Africa

By Amir Abdulazeez

Several decades into the global modern era, Africans, Asians and Latin Americans continue to be held hostage by their colonially indoctrinated inferior mindsets engineered by the blackmail and mythology of Western moral supremacy. This error is not in observing Western virtues, many of which are real. The error is in the uncritical veneration that renders their vices invisible and their judgements unchallengeable. It is evident from the events of the last three decades alone that the so-called saner climes of Europe and North America are the primary architects of global chaos and instability of nations, all in the name of injecting sanity into ‘less sane’ societies.

The ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, launched in the midst of Ramadan, is a typical doctrine of the saner climes, exhibited in its most naked form. Iran’s Foreign Minister had said three days before the war was declared that a nuclear agreement was ‘within reach’ after a third round of indirect talks in Geneva. 

The IAEA itself confirmed there was no evidence of a structured Iranian nuclear weapons programme at the time of the attack. Yet, the surprise assault assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, killed his family members and damaged schools, hospitals and even UNESCO-recognised cultural heritage sites. This is a typical catalogue of barbaric war crimes for which the West has condemned others across generations. 

The Donald Trump administration, whose seemingly rude, dishonest and arrogant officials, has offered a menu of rationalisations and a handful of conflicting justifications for the war. However, when Amnesty International confirmed that the United States was responsible for a strike that killed at least 160 primary school girls, the US officials chose arrogance through denials instead of remorse. 

In fact, the Head of the Federal Communications Commission simultaneously intimidated his own press, threatening the withdrawal of broadcast licenses of American news outlets whose war coverage he deemed unfavourable. Another trademark saner-climes mythology, muzzled in a way only a few non-saner climes can imagine. 

Meanwhile, in all these, it is the ‘lunatic’ Iran that is supposed to apologise and do nothing while it is attacked. The Iranian Regime, branded as autocratic on the premise that it compels women to cover their hair in public, is being lectured by leaders of societies whose women go out naked in the name of civilisation and whose governments topple, kill and abduct Heads of state of other countries for recklessly greedy reasons. 

Now imagine if the erratically behaving Donald Trump were the leader of any African Country, the West would have since declared him incoherent and unstable to deal with or labelled his citizens stupid for voting for him. Worse still, imagine if the Epstein scandal happened in Asia or Latin America. All these contradictions reveal with crystal clarity that Western principles are instruments of convenience. 

To understand the foundations of all these, let us revisit some history. Britain’s Industrial Revolution was fertilised by the profits of the transatlantic slave trade and the systematic plunder of India, a country whose share of global GDP fell from about 25% at the onset of colonial rule to barely 4% at independence. 

France financed much of its republican grandeur on the forced labour of West Africa and the Caribbean. Belgium’s King Leopold II transformed the Congo into a private abattoir, severing the hands of Africans who failed to meet rubber quotas, leaving behind a traumatised country that still bleeds today. 

To speak of the sanity of those climes without acknowledging that they were partly built from organised insanity inflicted elsewhere is to ignore the background to what we are witnessing today.

In the last fifty years alone, the so-called saner climes have unleashed a level of violence and destabilisation that would shame any regime they have ever deemed fit to condemn. The United States, the self-acclaimed sentinel of the free world, has engineered irrational regime changes in Chile (1973), Iran (1953 and subsequently), Guatemala (1954), Nicaragua, Panama, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, among others. The 1973 CIA-backed coup against a democratically elected socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, installed Augusto Pinochet, under whose reign thousands were tortured, disappeared, or executed. Henry Kissinger, the American architect of that atrocity, received the Nobel Peace Prize from his fellow saner clime comrades. 

