Carney, the former Bank of England governor who succeeded Justin Trudeau last week, conspicuously chose key Europe powers France and the United Kingdom, rather than the United States, for his first foreign visits after President Donald Trump ramped up the rhetoric against Canada.

Describing Canada as the “most European of non-European countries”, Carney said his nation needed to boost ties with European allies like France while trying to retain positive relations with the United States.

“It is more important than ever for Canada to reinforce its ties with reliable allies like France,” Carney said during a press conference with President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace on his first trip abroad since becoming prime minister on Friday.

“I want to ensure that France and the whole of Europe works enthusiastically with Canada, the most European of non-European countries, determined like you to maintain the most positive possible relations with the United States,” Carney said.

Carney faces threats on three fronts: a trade war with the Washington, Trump’s threats to annex his country, and looming domestic elections.

Trump unveils sweeping US tariffs on Canada, Mexico, China – EU next?

Maintain support for Ukraine

Trump’s imposition of an escalating raft of import tariffs on Canadian goods has threatened to trigger a recession, and his scorn for Canadian sovereignty sent jitters through the former ally.

Opinion polls show a large majority of Canadian voters reject Trump’s argument that their country would be better off as the “51st state of the United States”.

But the trade war is a threat to the economy of the vast country of 41 million people, which has long enjoyed a close US partnership.

Canada, France and Britain are among the NATO members that have maintained strong support for Ukraine‘s beleaguered government and military since Russia’s all-out invasion in February 2022, even as Trump’s US administration has bullied Kyiv to make concessions to Moscow.

London and Paris are putting together plans for a coalition security force in Ukraine and looking for allies.

Canada and France want a “solid and lasting peace, accompanied by robust guarantees that will protect Ukraine against any further Russian aggression and ensure the security of the whole of Europe,” Macron said alongside Carney.

“It is in this spirit that we will maintain our support for Ukraine and continue to demand clear commitments from Russia,” he added.

G7 envoys unite behind Ukraine, warn Russia of further sanctions

We stand for sovereignty

Carney told Macron both nations stood for “sovereignty”.

“We both stand for sovereignty and security demonstrated by our unwavering support for Ukraine under your leadership,” the Canadian premier said, two days after both leaders took part in a Saturday morning video conference of countries backing Ukraine organised by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

France is Canada’s 11th-largest trading partner and Britain its third at a time when Trump’s tariffs and Canadian retaliatory measures are threatening trade with its huge southern neighbour — destination of three-quarters of Canada’s exports.

But Canada also has a “Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement” (CETA) with the European Union, which includes France, and is a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which now also includes Britain.

After Paris, Carney heads for London, where he once worked as governor of the Bank Of England, for talks with Starmer and King Charles III, the monarch who is head of state in both Britain and Canada.

In his first speech as prime minister, Carney said: “Security is a priority for this government, reinforcing our security, as is diversifying our trading and commercial relationships, of course, with both Europe and the United Kingdom.”

On his return leg, Carney will visit Iqaluit, in Nunavut, the Canadian territory closest to the Danish autonomous country of Greenland – which Trump has also threatened to annex – to “reaffirm Canada’s Arctic security and sovereignty.”

(with AFP)

Rwanda said on Monday it was severing diplomatic relations with Belgian and expelling all their diplomats, amid fraught relations over the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Government of Rwanda notified the government of Belgium of its decision to cut diplomatic ties, effective immediately, the foreign affairs ministry wrote in their statement on Monday.

“Belgium has clearly taken sides in a regional conflict and continues to systematically mobilize against Rwanda in different forums, using lies and manipulation to secure an unjustified hostile opinion of Rwanda, in an attempt to destabilize both Rwanda and the region,” the statement reads.

It added that the decision reflected “Rwanda‘s commitment to safeguarding our national interests and the dignity of Rwandans”.

All Belgian diplomats within the country will be required to leave within 48 hours, the statement added.

Fiery speech

The decision follows a fiery speech made by Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame against Brussels over the weekend.

“One of the biggest problems we faced is that we were colonised by a small country like Belgium, which cut our country up so it can be small like it,” he said Sunday.

“Belgium has killed us throughout history, and keeps coming back to kill us more.”

In response, Belgium’s foreign affairs minister Maxime Prevot said the move was “disproportionate and shows that when we disagree with Rwanda they prefer not to engage in dialogue.”

Brussels will reciprocate by declaring Rwandan diplomats persona non grata, he added.

The crisis in the DRC and the African Union response

Sanctions

The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on three senior Rwandan military commanders and the head of Kigali’s state mining agency over the M23 offensive in DRC. 

The EU’s foreign affairs ministers were meeting this Monday to discuss including nine new Rwandan figures on a list of sanctioned personalities, for their role in the conflict in eastern DRC.

The three commanders lead Rwanda’s special forces and two divisions accused of deploying troops in eastern DR Congo to back the armed group, according to the EU’s official journal.

For several days, the EU had been discussing putting in place sanctions against Rwanda.

The United Kingdom, Canada and Germany also announced sanctions for the same reasons earlier this month.

Spiralling conflict

The Rwanda-backed M23 armed group started launching its most recent massive offensive in the mineral-rich east of the DRC earlier this year in January, taking two major cities in North Kivu and South Kivu.

A United Nations report has said that Kigali effectively controls the group and has around 4,000 troops in the country.

Kigali has denied involvement in the conflict and says it faces a threat from ethnic Hutu fighters in the DRC.

Kigali says Kinshasa is collaborating with the FDLR, a military group they accuse of persecuting Congolese Tutsi people and Tutsi refugees from Rwanda, who were pushed to leave during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Rwanda marks 30 years since genocide that horrified the world

“Both governments claim their involvement in conflicts in the eastern part of the DRC are linked to protecting ethnic populations,” according to Christopher P. Davey, visiting assistant professor at Binghamton University in New York state and a specialist in the genocide. “In reality, however, the persistent fighting is destroying economies and livelihoods,” he wrote.

 (with newswires)

While the French capital hasn’t yet experienced the extreme water shortages seen in cities like Barcelona and Cape Town – where authorities imposed tough restrictions and rationing measures – climate projections suggest conditions are set to worsen, particularly after 2050.

The study warns that a major drought could “gravely disrupt economic activity” in the Île-de-France region that surrounds Paris, with the agricultural and manufacturing sectors hit hardest.

“The robust historical infrastructure of the region could prove insufficient to cope with future droughts,” said Jo Tyndall, director of the OECD Environment Directorate, in the 200-page report.

Temperature spike

Historically considered water-rich thanks to its reservoirs and groundwater reserves, the Île-de-France has already experienced average temperature increases of 2C since 1990 – raising the probability of severe droughts.

The report warns that within 25 years, climate change could create drought conditions similar to those observed in Mediterranean regions at the end of the 20th century, which saw prolonged dry periods and significant agricultural losses.

Climate change is making rainfall patterns increasingly erratic while rapidly drying out the region’s soils.

“We know we’ll be more exposed, but we haven’t quantified the vulnerability of activities or populations,” Sophie Lavaud, the report’s lead author, told the French news agency AFP.

She explained that authorities have relied heavily on the region’s network of four major reservoir lakes, built upstream of the Seine and Marne rivers.

These reservoirs can provide up to 70 percent of river flow during drought periods – a system that has worked well historically, but has led to complacency about future risks.

Top scientists warn France will have to spend more to deal with climate change

Growing needs

Home to 19 percent of France’s population, the Île-de-France powers a third of the country’s economy while devoting half its land to agriculture. Growing development is driving up water demands across all sectors.

Agricultural water needs have “more than doubled since 2012” and are projected to “increase by 45 percent by 2050,” the report found. Water is also increasingly used for cooling systems drawing from the Seine river.

Currently, 57 percent of water withdrawals go to public water supply, 20 percent to industry, 13 percent to energy production, 7 percent to canals and 3 percent to irrigation.

A severe weather event comparable to the historic 1921 drought – the worst to hit the Paris region in the past 150 years – would force water usage restrictions for industry, agriculture and river transport “for more than 150 days” to maintain drinking water supplies for residents.

The OECD broke down the potential €2.5 billion economic damage into different categories.

Its analysis shows that immediate economic losses – such as reduced industrial production due to water restrictions and decreased crop yields from dry soil – would account for more than two-thirds of the total cost.

Manufacturing companies and farms would bear the brunt of these impacts.

France rolls out plan to prepare for 4C temperature rise by end of century

Prevention strategies

“A precise understanding of water usage is crucial,” said Lavaud. “This includes seasonal variations because what is extracted in winter impacts summer availability.”

The report recommends several preventive actions to address growing drought risks, though it does acknowledge the region is already performing relatively well in water conservation.

The OECD advocates for risk assessment of drought impacts to establish post-2030 strategies and to allocate water resources based on each user’s needs.

Current regulations allow users to make unlimited withdrawals except during drought periods, provided they can prove “that the resource or ecosystems won’t suffer”.

“Authorities must rethink water allocation strategies now, rather than waiting for a crisis,” the report said.

Infrastructure challenges

Beyond water shortages, the study looks at how drought could crack the foundations of Paris’s built environment. As clay soils beneath the city shrink during extended dry periods, buildings face structural damage – adding potentially millions to the economic toll.

“There is also a risk of conflicts over water use, particularly between urban areas and agricultural regions that may be called upon to supply additional drinking water,” Lavaud said.

The OECD’s blueprint for resilience calls for a radical rethinking of water infrastructure – from capturing rainwater to recycling industrial wastewater.

Yet the question of who pays remains unresolved.

The OECD warns that unless stronger investments are made now, future droughts could severely test the resilience of Paris and its surrounding region.

When he was asked about the possibility of rolling back the retirement age to 62 from 64, Bayrou said “no”.

The social partners involved in renegotiating the pension reform “know very well the numerical connection” between the retirement age and the deficit, he told on France Inter radio, pointing to the report commissioned from the Cour des comptes auditor showing the deficits of the pension system.

The international context – where France is planning a massive military investment to help Ukraine – does not justify taking on additional debt.

Weekly meetings

Bayrou has tasked social partners, who have been meeting weekly since the end of February, with finding a way to balance the pension system between spending and the deficit, and had promised that all options were on the table, including revising the retirement age.

French PM vows to reopen pension reform talks amid growing debt crisis

The opposition reacted immediately to his backtracking, particularly the Socialists, for whom the renegotiation was the main reason for not censuring the Prime Minister in several votes in parliament.

“François Bayrou’s statements are completely unacceptable,” MP Arthur Delaporte said. 

“We cannot have a prime minister who on the one hand says nothing is off the table, and on the other hand, a prime minister who uses the pretext of the war in Ukraine to reverse course.”

The leader of the hard-left France Unbowed Jean-Luc Mélenchon said on X that the about-face was a slap in the face – a position close to that of the far right National Rally.

Lack of trust

On Monday, the CFTC trade union requested “clarification” from Bayrou, and the CFDT, intends to ask the Prime Minister “if he confirms his remarks” at a meeting scheduled Tuesday.

Dominique Corona, deputy secretary general secretary of the Unsa union said the statement shows that the government “does not trust the social partners”.

The CFDT and CFTC will continue to participate in the weekly negotiations, while the CGT said it would put the question to its members.

Bayrou faces the threat of censure in the National Assembly, though for it to have a chance of success the Socialists would have to change course. For now, the party is aligning itself with the government, with whom it agrees on the gravity of the threat from Russia.

Bayrou has promised to submit any agreement that comes out of the negotiations to a vote in parliament.

(with AFP)

“France was confined, but it never stopped,” Macron wrote on X Sunday to mark the fifth anniversary of his televised announcement that French people would be confined to their homes as of the next day, 17 March 2020.

France came together “in the face of the unknown, in the face of a challenge,” he wrote in the long post in which he praised France’s courage and solidarity, and paid homage to healthcare workers, teachers who kept schools open, and other essential workers who continued to go to work.

For many in France, 17 March is a key date, according to anthropologist Laëtitia Atlani-Duault who has been gathering memories of Covid, and published them in a book, Fragments de memoires (Fragments of memories).

“It comes back, like when we talk about September 11,” she told RFI. “People say ‘I remember where I was, I remember what I was doing, I remember how I found out.”

Lockdown experiences

The accounts fall into two distinct groups: those who suffered and those who managed to enjoy the confinements.

“Some wanted to talk about how much it had been, effectively, a blessed moment,” Atlani-Duault said of people who were able to use the confinements to reexamine their lives and priorities, and who were able to spend more time with their kids, for example.

Five years on from the Covid-19 pandemic, what legacy has the virus left?

But the majority of experiences were less positive, with real suffering from healthcare workers in particular.

“There was real suffering in the accounts from nurses and doctors,” she said. “Accounts also from the partners of healthcare workers. There were also people who spoke of not being able to say goodbye, and accompany those who died in retirement homes, for example, or in hospital, and be able to bury them with dignity.”

Some 69,000 people died from Covid-19 in 2020, according to the French health authority, Santé publique France, the third cause of death that year, after tumours and neuro-cardiovascular diseases.

