Their cases are passed between institutions and the process can take months. In the meantime, they risk sleeping rough, being arrested or even deported before a final decision is made.

The recent police eviction of hundreds of youths occupying a Paris theatre has thrown a spotlight on this national challenge.

“We are not criminals, nor drug addicts. The only thing we are asking for is shelter, education and access to health. How can this be bad for France?” said Hamadou, a 16-year-old from Guinea who was among those evicted.

Each year, around 8,000 undocumented migrant minors arrive in Paris alone. Only about 2,500 are officially recognised as underage and immediately taken into care, according to Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

For those caught in administrative limbo, options are limited. Some, like Hamadou and 500 others, occupied La Gaîté Lyrique theatre in central Paris from 10 December 2023, before being forcibly removed by police on 18 March.

“I was so frightened, I could not find any sleep that night, before the police evicted us,” Hamadou told RFI.

“The policemen, a hundred of them, looked like they were geared up for war with their shields, helmets and batons. Up till the last minute, I was convinced that they would never use force, that the Paris municipality will come to the rescue with news of lodgings for us.”

Most of the youths at Gaîté Lyrique come from former French colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Many find themselves in a paradox: French law guarantees protection for unaccompanied minors under the International Convention on the Rights of the Child – but proving they qualify for that protection is increasingly difficult.

The X-ray bone examination is hardly ever carried out nowadays, the age assessment tests is mainly through interviews.

“This is problematic for us because it is not based on scientific evidence and it looks like the interviewer can decide whatever they choose to believe,” Hamadou said.

A hot potato

Mohamed Gnabaly, mayor of Ile-Saint-Denis and member of the Green party, told RFI that the Gaîté Lyrique case shows how different institutions bounce responsibility back and forth.

“It is fine as long as they remain invisible. The unaccompanied migrant minors became a problem because they were a sore sight right in the centre of the capital city,” he said.

“And this fed the racist speech we heard about them within both the ranks of the government and the far-right.”

Fousseni, from the Belleville park youth group which helped organise the occupation, said the delays and lack of shelter push the minors into impossible choices.

“By the time many have built up their case while trying not to get arrested, they have already reached 18,” he said.

The Municipality of Paris brought the case to court in January. A court then issued an order on 13 February for the theatre to be evacuated within one month. When the city failed to act by the deadline, police chief Laurent Nunes said he had to intervene.

“The Municipality of Paris [owner of the theatre] did not contact me by 13 March. I had to take my responsibilities and put an end to this occupation which was disrupting public order,” Nunes said on the TV programme C à vous.

“The Municipality of Paris asked for details on what accommodation would be given to the young people and how they were to be treated,” he added. “This to me implicitly meant that the Municipality of Paris did not want security forces to intervene.”

Caught in the clash

On 18 March, riot police used batons and tear gas to enter the theatre, pushing past human chains formed by activists, civilians and politicians.

“This show of force and attacking vulnerable black migrant minors is the first step of the military discourse the government and the far-right is currently using,” Danièle Obono, an MP from the left-leaning France Unbound party, told RFI.

Police evict migrants from Paris theatre after months-long occupation

Belleville parc youth group reported that around 60 people were arrested, including minors and adult supporters. Ten were injured. So far, 25 minors have been issued deportation orders – a move the group says violates their legal rights.

“This is illegal because they are minors and are currently being processed by the ministry of Justice to prove that they are under 18,” said Fousseni. “They cannot be thrown out of the French territory like used tissue papers.”

Differing perspectives

Government officials say the situation is not as clear-cut. Minister François-Noël Buffet told parliament that the youths were mostly over 18. The government and far-right groups blamed them for damage and losses to neighbouring businesses.

Mayor Hidalgo defended the eviction, saying the situation had become unsafe.

“There are around 8,000 young undocumented migrants who arrive in Paris every year. Approximately 2,500 of them are recognised as minors and are immediately taken care of,” she told France Inter.

“The situation was tensed, dangerous and very complicated.”

Hidalgo said accommodation had been offered, but turned down.

Fousseni said the offer was in Rouen – too far from Paris, where most of the young people are enrolled in school, receiving healthcare and attending legal appointments. Only six accepted the placement.

Billionaire Elon Musk commented on the case on X, writing: “Another case of suicidal empathy… it will end civilization. Game over.” He later added, “They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilisation which is the empathy response.”

Uncertain future

For Hamadou, the eviction had immediate consequences.

“I couldn’t breathe. I escaped with only the clothes I am now wearing,” he said. His suitcase, containing all the documents gathered to prove his age, was lost in the chaos.

Now, he and others like him try not to sleep in the same place twice, fearing police checks. They depend on charities for food.

“The greatest danger they now face is police violence,” said Fousseni. “Police in Paris are preventing the unaccompanied migrants to sleep in the streets of the city. They are being pushed to the outskirts of Paris.”