The French Government, through its notorious Françafrique policy, maintained a neocolonial empire across West and Central Africa long after the 1960s, propping up murderous dictators and conducting military interventions to protect economic interests, with a consistency that made a mockery of every democratic principle France professed to uphold.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 by Western Governments is perhaps the most consequential act of manufactured catastrophe of the modern era. The war resulted in the deaths of an estimated 200,000 to one million Iraqi civilians, the obliteration of the country’s infrastructure, the rise of ISIS from the ashes of a disbanded Iraqi army and the triggering of a refugee crisis that continues to destabilise the Middle East. No one was held accountable. George W. Bush and Tony Blair are living happy lives in their saner countries. The International Criminal Court, which has indicted multiple African heads of state on much lesser crimes with considerable alacrity, found no jurisdiction to examine any of them. Meanwhile, the people of Iraq, Syria and Libya who were dismantled in the name of liberation still live in the ruins and pains of what the saner climes call democracy.

While the West was busy bombing the Middle East, Africa, the so-called backward continent, was largely attending to its own affairs of conflict resolution with a remarkable degree of maturity. The African Union mediated crises in Burundi, the Gambia and Lesotho without firing a single bullet. ECOWAS brokered peace agreements in Sierra Leone and Liberia and deployed peacekeeping forces with genuine multilateral mandates, without the casual trigger-happiness of Western powers. 

Western attitude towards violence is shamelessly selective. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Saner Clime’s response was swift, comprehensive and morally unambiguous: sanctions, weapons, diplomatic isolation and a media chorus of civilizational solidarity. This response was appropriate anyway. But the problem is its stark contrast with the Western posture toward other invasions. When Saudi Arabia launched its war on Yemen in 2015, the United States and the United Kingdom did not merely decline to intervene; they allegedly supplied the bombs, refuelled the warplanes and provided intelligence for strikes that killed thousands of Yemeni civilians and engineered one of the worst humanitarian crises on earth. 

Many argue that the actions of Western governments do not accurately reflect what their citizens stand for. This is debatable, especially when one examines certain incidents. During the Obama presidency, Edward Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency was conducting mass, warrantless surveillance of American citizens and foreign governments, including the personal telephone of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in flagrant violation of constitutional protections and international diplomatic norms. The response was not accountability but exile for Snowden and a classification of his revelations as treason. 

The United States has the largest prison population on earth, both in absolute numbers and per capita, administered under a system in which Black Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of their white counterparts, in conditions that the United Nations has described as cruel. Since 1968, gun violence has claimed more American lives than all of America’s foreign wars combined. One might be inclined to believe that these controversies are ones ordinary Western citizens may not approve of.

Climate change is another damning indictment of Western moral authority in the twenty-first century. The Industrial activities enriching Europe and North America still depend on burning carbon at a scale the planet has never experienced. The United States, historically the world’s largest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gases, withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement under Donald Trump. 

Australia, another clime reputed to be considerably saner than most, has built its prosperity on coal exports and resisted meaningful emissions reduction. Some Pacific Island nations face sea submersions within this century as a consequence of decisions made in saner capitals. When these nations’ leaders speak at the United Nations with tears in their voices, the saner climes offer symbolic but empty sympathy before later returning to preserving their industrial prerogatives. 

The Western Media’s tactical twisting of narratives regarding other climes is another issue. For example, CNN may not run primetime documentaries on the Swiss banking system’s complicity in laundering the proceeds of African kleptocracy, but will rather concentrate on the primary kleptocrats. The BBC does not lead with investigations into the role of British arms dealers in sustaining African conflicts. The New York Times does not dedicate its front page to the tax avoidance schemes through which Western corporations drain billions of dollars annually from African economies (more than the continent receives in foreign aid).

In addition to all this, there is something more worrisome. The bulk of support received by these saner climes comes from their victims in the third world. In Nigeria, for instance, the blind sympathy for religious affiliations drives people to support the brazen oppression and cruel injustices perpetrated by the West. Our solidarity should be among ourselves, not with those who see and treat us as worthless humans and more like animals because of their superior moral hypocrisy. 

