Rwandan-backed M23 rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo battled militiamen allied with the government on Tuesday as regional countries tried to give fresh impetus to faltering peace initiatives.
Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye said he had seen “credible intelligence” that Rwanda had a plan to attack his country, whose forces have battled Rwandan-backed rebels in neighbouring DRC.
South Sudan’s first vice-president, Riek Machar, has accused Uganda of violating a United Nations arms embargo by entering the country with armoured and air force units and conducting airstrikes there.
Renewed fighting in DRC as neighbours try to revive peace process
Rwandan-backed M23 rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) battled militiamen allied with the government on Tuesday as regional countries tried to give fresh impetus to faltering peace initiatives.
M23’s swift advance since January has seized eastern DRC’s two largest cities, resulted in thousands of deaths and forced hundreds of thousands more from their homes.
Southern and east African countries have made repeated diplomatic pushes to resolve the conflict amid fears it could spiral into a larger regional war.
The latest setback to those efforts came on Monday when the M23 rebels went back on a pledge to withdraw from the strategic town of Walikale and accused the DRC army of failing to halt its own offensive operations there.
The rebels and pro-government milita fighters known as Wazalendo battled on Tuesday in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, said residents.
In North Kivu, a second day of clashes raged near the banks of Lake Edward, which straddles the border between DRC and Uganda, said Muhindo Tafuteni, a local civil society activist.
In South Kivu, fighting took place in several towns north of the provincial capital Bukavu, which M23 captured in February, said residents.
Leaders from the main southern and eastern Africa political blocs had met on Monday to advance a plan aimed at securing a ceasefire in a conflict rooted in the long fallout from the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and competition for control of mineral riches.
In a statement afterwards, they said they had appointed five former heads of state to facilitate the peace process.
The appointees are Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo, South Africa’s Kgalema Motlanthe, Ethiopia’s Sahle-Work Zewde, Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta and Central African Republic’s Catherine Samba Panza.
DRC’s presidency said the new panel would name a mediator to replace Angolan President João Lourenço, who withdrew from the role on Monday following years of efforts to ease tensions between Rwanda and DRC.
Burundi says Rwanda has a plan to attack it
Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye said he had seen “credible intelligence” that Rwanda had a plan to attack his country, whose forces have battled Rwandan-backed rebels in neighbouring DRC.
He did not elaborate on the alleged plan, which was dismissed by Rwanda, and said he hoped the problem could be resolved through dialogue.
“We know that he has a plan to attack Burundi,” Ndayishimiye told the BBC in an interview, referring to Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
“Burundians will not accept to be killed as Congolese are being killed. Burundian people are fighters,” he said.
Rwanda’s foreign minister, Olivier Nduhungirehe, described the statement as “unfortunate”, adding in a post on X that the two countries were holding discussions and had agreed on the need for military and verbal de-escalation.
Ndayishimiye’s comments underscored the regional stakes of the conflict in eastern DRC, where an advance by M23 rebels since January has captured swathes of territory and killed thousands.
A war in eastern Congo from 1998-2003 drew in more than half a dozen foreign armies. This time, Rwanda has sent arms and troops to support M23, according to the United Nations, while Burundian troops have been fighting alongside DRC forces.
South Sudan says Uganda is violating arms embargo
South Sudan’s first vice-president, Riek Machar, has accused Uganda of violating a United Nations arms embargo by entering the country with armoured and air force units and conducting airstrikes there.
In a letter addressed to the UN, African Union and the Igad regional bloc, Machar said Uganda’s military intervention in South Sudan had violated a 2018 peace deal, which ended a brutal five-year civil war.
Uganda said it had deployed troops in South Sudan earlier this month at the request of the government there, following a breakdown in the turbulent relationship between Machar and President Salva Kiir.
In early March, security forces rounded up several of Machar’s most senior allies, following clashes in South Sudan’s northeast between the military and the White Army militia, a force the government accuses Machar of supporting.
Machar’s SPLM-IO party denies any ongoing links with the White Army, which mostly comprises armed ethnic Nuer who fought alongside Machar against Kiir’s largely Dinka forces during the 2013-2018 conflict.
The UN has warned that a rise in hate speech could plunge the country back into war along ethnic lines.
Uganda fears a full-blown conflagration in its oil-producing northern neighbour could send waves of refugees across the border and potentially create instability.