The confinement hit young people particularly hard, and the pandemic shone a light on, and increased, incidences of depression, anxiety and other mental health problems, particularly among university students.

“The particular circumstances weakened students, isolated them and so perhaps anticipated this degradation of their mental health,” Mélissa Macali, a mental health researcher at the French national health and medical research institute, Inserm, told RFI.

Covid-19 restrictions are having detrimental impact on mental health of young French people

“And on top of that, it’s true that there are probably multiple causes: increased precariousness, the feeling of isolation, the impact of social media, but also other environmental and collective impacts, and international conflicts and the global political situation worries them a lot.”

Anthropologist Atlani-Duault and others have been calling for 17 March to be officially commemorated in France, to recognise the long-term impact of Covid and also to retain lessons learned, “for future crises”.

She highlights local solidarity, from individuals and local governments, as well as community groups.

“The Covid crisis showed what the state could do, but also the flaws in the state’s response, what it could not do, and what, for example, local solidarity could bring,” she said.

Macron, in his message said the solidarity shown during the Covid pandemic should be recalled to “inspire and guide us”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s already strong support for the militant group Hamas has strained relations with Israel.

Now, Syria is threatening to become a focal point of tension.

Earlier this month, Erdogan issued a widely interpreted warning to Israel to stop undermining Damascus’s new rulers.

“Those who hope to benefit from the instability of Syria by provoking ethnic and religious divisions should know that they will not achieve their goals,” Erdogan declared at a meeting of ambassadors.

Erdogan’s speech followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer to support Syria’s Druze and Kurdish minorities.

“We will not allow our enemies in Lebanon and Syria to grow,” Netanyahu told the Knesset. “At the same time, we extend our hand to our Druze and Kurdish allies.”

Gallia Lindenstrauss, an Israeli foreign policy specialist at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv told RFI that Israel view is not very optimistic about the future of Syria, and sees it as a potential threat to Israel.

Success of rebel groups in Syria advances Turkish agenda

“The fact that Turkey will be dominant in Syria is also dangerous for Israel,” adds Lindenstrauss.

“Turkey could build bases inside Syria and establish air defences there. This would limit Israel’s room for manoeuvre and could pose a threat. Israel wants to avoid this and should therefore adopt a hard-line approach.”

Deepening rivalry

Ankara and Jerusalem’s deepening rivalry is shaping conflicting visions for the future of Syria.

Selin Nasi, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics’ Contemporary Turkish Studies Department, “Turkey wants to see a secure and stabilised unitary state under Ahmad al-Sharaa’s transitional government.

“Israel, on the other hand, wants to see a weak and fragmented Syria. Its main concern has always been securing its northern border,” added Nasi.

Israeli forces are occupying Syrian territory along their shared northern border, which is home to much of Syria’s Druze minority.

However, Israeli hopes of drawing Syria’s Kurds away from Damascus suffered a setback when the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which controls part of Syria, signed an agreement on 10 March to merge part of its operations with Syria’s transitional government.

Mutual distrust

As Damascus consolidates control, analysts suggest Israel will be increasingly concerned about Turkey expanding its military presence inside Syria.

“If Turkey establishes military posts in the south of the country, close to the Israeli border, presumably with the permission of the government in Damascus,” warns Soli Ozel, a lecturer in international relations at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, “then the two sides would be in close proximity, with military forces on both sides. That, I believe, would create a highly dangerous, volatile, and incendiary situation.”

As Erdogan celebrates Turkish role in ousting Assad, uncertainty lies ahead

Analysts warn that if Turkey extends its military presence to include airbases, this could threaten Israel’s currently unchallenged access to Syrian airspace.

However, some observers believe that opportunities for cooperation may still exist.

“Things can change,” says Israeli security analyst Lindenstrauss.

“Israel and Turkey could resume cooperation and potentially contribute to Syria’s reconstruction in a way that does not threaten Israel. However, this does not appear to be the path the Erdogan regime is currently taking, nor does it seem to be the direction chosen by Netanyahu and his government.”

With Erdogan and Netanyahu making little secret of their mutual distrust, analysts warn that their rivalry is likely to spill over into Syria, further complicating the country’s transition from the Assad regime.

The council meeting on Monday will also address uranium supply, amidst a global resurgence in nuclear energy.

This marks the fourth assembly since Macron underscored that nuclear power – a low-carbon energy source – is central to France’s strategy for curbing greenhouse gas emissions and combating climate change in a speech in the Alsatian city of Belfort in 2022.

France’s Macron calls for a nuclear power ‘renaissance’, building at least 6 reactors

The French president plans to deliver a progress update on Small Modular Reactors or SMRs, as he believes them to be fundamental to France’s energy strategy, aiming to commission two new plants in France by 2030.

As things stand, more than a dozen individual projects have come to the fore in France, showcasing the country’s drive towards the development of nuclear technology.

The council intends to evaluate the ventures based on recent reports into fuel and site constraints, identifying projects with the highest potential for swift completion and impact on the French electricity grid.

The goal is to ultimately direct state financial support to select projects.

Next generation reactors

Also in the spotlight are plans to build six state of the art EPR2 reactors, with the aim of kickstarting financing talks with the European Commission as soon as possible.

The second generation European pressurised reactors are nuclear generators designed to be safer, more efficient and easier to build than their predecessor – the EPR – while maintaining high power output and low carbon emissions.

The Elysée Palace has pointed to Brussels’ recent green light for the Czech Dukovany power station – secured largely through a zero-interest state loan – as an example France could follow.

At the same time, the council will tackle the rising demand for uranium, the essential fuel powering nuclear reactors, as the sector experiences renewed momentum.

With key suppliers based in Canada, Africa and Central Asia, ensuring a secure, long-term uranium supply is paramount.

French companies – Orano in particular – will need the right tools and strategies to safeguard the nation’s energy future, in light of the collapse of French influence in the Sahel region of Africa, specifically in uranium-rich Niger. 

Niger embraces Russia for uranium production leaving France out in the cold

While current stocks are sufficient, forward planning for the next 20 to 30 years will be crucial to maintaining France’s energy sovereignty.

Paris’s push for nuclear innovation is a core element of France’s wider climate ambitions, building on the country’s ongoing public consultations for France’s national low-carbon strategy and multi-annual energy programme – both of which are key stepping stones on the path towards the aim of carbon neutrality by 2050.

“Women artists have long been marginalised in art history courses and by museums and galleries,” Manon Lecaplainn, director of the Sainte-Croix Museum, told RFI. “For decades, art history has been written without women. Why should our exclusively female exhibition be shocking?”

“Our aim is not to exclude men from art history,” she explains. “The goal is to make people think.”

The Sainte-Croix Museum has been known in France for its proactive policy of promoting women artists since the 1980s.

In this new exhibition, Lecaplain and her co-curator Camille Belvèze are showcasing nearly 300 works from the 18th century to the present day, divided into three sections: the collection of Eugénie Dubreuil, the hierarchy of genres in art history, and the social role of the museum.

Spotlight on Africa: celebrating female empowerment for Women’s History Month

This exhibition is the first step in a five-year project to promote Dubreuil’s collection – entitled La Musée – and relies on a financial grant of €150,000.

“Why not an initiative like this on a larger scale in France, Europe, the world?” asks Dubreuil.

► La Musée runs until 18 May, 2025 at the Sainte-Croix Museum in Poitiers.

France co-founded the United Nations International Labour Organisation in 1919, championing “equal pay for equal work”, and in 1972, the agency wrote the principle of pay equality into its labour code.

In 1983, France’s Roudy law mandated equal opportunities in the workplace, requiring companies to publish annual reports comparing the situation of its male and female employees and introducing a tool to help human resources managers identify and measure pay differences.

In 2018, the country launched an index to monitor the performance of large companies in the field of gender equality.

But this battery of legal measures has still not enabled France to close its gender pay gap.

Data published this week by the French National Statistics Institute (Insee) showed that in 2023 women’s average annual salary was €21,340 net compared to €27,430 for men – a difference of more than 22 percent.

While there has been progress, the pace is slow, with the gap narrowing at a rate of 1 percent per year over the last five years.

The primary reasons behind the gender pay gap are hours worked and type of jobs held. Women work on average 9 percent less than men and they’re also more likely to work part-time. But even when working hours are identical, their average salary is 14.2 percent lower than men’s, Insee found.

What’s more, working part-time is not necessarily a life choice says Anne Eydoux, an economist specialising in employment and gender issues.

“It’s a choice made under constraint, and some of the constraints refer to the gender divide of family roles where women take [more] parental responsibility,” she tells RFI. “But it’s also the result of occupational segregation.” Women are over-represented in for example supermarket and cleaning jobs, where split shifts are common.

Sexism and workplace inequality is rife in most areas of French life, research shows

Gendered occupations

Women are also far more likely to work in low-paying sectors such as health, care and education.

According to Insee, more than 95 percent of secretaries are women, with an average full-time net salary of €2,044 per month.

Meanwhile, only a quarter of engineers and IT executives – professions in which average monthly net salaries are close to €4,000 – are women.

“Women are over-represented in the care sector, where their skills are under-recognised,” Eydoux said. “And this is a fact for many female-dominated occupations, as the Covid crisis showed.”

Women also have less access to the highest-paying jobs. In 2023, they accounted for 42 percent of full-time equivalent positions in the private sector, and yet just 24 percent of the top 1 percent of high-paying jobs. The glass ceiling is still there, as Eydoux noted.

France works towards gender equality in top jobs while UK women are still struggling

Cultural attitudes

Working less and in lower-paid sectors does not, however, fully explain the 22 percent wage gap. Women doing the same job as men in the same company are still paid 3.8 percent less.

There are historical and cultural reasons for this according to Marie Donzel, an expert in social innovation and author of  “Justified inequalities: how to pay women less with a clear conscience”.

Until 1945, France had a “female wage”. Based on the assumption that a woman’s pay was intended merely to supplement her husband’s income, “women could be paid 10 to 15 percent less just because of their gender,” Donzel told RFI. 

This has helped foster gendered attitudes towards salaries. “Women tend to see [their pay] in terms of how much they need to live, and men see it in terms of ‘how much my job is worth’,” she said.

Donzel also points to a cultural prevailing negative image of women who take an interest in money. “We have a gendered socialisation in France that teaches us to be modest. When we talk about money, there’s still the spectre of venality.”

Gender pay gap means French women are ‘working for free’ until end of year

‘I thought negotiating was vulgar’

Women themselves are not always aware that they’re being discriminated against. It took Nathalie, a regional director for a multinational company, 15 years to find out.

“While chatting with my male counterparts, I realised that I was earning about €1,000 less per month than they were,” she told Franceinfo. “I’d lost €150,000 over 15 years.”

After comparing pay slips with colleagues, she realised that “every time, the women had significantly more experience in the role, more qualifications, we checked all the boxes. And yet, we were paid less. And the higher you climb in the hierarchy, the bigger the gap becomes”.

Nathalie took her case to court and won, securing a raise for herself and her colleagues. She questions whether women “negotiate their salaries enough”.

The question of negotiating pay “is as taboo as sex,” says lawyer Insaff El Hassini.

She set up a training and coaching company called Ma Juste Valeur – meaning “My True Worth” – to help women overcome that barrier and negotiate their pay, after facing gender discrimination in the workplace herself.

“I found out my male colleague earned €5,000 a year more than me,” she told RFI.  “When I voiced my concerns I was told, ‘Well you’re already well paid, you should have negotiated your starting salary when you joined’. No one had told me you had to negotiate. I thought it was vulgar.”

Gender gap at work far wider than expected, women’s pay remains static, UN says

Closing the gap

This year France will implement the EU’s 2023 Pay Transparency Directive, obliging companies to provide employees with pay scales for equivalent posts. Both Eydoux and Donzel welcome this transparency measure.

Eydoux also points to economic measures such as increasing both the minimum wage and income tax on very high wages, which together would narrow the pay gap. But the French government, which is trying to reduce the country’s huge deficit and keep high-earners and businesses on board, is not currently in favour of either.

Donzel insists that salaries in the female-dominated education and care sectors must be raised, given the contribution they make to society. “Whether it’s taking care of children, the elderly or in caring professions, this is obviously what’s most valuable, yet the economy has reversed the value system and that’s what we pay the least for.”

Eydoux would also like to see France’s gender quota policy, which has proven “very efficient” in breaking the glass ceiling by imposing gender-balance on executive boards, extended to other sectors.

Growing ‘masculinist’ culture in France slows down fight against sexism

For the moment, however, she says there aren’t many signs of improvement: “I don’t see much political will to focus on the gender pay gap and reduce it.”

Resistance to gender equality is nothing new, she added, and while younger women in particular are “more conscious of the gender pay gap and more willing to improve the situation”, they are now facing new forms of resistance.  

“More and more young men are defending masculinist positions and ideologies,” she said, with some claiming the 22 percent gender pay gap is “fake news”.

The massacre at Thiaroye took place on 1 December, 1944, when French colonial troops opened fire on West African soldiers who had just returned from Europe, where they had been fighting for France. 