Additionally, our bootlicking governments, which are considered close to valueless in the International arena or even insane just like us, must stop intimidating their own citizens who decide to speak up against Western double standards. Let’s remember, the phrase “saner climes” is a moral verdict and a devastating condemnation of everywhere else except Europe and North America. Africans and all peoples of the marginalised world are owed the intellectual inheritance of critical discernment.

The world does not need more or fewer saner climes; it needs a more honest accounting of what sanity actually requires. It requires consistency: the same rules applied to the powerful and the powerless alike. It requires humility: the acknowledgement that no civilisation holds a monopoly on wisdom. 

And it requires accountability: not the selective justice of indicting the weak and glorifying the mighty, but the universal application of standards that do not bend before a Security Council veto or the impulse of a self-serving superpower. Until that accounting arrives, the presumption of Western moral authority deserves not deference, but fearless interrogation; the kind that the so-called saner climes have always claimed to celebrate and so rarely been prepared to receive.

By Kamal Alkasim

It began with hope. Like many young Nigerians chasing a better life, Sulaiman Abubakar left Kano with dreams of greener pastures. But four years after crossing into Algeria illegally, his journey has become a nightmare — one of arrest, detention, and silence that has left his loved ones pleading for help.

Sulaiman Muhammad, a native of Kano, fled his hometown’s rising cost of living and crossed into Algeria illegally. After four years abroad, he was arrested and has been detained there for more than four months.

In an interview with The Daily Reality, his fiancée Khadija Abubakar, 20, shared the untold story:

“I met him before he left for Algeria. The hardship at home forced him to go. We lost touch for a long time,” she said.

“When we reconnected, he sent ₦1 million to my family so my parents could buy marriage materials (Lefe) and prepare our wedding. A month later, back in Kano, he returned to his business, and I haven’t heard his voice since.”

Her words, spoken with sorrow, highlight the human cost of irregular migration.

His Kindness and Impact on My Life

“He is generous and very good to me. If I marry him, I know he will be a supportive partner. He sent me money as capital to grow my business, and in every situation he has never failed to support me. He always told me that if he had enough capital, he would return to Kano, start his own business, and stay home rather than travel again. Missing him is a great loss to me.”

“After he went missing, I contacted his boss on WhatsApp. We spoke, and he told me to stay calm and promised to do his best to rescue him. He thought the police might have arrested him. We talk every day, but the story remains the same. I don’t know what to do.”

A Mother’s Plea

Sulaiman’s mother, Aishatu Abubakar, who asked not to be photographed, shared her anguish: “My son is one in a million. He’s obedient. If I lose him, they will finish me. He always takes on my responsibilities. The whole family is proud of him. He promised to finish building my home. This tragedy ends that hope for me. But in my body, I feel my son will escape soon.”

Final Call for Help

“I called on people who can help me to rescue him,” Khadija said. His mother, Aisha Abubakar, added, “I call on anyone who can do anything to help us. We are ready to join hands.”

What Algerian law says about illegal immigration

Algeria’s main rule for people who enter the country without a visa or proper documents is set out in Law No. 08-11 of 25 June 2008 on the conditions of entry, residence and movement of foreign nationals. The law makes “illegal entry” a punishable offence, and once caught, migrants can be detained, fined, and then deported. 

In practice, authorities often place undocumented migrants in administrative detention centres while arranging removals, and they may also issue re-entry bans. Human rights bodies have repeatedly urged Algeria to decriminalise irregular migration and to use detention only as a last resort, but the 2008 law remains the legal basis for treating unauthorised entry as a criminal matter.

By Abdulhameed Ridwanullah

This week, the article titled “Something Big Is Happening” was published on X by AI entrepreneur Matt Shumer. It became viral with around 80million views, 36k retweets, 105k likes and 5.7k comments at the moment of this writing. The virality stems from the central thesis of the post – AI disruption of white-collar jobs within years. Days later, the CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, while granting an interview to the Financial Times, claimed that the tasks undertaken by white-collar workers will be automated within 12 to 18 months (watch the details in the video). Previously, Dario Amodei predicted that up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs would be automated within one to five years in his January 2026 essay.