La Gaîté Lyrique management had supported the occupation at first, despite cancelling shows and taking financial losses.

“It is out of question to throw them out in the streets where it is freezing cold. We regret, however that we were taken over so suddenly,” it said in a communiqué last December.

The theatre later criticised the lack of coordination between the Paris Municipality and the national government, which left the minors in limbo for three months.

For thousands of unaccompanied minors across France, the system remains opaque, slow and unforgiving – and the stakes are growing by the day.

Five of the last six years have seen the most rapid glacier retreat on record, the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said, on its inaugural World Day for Glaciers.

“Preservation of glaciers is a not just an environmental, economic and societal necessity: it’s a matter of survival,” said WMO chief Celeste Saulo.

“From 2022 to 2024, we saw the largest three-year loss of glaciers on record,” she said, adding that the worst year was 2023.

Together, “all 19 glacier regions lost 450 billion tonnes of mass,” the WMO said, citing new data from the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS).

Beyond the continental ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, more than 275,000 glaciers worldwide cover approximately 700,000 square kilometres, said the WMO. But they are rapidly shrinking due to climate change.

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Until now, scientists had counted only 220,000 glaciers. “This doesn’t mean that new glaciers have appeared, it means that the new inventory is much more detailed,” French glaciologist Etienne Berthier told RFI.

A specialist in the spatial analysis of glaciers at the Legos laboratory at the University of Toulouse, he says technology has vastly improved monitoring systems.

“We now have very high-resolution space instruments, on the order of 50 centimetres, which provide much more detail in this inventory of glaciers based on satellite images. We can therefore better see each small glacier, or those that deserve to be separated in two because they have different behaviours,” he explained.

According to a study published in the scientific journal Nature on 19 February, approximately 273 billion tonnes of ice melted each year between 2000 and 2023.

This is like emptying “the equivalent of three Olympic-sized swimming pools per second,” warned the European Space Agency project Glambie, which authored the study.

Berthier points out that Europe, the fastest-warming continent, lost 39 percent of its glacier volume between 2000 and 2023. In 2021 and 2023 alone, Swiss glaciers lost 10 percent of their mass, the same amount lost between 1960 and 1990.

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“Melting accelerated and became widespread in the 1990s due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Each decade, mass losses are greater. In the Alps, it is estimated that between 1 percent and 10 to 15 percent of glacier volume will remain in 2100, depending on the scenario,” he explained.

“In the Pyrenees, we have been losing one glacier per year since 2000. Around 10 remain, which are expected to disappear in the next 10 to 15 years,” he said.

Based on a compilation of worldwide observations, the WGMS estimates that glaciers – not including the continental ice sheets – have lost more than 9,000 billion tonnes since records began in 1975.

“This is equivalent to a huge ice block of the size of Germany, with a thickness of 25 metres,” said WGMS director Michael Zemp.

However, the rate of loss is not the same around the globe.

Glacier mass loss was relatively moderate last year in regions such as the Canadian Arctic and the peripheral glaciers of Greenland – while glaciers in Scandinavia, Norway’s Svalbard archipelago and North Asia experienced their worst year on record.

At current rates of melting, many glaciers in western Canada and the United States, Scandinavia, central Europe, the Caucasus and New Zealand “will not survive the 21st century,” said the WMO.

The agency said that together with ice sheets, glaciers store around 70 percent of the world’s freshwater resources, with high mountain regions acting like the world’s water towers. If they were to disappear, this would threaten water supplies for millions of people downstream.

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Another issue is rising sea levels, which saw an increase of 1.8 cm between 2000 and 2023.

A rise of at least 30 to 60cm is projected by the end of the century, according to the European Union’s observation programme Copernicus, which will affect hundreds of millions of people living in coastal areas.

For the UN, the only possible effective response is to combat global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“We can negotiate many things in the end, but we cannot negotiate physical laws like the melting point of ice,” said Stefan Uhlenbrook, the WMO’s water and cryosphere director.

“Ignoring the problem” of climate change “is maybe convenient for a short period of time,” he said, but “that will not help us to get closer to a solution”.

After double-digit growth in the last few years, including throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, organic food is in free fall in France.

“During Covid we reached 12 to 15 percent of our sales in organic, but then after Covid, people were more cautious about their food spending, so it has dropped,” Pierre Gratacos, operations director for Cardell, an apple producer in south-western France, explained at the recent Paris international agricultural show, where he was showcasing the company’s organic Juliet apples.

During the pandemic people cooked at home more and spent more money on food, but as leisure activities resumed and rising inflation started to impact prices, the cost of buying organic has become a sticking point.

More about how organic farmers are dealing with the drop in consumer demand in the Spotlight on France podcast:

“People have less money to spend on food, so they usually buy less,” said Gratacos, explaining that organic apples are more expensive to grow because the trees yield less fruit.