The tirailleurs sénégalais (Senegalese riflemen), as they were known, had been promised the same pay and pensions as their French counterparts. 

When they assembled peacefully to demand their rightful compensation, they were met with gunfire. The exact death toll remains disputed: official French accounts initially claimed only 35 casualties, while other estimates suggest more than 300 were killed. 

Before turning his lens on Thiaroye, Monteil had examined policing methods in France. He observed parallels between contemporary law enforcement tactics and the operations once carried out in Africa. 

“During my research, I made the connection between modern law enforcement and its colonial heritage,” he told RFI. 

Documenting Thiaroye through images became the natural next step for the photographer, in tribute to the Senegalese soldiers whose story has been largely forgotten. 

France honours WWII colonial troops shot dead by French army in Senegal

Recreating the past

The result is the book Fecci Worma, which means “High Treason” in the Wolof language.  

Over three years, Monteil travelled between France and Senegal, retracing the events. He visited Morlaix, on the Brittany coast, where the discharged Senegalese soldiers had boarded a ship home, and Thiaroye, where they were killed. 

Monteil timed his photographs to recreate the past – shooting in the early morning in Morlaix to mirror the soft light when the soldiers departed. 

He also shot portraits of descendants of the soldiers, as well as the historians and artists who have studied the massacre, and the caretaker of Thiaroye’s military cemetery. 

Alongside his photographs, Monteil has used infographics and maps to bring complex historical data to life. Using French military archives, he also reconstructed the layout of the Thiaroye transit camp, which served as a temporary home to demobilised soldiers following their service.  

By overlaying contemporary aerial images on historical maps, he revealed a geography that had been buried by time.  

“A black circle surrounded the site of the massacre, on military reports from that time,” he explained. His maps highlight where the soldiers’ barracks stood and where the French army entered the camp. 

Senegal mourns Thiaroye war heroes slain by French troops 80 years ago

These visual reconstructions could prove useful for archaeologists. In February, the Senegalese government announced plans for excavations, in order to determine the true number of soldiers killed.  

A hidden history

In a single, striking image, one of Monteil’s infographics lays bare the conflicting figures reported over the past 60 years. 

His research draws on diverse sources: French public archives, newspaper clippings, the work of Senegalese filmmaker Mansour Kébé from the 1980s, as well as testimonies from military personnel, historians and the children of the soldiers. 

French historian Armelle Mabon, a specialist in the Thiaroye massacre, provided access to her own archives, which expose contradictions and omissions in the French state’s version of events.

“She is a historian, a detective, a researcher. She brings a different sensitivity and vision of things – a book was missing,” Monteil says of Mabon. 

For both the photographer and the historian, uncovering the truth about Thiaroye remains an unfinished mission – and a crucial one because the official record still contains significant gaps, 80 years on.

“There are still obstructions from the French state and we clearly show them in this book,” Monteil says.  

Among the grey areas is the list of repatriated soldiers, the exact mapping of where the soldiers are buried and archives that appear deliberately truncated. 

Monteil notes with frustration that a French parliamentary commission, established to investigate the massacre, ultimately produced no findings. 

For his book project, he bypassed traditional publishing houses in favour of crowdfunding, a choice he says ensured complete editorial independence. “The Thiaroye massacre would not have interested many publishers.”

This story has been adapted from the original version in French by Juliette Dubois

Shea butter is widely used in the cosmetics industry, as well as by chocolatiers as a substitute for cocoa butter.

Diongoma was founded by Mariama Sylla in 2007. Located in Salemata, in the southeast of the country, its product has been certified “organic” by the Ecocert organisation since 2016.

This certification was hard-won, as according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the marketing of organic products in Senegal faces a number of constraints, including the high cost of certification processes.

From harvest to production, Sylla currently works with 3,000 women. She has enabled more favourable valuation of shea, which is a source of income for up to a third of households in Senegal.

RFI went to the Paris Agricultural Show to meet Diongoma to find out more.

Sylviane Boyer founded Pot en Ciel Kreol in 2023, in Cambaie in the north of Réunion, a French department in the Indian Ocean. She had taken over her family farm, which grew numerous vegetables native to the island.

“On Réunion Island, we have exotic vegetables, which have lots of antioxidants. We’re protected here on this little volcanic island, in terms of all the produce we have,” Boyer told RFI. “There are vegetables that can’t be found in mainland France… papaya, chayote, watercress that grow in our mountains. And chillies.”

Over the years, Boyer began to notice a rise in cases of diabetes, Crohn’s disease and high cholesterol. It was at this point that she became interested in micronutrition – the practice of optimising the diet to include vitamins and minerals the body needs – and discovered lacto-fermentation.

“We have lots of health problems because we eat too much fat and sugar. This led me to study lacto-fermentation a bit and I found that, scientifically speaking, a lot has been proven about it, which brought me back to it.”

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This technique is very common in several Africa countries, where access to electricity can be limited, making food preservation a challenge.

“In Africa, babies’ first meals are made using lacto-fermentation. It’s a natural process to follow,” says Boyer.

This ancient food preservation technique involves immersing food in salted water to encourage the growth of lactic acid bacteria.

“We use large vats where we put local fruits and vegetables from Réunion, along with water and natural, unrefined salt from Saint Leu. This process helps us pre-digest the food and release its full bioavailability,” explains Mégane Mardemoutou, sales manager at Pot en Ciel Kreol.

“This process develops probiotics and prebiotics, multiplies vitamin C, vitamin K – which is very important for the heart – and various B vitamins like B2 and B6.”

One local vegetable the company works with is bitter melon. “It’s a fruit that grows on vines, somewhat like cucumbers. It’s an old local vegetable with a thousand benefits because it aids detoxification, improves heart circulation and provides all the essential vitamins we need,” says Mardemoutou.

Over half of all adults will be overweight or obese by 2050, study shows

The company is now working with hospitals, the Regional Health Agency and local organisations to spread awareness of the health benefits of lacto-fermentation.

A simple request to an image-generating artificial intelligence (AI) tool such as Stable Diffusion or Dall-E is all it takes to demonstrate this.

When given requests such as “generate the image of someone who runs a company” or “someone who runs a big restaurant” or “someone working in medicine”, what appears, each time, is the image of a white man.

When these programmes are asked to generate an image of “someone who works as a nurse” or “a domestic worker” or “a home help”, these images were of women.

As part of a Unesco study published last year, researchers asked various generative AI platforms to write stories featuring characters of different genders, sexualities and origins. The results showed that stories about “people from minority cultures or women were often more repetitive and based on stereotypes”.

The report showed a tendency to attribute more prestigious and professional jobs to men – teacher or doctor, for example – while often relegating women to traditionally undervalued or more controversial roles, such as domestic worker, cook or prostitute.

Why the African continent has a role to play in developing AI

The broad language patterns used by these Large Language Model (LLM) tools also tend to associate female names with words such as “home”, “family” or “children”, while male names are more closely associated with the words “business”, “salary” and “career”.

As such, these models demonstrate “unequivocal prejudice against women,” warned Unesco in a press release.

“Discrimination in the real world is not only reflected in the digital sphere, it is also amplified there,” said Tawfik Jelassi, Unesco’s assistant director-general for communication and information.

A mirror of society

To create content, generative AI is “trained on billions of documents produced at a certain time,” explained Justine Cassell, director of research at France’s National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria). 

She explained that such documents, depending on when they were produced, often contain dated and discriminatory stereotypes, with the result that AI trained on them then conveys and reiterates these.

This is the case with image and text generators, but also for facial recognition programmes, which feed off millions of existing photos.

From breast cancer to HIV, how AI is set to revolutionise healthcare

In 2019, a US federal agency warned that some facial recognition systems were having difficulty correctly identifying women, particularly those of African-American origin – which has consequences for public safety, law enforcement and individual freedoms.

This is also an issue in the world of work, where AI is increasingly being used by HR managers to assist with recruitment.

In 2018, news agency Reuters reported that Amazon had to abandon an AI recruitment tool. The reason? The system did not evaluate candidates in a gender-neutral manner, as it was based on data accumulated from CVs submitted to the company – mainly by men. This led it to reject female applicants.

Diversifying data

AI is first and foremost a question of data. And if this data is incomplete or only represents one category of people, or if it contains conscious or unconscious bias, AI programmes will still use it – and broadcast it on a massive scale.

“It is vital that the data used to drive the systems is diverse and represents all genders, races and communities,” said Zinnya del Villar, director of data, technology and innovation at the Data-Pop Alliance think tank. 

In an interview with the UN Women agency, del Villar explained: “It is necessary to select data that reflects different social backgrounds, cultures and roles, while eliminating historical prejudices, such as those that associate certain jobs or character traits with one gender.”

One fundamental problem, according to Cassell at Inria, is that “most developers today are still predominantly white men, who may not be as sensitive to the presence of bias”.

‘By humans, for humans’: French dubbing industry speaks out against AI threat

Because they are not subject to the prejudices suffered by women and minorities, male designers are often less aware of the problem – and 88 percent of algorithms are built by men. In addition to raising awareness of bias, researchers are urging companies in the sector to employ more diverse engineering teams.

“We need a lot more women coding AI models, because they’re the ones who will be asking the question: doesn’t this data contain abnormal behaviour or behaviour that we shouldn’t reproduce in the future?” Nelly Chatue-Diop, CEO and co-founder of the start-up Ejara, told RFI.

Under-representation of women

Currently, women account for just 22 percent of people working in artificial intelligence worldwide, according to the World Economic Forum.

The European AI barometer carried out by Join Forces & Dare (JFD – formerly Digital Women’s Day) reveals that of the companies surveyed with an AI manager on their executive committee, only 29 per cent of these managers are women. Globally, women account for 12 percent of AI researchers.

“The lack of diversity in the development of AI reinforces biases, perpetuates stereotypes and slows down innovation,” warns the report.

It’s an observation echoed by Unesco, which posits that the under-representation of women in the field, and in management positions, “leads to the creation of socio-technical systems that do not take into account the diverse needs and perspectives of all genders” and reinforces “disparities between men and women”.

Could European AI create a more unified European identity?

Both organisations have emphasised the need to ensure that girls are made aware of and guided towards STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects from a young age – areas which are still too often the preserve of men, and in which high-achieving women are often invisible. 

With AI applications increasingly used by both the general public and businesses, “they have the power to shape the perception of millions of people,” noted Audrey Azoulay, director-general of Unesco. “The presence of even the slightest gender bias in their content can significantly increase inequalities in the real world.”

Unesco, alongside numerous specialists in the sector, is calling for mechanisms to be put in place on an international level to regulate the sector within an ethical framework.

But this seems a long way off. The United States, with its colossal weight in this field, did not sign the Paris Summit declaration on AI, issued last month. Nor did the United Kingdom.

While the UK government said the statement ha not gone far enough in terms of addressing global governance of AI, US vice-president JD Vance criticised what he called Europe’s “excessive regulation” of the technology.

This article has been adapted from the original version in French.

“You know, everything in this life passes at an incredible speed. I didn’t see the time go by,” Salgado said, upon opening the exhibition at the Franciscaines cultural centre. “I’ve done a lot of things, I’ve travelled, I’ve captured images. And this morning, when I arrived here, I felt a summary of my life and it moved me deeply.”

The photographer, who has spent much of his life in Paris and in 2019 was given a place in France’s prestigious institution for artists, the Academy of Fine Arts, explained that he was feeling “a bit battered” due to medical reasons.

“The happiest day of my life was when I turned 80. I’ve lost so many friends. We were all together in Goma [Democratic Republic of Congo] for four years, four photographers were murdered, and I was there. So being alive at 80 is an immense privilege.”

For this exhibition, supported by the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), Salgado took part in selecting the photos, which are being displayed in smaller formats to offer a better vision of his work.

It is a body of work spanning more than 40 years, in which he travelled to all corners of the world, capturing themes as diverse as the precarious nature of manual labour amid the transformation of the industrial world – as seen in “The Hand of Man” – and human migration, as seen in “Exodus”.

Dennis Morris: the iconic lens behind Bob Marley and punk rock takes centre stage in Paris

‘An immense universe’

“As a photographer, we ask ourselves questions… about security, legitimacy, ethics, and more generally about the world,” Salgado explained.

His work has taken him to more than 130 countries, photographing gold mines, oil fields in Kuwait during the Gulf War and the genocide in Rwanda. This, he says, was his most difficult assignment, and he eventually had to stop covering it on the advice of his doctor.

Recognition for journalists who bear burden of showing world the Gaza war

After this, he returned to Brazil with his family for three months and began reconsidering his work as a photographer.

“Before, I believed in one species: mine. What made me completely lose hope in my species was discovering that we are a terrible, violent, horrible species, that we are destroying our planet. And discovering other species, I fell that I was part of an immense universe of species.”

In 1998, he created the non-profit organisation Instituto Terra with his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado to restore the ecosystem in the Rio Doce Basin in Brazil.