All week, the debate has been whether AI will take your job. The discourse is loud. Spoiler alert! The discourse is almost entirely about the West. The Global South is often an afterthought. So, when I read Shumer say, “the experience everyone else is about to have,” or Suleyman say, “most tasks fully automated in 18 months”, I ask: Whose experience? Automated for whom?


The West debates whether AI will take their jobs. Much of Africa is still waiting for the jobs AI is supposedly coming to replace.


Most importantly, studies have shown that automated AI moderation barely works in the Global South (read the CDT study by Mona Elswah and her colleagues here). In my PhD research, I study how AI content moderation systems fail in Nigerian languages. The failures are systematic, not incidental. Moreover, there are over 2000 languages in Africa. AI moderation seldom works in 3 major Nigerian languages. There is a wide gap between what Silicon Valley promises about AI and the deliverables to the world population. That is the story.


Moreso, this doomsday discourse about new technology is not new. The pattern is real. Connor Boyack’s rejoinder (AI isn’t coming for your future. Fear is) beautifully captures by invoking Bastiat’s insight about the “seen and unseen” changes brought by new technology. The debate all week has been focused on the “seen”, but the “unseen” invoked by Boyack are the new industries and possibilities that emerge when technology reduces costs and eliminates drudgery. No doubt, every major technology disruption has eventually created more than it destroyed. If anything, Africa’s unofficial content creation economy is a pointer to such an opportunity. 


However, the challenge is that the benefits are never evenly distributed. They are concentrated where infrastructure exists, languages are resourced, and capital flows. The boom and doom are not the same for a worker in London or Boston and someone in Cape Town, Lagos, Kano or Nairobi. One pays $20 ChatGPT subscription and enlists AI as a co-pilot. But the other is faced with the unseen failure of AI moderation, wreaking havoc in their community. This inequality runs in both directions: who benefits from AI’s capabilities and who is harmed by its failures.


So, the future of AI is not one story. It is two. While professionals in well-resourced economies leverage, adapt, upskill and thrive, billions of people in low-resource economies remain in the blind spot of a technology that was never designed for them.  


The real question is not whether AI will take your job. It is whether AI will equally serve everyone or continue to perpetuate historical inequality.
This is the conversation we should all be having.

Abdulhameed Ridwanullah is a doctoral researcher working on AI and platform studies in Nigeria at Media for Empowerment and Impact Lab, Northeastern University, Boston. He can be reached at olaitanrido@yahoo.com

By Sabiu Abdullahi

Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on Saturday that Beijing will remove tariffs on imports from nearly all African countries starting May 1, according to state media reports.

Currently, China maintains a zero-tariff policy for imports from 33 African nations. However, last year, the government pledged to extend the policy to all 53 of its diplomatic partners on the continent.

From May, the zero-tariff arrangement will apply to every African country except Eswatini, which continues to maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Xi highlighted the move during the annual African Union summit in Ethiopia, describing it as a significant boost for development across Africa.

“This will undoubtedly provide new opportunities for African development,” he said, underscoring China’s role as Africa’s largest trading partner.

The country has been a major supporter of infrastructure projects across the continent through its expansive “Belt and Road” initiative.

African nations are increasingly turning to China and other international partners for trade, following the imposition of steep tariffs by US President Donald Trump last year.

The zero-tariff policy is expected to strengthen trade ties between China and Africa, giving African exporters greater access to Chinese markets while encouraging economic growth in the region.

By Iranloye Sofiu Taiye

The world has entered a phase in which power no longer feels compelled to wear moral disguises. From Eastern Europe to the Middle East, from East Asia to Latin America, coercion has re-emerged as an acceptable instrument of statecraft, and sovereignty has become increasingly conditional, least respected when convenient and violated when costly restraint disappears.

