family planning services in the same trip too.”

Sitting in his office in the Lilongwe City Council building behind an organised desk, Mndolo discusses the challenges.

“As soon as the stop-work orders came out, we lost close to 5,000 health workers. The majority of these are what we call HIV diagnostic assistants,” he says, referring to the fallout from the USAID cuts. “We are looking now to push towards a health system that is more community-based and not necessarily hospital-based.” In such a system, doctors and health workers from central hospitals would be dispatched more to remote communities, and regular community outreach would become part of their remit, requiring them to perform a wider array of services.

Mndolo and his colleagues are setting up online initiatives and WhatsApp chat groups to field questions from remote patients. He remains optimistic about Malawi’s health system and says the worst thing the country can do now is to lose hope.

“Each crisis is an opportunity. This gives us a chance to strengthen the system and retrain our workforce and digital health systems,” he says.

“We are not naive. This will take some time, but once we get a hold of that as a nation, we can be better with time; that is the opportunity that is there for us.”

Despite such reassurance, those in remote communities say they feel isolated.

Tendai Kausi, a 22-year-old mother from the Musa community in the Mulanje district, still goes to the remote health post for help with her four-year-old son, Saxton. But because of the cuts and closures, many women from her community do not, and she has seen new mothers carry pregnancies in their isolated villages – far from healthcare and without routine checks.

“This is not good for the development of our country,” she says.

“My child will be affected because the services here will not get better,” Kausi says. “I feel very sad for my community.”

A prominent Sudanese doctor’s group has accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of raping at least 19 women as they fled the city of el-Fasher in Darfur.

The Sudan Doctors Network said in a statement on Sunday that it documented the rapes among women who had fled to the town of al-Dabba in the neighbouring Northern State.

Two of the women were pregnant, the group said.

“The Sudan Doctors Network strongly condemns the gang rape being perpetrated by the RSF against women escaping the horrors of El-Fasher, affirming that it constitutes a direct targeting of women in a blatant violation of all international laws that criminalise the use of women’s bodies as a weapon of oppression,” the group wrote on X.

Sudan Doctors Network: We have documented 19 cases of rape committed by the Rapid Support Forces, including two pregnant women, at Al-Afad Camp in Al-Dabba

The Sudan Doctors Network team at Al-Afad Camp in Al-Dabba has documented the rape of 19 women while they were fleeing from… pic.twitter.com/u5qWp4bdSD

— Sudan Doctors Network – شبكة أطباء السودان (@SDN154) December 7, 2025

Sudan has been engulfed in civil war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary RSF. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million, according to the United Nations. It has also left some 30 million in need of humanitarian aid.

The RSF took the city of el-Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur, in October after an 18-month campaign of siege and starvation. The city was the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the region.

Survivors who fled the city in the subsequent days recounted mass killings, rape, pillaging and other atrocities, prompting an international outcry.

Amnesty International has accused the RSF of “war crimes”, while the UN Human Rights Council has ordered an investigation into the abuses in el-Fasher. Officials who visited Darfur and spoke to survivors described the region as an “absolute horror show” and a “crime scene”.

Widespread sexual assault

Mohammed Elsheikh, a spokesperson for the Sudan Doctors Network, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that he was “100 percent sure” that sexual violence committed by RSF fighters is far more widespread than reported.

“Because most of the communities look at it as a stigma, most of the raped women tend not to disclose this information,” he said.

Elsheikh said the network had also documented 23 cases of rape among women who fled el-Fasher for the nearby town of Tawila.

“Unfortunately, the age of these raped victims varies from 15 years to 23 years old,” he said.

In its statement, the Sudan Doctors Network urged the international community to take urgent action to protect Sudanese women and girls.

It also called for “serious pressure on RSF leaders to immediately stop these assaults, respect international humanitarian law, and secure safe corridors for women and children”.

The latest accusations came amid a growing outcry over another RSF attack on a pre-school in the state of South Kordofan that local officials said killed at least 116 people. Some 46 of the victims were children, according to the officials.