‘The Amazon is paradise on earth’

For his series “Genesis” (2004-2011), Salgado traveled from the Galapagos to the Amazon, via Africa and the Arctic. “It’s perhaps one of the most interesting journeys of everything I’ve done in my life. Because the Amazon is paradise on earth,” he said.

“These Amazonian populations are the prehistory of humanity. They are us from 10,000 years ago. They live in such a pleasant, gentle way, in communion with nature. There are no lies, there is no repression.”

How exiled photographer Ernest Cole captured apartheid’s human toll

However, contemplating what he had learned from these trips, Salgado said: “I travelled for eight years across 32 countries or regions of the world, but the greatest journeys I’ve made are within myself.”

The exhibition Sebastião Salgado: The MEP Collection runs until 1 June, 2025 at the Franciscaines venue in Deauville.

The victory capped a dazzling dozen days for the hosts in which they twice outplayed English Premier League leaders Liverpool and advanced to the last eight of the Champions League

And in front of their faithful, they suffocated the life out of the land’s second best side.

Marseille started as if unimpressed by the 16-point gulf between the teams and that impressive surge to the quarter-finals of European club football’s most prestigious tournament.

They chivvied and chased in an attempt to dissolve the vaunted PSG patterns in midfield. 

Unable to weave their wondrousness, PSG went old school. 

From a goal kick, goalkeeper Gigi Donnarumma hit the ball high to the left, up jumped Khvicha Kvaratskhelia who nodded it on to Fabian Ruiz. The Spain international slid it on to Ousmane Dembélé who skipped around the Marseille goalkeeper Gerónimo Rulli and lashed it past defender Leonardo Balerdi trying to cover on the line.

It was the France international’s 21st league goal of the season.

Just before half-time, Ruiz set up Nuno Mendes to double the advantage.

Comeback

Marseille began second-half with the same intensity and after Dembélé fluffed a chance to make it 3-0, they were let back into the contest.

Mendes gave away possession in midfield and PSG old boy Adrien Rabiot – targeted with offensive banners by PSG ultras – set up Amine Gouiri to halve the deficit after 51 minutes.

But the visitors could not find the leveller. PSG restored the two-goal advantage 14 minutes from time.

Skipper Achraf Hakimi scampered down the right wing and his ball into the box was diverted into his own net by Marseille substitute Pol Lirola.

At 3-1, PSG boss Luis Enrique opted for containment. The Spaniard brought on midfielders Joao Neves and Kang-in Lee to see out the fixture. 

“The statistics show we have been consistent this season and that’s why we’re 19 points clear,” said Enrique.

“The French first division is not easy … people say it is but it is not. We can see how well French teams have played in European competitions this season.”

PSG need to win two of their last eight games to retain the Ligue 1 crown.

Marseille will battle with Nice, Monaco and Lille to secure one of the three berths leading to next season’s Champions League.

Senegal will summon former president Macky Sall to court after the west African country’s audit office unveiled irregularities in the treasury’s bookkeeping on his watch, a government spokesman said on Friday, 28 February.

Sall, who led Senegal from 2012 to 2024, is accused of having presided over “catastrophic” mismanagement of the public purse after an independent report invalidated official figures under his stewardship, revising both debt and the public deficit sharply upwards.

Sall, who has lived in Morocco since leaving office last year, has rejected the row over the report as “political”.

Government spokesman Moustapha Sarre said Sall “could even be considered as the leader of a gang that committed criminal acts”.

“Inevitably he will face justice. He is the person chiefly responsible for the extremely serious acts that were committed,” Sarre told broadcaster RFM. “Legal proceedings cannot be avoided,” he added.

Published on February 12, the audit office’s report found accounting discrepancies such as a 2023 budget deficit of 12.3 percent – more than double the 4.9 percent announced under Sall.

“I don’t give him any mitigating circumstances. Everything that happened, happened under his orders,” said Sarré.

Macky Sall’s candidate concedes defeat in Senegal election

President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who was elected president last March, has pledged a clean break from the Sall era.

Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko – a longtime opponent of Sall’s – vowed last September to investigate what he said was “widespread corruption” under the previous administration.

Several former officials have been charged and imprisoned in recent months, including an MP close to Sall, on fraud and money laundering charges.

Amnesty law

The former president and members of his government could be tried for “high treason” before the High Court of Justice.

If charges are brought against Sall, it would be the first time that a former head of state would be brought to justice in the context of his former function since Senegal gained independence from France in 1960.

In late December, Sonko said his government would look at repealing a widely opposed law offering amnesty to those involved in the violence.

This amnesty law was introduced at Sall’s behest just before the March 2024 election, which saw Sall replaced as president by Sonko’s protégé Faye.

Following his re-election to a second term in 2019, Sall had left open the possibility of seeking a third mandate in 2024, provoking anger in Senegal. The country, widely considered a stable democracy in the region, underwent a period of deadly political turbulence, as Sall and Sonko locked horns.

Listen to our podcast episode: The long path to Senegal’s troubled presidential elections

Political violence

The final months of Sall’s presidency were marked by an unprecedented level of political violence. Between March 2021 and February 2024, 65 people were killed as protests against Sall erupted, according to recent figures.

The country’s family minister Maimouna Dieye at the beginning of February gave a tally of 79.

“Sixty-five deaths have been recorded, including 51 killed by gunshots,” said the CartograFreeSenegal collective, which said it had compiled the tally in conjunction with Amnesty International.

France hands back two out of five army bases to Senegal

A quarter of those killed were school children or students, and the average age of the victims was 26, with the youngest aged 14 and the oldest 53, the collective said.

“Justice, truth and reparation require that security forces allegedly responsible for excessive and illegal use of force during protests be prosecuted. The amnesty law constitutes an obstacle that must be removed by the current Senegalese authorities, as they pledged to do,” said Marceau Sivieude, Amnesty International’s interim regional director for West and Central Africa. 

‘Manipulation’

For the former president’s camp, the recent remarks from the government are “unacceptable”.

“We cannot understand or accept that a government spokesperson would allow himself to call a former head of state a gang leader. It is unacceptable. It is inelegant. There is no substance, they are in populism,” said Abdou Mbow, deputy spokesperson for the APR, Sall’s party.

“They say things that make no sense, that manipulate the population. They must stop and know that when you are at the head of a country, you must have the shoulders to have restraint with regard to certain remarks,” he added. 

Sall’s administration has never provided an official toll of those killed during the protests.

(with newswires)

Visual retelling of Thiaroye massacre sheds new light on French colonial atrocity

The United States this week proposed the halt in fighting in the more than three-year war after talks in Saudi Arabia, which Kyiv agreed to.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has given no clear answer, instead listing a string of conditions and raising “serious questions” over the proposal.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday accused the Kremlin of not wanting to end the war and warned that Moscow wanted to first “improve their situation on the battlefield” before agreeing to any ceasefire.

Moscow said Sunday that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and that the pair had discussed “concrete aspects of the implementation of understandings” at a US-Russia summit in Saudi Arabia last month.

The February Riyadh gathering was the first high-level meeting between the United States and Russia since Moscow launched its invasion.

“Sergei Lavrov and Marco Rubio agreed to remain in contact,” the Russian foreign ministry said, with no mention of the US-suggested ceasefire.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said Saturday that the pair had “discussed the next steps” on Ukraine.

She also said Rubio and Lavrov “agreed to continue working towards restoring communication between the United States and Russia”.

The call came hours after the UK hosted a virtual summit on Ukraine, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer accusing Putin of “dragging his feet” on the ceasefire.

“The ‘yes, but’ from Russia is not good enough,” Starmer said, calling for a stop to the “barbaric attacks on Ukraine once and for all”.

Kyiv the next day said Russia launched 90 Iranian-made Shahed drones onto nine Ukrainian regions.

Zelensky says Putin ‘lying’

In his reaction to the ceasefire earlier this week, Putin said the initiative would benefit primarily Ukraine and not Russian forces, who he said are “advancing” in many areas.

He raised “serious questions” over the initiative.

Putin’s reaction to Ukraine ceasefire proposals deepen G7 rifts over US strategy

The proposal came as Russia, which occupies parts of southern and eastern Ukraine,  has had momentum in some areas of the front.

It has ousted Ukrainian forces from parts of its Kursk region, where Kyiv hopes to hold onto Russian territory as a potential bargaining chip in any future negotiations.

Putin said he wanted to discuss Moscow’s concerns with Trump in a phone call.

Zelensky said Saturday that by not agreeing to the ceasefire, Putin was also going against Trump, who has made overtures towards Russia, and accused Moscow of trying to find ways not to end the war.

He accused Putin of “lying about how a ceasefire is supposedly too complicated”.

Ukraine said Sunday that one person was killed by a Russian drone strike on the city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region, which fell to Russia at the start of its Ukraine invasion before being retaken by Kyiv’s forces. 

(With newswires)

France were solid rather than spectacular during the first-half. 

Yoram Moefana went over the line 17 minutes into the encounter at the Stade de France after a Thomas Ramos penalty had opened the scoring.

Ramos added the two points for the conversion to take his tally up to five points and a merited 10-0 lead.

But midway through the half, Ramos petulantly pushed Scotland scrum-half Ben White over Peato Mauvaka and Mauvaka promptly got up and ploughed into White.

His flash of pique was punished with a yellow card and a penalty. Finn Russell converted it to get Scotland going.

Record

In extending France’s lead to 13-3, Ramos became France’s all-time top points scorer with 438 points eclipsing Frédéric Michalak’s high of 436 points between 2001 and 2015.

But the elation was short-lived.

Darcy Graham danced his way through the France defence to register Scotland’s first try and suggest a contest at 13-10 after Russell’s conversion.

Jean-Baptiste Gros’ yellow card and a penalty gave Russell the chance to level and the skipper obliged.

But Ramos added another penalty to give France a 16-13 half-time lead.

Following the break, France re-established a 10-point lead on the counterattack. Romain Ntamack broke clear and set up Louis Bielle-Biarrey for his eighth try of the 2025 campaign and a championship record. 

Fight

Another Russell penalty after 51 minutes kept Scotland in touch at 23-16 but the game was effectively over and the championship sealed when Ramos clocked up another seven points with a try and conversion to take the game away from Scotland at 30-16.

Tactfully, the vast majority of the 78,000 fans in the Stade de France waited until the hour before unleashing the first Marseillaise of the encounter as the partisans sensed a first six Nations title since 2022.

Moefana obliged the yearning with his second of the night to eradicate any hope of a Scottish recovery.

“It was a difficult match,” France head coach Fabien Galthié told French broadcaster France 2. 

“We didn’t quite know how to handle it at the start. Scotland were playing without pressure and we were quite nervous.

“At half-time, I told the players they could do better. They were just too timid and that was because of what was on the line. But they knew what they had to do and they did it.”

As well as Ramos taking sole charge of France’s points record with 450 and counting, the team notched up a Six Nations tournament high of 30 tries to surpass the 29 scored by England during their surge to the 2001 crown.

“Obviously we play to win titles,” Ramos told France 2. “It’s a relief to win the Six Nations after seeing Ireland lift it a couple of times.”

The 16-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) held an extraordinary summit to discuss the conflict in eastern DRC, held via video conference this week.

The situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was the main topic on the agenda, with Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi attending the meeting.

The participants at the summit decided to terminate the mandate of SAMIDRC, the SADC Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and directed the commencement of a phased withdrawal of SAMIDRC troops from the DRC, the group said in a statement at the end of the meeting.

The SAMIDRC was sent to the region in December 2023 to help the government of the DRC, a SADC member, restore peace and security.

But South Africa lost 14 soldiers in the eastern DRC conflict in January. Most were from the SAMIDRC mission but at least two were deployed as part of a separate United Nations peacekeeping mission.

Three Malawian troops in the SADC deployment were also killed.

Officials did not comment on the size of the military deployment, which also includes soldiers from Tanzania.

The bulk of the troops come from South Africa, which is estimated to have sent at least 1,000 troops.

Calls have been mounting in South Africa for the soldiers still in the DRC to be withdrawn, with reports that they are confined to their base by M23 fighters.

Regional conflict

The conflict in the area of South and North Kivus has seen some three decades of unrest and claimed millions of lives.

The M23 has seized swathes of the mineral-rich and volatile eastern DRC, including the key cities of Goma and Bukavu, in a lightning advance since January.

DRC’s neighbours are trying to mobilise diplomacy to put an end to this deadly fighting.

The virtual SADC summit came a day after Angola announced that peace talks between the DRC and the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group would begin next week.

Angola indicates M23 rebels are ready to begin direct peace talks on 18 March

Opening Thursday’s summit, SADC chairperson and Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa called for a “greater sense of urgency” in efforts to end the conflict, which he said could cause instability beyond the DRC’s borders.

Inclusive dialogue was essential, he said, adding that the review of the SAMIDRC mandate was “timely”.

Angola’s presidential office hopes that talks between the DRC and M23 will begin next Tuesday.

“Following the steps taken by the Angolan mediation… delegations from the Democratic Republic of Congo and the M23 will begin direct peace talks on 18 March in the city of Luanda,” it said.