The Russia–Ukraine war, China’s posture towards Taiwan, Israel’s war in Gaza, and the long-standing pressure campaign against Venezuela are not isolated crises. They are symptoms of a systemic transition: the erosion of post–Cold War restraint and the reassertion of raw power politics in a crowded, mistrustful, and increasingly multipolar international system.

For Africa, this moment is not abstract. It is existential. The same forces reshaping Europe, Asia, and Latin America are already present on the African continent through resource competition, security outsourcing, debt diplomacy, sanctions regimes, proxy alignments, and political conditionality. The difference is that Africa often confronts these forces without a unified strategy, relying instead on appeals to history, morality, or international goodwill. That approach is no longer sufficient.

Realist theory, as articulated by thinkers such as Hans Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer, offers a brutally honest diagnosis of the international system. It reminds us that global politics is characterised by anarchy, not law; that survival, not virtue, motivates states; and that power, not rhetoric, ultimately determines outcomes.

Recent conflicts confirm realism’s core claims: Russia acted in Ukraine not because of moral failure but because it perceived a narrowing window to secure its sphere of influence. China’s pressure on Taiwan is driven less by ideology than by long-term assessments of capability, timing, and strategic opportunity. Israel’s conduct in Gaza reflects the logic of overwhelming deterrence in an insecure regional environment. The United States’ treatment of Venezuela illustrates how economic warfare substitutes for direct military intervention in an era of reputational constraints.

In each case, capability trumped legality, and vulnerability invited pressure. Yet realism, while accurate in diagnosing power behaviour, becomes dangerous when treated as destiny. Taken to its logical extreme, it suggests that weaker states have only three options: submission, alignment, or destruction. This is analytically lazy and politically paralysing.

History and current global practice demonstrate that survival is not reserved for the strongest but for the most strategically positioned. The key distinction between states that withstand pressure and those that collapse is not moral standing but strategic architecture.

Ukraine did not survive Russia’s invasion because it matched Moscow militarily. It survived because it transformed a bilateral war into a multilateral stake. By embedding its security dilemma within NATO, the EU, and global norms, Ukraine increased the cost of Russian victory beyond the battlefield.

Taiwan’s resilience lies not only in its arms but also in its economy. Its centrality to global semiconductor supply chains converts any military action into a worldwide economic crisis. Invasion becomes irrational not because it is impossible, but because it is prohibitively disruptive.

Palestine commands unprecedented global sympathy yet remains structurally vulnerable. Without credible security guarantees, economic leverage, or institutional power, moral legitimacy alone has not translated into sovereignty.

Venezuela’s leadership adopted confrontational rhetoric without building defensive alliances, diversified economic networks, or institutional shields. The result has been isolation, sanctions, and internal fragility, confirming that outrage without insulation invites coercion. The lesson is stark: states do not survive because they are right; they survive because they are costly to dominate. Afghanistan’s resilience is a case study. 

Africa today occupies a paradoxical position. The continent is: Central to the global energy transition (critical minerals), demographically pivotal, geopolitically courted by rival powers, and numerically powerful in multilateral institutions; alas, Africa remains strategically fragmented. Most African states still approach global politics through the language of gratitude, alignment, or moral appeal rather than through calculated leverage. The continent’s diplomatic posture is often reactive rather than anticipatory.

This is dangerous in a world where: aid is weaponised, debt is politicised, sanctions are normalised, and security assistance comes with strategic strings. Africa risks becoming the quiet theatre of the next great-power contest, not because it is weak, but because it is insufficiently coordinated.

What Africa requires is neither idealism nor cynicism, but strategic realism with agency a doctrine that accepts power politics while refusing subjugation.

Such a doctrine would rest on five pillars.