On Sunday, Justice Minister Abdullah Dirife said Khartoum was willing to pursue political talks aimed at ending the conflict, but insisted that any settlement must “ensure there is no presence for ‘terrorist’ militias in both the political and military arenas”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the Doha Forum, he said the rebels “need to agree to give their weapons in specific areas and leave all these cities, and the police should take over”.

Dirife also called for putting a stop to the “transfer of weapons and the infiltration of mercenaries into Sudan” and claimed that fighters and arms were entering from regions including South America, Chad and the UAE.

The RSF currently holds all five states of Darfur, while the Sudanese army retains control of most of the remaining 13 states, including Khartoum.

Dirife also accused the RSF of repeatedly breaking past commitments to adhere to regional and global mediation initiatives.

“The last initiative we signed was the Jeddah Declaration. However, this militia didn’t commit to what we agreed on,” he said in Doha.

The Jeddah Declaration – brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia in May 2023 – was meant to protect civilians and lay the groundwork for humanitarian access. Several ceasefires followed, but both sides were accused of violating them, prompting the mediators to suspend talks.

The UN has meanwhile formally declared famine in el-Fasher and Kaduguli in South Kordofan and warned of the risk of a hunger crisis in 20 additional areas across the Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan regions.

The World Food Programme’s Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told Al Jazeera on Sunday that the agency was providing aid to five million people, including two million in areas that are difficult to reach, but warned that assistance has fallen far short of needs.

“World attention needs to be on Sudan now, and diplomatic efforts need to be stepped up in order to prevent the same disaster we saw in el-Fasher,” he said.

At least 153 students and 12 teachers taken from a Catholic school last month remain in captivity.

Nigerian authorities have secured the release of 100 children who were among hundreds kidnapped from a Catholic school in northern Nigeria last month, officials and local media have reported.

The 100 children arrived in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, and are set to be handed over to local government officials in Niger State on Monday, an unnamed United Nations source told the AFP news agency.

“They are going to be handed over to Niger State government tomorrow,” the source told the AFP news agency.

Nigeria’s The Guardian newspaper reported on Sunday that the rescued children were receiving medical evaluations and would be reunited with their families after a debriefing.

Presidential spokesman Sunday Dare also confirmed reports to the AFP that 100 children were being freed.

Armed gunmen kidnapped 303 students and 12 teachers from St Mary’s School in the Papiri community of Niger State’s Agwara district on November 21.

They included both male and female students aged between 10 to 18 years, according to the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

Fifty of the students escaped captivity in the days after they were kidnapped, returning home to their families. Following the release of 100 students on Sunday, 153 students and 12 teachers are believed to remain in captivity.

Days earlier, gunmen abducted 25 schoolgirls from the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in the neighbouring Kebbi State’s Maga town,170km (106 miles) away.

“We have been praying and waiting for their return. If it is true, then it is a cheering news,” said Daniel Atori, spokesman for Bishop Bulus Yohanna of the Kontagora diocese, which runs the school.

“However, we are not officially aware and have not been duly notified by the federal government.”

The latest abductions are the worst seen in Nigeria since more than 270 girls from Chibok town were snatched from their school in 2014.

In total, more than 1,400 Nigerian students have been kidnapped since 2014, in almost a dozen separate incidents.

The most recent kidnappings came soon after United States President Donald Trump said that Nigeria’s Christians are facing genocide, a claim that has been questioned by local officials and Christian groups, who say that people from different faiths have been caught up in ongoing violence in parts of the country.

Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, a spokesman for Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Al Jazeera last month that people of all faiths have been affected by the ongoing violence.

“We’ve continuously made our point clear that we acknowledge the fact that there are killings that have taken place in Nigeria, but those killings were not restricted to Christians alone. Muslims are being killed. Traditional worshippers are being killed,” Ebienfa said.

“The majority is not the Christian population.”

Trump has threatened military intervention in Nigeria, alleging that the country is failing to protect Christians from persecution. He has also threatened to cut aid to Nigeria.

Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people, is divided between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south.

According to Pew Research Center estimates, Muslims make up 56 percent of Nigeria’s population, while Christians make up just more than 43 percent.

Armed groups have been engaged in a conflict that has been largely confined to the northeast of the country, which is majority Muslim, and has dragged on for more than 15 years.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has confirmed deploying fighter jets and ground troops to neighbouring Benin to help foil a coup attempt by a group of Beninese soldiers.

In a statement on Sunday, Tinubu’s office said Nigeria’s military intervened in Benin after President Patrice Talon’s government issued two requests for help, including for “immediate Nigerian air support”.

Tinubu first ordered Nigerian fighter jets to enter Benin and “take over the airspace to help dislodge the coup plotters from the National TV and a military camp where they had regrouped”, the statement said.

Nigeria’s military sent in ground troops later, after Benin’s government asked for their support in “the protection of constitutional institutions and the containment of armed groups”, it said.

Tinubu praised his troops and said they had helped “stabilise a neighbouring country”.

The Nigerian statement came shortly after Talon, the president of Benin, appeared on national television and said his security forces had successfully blocked the attempt to overthrow his government.

Talon promises punishment

Talon said forces loyal to him “stood firm, recaptured our positions, and cleared the last pockets of resistance held by the mutineers”.

“This commitment and mobilisation enabled us to defeat these adventurers and to prevent the worst for our country,” he said. “This treachery will not go unpunished.”

The Benin president added that his thoughts were with the victims of the coup attempt as well as with a number of people who have been held by the fleeing mutineers.

He did not give details.

The unrest was the latest threat to democratic governance in the region, where militaries have in recent years seized power in Benin’s neighbours Niger and Burkina Faso, as well as in Mali, Guinea and, only last month, Guinea-Bissau. But it was an unexpected development in Benin, where the last successful coup took place in 1972.

A government spokesperson, Wilfried Leandre Houngbedji, said that 14 people had been arrested in connection with the coup attempt as of Sunday afternoon, without providing details.

One security source told the AFP news agency that all the detainees were soldiers in active service, except one who was ex-military. It was not clear if Lieutenant Colonel Pascal Tigri, the coup leader, had been apprehended.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Olushegun Adjadi Bakari told the Reuters news agency that the soldiers had only managed to briefly take control of the state TV network.

While gunfire had been heard in some locations of the country’s commercial hub, Cotonou, during the coup attempt, the city has been relatively calm since early afternoon, according to residents.

ECOWAS to send troops

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional bloc and the African Union also condemned the coup attempt.

In a statement later on Sunday, ECOWAS said it had ordered the immediate deployment of elements of its standby force to Benin, including troops from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

It said the troops would help the Beninese government and army “preserve constitutional order and the territorial integrity of the Republic of Benin”.

The coup attempt came as Benin prepares for a presidential election in April, which is expected to mark the end of Talon’s tenure.

Last month, Benin adopted a new constitution, creating a Senate and extending the presidential mandate from five to seven years. Critics have described the reforms as a power grab by the governing coalition, which has chosen Minister of Economy and Finance Romuald Wadagni as its candidate.

The opposition Democrats party, founded by Talon’s predecessor, Thomas Boni Yayi, has meanwhile seen its proposed candidate rejected because of what a court ruled was insufficient backing from lawmakers.

Ibrahim Yahaya Ibrahim, deputy director of the Sahel Project at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that the coup bids in Benin and other African countries have been partly driven by governments rejecting their democratic responsibilities.

“In recent days and recent months, we have all been holding our breath about what could happen in many countries that are either facing security situations that are bad, or are coming to an election, where there is no clarity on whether the rulers will be respecting the rules of the democratic game,” Yahaya said.

“That is a good part of the story [in Benin]. President Talon has accepted to step down in a context where many other leaders are trying to add new terms. We saw it in Cote d’Ivoire, we saw it in Cameroon recently, and many other cases. But the less positive part of the story is that the leader of the opposition’s candidacy has been invalidated in Benin,” he added.