Angolan President Joao Lourenco had earlier met DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, who had previously refused to engage in dialogue with the M23 as demanded by Rwanda.

Angola pushes for direct talks between Kinshasa and M23 in DRC crisis

A report by UN experts has said Rwanda maintains some 4,000 troops in the eastern DRC in support of the M23. Rwanda denies providing the group with military assistance.

The DRC says the M23’s advance has killed more than 7,000 people since the beginning of 2025. These figures remain to be verified independently. 

 (with AFP)

“For the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced,” Michael Abramowitz, the organization’s director, said in a statement. He added that “virtually” the entire 1300-person staff was placed on leave.

On Friday, Trump signed an executive order to reduce functions of several agencies to “the minimum required by law.” Agencies included the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which houses Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba.

“VOA promotes freedom and democracy around the world by telling America’s story and by providing objective and balanced news and information, especially for those living under tyranny,” Abramowitz said.

One reporter, who spoke under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, said: “We expected something like this to happen, and it just happened to be today.”

The Paris-based press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said it “condemns this decision as a departure from the U.S.’s historic role as a defender of free information and calls on the U.S. government to restore VOA and urges Congress and the international community to take action against this unprecedented move.”

The Agency for Global Media also sent notices terminating grants to Radio Free Asia and other programming run by the agency. Voice of America transmits United States domestic news into other countries, often translated into local languages. Radio Free Asia, Europe and Marti beam news into countries with authoritarian regimes in those regions like China, North Korea and Russia.

“The cancellation of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s grant agreement would be a massive gift to America’s enemies,” said the network’s President and CEO, Stephen Capus, in a statement.

Combined, the networks reach an estimated 427 million people. They date back to the Cold War and are part of a network of government-funded organizations trying to extend U.S. influence and combat authoritarianism that includes USAID, another agency targeted by Trump.

Kari Lake, who was appointed by Trump as a “senior advisor” to the Agency for Global Media, said in a statement on its website that “this agency is not salvageable … From top-to-bottom this agency is a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer—a national security risk for this nation—and irretrievably broken. While there are bright spots within the agency with personnel who are talented and dedicated public servants, this is the exception rather than the rule.”

(With newswires)

An article on the home page of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) is illustrated with an image of the Ukrainian flag alongside the Nato flag – the blue and yellow side by side with the compass rose on its blue background, representing the Atlantic Ocean and the direction towards peace.

“Nato condemns Russia’s war against Ukraine in the strongest terms. The Alliance remains steadfast in its support for Ukraine, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” reads the text.

However, in recent weeks the actions of one member – its main contributor – have seemed distinctly out of step with that statement.

Trump’s reversals of the US position on Ukraine and the American rapprochement with Moscow represent an ideological break with Nato, in which Washington has always taken the leading role.

Created in 1949 during the Cold War, the political-military alliance that brings together 32 countries was founded on the need to guard against the expansion of the Soviet Union.

Although following the collapse of the USSR the organisation expanded its missions to include peacekeeping operations, since 2022 Russia has once again been designated a “threat” in the organisation’s “strategic concept”, which defines its doctrine.

Foundations of the Alliance shaken

With the US recently appearing more aligned with Russia than with its allies, this paradox raises questions about the future of the organisation. Trump has been increasingly critical of Nato, throughout his campaign and since his election, and has frequently cast doubt on his country’s commitment to it.

During his speech at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February, US vice-president JD Vance urged Europeans to take their defence into their own hands. At the same time, from Warsaw, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth called on Europe to “invest, because you can’t assume that the American presence will last forever”.

France hails ‘progress’ of Ukraine ceasefire deal, says onus is now on Russia

On 6 March, Trump questioned the solidarity of his allies: “My biggest problem with Nato is that if the United States had a problem and we called France or other countries that I won’t name and said we’ve got a problem, do you think they would come and help us, as they’re supposed to? I’m not sure.”

Nato’s Article 5 states that if a Nato country is the victim of an armed attack, this will be considered an attack on all members, all of whom will come to its aid, by any means deemed necessary including the use of armed force.

To date, the only time Article 5 has been invoked was by the US after the 9/11 attacks, which led to Nato’s intervention in Afghanistan. 

“For the time being, there has been no statement from the Trump administration calling into question the foundation of the Alliance, Article 5,” stressed Amélie Zima, a researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri) and head of the European and Transatlantic Security Programme.

Article 5 is the cornerstone of the Nato edifice. “At a recent press conference, a journalist in the Oval Office asked Donald Trump if he would defend Poland. He immediately replied ‘yes, we are committed’. He was then asked the same question about the Baltic States. There he made a sort of grimace, believing that the matter was more complex, but he concluded all the same ‘we are committed’,” Zima added.

For its part, Nato is playing down any fears. “The transatlantic partnership remains the cornerstone of our Alliance,” said the organisation’s secretary-general Mark Rutte on 6 March, asserting that he had received guarantees from the US regarding its obligations.

At the same time, he called on Europeans to follow the example of Warsaw, which spends 4.7 percent of its GDP on defence.

“If you look at the spirit of the statements and Trump’s pivot towards Russia, there is clearly a doubt that has been introduced,” said Fabrice Pothier, former director of foresight at Nato from 2010 to 2016.

‘Trump has cast doubt on Nato’s reliability’

While fears of American disengagement are tangible, for Alexis Vahlas, director of a master’s degree in European security at Sciences Po Strasbourg and a former Nato political adviser, this remains unlikely. According to him: “Nato remains a lever of influence and an essential interoperability tool for the United States.”

But the unpredictable nature of the Trump administration means that all scenarios have to be considered. Could Nato function without the US or with less American involvement? Given that the country accounts for around 70 percent of Nato’s military spending and that Article 5 is based on the premise of American military strength – particularly its nuclear arsenal – this would represent an unprecedented upheaval for the Alliance, which would consequently lose much of its credibility. 

On 7 March, a Swedish media report quoting unnamed Nato sources indicated that the US had informed its Nato allies of its decision to stop participating in the planning of future military exercises in Europe from 1 January 2026. This information has not been confirmed.

EU Commission chief calls for defence ‘surge’ in address to EU parliament

A US military source quoted by American military newspaper Stars and Stripes then said on 10 March that Nato was “continuing to prepare for military exercises involving the United States this year and beyond”.

Amidst these contradictory statements, General Jean-Paul Paloméros, former Nato Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, told RFI: “These exercises are fundamental because they are representative of the Alliance’s ability to fulfil its collective defence mission. If there are no more exercises, there is no longer any demonstration of credibility and joint training. That is Nato’s great strength.”

‘A credible alternative’

“Today, there is a feeling of anxiety that is leading to a dual attitude,” says Vahlas. On the one hand, it is a question of trying to preserve Western cohesion, while on the other, the 23 EU Member States who are Nato members – Austria, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta are not – are preparing to rely more on their own defence structures.

Brussels has validated the ReArm Europe plan, mobilising some €800 billion for European defence. “But there is no exclusivism,” insists Valhas. In other words, the idea is to keep both mechanisms operational: to safeguard Nato as far as possible, while also strengthening the European alternative. 

“Nato is not necessarily dead as an organisation, but it is less reliable, so we need to create an alternative that is sufficiently credible,” said Pothier, who believes this alternative is being built outside the usual frameworks of European security – Nato and the EU – and instead, around a coalition of key countries. 

“American developments, both in terms of support for Ukraine and rapprochement with Russia, and with the introduction of the transactional nature of the security guarantee, obviously represent a challenge for the transatlantic Alliance in a context where the threat is greater than at any time since the Cold War. But this does not prevent Nato from remaining a forum for political consultation, a planning framework for deterrence and defence, and interoperability for our armies,” said Muriel Domenach, former French ambassador to Nato.

“While we are talking, Europe’s armies are working within the Nato framework, and this cooperation is useful whatever the framework – EU, Nato or ad hoc,” she added.

Previous crises

This is not the first time Nato’s existence has been called into question. During his first electoral campaign in 2016, Trump deemed the organisation “obsolete” – before then reversing his position.

In 2019, Emmanuel Macron called the organisation “brain dead”, while in the same year, the US decided to unilaterally withdraw its troops from Syria. France in fact left Nato’s integrated command in 1966, with General de Gaulle preferring to maintain strategic independence from the US – although it was reinstated in 2009, under Nicolas Sarkozy.

“Nato has already been through some major crises,” said Zima. “In the 1960s, when we moved from the doctrine of massive retaliation to a graduated response, De Gaulle was already expressing doubts about the Americans‘ willingness to defend Europe and, in particular, to use nuclear weapons.”

Macron hosts European military chiefs to discuss Ukraine security guarantees

But the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the need to support the country, gave new weight to the organisation.

Natalia Pouzyreff, co-chair of the French delegation to the Nato Parliamentary Assembly, explained: “It is on this issue that the Europeans want to re-engage in dialogue with the United States. For us, there is a continuum. Ukraine is our shield and it is Europe’s shield, and if Europe is not secure, that is not good for the Americans.”

The Trump administration’s stance, however, has clearly deviated from the values promoted by the organisation: freedom, democracy, the rule of law. “There have always been deviations, such as with Viktor Orban’s Hungary or Turkey, but this is the first time that these deviations have been made by the world’s leading political and military power,” said Zima.  

A Nato summit is scheduled for June 2025 in The Hague. Could there be a change in the organisation’s strategic concept, in which Russia would no longer be designated “the most important principal threat” to the Allies?

“If the Americans were to push to institutionalise their position, I think we could be heading for a real institutional crisis,” says Pothier. “It’s one thing to have a spirit that is no longer that of transatlantic concord, but it’s quite another to put it into the very letter of the institution.”

This article has been adapted from the original version in French.

Aix-Marseille University launched the “Safe Space for Science” initative earlier this month, offering to take in American scientists fleeing the US after the Trump administration announced it would pull funding and putting restrictions on some areas of research.

Forty US scientists have “answered the call”, the university said in a press release this week.

They include academics from Stanford, Yale, NASA, the National Institute for Health (NIH), and George Washington University.

Most of the research topics are related to health  – LGBT+ medicine, epidemiology, infectious diseases, inequalities, immunology, etc.), the environment and climate change, plus the humanities, social science and astrophysics, the statement said.

Ex-NOAA chief: Trump firings put lives, jobs, and science in jeopardy

‘New brain drain’

“We are witnessing a new brain drain,” Benton said in the statement,issued on Wednesday.

“We will do everything possible to help as many scientists as possible continue their research.”

The first American scientist arrived at Aix-Marseille this week. Andrea, a specialist in infectious diseases and epidemics, was working on the African continent.

“The main impact of Donald Trump’s policies on my work is that it’s created a climate of utter uncertainty and fear,” she told France Info. “And even if I still have a job, and we receive funds, there is no information on whether the financing will continue.”

Aix-Marseille says it can raise €15 million to support around 13 US scientists, but insisted it would not be able to meet all the requests on its own. Benton has called on the French and other European governments to help.

French scientists join US protests in face of Trump administration’s ‘sabotage’

The Trump administration’s cuts have already had an impact. On Tuesday, UMass Chan – a public medical school in Massachusetts – announced a freeze on hiring citing “ongoing uncertainties related to federal funding of biomedical research”. Students who had already been accepted were informed by email that their admissions for autumn 2025 term were rescinded.

Fifty limestone cubes – each measuring 7 centimetres by 7 centimetres and weighing nearly 800 grams – will be awarded to winners drawn at random between 7 and 11 April.

The stones come from the rubble of the cathedral, which almost burned down in 2019 but was fully renovated and re-opened last December, and each will carry a brass plaque authenticating its provenance.

La Fondation du Patrimoine (the Heritage Foundation) said the stones were too badly damaged to be used in the renovation.

Those hoping to own one of the cubes have until 4 April to make a donation of at least €40 through the organisation’s website, to help preserve France’s religious heritage.

“Beyond this emblematic monument, thousands of small Notre Dames throughout France are in danger and deserve our attention,” the organisation said in a statement. “With this competition, we want to remind people that every donation counts in preserving these treasures of religious heritage.”

Scientists build a virtual twin of Notre-Dame to help restore its glory

Saving national treasures

Around 5,000 religious buildings in France are in poor condition and require immediate intervention.

France’s culture minister Rachida Dati suggested in October last year establishing a €5 entrance fee to be paid by tourists, which would go towards the upkeep of these buildings.

The idea was met with mixed reactions from the public and politicians and is yet to be introduced.

Notre-Dame revival drives return to ancient French craftsmanship

La Fondation du Patrimoine was one of four organisations tasked with collecting money to restore Notre-Dame de Paris. 

It collected donations from 236,000 donors worldwide, raising €225 million out of a total of €850 million needed for the restoration.

After the French, Americans have been the biggest donors by far, raising some €58 million since 2019.

(with AFP)

Founded by French artist Erick Monjour in 2021, the Salon du Livre Africain de Paris has become a key event on the city’s cultural and literary calendar.