“Because the method of growing is a bit more demanding, so there are fewer apples in one organic tree than in a normal tree, and if you grow fewer apples, you need to sell them at a higher price,” he explained.

With increased costs for packing added, the company’s organic apples are 25 to 30 percent more expensive than conventionally grown ones.

Convincing the middlemen

However, Gratacos believes consumers would be willing to pay more, with the right information.

“They are OK about buying more expensive apples if they’re organic,” he said. “I think the end consumers are ready, but the middle buyers are not ready and are not really educated about it.”

The middle buyers are the middlemen who buy produce wholesale and resell it to grocery chains, where the bulk of food is purchased.

Today, just 6 percent of food consumed in France is organic, according to the Agence Bio, the agency supported by the agriculture ministry which promotes organic production.

This drop in demand means farmers have less of a market to sell to, which has led them to question their business models.

In 2023, France had around 61,000 organic farms – 14.4 percent of the total number – which were working on 10.4 percent of the country’s agricultural land.

That was a drop of 1.3 percent from the previous year and, according to the chamber of agriculture, the number of farmers converting to organic dropped by 30 percent.

Organic aspirations

Those in the organic sector say this drop impacts everyone, as half of all France’s farmers are set to retire in the next 10 years, and newcomers to the sector are particularly interested in organic

“We have a lot of aspiring farmers, and they want to become organic farmers,” said Philippe Camburet, president of the National Organic Agriculture Federation. “If we do not allow them to go into organic farming, they will not go into this profession.”

Setting up any agricultural enterprise requires significant investment. Conventional farms need to sign contracts with pesticide and fertiliser suppliers and are under pressure to produce.

“They don’t want this,” Camburet says of new farmers. “This is not the agriculture that makes you dream. What makes you dream is what has meaning.”

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But ideals only go so far, and without the consumer demand, people are hesitant to go into organic farming.

“Some people who want to get installed in organic agriculture think a little bit more, and they sometimes hesitate to go into this field,” says Vincent Kraus, co-founder of Fermes en Vie (“Farms alive”), an organisation which raises investor funds to provide new farmers with land to start out as organic farmers.

“They really want to do things differently, and are interested in other ways to produce,” he says of the farmers he works with.

Agriculture and environment

He and others had hoped that the long-delayed agricultural reform law that was passed in March to address the grievances raised by farmers in protests in the winter of 2024, would provide more support to organic farmers.

Environmentalists and politicians on the left have criticised the law for backtracking on environmental commitments, with articles loosening rules on pesticides and land usage.

“I was expecting the pragmatic guidelines that make sense for future generations,” Camburet said. “Unfortunately, that is really not at all the case.”

The text of the law states that agriculture is a “major national interest”, essential to the French economy. It goes on to define food sovereignty as not only the capacity to produce enough food to feed the French population, but also to support France’s exports to “contribute to global food security”.

“The agricultural industry wants to be on the world market, to compete with others, who are much bigger than we are,” Camburet said. “What we must do is take a different path. Why should we continue to go big, exhausting ourselves, and exhausting our economy, our environment and our health?”

Linking farm and plate

This law maintains France’s ambition to reach 21 percent organic agriculture by 2030 – a target that had been removed in the right-leaning Senate version of the text, but which was later reinstated.

The Senate argued that there was no point in setting targets if consumer demand was not there.

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Laure Verdot, director of the Agence Bio – which the senators had also wanted to cut – agrees with this to some extent, but says that the goal should instead be to change consumer demands.

“It’s not enough to declare an objective of the number of hectares of organic in the fields,” she said “We must have ambitions for organic consumers.”

The agency has launched a campaign to promote organic food to the general public.

“We must absolutely make the link between our consumption, on our plates, and the farmers in the field,” Verdot said. “If we want to be able to draw in farmers who want to go organic, we must make room for them on our plates.”

To hear more on the state of organic farming in France, on the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 125, listen here.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) warned that the actual death toll is likely much higher, as many deaths go undocumented due to a lack of official sources.

“The tragedy of the growing number of migrant deaths worldwide is both unacceptable and preventable. Behind every number is a human being, someone for whom the loss is devastating,” said IOM deputy director general for operations Ugochi Daniels in a press release.

“The increase in deaths across so many regions in the world shows why we need an international, holistic response that can prevent further tragic loss of life.”

Five-year upward trend

The 2024 figure continues a five-year trend of rising migrant deaths. It surpasses the previous record of 8,747 deaths recorded in 2023.

Asia recorded the highest regional toll with 2,778 deaths, followed by Africa with 2,242. The IOM documented 2,452 deaths in the Mediterranean Sea. Although not a record, the number remains high.