1. Strategic Indispensability: Africa must move beyond raw resource exportation toward value-chain centrality. Countries that control processing, logistics, and industrial ecosystems are harder to coerce than those that merely supply inputs.

2. Networked Sovereignty: Sovereignty in the 21st century is not isolationist. It is embedded on favourable terms through regional blocs, trade regimes, and security compacts that dilute unilateral pressure.

3. Institutional Power, Not Institutional Faith: Africa must stop treating international institutions as moral referees and start using them as arenas of contestation. Voting blocs, agenda-setting, and procedural leverage matter.

4. Strategic Non-Alignment, Not Passivity: Non-alignment must evolve from rhetorical neutrality into active hedging, diversifying partnerships, avoiding dependency traps, and exploiting multipolar competition without becoming a proxy.

5. Continental Coordination: No African state, regardless of size, can negotiate effectively alone in a hardened global system. Continental coherence in economic, diplomatic, and security-related is no longer aspirational; it is existential.

Conclusively, power will not wait for Africa to be ready; the defining feature of the emerging world order is not chaos, but selective constraint. Power will be exercised where resistance is weak, fragmented, or sentimental and restrained where costs are high, and consequences diffuse. Africa cannot afford another century of learning this lesson too late. The continent must abandon the illusion that shared history, moral standing, or international sympathy will shield it from coercion. Those narratives did not protect Ukraine, Palestine, or Venezuela. They will not protect Africa.

What will protect Africa is a strategy: the ability to anticipate pressure, restructure vulnerability, and convert relevance into leverage. In a world where power has shed its disguises, survival belongs not to the loudest protester, but to the most strategically prepared.

Iranloye Sofiu Taiye is a policy analyst and wrote via iranloye100@gmail.com.

By Hadiza Abdulkadir

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Libya’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi, has been killed in the western Libyan town of Zintan, according to local authorities and sources close to the family.

He was reportedly shot after armed men stormed his residence, disabling security cameras before opening fire. The circumstances surrounding the attack remain unclear, and no group has claimed responsibility so far.

Once seen as his father’s political heir, Saif al-Islam became a central and controversial figure following the 2011 uprising that ended the Gaddafi regime. He was captured that year, later sentenced to death in absentia for war crimes, and released in 2017 under an amnesty law.

In recent years, he had sought a return to politics, including an unsuccessful attempt to run in Libya’s postponed presidential election.

Libya’s Attorney General has announced an investigation into the killing. Analysts say his death could have political implications in a country still struggling with deep divisions and instability more than a decade after the revolution.

By Muhammad Abubakar

The Confederation of African Football has imposed heavy sanctions on Senegal following the dramatic Africa Cup of Nations final against Morocco, including a five-match suspension and $100,000 fine for coach Pape Thiaw.

Thiaw was penalised for “unsporting conduct” after instructing his players to walk off the pitch during the final. The incident marred Senegal’s championship victory.

Senegalese players Ismaila Sarr and Iliman Cheikh Baroy Ndiaye have each been banned for two CAF matches for similar misconduct. The Senegalese Football Federation faces a substantial $615,000 fine despite lifting the trophy.

Morocco has also been penalised. CAF handed the runners-up a $315,000 fine for improper conduct, whilst defender Achraf Hakimi received a two-match suspension for unsporting actions.

Neither federation has yet announced whether they will appeal the decisions.

By Muhammad Sulaiman

President Bassirou Diomaye Faye has awarded Senegal’s AFCON 2025–winning squad a total of $6.2 million in cashand 68,000 square meters of land, marking one of the most generous state rewards in African football history.

Each player will receive $135,000 and a 1,500-square-meter plot on the Petite Côte, while members of the technical and backroom staff will be awarded $90,000 and 1,000-square-meter plots, according to the presidency.

Senegal clinched the continental title with a disciplined 1–0 victory over the Morocco national football team in the final, a tightly contested match that underscored the Lions’ defensive organisation and tactical maturity.