The 2025 edition, running from 14 to 16 March, brings together 100 publishers and 300 authors predominantly from Africa, but also from Europe and beyond.

Alongside book signings and talks by authors, the event features around 30 conferences on such diverse topics as books in the digital age, children’s literature and perspectives on history and colonialism.

Cameroon shares centre stage with Brazil as this year’s guest countries of honour, with a focus on exploring the African diaspora and its contribution to contemporary literature.

Several prominent names in African literature will be present – notably Senegal’s Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. Winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2021, he will chair a conference on Senegalese literature from the diaspora.

African writers celebrated with prestigious French literary prizes

‘Stories have to come from all over’

Among the events is a tribute to Haitian artist and writer Frankétienne, who passed away on 20 February in Port-au-Prince.

Born in 1936, Jean-Pierre Basilic Dantor Franck Étienne d’Argent is considered a national treasure in Haiti and hailed as a “father figure” to today’s generation of artists and writers.

Frankétienne’s compatriot Rodney Saint-Éloi, a poet and editor, will be among the guest writers at the fair.

A recipient of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic, Saint-Éloi’s latest book is entitled Les racistes n’ont jamais vu la mer (“Racists have never seen the sea”).

In an interview with France 24 this week, he underlined the importance of providing “diverse points of view”, saying: “Stories have to come from all over, not just big cities.”

He argued that book fairs are ideal spaces for this. Having started his publishing company Mémoire d’encrier (“Inkwell Memory”) 20 years ago, Saint-Éloi also understands the challenges of the market.

Having a publishing house is not just about adding books to the pile, he said, but about providing the opportunity to “rethink the colonial past” and make the publishing world “fairer and more global”.

Quality, not quantity

One of the highlights of the fair is the annual literary prize for French-language writers – Le Grand Prix Afrique – awarded by the Association of French-Language Writers (Adelf).

One of the six 2025 finalists is poet and author Véronique Tadjo, nominated for her book entitled Je remercie la nuit  (“I thank the night”).

Born in Paris and raised in Côte d’Ivoire, Tadjo headed up the French department at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and has won numerous literary prizes, including the Grand Prix Littéraire d’Afrique Noire in 2005.

Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah wins Nobel Prize for Literature

A second award will be handed out during the book fair, rewarding “beautiful books on Africa” – be they about art, culture, architecture, design, photography, cuisine or fashion.

For Togolese writer Sami Tchak, it is important to have a fair that focuses on African writers and themes, to celebrate what is “rare” in the world, and to “zero in on special talents”, he says.

The author of some 20 books, he will present his latest work Profaner Ananda (“Desecrating Ananda”), written in collaboration with Annie Ferret and dedicated to the Mauritian author Ananda Devi.

“Literature is not about quantity,” he said. “The Paris fair is where we can meet one or two authors who lift everyone else up to a higher level and that makes it all worthwhile.”

The Salon du Livre Africain de Paris is open from 14-16 March at the Halle des Blancs Manteaux. 

“The capitalist system and the bourgeois mode of thinking is in a big crisis,” says Gernot Wolfer.

Comrade Wolfer is a representative of the Berlin cell of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD), which took part in the German election under the slogan “Make Socialism Great Again”.

Wolfer, 67, is a retired metal worker who was employed by multinational companies such as Bosch and Siemens, and active in the powerful IG Metall union. 

Berlin’s public transport grinds to a halt as workers strike ahead of German elections

In the library at the MLPD Berlin office is a small bust of Karl Marx, and the bookshelves feature titles such as “The End of Socialism?”, “Trade Union and Class Struggle” and “On the Formation of Neo-imperialist countries”.

On the photocopier sits a yellow hardhat with a sticker that reads “Workers of all countries: Unite!”.

Wolfer was well prepared, bearing five A4 sheets of remarks, written in both German and English. “It’s approved by the politburo,” he told us cheerfully, “so you can quote me on it.”

“We wanted to make a counterpoint to the well-known slogan of the US president,” he said, referring to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” maxim.

“It makes no sense to make America great again, or Germany or Russia or China. They are heading directly to a third world war,” he added. “The world will be divided again, over raw materials. If mankind is to survive, we have to overcome capitalism. We need a socialist world.”

Fragmentation of the left

But even uniting those who share this goal to fight for it could prove a daunting task.

The MLPD is one of several parties within the German political left that uses “social” or “socialist” principles in their manifestos.

The largest by far is the establishment Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) – the country’s centre-left social democrat party, which has been in power on and off since the Second World War. It is the oldest political party in Germany, and the party of recently defeated Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Much further to the left is Die Linke. It is the offspring of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) – commonly referred to in English as the East German Communist Party – which ruled East Germany for seven decades.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the SED morphed into the Democratic Socialist Party (PDS) which in 2005 changed its name to Die Linke, and attained its best election result in 2009 with 11.9 percent of the votes.

Today, the party presents itself as combining green politics with social awareness. They made a surprise comeback during the recent election, with their share of the vote (8.77 percent) meaning they’ll have 64 seats in the Bundestag.

Germany’s far-left party celebrates surprise comeback in elections

An offspring of Die Linke, led by former MP Sahra Wagenknecht, the BSW, combines left-wing economics with right-wing nationalism and cultural conservatism – it is anti-immigration and pro-Russia – but did not get enough votes to enter parliament.

Left of the left

On the far left are the Socialist Equality Party (SGP), a Trotskyist group whose slogan is “Socialism instead of War!”, and Wolfer’s MLPD.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service (the BfV) names the SGP and MLPD as “strictly ideological left-wing-extremists”, as well as “extremist structures” within Die Linke, saying that their “shared goal” is “to dismantle the democratic constitutional state and establish socialism and, proceeding from that, a classless communist society”.

But for now, Wolfer believes it is better to operate within the existing system.

Praising France’s “anti-fascist front”, the alliance led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party, he regrets that similar election coalitions are not allowed in Germany. “You have to go to the election as one single party,” he says, something he thinks is “a restriction of democratic rights”.

He adds that his party supports “a broad anti-fascist unity under all progressive parties, not only left parties”.

He also says that they “work together with people from Die Linke” which he says has “progressive demands”, adding: “That’s good. They are an important force within the anti-fascist movement.”

“But,” he continued, “they made their deal with the capitalist society. The word ‘socialism’ is very rarely used in their leaflets or books”.

Why socialism?

The question remains: why socialism? After the failure of the USSR, the excesses of Stalin’s Gulag, the Chinese Communist Party’s experiments with the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, costing the lives of millions of people, who is still interested in socialism as an ideology?

Cannibalism in China 50 years on

“The first socialist countries of the world have been very successful for decades,” counters Wolfer. “So the plane flew before it crashed.”

And the reason for this “crash”? “We call it a betrayal of the socialist principles,” he says.

A case in point is the Berlin Wall, which was constructed by East German authorities in 1961 to prevent East Germans from fleeing to the West. 

“The Berlin wall is not a socialist wall. The main slogan of the communist movement and of Marx and Lenin was for ‘workers of all countries to unite’, not to build walls and divide yourselves against each other,” explains Wolfer.

“The Stasi dictatorship in the former East Germany and the criminal acts in the later Soviet Union are not results of a socialist mode of thinking,” he says, referring to the infamous intelligence service that arrested and tortured thousands of civilians.

He argues that today, China’s Communist party is no longer a working-class party either: “On the latest party congress, there’s a bunch of millionaires.”

He says such betrayals of socialist ideals and the experiences of socialist countries must be evaluated. “We have to build on this and we have to make socialism great again.”

The official results of the German election held on 23 February, published on 14 March show that the MLPD won just 19,551 votes nationwide – or 0.04 percent of the total of 49,649,512.

Although the party gained 1,731 more votes than in the 2021 elections, Wolfer knows his party didn’t stand a chance of reaching the 5 percent threshold to get into the German parliament. But he will keep on fighting for global socialist unity, he says.

Some time ago, he and some other MLPD members went to Israel to “find comrades”. At a demonstration against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he and his friends saw a group of Israelis waving Palestinian flags – and red flags too.

“Bingo,” they thought. Wolfer and his MLPD comrades invited this group of Israelis to Berlin, along with a group of Palestinian Marxists.

“In the beginning they were suspicious, they didn’t want to talk to each other,” says Wolfer. But after a few days of discussions in the offices of the MLDP in Berlin, the atmosphere changed. “When they parted they were hugging and crying.”

All three teams advanced on Tuesday and Wednesday to the quarter-finals of the Champions League to continue the projection of the RDB’s “Visit Rwanda” logo in European club football’s most prestigious competition.

PSG progressed at the expense of Liverpool following a penalty shoot-out at Anfield. Bayern cruised past Bundesliga rivals Bayer Leverkusen 5-0 on aggregate and Arsenal spanked the Dutch outfit PSV Eindhoven 9-3 over two legs.

In the last eight, PSG will play Aston Villa, Bayern will take on Inter Milan and Arsenal will face defending champions Real Madrid.

While the clubs battle for supremacy, their association with the RDB is coming under increasing scrutiny due to rows over the involvement of Rwandan troops in the M23 group which is fighting soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Human rights groups as well as the United Nations say they have evidence that Rwanda is actively bolstering the M23 in its sweep through Goma and Bukavu in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.

Authorities in Kigali deny providing arms and troops to M23 rebels. They say Rwandan forces are acting in self-defence against the Congolese army and militias hostile to Rwandans, especially Tutsi.

Possible deal

But as Angolan officials attempt to broker a peace deal between the Congolese president Félix Tshisekedi and M23 leaders, campaigners in Europe have called on the football clubs to terminate their contracts with a brand that they claim has become tarnished.

“Ideally, the contract should end immediately,” said Jordan Madiande who launched a petition in January with his cousin Lionel Tambwe calling for PSG’s deal with the RDB to be severed.

Arsenal’s association with “Visit Rwanda” began in May 2018. Its logo appears on the shirt sleeves of Arsenal’s men’s, women’s and youth teams and can be seen on boards at the Emirates Stadium in north London and on interview backdrops.

PSG signed its initial contract with the RDB in 2019. It was renewed in May 2023 and is scheduled to end after the 2025 season.

Under the PSG deal with the RDB, the logo “Visit Rwanda” appears on the training and warm-up kits of the men’s teams. Rwandan tea and coffee is also served at kiosks and in the suites at the PSG stadium. In both instances current and former players travel to Rwanda for promotional tours.

“If it’s not renewed, that will be acceptable,” added Madiande whose parents came to France from the DRC in the 1980s. “It will still be a victory.”

The 32-year-old social worker’s petition states that as an internationally respected club, PSG has an important role to play in promoting positive values.

It adds: “However, by maintaining this partnership with “Visit Rwanda”, our club could be perceived as ignoring the geopolitical and humanitarian realities of this situation, and risk giving the impression that it is turning a blind eye to human rights violations.”

Comment

PSG has yet to comment publicly on the petition which has amassed 73,000 signatures nor has there been a response to a letter from the DRC’s minister of foreign affairs, Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner.

In January, she called on PSG’s bosses as well as their counterparts at Arsenal and Bayern Munich to review their sponsorship deals.

“At a time when Rwanda is waging war, Rwanda’s guilt in this conflict has become indisputable,” wrote  Kayikwamba Wagner. “Your sponsor is directly responsible for this misery.”

Arsenal have maintained their links with the RDB so too Bayern Munich who dispatched a fact-finding team to Rwanda.

Congo’s government says at least 7,000 people have died in the fighting since January. According to the UN humanitarian affairs office (Ocha), at least 600,000 people have been displaced by the fighting since November.

“Maybe before, PSG’s executives didn’t really know what was going on or they didn’t understand the scale of it,” said Madiande.

“But new things are happening. Bukavu was taken since the petition began. There are the UN reports that say what is happening and there are international reports from human rights organisations. We didn’t invent it. So the question is now, can PSG go on with this?”

Contract

The controversy surrounding the 15 million-euro a year contract has also illuminated the extent and depth of Rwanda’s footprint in the world of sport.

Rwanda and South Africa are both bidding to stage a Formula 1 grand prix in 2027 – potentially the continent’s first such race since 1993. A state-of-the-art track is being built to F1 standards close to Kigali’s new Bugesera airport in the case of success.

In September, Rwanda will welcome the world cycling championships – the first time since its inception in 1921 that the planet’s elite operators will compete in Africa.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame was also one of the strongest advocates for the establishment in 2021 of the Basketball Africa League. Critics say such promotion is sportswashing –  using sporting events to gloss over official clampdowns on political opponents and human rights abuses. 

“It is very much part of Kagame’s toolkit,” said Michela Wrong, author of several books on the region including Rwanda Assassins sans frontierès. “He does sportswashing superbly well.

“And it’s because it works in his favour, He’s also genuinely an Arsenal fan, so he likes to go and watch the matches himself.

“Rwanda is managing to get its its message out to a very particular audience. It’s a young audience. It’s a trendy audience. It’s an audience that possibly isn’t that well informed about the niceties of African politics over the last 30 years and one that can’t really be bothered to read up on that sort of detail.