“The Ugandan forces are currently taking part in airstrikes against civilians,” said Machar in the March 23 letter, urging pressure on Uganda to withdraw its troops.
South Sudan’s army attacked SPLM-IO forces stationed at a camp near the capital Juba on Monday night, said the party’s military spokesperson, Lam Paul Gabriel, on X. Major General Lul Ruai Koang, the government military spokesperson, said he would issue a statement once he had gathered all the relevant information.
Machar’s spokesperson, Pal Mai Deng, said on Tuesday that intelligence officers in Lakes State had arrested four SPLM-IO officials and shut down their office in the state’s capital, Rumbek.
Last week, Uganda’s parliament retrospectively approved the deployment in South Sudan, first announced on 11 March.
In a series of since-deleted posts published on X in the early hours of Sunday, Uganda’s military chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba said: “I’m tired of killing Nuer,” referring to Machar’s ethnic group.
“Tell your leader Riek Machar to come and kneel down before ‘our’ President H.E Salva Kiir,” wrote Kainerugaba, who has a history of making inflammatory statements that have previously sparked diplomatic tensions in the region.
Nigeria’s Trans Niger oil pipeline restored after blast
Nigeria’s Trans Niger oil pipeline had been fully restored and was working normally, after it was ruptured by a blast last week, said Renaissance spokesperson Tony Okonedo on Tuesday.
The Trans Niger Pipeline (TNP), with a capacity of around 450,000 barrels per day, is one of two conduits that export Bonny Light crude from Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer.
Oil output through the TNP was rerouted to an alternative line after blasts ruptured the main link on 19 March, according to Nigerian oil consortium Renaissance Group, which now owns Shell’s former onshore subsidiary that operates the pipeline.
Top cocoa producer Ivory Coast to slash exports from upcoming crop
Ivory Coast will slash the amount of cocoa it sells on international markets from the upcoming crop, according to two regulatory sources, as the world’s top producer of chocolate’s main ingredient grapples with a second year of output decline.
They said the regulator would cut the contract sales limit to 1.3 million tonnes for the 2025/26 cocoa season from the usual 1.7 million tonnes after two weaker crops caused by climate change, ageing plantations and the spread of plant diseases.
Three sources at Ivory Coast’s Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC) said two back-to-back production declines suggested it was not just a cyclical fall but a structural trend.
About 70% to 80% of the country’s main crop production is sold in world markets in advance as “contract” sales, which totalled around 1.7 million tonnes during the 2022/2023 season when Ivory Coast produced 2.3 million tonnes of cocoa.
But that output fell to around 1.75 million tonnes the following season and is estimated at a similar level for the 2024/2025 season that ends this month.
Cocoa farmers, pod counters and exporters said swollen shoot disease was spreading rapidly through all of Ivory Coast’s 13 cocoa-producing regions.
The viral disease, for which there is no treatment, had affected around half of the country’s cocoa fields, they estimated.
Irregular rainfall and drought have also affected cocoa production.
DRC lab testing confirms deadly disease outbreak was malaria
Testing has confirmed that an initially unidentified illness that killed more than 50 people in northwest DRC was malaria, said the country’s National Public Health Institute (INSP) late on Monday.
At least 943 people fell sick and 52 died in Equateur province at the start of the year, with symptoms ranging from fever and fatigue to vomiting and weight loss.
Health officials said in February that the condition was suspected to be either malaria or food poisoning.
Lab testing on samples had now confirmed that it was malaria, said INSP coordinator Christian Ngandu.
The research centre was still waiting for the results of water, drinks and food samples sent abroad to test for intoxication, he added.
A separate outbreak of disease in December, initially of unknown cause, was ultimately also identified as malaria.
Nigeria’s Dangote oil refinery issues tender to sell fuel oil
Nigeria’s Dangote oil refinery issued a tender on Tuesday to sell 128,000 tonnes of residual fuel oil in April, according to a summary of the tender document shared by a market source.
The 650,000 barrel per day (bpd) Dangote refinery will close the tender on Wednesday at 1200 GMT, as it seeks buyers for 88,000 tonnes of low sulphur straight run fuel oil and 40,000 tonnes of slurry oil for loading on April 10-12, the summary showed.
Dangote will shut its 204,000bpd gasoline-making unit for 30 days for maintenance tentatively expected to start on 1 June, according to industry monitor IIR.