Led by head coach Pape Thiaw, the Lions’ triumph has been celebrated as a symbol of national pride and sporting excellence, with officials saying the rewards reflect the country’s gratitude for a team that once again placed Senegal at the summit of African football.

By Abdulsalam Mahmud

Across the world today, governments are recalibrating their economies to fit a green and sustainable future. From Brazil’s vast reforestation drive in the Amazon to Morocco’s solar revolution in Ouarzazate, nations are realising that the path to prosperity now runs through the low-carbon economy. 

The green transition has become more than an environmental necessity; it is the new global economy in the making — one that rewards innovation, resilience and foresight. For Africa, this transition is both an urgent challenge and a rare opportunity. 

As the continent most vulnerable to climate change, Africa stands to lose the most from inaction. Yet, it also possesses immense natural capital — sunlight, land, biodiversity and youthful human potential — that can power a sustainable transformation. Countries that act early and boldly will not only build resilience but also attract the finance, partnerships and technologies shaping the next century.

In this global context, Niger State, under the visionary leadership of His Excellency, Farmer Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago, has chosen to define its future differently. Over the last two years, the state has pursued one of the most ambitious subnational green economy transformations in Nigeria’s history. 

By linking local realities to global climate ambitions, Niger is steadily positioning itself as a hub for climate-smart agriculture, clean energy, and green industrial development. Governor Bago’s administration began by recognising an undeniable truth: climate change is not just an environmental issue but an economic one. 

Desertification, flooding and deforestation have long undermined livelihoods across the state. To confront these threats, Niger launched its “Green Economy Blueprint”, an integrated strategy designed to build resilience while creating green jobs and sustainable prosperity. From that moment, the state’s engagement with the world deepened. 

At COP28 in Dubai, Niger presented its blueprint before international partners, and by COP29 in Baku, it had become a recognisable name in subnational climate leadership. These appearances were not symbolic. They yielded partnerships that have since defined the core of Niger’s transition agenda.

One of the most transformative was the Memorandum of Understanding with Blue Carbon, a UAE-based company committed to developing sustainable climate solutions. The agreement to plant one billion economic trees across one million hectares in Niger State is among the largest private–public reforestation programmes on the African continent. 

Beyond ecological restoration, the initiative promises rural employment, carbon credit generation and long-term economic dividends from timber, fruit and non-timber forest products. Equally significant was the partnership with FutureCamp Germany, a globally renowned firm in carbon markets. This collaboration aims to unlock over ₦1 trillion in climate investments and build the technical framework for Niger’s carbon market activation.

For a subnational entity, this is pioneering work — one that could see Niger emerge as the first Nigerian state to fully participate in voluntary carbon trading, attracting new revenue streams while promoting transparency in climate finance. The MoU with the NNPC Limited extends Niger’s climate action to the energy frontier. 

It covers a suite of renewable and low-carbon projects, including a Greenfield hydroelectric power plant, mega solar parks for institutions and home solar systems targeting 250,000 households. The agreement also envisions an ethanol plant capable of producing 500 million litres annually, powered by crops cultivated across 100,000 hectares — a project that will create value chains, empower farmers and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, the collaboration with ECOWAS Bank for Development and the Environment for an $11 million Madalla Green Economic Market promises to turn commerce itself into a model of sustainability—blending trade, recycling, and renewable energy into a single modern ecosystem. Similarly, Niger’s partnership with the Turkish firm Direkci Camp is reshaping agribusiness through smart agriculture, irrigated soya cultivation and export-oriented value chains.

These developments are not isolated. They are coordinated through the Niger State Agency for Green Initiatives (NG-SAGI), the institutional anchor established two years ago and now led by Dr Habila Daniel Galadima. Beyond a doubt, NG-SAGI is more than a bureaucracy; it is a policy engine designed to harmonise the state’s environmental, agricultural, and energy programmes into a coherent climate-resilience framework.

