Niger’s ousted president hits back as UK slams coup

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Written by alib

Category: Africa

Published: 27 July 2023

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LONDON - Britain backed a regional diplomatic scramble underway on Thursday to defuse tensions in Niger, as the West African country’s deposed president vowed to resist a military takeover.

Andrew Mitchell, the Foreign Office minister for Africa, slammed the coup and said the government was closely monitoring the situation as the US urged its citizens to avoid affected areas.

“The UK condemns in the strongest possible terms any attempt to undermine stability and democracy in Niger,” Mr Mitchell said.

“The UK joins the African Union and Economic Community of West African States in their calls to end the unacceptable events seen today, and to ensure the full and swift restoration of Niger’s democratically elected institutions,” he said.

A group of soldiers appeared on the former French colony’s national television on Wednesday night to declare they had removed President Mohamed Bazoum from power, and he was being held in the presidential palace.

They said they had dissolved the constitution, suspended all institutions and closed the nation’s borders.

In the TV announcement on Wednesday, Col Maj Amadou Abdramane, said alongside nine other uniformed soldiers: “We, the defence and security forces... have decided to put an end to the regime you know.

“This follows the continuing deterioration of the security situation, and poor economic and social governance.”

However, Mr Bazoum gained access to social media on Thursday and declared that Niger’s "hard-won gains will be safeguarded", condemning the wider region’s seventh coup since 2020.

The country's foreign minister Hassoumi Massoudou also tweeted an appeal for "all democrats and patriots" to ensure the coup fails.

Land-locked Niger has become a key ally for Western powers against Islamist insurgencies in the region, but military efforts have been undermined by coups in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso.

Niger is also an EU ally in the fight against illegal migration from sub-Saharan Africa, which is fuelling Britain’s small boats crisis.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres both said they had spoken to Mr Bazoum and offered their full support to his government.

“The US condemns efforts to subvert Niger’s constitutional order by force, and underscores that our partnership depends on the continuation of democratic governance,” Mr Blinken said, as European governments also denounced the takeover.

AU force in Somalia completes first phase of drawdown

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 01 July 2023

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MOGADISHU - The African Union force in conflict-torn Somalia said it has completed the first phase of a troop reduction aimed at eventually putting security fully in the hands of the national army and police.

The African Transitional Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) said in a statement dated Friday that a total of seven bases had been handed over to Somali security forces, enabling the drawdown of 2,000 troops by the June 30 deadline.

ATMIS chief logistics officer Bosco Sibondavyi described the handover as an "important milestone" in the implementation of the Somalia Transition Plan and UN Security Council resolutions on the transfer of security responsibility.

The Security Council on Tuesday renewed for six months its authorisation of the AU force, which has a deadline of the end of September for the departure of a further 3,000 soldiers.

The ATMIS contingent had included over 19,000 soldiers and police officers from several African nations including Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, but will have to be reduced to zero by the end of 2024.

In April 2022, the Council approved the replacement of AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia), which had been set up in 2007, by ATMIS, a mission with a reinforced mandate to fight Al-Shabaab Islamists.

The group, which has links with Al-Qaeda, has been waging a bloody insurgency against the fragile internationally backed government in Mogadishu for more than 15 years.

Its fighters continue to carry out deadly attacks despite a major offensive launched last August by pro-government forces, backed by the AU force and US air strikes.

In the deadliest most recent attack, 54 Ugandan peacekeepers were killed in late May when Al-Shabaab militants stormed an AU base southwest of the capital.

How can we get electricity from space?

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 18 June 2023

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LONDON - Solar power harvested by satellites and beamed to Earth is no longer ‘just science fiction’, say scientists.

The United Kingdom (UK) government has given the go-ahead for a £4.3 million project to harness the Sun’s rays via a “Bond-style” floating solar power station that could supply up to a quarter of the country’s electricity, writes Arion McNicoll in the London-Based publication The Week.

Grant Shapps this week announced a multimillion-pound package of support for a project being led by two universities. Cambridge University will develop ultra-lightweight solar panels that can survive the harsh environment of space, while Queen Mary, University of London will research the wireless transmission technology that would send the energy back to Earth.

The energy company EDF, meanwhile, will investigate how to get the power into the UK’s National Grid.

“It does sound like something out of a Bond movie,” Shapps, the energy security and net zero secretary, said in an interview with The Telegraph. “But solar panels in space have the advantage of getting 24 hours of sunlight, which we can’t do on Earth, so it’s definitely worth investing in.

“People thought it was impossible to land a man on the Moon, or impossible to split that atom. You follow the science and the impossible becomes possible.”

‘A near-limitless supply of power’

Earlier this week a prototype built by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) demonstrated that beaming power wirelessly from space towards Earth is possible.

A small but detectable amount of power was transmitted by a device known as the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (Maple), which Space.com explained is “an array of flexible and lightweight microwave power transmitters”.

According to the space news website, the experiment proved “the viability of tapping into a near-limitless supply of power in the form of energy from the sun from space”.

Retrieving energy from space has numerous advantages, the site said. “Because solar energy in space isn’t subject to factors like day and night, obscuration by clouds, or weather on Earth, it is always available.” Consequently, “it is estimated that space-based harvesters could potentially yield eight times more power than solar panels at any location on the surface of the globe.”

‘Space solar power is inevitable’

Tapping into such a potentially vast and reliable power supply could not only boost Britain’s energy security, but will also reduce the need for fossil fuels and drive down household bills, Shapps said.

It is not just the UK that is interested in the technology. In late November, a top-level meeting of European science ministers will convene in Paris to discuss the next priorities for the European Space Agency (Esa). One item they will be considering is a project called Solaris, which proposes building commercial power stations in orbit.

The China Academy of Space Technology has announced plans for a similar system by 2028 and military labs in the US are reportedly experimenting with technology that could send power to remote bases or combat zones.

Generating power in space is not a new idea, said The Guardian. In fact it has been investigated every few decades since the beginning of the space race and “on every occasion, the story has been the same: the cost of launching such large satellites is prohibitive. But now, things are different.”

Reusable rockets are making the cost of sending equipment into orbit significantly cheaper, the newspaper said, citing John Mankins, a former Nasa physicist who is now president of Artemis Innovation Management Solutions.

Instead of costing about $1,000 to launch every kilogram into space, Mankins told The Guardian he expects prices soon to reach closer to $300 a kilogram. “That’s the holy grail for space solar power. It is not just possible someday – it’s inevitable in the next five or seven years,” he said.

“People are realising this isn’t just science fiction,” Ali Hajimiri, an electrical engineer at Caltech and one of the Maple project’s leaders, told The Wall Street Journal. “There may be a pathway to make this reality.”

‘An existential need’

Obstacles remain. One Solaris-funded report by the research firm Roland Berger noted that bringing space-based solar power to Earth will require not just a lot of satellites but plenty of antenna farms on the ground. Two gigawatts of beamed power would require about 25 square miles of receiver, the firm suggested.

Other potential dangers include everything from “impacts on health to sabotage”, the WSJ said. “And then there is the question of how much customers will have to pay for their space-based solar electricity.”

In its report, Roland Berger concluded that power from space could be “a cost-competitive renewable technology”, but that it still depends on how much it costs to send equipment into space and the cost of electronics generally.

Still, for Sergio Pellegrino, who also worked on Caltech’s project, the opportunities are clear. “There is an existential need for abundant clean power,” he said, “and this could help get us there.”