“So it’s a way of sort of going over the heads of people like me and journalists. Rwanda goes over our heads and reaches a young audience that really doesn’t want to engage with those issues. So I think it’s a very effective way of marketing a certain kind of message.

“This is sportswashing taken to quite a very high level, a level that I don’t think you can see anywhere else in Africa.”

In February, the RDB, responded to queries about its sponsorship deals on social media. It claimed the DRC was undermining its international partnerships through misinformation and political pressure.

“These efforts threaten regional peace, stability, and economic cooperation,” said the message on X. “These collaborations transcend borders, inspire millions across Africa, and contribute to the continent’s socioeconomic progress.”

Madiande, a life-long PSG fan, said he would wait to see if the PSG sponsorship deal were to be renewed before deciding if the campaign should be escalated.

“We think that clubs are intelligent and that they will understand that this is serious,” he said. 

“We think that with the values defended by PSG, Arsenal and Bayern Munich and especially with their histories, that it’s going to stop. But if it doesn’t, there will be further action. It will be more visible.”

 Ligue 1 pacesetters PSG host arch rivals Marseille at the Parc des Princes on Sunday night. Victory over the visitors, who occupy second place, would extend PSG’s lead to 19 points with eight games remaining.

“I’ve been a PSG fan for as long as I can remember,” said Madiande. “But if their approach doesn’t change, I’ll have to ask myself lots of questions. That will be hard. I’ve supported them when they nearly went down to the second division and I’m still a supporter now when things are going better.

“They really can’t need this money from this source. There must be many organisations out there willing to be associated with the club.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s already strong support for the militant group Hamas has strained relations with Israel.

Now, Syria is threatening to become a focal point of tension.

Earlier this month, Erdogan issued a widely interpreted warning to Israel to stop undermining Damascus’s new rulers.

“Those who hope to benefit from the instability of Syria by provoking ethnic and religious divisions should know that they will not achieve their goals,” Erdogan declared at a meeting of ambassadors.

Erdogan’s speech followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer to support Syria’s Druze and Kurdish minorities.

“We will not allow our enemies in Lebanon and Syria to grow,” Netanyahu told the Knesset. “At the same time, we extend our hand to our Druze and Kurdish allies.”

Gallia Lindenstrauss, an Israeli foreign policy specialist at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv told RFI that Israel view is not very optimistic about the future of Syria, and sees it as a potential threat to Israel.

Success of rebel groups in Syria advances Turkish agenda

“The fact that Turkey will be dominant in Syria is also dangerous for Israel,” adds Lindenstrauss.

“Turkey could build bases inside Syria and establish air defences there. This would limit Israel’s room for manoeuvre and could pose a threat. Israel wants to avoid this and should therefore adopt a hard-line approach.”

Deepening rivalry

Ankara and Jerusalem’s deepening rivalry is shaping conflicting visions for the future of Syria.

Selin Nasi, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics’ Contemporary Turkish Studies Department, “Turkey wants to see a secure and stabilised unitary state under Ahmad al-Sharaa’s transitional government.

“Israel, on the other hand, wants to see a weak and fragmented Syria. Its main concern has always been securing its northern border,” added Nasi.

Israeli forces are occupying Syrian territory along their shared northern border, which is home to much of Syria’s Druze minority.

However, Israeli hopes of drawing Syria’s Kurds away from Damascus suffered a setback when the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which controls part of Syria, signed an agreement on 10 March to merge part of its operations with Syria’s transitional government.

Mutual distrust

As Damascus consolidates control, analysts suggest Israel will be increasingly concerned about Turkey expanding its military presence inside Syria.

“If Turkey establishes military posts in the south of the country, close to the Israeli border, presumably with the permission of the government in Damascus,” warns Soli Ozel, a lecturer in international relations at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, “then the two sides would be in close proximity, with military forces on both sides. That, I believe, would create a highly dangerous, volatile, and incendiary situation.”

As Erdogan celebrates Turkish role in ousting Assad, uncertainty lies ahead

Analysts warn that if Turkey extends its military presence to include airbases, this could threaten Israel’s currently unchallenged access to Syrian airspace.

However, some observers believe that opportunities for cooperation may still exist.

“Things can change,” says Israeli security analyst Lindenstrauss.

“Israel and Turkey could resume cooperation and potentially contribute to Syria’s reconstruction in a way that does not threaten Israel. However, this does not appear to be the path the Erdogan regime is currently taking, nor does it seem to be the direction chosen by Netanyahu and his government.”

With Erdogan and Netanyahu making little secret of their mutual distrust, analysts warn that their rivalry is likely to spill over into Syria, further complicating the country’s transition from the Assad regime.

Hello everyone! Welcome to The Sound Kitchen weekly podcast, published every Saturday – here on our website, or wherever you get your podcasts. You’ll hear the winner’s names announced and the week’s quiz question, along with all the other ingredients you’ve grown accustomed to: your letters and essays, “On This Day”, quirky facts and news, interviews, and great music … so be sure and listen every week.

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Remember, podcasts are radio, too! As you see, sound is still quite present in the RFI English service. Please keep checking our website for updates on the latest from our journalists. You never know what we’ll surprise you with!

To listen to our podcasts from your PC, go to our website; you’ll see “Podcasts” at the top of the page. You can either listen directly or subscribe and receive them directly on your mobile phone.

To listen to our podcasts from your mobile phone, slide through the tabs just under the lead article (the first tab is “Headline News”) until you see “Podcasts”, and choose your show. 

Teachers take note! I save postcards and stamps from all over the world to send to you for your students. If you would like stamps and postcards for your students, just write and let me know. The address is english.service@rfi.fr  If you would like to donate stamps and postcards, feel free! Our address is listed below. 

Another idea for your students: Br. Gerald Muller, my beloved music teacher from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, has been writing books for young adults in his retirement – and they are free! There is a volume of biographies of painters and musicians called Gentle Giants, and an excellent biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., too. They are also a good way to help you improve your English – that’s how I worked on my French, reading books that were meant for young readers – and I guarantee you, it’s a good method for improving your language skills. To get Br. Gerald’s free books, click here.

Independent RFI English Clubs: Be sure to always include Audrey Iattoni (audrey.iattoni@rfi.fr) from our Listener Relations department in your RFI Club correspondence. Remember to copy me (thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr) when you write to her so that I know what is going on, too. N.B.: You do not need to send her your quiz answers! Email overload!

This week’s quiz: On 15 February, I asked you a question about Paul Myers’ article “Namibian independence leader Sam Nujoma dies aged 95”. Sam Nujoma was Namibia’s first democratically elected president; he led Namibia’s fight for independence from South Africa.

You were to send in the answer to this question: Namibians have just elected a new president, who will be inaugurated on the 21st of this month. What is the name of their president-elect? 

The answer is: Namibia’s president-elect is Dr. Ndemupelila Netumbo Nandi – Ndaitwah. Born in 1952, Dr. Nandi – Ndaitwah will be Namibia’s fifth president and the first woman to hold the position. 

Speaking of Sam Nujoma, she, as Paul wrote in his article: “… paid tribute to Nujoma’s visionary leadership as well as his dedication to liberation and nation-building. ‘It laid the foundation for our free, united nation,’ she added. ‘Let us honour his legacy by upholding resilience, solidarity, and selfless service.’”

In addition to the quiz question, there was the bonus question, suggested by Hans Verner Lollike from Hedehusene, Denmark: “Describe a cultural monument or a nature site in your country that is not known to the world at large.”

Do you have a bonus question idea? Send it to us!

The winners are: RFI English listener Debashis Gope from the Dakshin Dinajpur district in West Bengal, India.  Debashis is also this week’s bonus question winner. Congratulations, Debashis, on your double win !

Also on the list of lucky winners this week are Rasheed Naz, the chairman of the Naz Radio France Listeners Club in Faisal Abad, Pakistan; RFI Listeners Club member Father Steven Wara from Bamenda, Cameroon, and last but not least, two RFI English listeners from Bangladesh: Nargis Akter from Dhaka, and Sakila Musarrat from Chapainawabganj. 

Congratulations, winners!

Here’s the music you heard on this week’s programme: “Sari” by George Fenton and Tom Leach; “Gnawa Funk Rhythm”; “The Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov; “The Cakewalk” from Children’s Corner by Claude Debussy, performed by the composer, and “Mulatu” by Mulatu Astatke, performed by the composer and his ensemble.

Do you have a music request? Send it to thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr

This week’s question … you must listen to the show to participate. 

After you’ve listened to the show, re-read our article “Macron hosts European military chiefs to discuss Ukraine security guarantees”, which will help you with the answer.

You have until 7 April to enter this week’s quiz; the winners will be announced on the 12 April podcast. When you enter, be sure to send your postal address with your answer, and if you have one, your RFI Listeners Club membership number.

Send your answers to:

english.service@rfi.fr

or

Susan Owensby

RFI – The Sound Kitchen

80, rue Camille Desmoulins

92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux

France

Click here to learn how to win a special Sound Kitchen prize.

Click here to find out how you can become a member of the RFI Listeners Club, or form your own official RFI Club.   

There are some explanations for France’s 22 percent gender pay gap – women work fewer hours on average and in lower-paid jobs. But even doing the same job and putting in the same hours, women still earn 4 percent less than men, and a barrage of legal measures hasn’t managed to change that. We look at what’s going on with economist Anne Eydoux and lawyer Insaff El Hassani – founder of a company helping women negotiate salaries. El Hassani highlights negative images around wealthy women and how France’s “female wage”, dropped in 1946, still impacts the way some employers view women’s salaries. (Listen @0′)

France has downsized its ambitions to increase the amount of organic agriculture after a drop in consumer demand for organic food . After years of growth, especially during the Covid pandemic, inflation and a distrust in labelling have turned consumers away from buying organic produce, even as new farmers are drawn to the prospect of working in a different way. At the recent annual agricultural fair in Paris, farmers and others working in the organic sector talk about how they are adapting to the new economic reality, and the need to raise awareness of the value of organic food, beyond the price tag. (Listen @17′)

France is marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of composer Maurice Ravel, whose most famous piece, Boléro, is considered an avant-garde musical expression of  the machine age. (Listen @9’50”)

Episode mixed by Cecile Pompeani. 

Spotlight on France is a podcast from Radio France International. Find us on rfienglish.com, Apple podcasts (link here), Spotify (link here) or your favourite podcast app (pod.link/1573769878).

France’s handover of its sole base in Côte d’Ivoire and a pullout in January from Chad are part of a broader reduction of the French army’s presence across the region.

“What we are living in now is a transformational age,” international relations expert Federico Donelli of Trieste University told RFI.

“Many traditional players like France, for example, in that region of Africa are downgrading their own engagement in this area. Not because they have some economic or political constraint but because the local states want them to leave the region.”

Donelli believes the door is now open to new players, such as Turkey.

“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invested heavily in Africa, quadrupling Turkey’s embassy presence across Africa in the past two decades. Erdogan, a devout Muslim, also plays the Muslim card and reminds his African audiences of France’s colonial past,” he says.

Insurgent threats

However, Eylem Tepeciklioglu of Ankara’s Social Sciences University believes the breakthrough for Turkey came with the French military failing to deal with insurgent threats in the Sahel and broader West Africa.

“The image of France is in tatters because the regional countries criticise French missions for failing to help them fight with terrorist groups and for bringing more harm than good,” explains Tepecikoglu.

Tepeciklioglu claims Erdogan’s Africa policy caught the regional zeitgeist.

“Together with rising anti-French sentiments, this brings opportunities for other countries to step in, and Turkey has several defense or mutual cooperation agreements with Sahelian countries. And according to some sources, Turkey has deployed military advisers and drones at the Abéché base in Chad,” adds Tepeciklioglu.

Macron’s Africa ‘reset’ stumbles as leaders call out colonial overtones

Deepening Senegalese and Turkish military ties was on the agenda at an Istanbul meeting in October. Shortly after the high-profile gathering, Senegal called for the removal of French forces.

Turkey’s vibrant arms industry selling battle-proven weapons invariably cheaper than its Western competitors, as well as having few, if any, restrictions on use, is complementing Ankara’s traditional diplomatic tools in its bid to broaden its influence.

“Turkish defense products are now very popular in African markets. So this also applies to Sahelian countries,” explains Tepeciklioglu, “For example, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Chad acquired Turkish drones. While other Sahelian countries acquired other Turkish military equipment.”

Overstretch

Turkey remains a relatively small player against the giants of Russia, China, and the United States in the battle to secure economic and diplomatic influence. 

But the growing competition between Western and Eastern powers could be to Turkey’s advantage, says Donelli.

 “So, for an African state, establishing a security agreement with Turkey is less costly in political terms in comparison with relations with Russia because that doesn’t mean ‘I break with the West, but I’m doing something with a NATO member’. This is really important,” adds Donelli.

Turkey and Italy consider teaming up to seek new influence in Africa

But Turkey’s rapid expansion into Africa does not come cheap what with diplomatic representations across the continent, growing military presence, such as army and naval bases in Libya and Africa.