Under this framework, Niger hosted Nigeria’s first-ever subnational Green Economy Summit in 2023, attracting investors and development partners from across the globe. The summit’s outcomes validated the Governor’s approach: local action can be globally relevant if guided by a clear vision and credible governance. The pledges and partnerships secured there continue to serve as foundations for current projects — from afforestation to renewable energy and sustainable agriculture.

Another milestone was the creation of the Niger State Agriculture Development Fund, with ₦3.5 billion in startup capital from the state and local governments. The fund is enabling 1,000 young farmers to access ₦1 million in grants, along with hectares of land for nurseries across all 25 local governments. This initiative has quietly triggered an agricultural mechanisation revolution, empowering a new generation to view farming as a business —and sustainability as a strategy.

Partnerships with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), the Energy Commission of Nigeria, and the Global World Energy Council are driving new frontiers in wind energy and industrial decarbonization. Niger’s growing alignment with UNIDO is already yielding plans for circular-economy models within the agro-processing free trade zone, blending job creation with environmental responsibility.

And while some of these projects are at different stages of implementation, the direction is unmistakable: Niger State is building a green identity anchored on innovation, inclusion and international collaboration. Even modest steps, like installing solar-powered streetlights across Minna, tell a larger story — one of a government deliberately moving toward a future powered by clean energy and driven by public safety and climate consciousness.

As the world prepares for COP30 in Brazil next month, Niger State’s delegation is expected to present these achievements not as isolated efforts, but as part of a coherent subnational climate narrative. It will highlight how a state, once challenged by deforestation and poverty, is now leading a structured march toward carbon neutrality and green prosperity. 

The focus this time will be on climate-smart agriculture, renewable energy expansion, youth inclusion, and green finance innovation—key pillars aligned with the global call for just and equitable transitions. At COP30, Niger’s voice will also speak for Nigeria’s broader subnational climate movement — demonstrating how state-level leadership can accelerate the nation’s commitments under the Paris Agreement. 

The lessons from Niger are clear: climate action must be localised, data-driven and economically beneficial. Beyond the conference halls of Brazil, Niger’s agenda carries deep human meaning. Every hectare reforested, every solar panel installed, every youth trained in sustainable agriculture is a statement of faith in a livable future. 

Climate action here is not an abstract ambition; it is a lived policy that transforms communities, restores hope and redefines governance as stewardship. If properly amplified, Niger’s story could inspire other states to view climate change not as a threat but as an opportunity—a chance to create industries, attract green finance, and protect generations unborn. 

That is the broader promise Governor Bago’s vision now represents: that sustainability is not an aspiration for rich nations alone, but a shared moral and developmental duty for all. As COP30 draws near, Niger’s turn to shine on climate action is not just about showcasing progress; it is about reinforcing possibility. 

For a state once defined by its rivers and farmlands, the journey toward a green economy may well become its most enduring legacy — one that proves that in Africa’s heartland, the seeds of a sustainable future are already being sown

Mahmud, Deputy Editor of PRNigeria and a rapporteur at the maiden Niger State Green Economy Summit, writes via  babasalam1989@gmail.com.

By Muhammad Abubakar

Cameroon’s upcoming Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) campaign is in turmoil due to a major power struggle between FECAFOOT President Samuel Eto’o and head coach Marc Brys, who remains under contract until 2026. Eto’o unilaterally declared Brys’s role was over.

The dispute has resulted in two rival 28-man AFCON squads.

Eto’o’s faction released a list naming David Pagou as coach and controversially omitted stars Andre Onana, Eric Choupo-Moting, and captain Vincent Aboubakar. Reports suggest Aboubakar was dropped to protect Eto’o’s national scoring record.

Coach Brys responded with his own squad announcement, restoring the high-profile players and questioning the team’s ability to compete in Morocco without them. This internal conflict severely undermines the Indomitable Lions’ preparations.