Straight run fuel oil is a feedstock processed through secondary refining units and turned into products like gasoline and diesel.
Dangote’s fuel oil exports averaged 75,000 bpd over the period from March to August 2024, but dropped to 20,000 bpd from September, according to shipping data analytics firm Kpler, when its petrol-making residue fluidised catalytic cracking unit started production.
Sudan’s RSF squeezes relief supplies as famine spreads, say aid workers
A Sudanese paramilitary force locked in a war with the army has placed new constraints on aid deliveries to territories where it is seeking to cement its control, including areas where famine is spreading, say humanitarian workers.
The move comes as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seek to form a parallel government in the west of the country, while it is rapidly losing ground in the capital, Khartoum — developments that could further divide the country, which split from South Sudan in 2011.
It also puts hundreds of thousands of people in the western region of Darfur at greater risk of starvation — many of them displaced in previous rounds of conflict.
Relief workers have previously accused fighters from the RSF of looting aid during more than two years of war still raging in Sudan. They also accuse the army of denying or hindering access to RSF-held areas, worsening hunger and disease.
A dozen aid workers, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said that since late last year the RSF had begun demanding higher fees and oversight of operational processes like recruitment of local staff and security, mirroring practices used by army-aligned authorities and further choking off access.
The war, which erupted out of a power struggle between the army and the RSF, has caused what the United Nations calls the world’s largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis.
About half of Sudan’s population of 50 million suffers from acute hunger, mostly in territory held or under threat by the RSF. More than 12.5 million people have been displaced.
Aid agencies have failed to provide adequate relief, and freezes on USAID funding are expected to add to the challenge.
In December, the Sudan Agency for Relief and Humanitarian Operations (SARHO), which administers aid for the RSF, issued directives demanding that humanitarian organisations register via a “cooperation agreement” and set up independent country operations in RSF territory.
Though SARHO agreed last month to suspend the directives until April, aid groups say the restrictions continue.
The tightening of bureaucratic controls is driven partly by the RSF’s quest for international legitimacy, but also offers a way to raise funds for a faction facing military setbacks while still controlling swathes of the country including almost all of Darfur, say the aid workers.
Over the course of the war, momentum on the battlefield has swung back and forth as both sides draw on local and foreign support, with little sign of a decisive breakthrough.
In recent days, however, the army has swiftly retaken ground in the capital that the RSF occupied at the start of the war, including Khartoum’s presidential palace.
Aid workers say failure to register with SARHO results in arbitrary delays and rejection of travel permits, but that compliance could lead to expulsion by the army and the Port Sudan-based government that is aligned with it.
This presented aid organisations with an “impossible choice”, MSF Secretary General Christopher Lockyear told the UN Security Council earlier this month. “Either way, lifesaving assistance hangs in the balance.”
Data compiled by the Sudan INGO forum, which represents non-governmental organisations, the proportion of groups facing delays getting travel permits into RSF territory doubled to 60% in January, from 20-30% last year. That dipped only slightly to 55% in February after SARHO temporarily suspended its directives.
In an interview with Reuters, SARHO head Abdelrahman Ismail said the agency was exercising its legal rights and duties.
“International humanitarian law gives us the right to organise this work via flexible, straightforward procedures, and in fact dozens of local organisations and a limited number of international organisations signed on,” he said.
Authorities in the army-backed administration in Port Sudan were pressuring international organisations not to deal with SARHO, he added.
Aid workers say the restrictions have had the biggest impact in the famine-stricken areas around the city of al-Fashir, the army’s besieged final holdout in Darfur, as well as in nearby Tawila, where tens of thousands have sought refuge.
A global hunger monitor has confirmed famine in three camps for displaced people close to al-Fashir - Zamzam, Abu Shouk, and al-Salam. The RSF has also shelled the camps in recent weeks as it seeks to push the army and its allies out.
"The situation in Zamzam camp is very difficult, we are hungry and scared," said a 37-year-old resident of the camp, Haroun Adam. "We aren’t receiving any form of aid, and people are eating leaves because there’s no food."
Aid workers said that in addition to seeking oversight, the RSF was increasing fees for various aid operations, including hiring local staff and transport of supplies.
The more engagement there was between the RSF and aid agencies, “the more foothold they have to ask for fees”, said one aid worker. DM