“Turkey is expanding too much. This is called overstretch in diplomatic language,” warns International relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara Middle East Technical University.

“So, Turkey’s military and economic capabilities are actually limited. The more you expand, the more you have to pay,” he says, adding that such a strategy would not be sustainable.

With the Turkish economy mired in crisis and Erdogan looking to improve ties with Europe, including France, analysts say Turkey could be ready for cooperation rather than rivalry in Africa.

Hello everyone! Welcome to The Sound Kitchen weekly podcast, published every Saturday – here on our website, or wherever you get your podcasts. You’ll hear the winner’s names announced and the week’s quiz question, along with all the other ingredients you’ve grown accustomed to: your letters and essays, “On This Day”, quirky facts and news, interviews, and great music … so be sure and listen every week.

Erwan and I are busy cooking up special shows with your music requests, so get them in! Send your music requests to thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr Tell us why you like the piece of music, too – it makes it more interesting for us all!

Facebook: Be sure to send your photos to thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr for the RFI English Listeners Forum banner!

More tech news: Did you know we have a YouTube channel? Just go to YouTube and write “RFI English” in the search bar, and there we are! Be sure to subscribe to see all our videos.

Would you like to learn French? RFI is here to help you!

Our website “Le Français facile avec RFI” has news broadcasts in slow, simple French, as well as bilingual radio dramas (with real actors!) and exercises to practice what you have heard.

Go to our website and get started! At the top of the page, click on “Test level”. According to your score, you’ll be counselled to the best-suited activities for your level.

Do not give up! As Lidwien van Dixhoorn, the head of “Le Français facile” service told me: “Bathe your ears in the sound of the language, and eventually, you’ll get it.” She should know – Lidwien is Dutch and came to France hardly able to say “bonjour” and now she heads this key RFI department – so stick with it!

Be sure you check out our wonderful podcasts!

In addition to the news articles on our site, with in-depth analysis of current affairs in France and across the globe, we have several podcasts that will leave you hungry for more.

There’s Spotlight on France, Spotlight on Africa, The International Report, and of course, The Sound Kitchen. We also have an award-winning bilingual series – an old-time radio show, with actors (!) to help you learn French, called Les voisins du 12 bis. 

Remember, podcasts are radio, too! As you see, sound is still quite present in the RFI English service. Please keep checking our website for updates on the latest from our journalists. You never know what we’ll surprise you with!

To listen to our podcasts from your PC, go to our website; you’ll see “Podcasts” at the top of the page. You can either listen directly or subscribe and receive them directly on your mobile phone.

To listen to our podcasts from your mobile phone, slide through the tabs just under the lead article (the first tab is “Headline News”) until you see “Podcasts”, and choose your show. 

Teachers take note! I save postcards and stamps from all over the world to send to you for your students. If you would like stamps and postcards for your students, just write and let me know. The address is english.service@rfi.fr  If you would like to donate stamps and postcards, feel free! Our address is listed below. 

Another idea for your students: Br. Gerald Muller, my beloved music teacher from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, has been writing books for young adults in his retirement – and they are free! There is a volume of biographies of painters and musicians called Gentle Giants, and an excellent biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., too. They are also a good way to help you improve your English – that’s how I worked on my French, reading books that were meant for young readers – and I guarantee you, it’s a good method for improving your language skills. To get Br. Gerald’s free books, click here.

Independent RFI English Clubs: Be sure to always include Audrey Iattoni (audrey.iattoni@rfi.fr) from our Listener Relations department in your RFI Club correspondence. Remember to copy me (thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr) when you write to her so that I know what is going on, too. N.B.: You do not need to send her your quiz answers! Email overload!

This week’s quiz: On 8 February, I asked you a question about our article “French PM pushes through budget, faces second no-confidence vote”. That’s because French Prime Minister François Bayrou used Article 49.3 – a special executive power – to push the budget through. The Parliament does not take kindly to Article 49.3, because the executive branch can use it to bypass their votes.

After it went through, a no-confidence motion was immediately brought forward by the hard-left France Unbowed party. At that time, it was not thought the no-confidence motion would pass, because the Socialists said they would vote against it. My question to you was: Why did France’s Socialist party say they would vote against the no-confidence motion brought by the France Unbowed party? 

The answer is, to quote our article: “The Socialist Party said in a press release that it did not want to see France in an extended period of financial limbo and would therefore, ‘in a spirit of responsibility’, not back the no-confidence vote.”

They held to their word: The Socialist party did not back the no-confidence vote – France has a budget now, and the same prime minister, François Bayrou. 

In addition to the quiz question, there was the bonus question: “Is the favorite child the worst child?”

Do you have a bonus question idea? Send it to us!

The winners are: RFI English Listeners Club member Nasyr Muhammad from Katsina State, Nigeria. Nasyr is also this week’s bonus question winner. Congratulations, Nasyr, on your double win !

Also on the winner’s list this week are: Reepa Bain, the secretary of the RFI Pariwer Bandhu SWL Club in Chhattisgarh, India; Mukta Banu, a member of the Shetu RFI Listeners Club in Naogaon, Bangladesh; RFI English Listeners Club member Dipita Chakrabarty from New Delhi, India, and last but not least, RFI English listener Murshida Parvin Lata, the vice – president of the Sonali Badhan Female Listeners Club in Bogura, Bangladesh.

Congratulations, winners!

Here’s the music you heard on this week’s programme: “One Woman” by Beth Blatt, Graham Lyle, and Fahan Hassan, performed by the United Nation Women Singers; “Toy Symphony” by Leopold Mozart; “The Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov; “The Cakewalk” from Children’s Corner by Claude Debussy, performed by the composer, and “Nubian Lady” by Kenny Barron, performed by Bobbi Humphrey and her orchestra.  

Do you have a music request? Send it to thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr

This week’s question … you must listen to the show to participate. After you’ve listened to the show, take another listen to the first story on Alison Hird and Sarah Elzas’ Spotlight on France podcast number 124, which will help you with the answer.

You have until 31 March to enter this week’s quiz; the winners will be announced on the 5 April podcast. When you enter, be sure to send your postal address with your answer, and if you have one, your RFI Listeners Club membership number.

Send your answers to:

english.service@rfi.fr

or

Susan Owensby

RFI – The Sound Kitchen

80, rue Camille Desmoulins

92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux

France

Click here to learn how to win a special Sound Kitchen prize.

Click here to find out how you can become a member of the RFI Listeners Club, or form your own official RFI Club.   

The sharp decline in US-Ukraine relations has raised doubts about American support for Europe, as the continent assesses its ability to defend itself against a threat from Russia.

Donald Trump’s decision to cut military aid to Ukraine this week signals a  shift in US foreign policy and raises questions about America’s commitment to Europe’s security.

From shortages in the number of tanks and the availablity of artillery, to the debate over a unified European army, leaders must decide whether to bolster national forces or embrace deeper military cooperation.

As France and the UK guard their nuclear arsenals and Russia tests Europe’s resolve, can the EU build a credible deterrent, or will it continue to rely on America?

The Director for Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa at the Institute for Economics and Peace, Serge Stroobants, explained to RFI that Europe lacks the capacity to react quickly to security threats, with defence procurement bogged down by fragmentation and slow production timelines.

As early as 2016, Germany’s defence industry acknowledged that no major projects would reach completion for at least six to eight years. Today the projections are even worse.

“If you want to invest quickly in the military – into defence, into new equipment and weapon systems – these need to be bought off the shelf outside of Europe,” with the US, Turkey, and South Korea as key suppliers, he says.

Defence neglected

Beyond military upgrades, Europe faces a broader challenge as its entire economic and state system must adapt to meet modern security demands.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s recent pledge to cut red tape for defence procurement is a step in the right direction, Stroobants says, but it comes too late and under pressure from events rather than forward planning.

“The problem is – as is so often with the EU – we are doing this under the pressure of the events. We’re not doing this in advance. We’re not planning. We don’t have a strategy.”

Despite being a continent of 500 million people – and the world’s third-largest economic and military power – Europe remains unable to ensure its own security due to a longstanding lack of strategic foresight and neglect of defence spending.

As it stands, a unified EU defence force remains a challenge due to Europe’s struggle to coordinate military policy alongside foreign diplomacy and development.

Stroobants explains that peace and security are based on three pillars – diplomacy, development and defence. “When you look at the EU, this has been done for almost 75 years, but if you are not able to integrate foreign policy and foreign development…and have common influence outside of European borders? Well, it doesn’t really help to only unify just one of those three pillars,” he said.

While the EU has made progress in development and soft power, true strategic influence for the bloc requires the full integration of defence and diplomacy to establish an undivided foreign policy and a stronger global presence.

‘Europe must do the heavy lifting’ in Ukraine, needs ‘US backing’: UK’s Starmer

Reshaping Europe

“For 30 to 35 years now, we have been divesting from defence, but it’s much more than defence. It’s the entire society that has lived with the idea that we would live eternally in peace,” Stroobants says.

He argues that to independently deter Russian aggression, European nations must go beyond bolstering their military capabilities – they need to rethink their entire strategic approach.

“If you want to be ready, you need to invest in defence…but you also need to reshape your society and your infrastructure,” he adds.

He also points out that with France and the UK as Europe’s only nuclear powers, their cooperation on a nuclear umbrella remains uncertain. France insists its deterrent will stay national but may engage allies without losing autonomy. Both nations favour a “coalition of the willing” over an EU or NATO-led approach, prioritising national security.

‘Deterrance and power’

While Moscow takes America’s military threat seriously and views European states as weak, Stroobants added,  Europe must take concrete steps to change this perception and restore credible deterrence.

European security hinges on two key concepts: deterrence and power. Deterrence relies not just on military capability but on the will to use it – because, as Stroobants puts it, “you can have 20,000 nuclear warheads, but if you have nobody who is strong enough to use them, they are not going to be a deterrent.

“And that’s exactly what’s happening with the EU at the moment”.

True power – accroding to Stroobants – is essentially a combination of military, economic, and diplomatic strength,comboined with a clear strategy and the political will to act.

Britain holds back as France pushes for truce between Russia and Ukraine

While Europe possesses significant resources, it lacks a unified vision on how to confront Putin’s Russia and define its role in an increasingly aggressive global order – leaving it strategically adrift and unable to deter adversaries effectively.

The absence of key nations – including the Baltic states – from a recent high-level security meeting in London only underscores the challenge of consolidating a unified European deterrent.

“After having lived in the military for 30 years, in Europe and under the NATO umbrella, not incorporating all the allies or member states [at high level meetings] is really strange,” he said.

For Stroobants, Europe now is facing the disintegration of alliances that have taken over seven decades to build.

Madhya Pradesh is often referred to as the Heart of India. Located right in the middle of the country, the Indian region shows everything India has to offer through its abundant diversity. The IFTM trade show, which took place in Paris at the end of September, presented the perfect opportunity for travel enthusiasts to discover the region.

Sheo Shekhar Shukla, Managing Director of Madhya Pradesh’s tourism board, sat down to explain his approach to sustainable tourism.

“Post-covid the whole world has known a shift in their approach when it comes to tourism. And all those discerning travelers want to have different kinds of experiences: something offbeat, something new, something which has not been explored before.”

Through its UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Shukla wants to showcase the deep history Madhya Pradesh has to offer.

“UNESCO is very actively supporting us and three of our sites are already World Heritage Sites. Sanchi is a very famous buddhist spiritual destination, Bhimbetka is a place where prehistoric rock shelters are still preserved, and Khajuraho is home to thousand year old temples with magnificent architecture.”

All in all, Shukla believes that there’s only one way forward for the industry: “Travelers must take sustainable tourism as a paradigm in order to take tourism to the next level.”

In partnership with Madhya Pradesh’s tourism board.

Also known as the Land of the Beautiful Islands, Malaysia’s landscape and cultural diversity is almost unmatched on the planet. Those qualities were all put on display at the Malaysian stand during the IFTM trade show.

Libra Hanif, director of Tourism Malaysia, explained the appeal of the country as well as the importance of promoting sustainable tourism today: “Sustainable travel is a major trend now, with the changes that are happening post-covid. People want to get close to nature, to get close to people. So Malaysia being a multicultural and diverse [country] with a lot of natural environments, we felt that it’s a good thing for us to promote Malaysia.”

Malaysia has also gained fame in recent years, through its numerous UNESCO World Heritage Sites, which include Kinabalu Park and the Archaeological Heritage of the Lenggong Valley.

Green mobility has also become an integral part of tourism in Malaysia, with an increasing number of people using bikes to discover the country: “If you are a little more adventurous, we have the mountain back trails where you can cut across gazetted trails to see the natural attractions and the wildlife that we have in Malaysia,” says Hanif. “If you are not that adventurous, you’ll be looking for relaxing cycling. We also have countryside spots, where you can see all the scenery in a relaxing session.”

With more than 25,000 visitors at this IFTM trade show this year, Malaysia’s tourism board got to showcase the best the country and its people have to offer.

In partnership with Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board. For more information about Malaysia, click here.