The agency said: “The figures showed the need for adequate search and rescue systems as well as the need for safe and regular migration routes.”

Data for the Americas is not yet complete, but at least 1,233 deaths were reported there in 2024. That includes 341 people who died in the Caribbean – an unprecedented number – and a record 174 deaths in the Darién jungle between Panama and Colombia.

Police evict migrants from Paris theatre after months-long occupation

Violence a major cause

Since 2022, at least 10 percent of all recorded migrant deaths have been due to violence. In 2024, this was largely linked to violence against people in transit in Asia. Nearly 600 people died on migration routes across South and South-Eastern Asia.

The IOM said most of the victims remain unidentified, leaving families without answers and hindering efforts to respond to the crisis.

“The rise in deaths is terrible in and of itself, but the fact that thousands remain unidentified each year is even more tragic,” said Julia Black, coordinator of the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project.

“Beyond the despair and unresolved questions faced by families who have lost a loved one, the lack of more complete data on risks faced by migrants hinders life-saving responses.”

Call for global response

The IOM is calling for an international response to address the growing number of deaths.

Its upcoming annual report will provide further analysis of the data from 2024, as well as a new focus on missing migrants in humanitarian crises.

The agency said the rising death toll highlights the need for safe, legal routes for people on the move. It described them as the only sustainable solution to the crisis of migrant deaths.

“Our forces completely destroyed the enemy’s fighters and equipment, and seized large quantities of equipment and weapons,” army spokesman Nabil Abdallah said in a statement broadcast on state television.

Abdallah vowed the army would “continue to progress on all fronts until victory is complete and every inch of our country is purged of the militia and its supporters”.

On social media, soldiers shared videos appearing to be inside the presidential palace, exchanging congratulations. AFP could not immediately verify the footage.

Paramilitary fighters overran the palace in April 2023, when war broke out between the RSF and the army.

At the time, the RSF swiftly took control of Khartoum‘s streets, with the army-aligned government fleeing to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.

Central Khartoum, where the presidential palace stands alongside ministries and the capital’s business district, has seen fierce fighting in recent months, after army troops surged through the city.

Earlier this week, the army said its forces had merged from the north and south, hemming in the RSF.

Sudan clashes intensify as army reinforcements arrive and paramilitaries hold the palace

Blow to the RSF

“With the army entering the Republican Palace, which means control of central Khartoum, the militia has lost its elite forces,” a military expert told AFP, requesting anonymity for their safety.

The paramilitary had stationed its elite forces and stored ammunition in the former seat of government and symbol of Sudan‘s state sovereignty, according to military sources.

“Now the army has destroyed equipment, killed a number of their forces and seized control of one of its most important supply centres in Khartoum,” the expert continued.

In recent months, the army has appeared to turn the tide of the war, first advancing in central Sudan to reclaim territory before shifting focus to Khartoum.

In January, it broke an almost two-year RSF siege of the General Command headquarters, allowing troops to merge with other battalions and encircle the RSF in the city centre.

“What remained of RSF militias have fled into some buildings” in central Khartoum, a military source told AFP, requesting anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Nearly two years of war has killed tens of thousands, displaced over 12 million, and triggered the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

More than 70 firefighters tackled the blaze at the North Hyde substation in Hayes on Thursday night. The fire was brought under control in the early hours of Friday morning.

“The fire has caused a power outage affecting a large number of homes and local businesses,” said Pat Goulbourne, London Fire Brigade’s assistant commissioner.

National Grid UK, which oversees the country’s power supply, said in a statement it was “working at speed to restore power supplies as quickly as possible”.

Heathrow Airport said on Friday it expected major disruption even once power is restored.

“To maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues, we have no choice but to close Heathrow for the full day on Friday. Passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens.”

Busiest January

Earlier this year, Heathrow recorded its busiest January on record, with more than 6.3 million passengers — up more than 5 percent on the same period last year.

January also marked the 11th month in a row that the airport averaged more than 200,000 passengers a day. Airport chiefs said transatlantic routes were a big factor.

When the closure was announced, some 120 flights were in the air heading to Heathrow.

Qantas diverted its Singapore–London QF1 and Perth–London QF9 flights to Paris Charles de Gaulle. The airline said passengers would be taken to London by bus.

United Airlines said seven of its flights either turned back or were sent to other airports. It cancelled all flights to Heathrow scheduled for Friday.

At least two flights from Taiwan to London were affected, the island’s Central News Agency reported.

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A China Airlines flight returned to Taiwan mid-route, while an EVA Air flight made its planned stop in Bangkok as the airline assessed the situation.

Singapore Airlines said on the X social media platform that its overnight flight to London was diverted to Frankfurt.

British Airways said in a statement that the closure of its main hub would have a significant impact on its operations.

“We’re working as quickly as possible to update passengers on their travel options for the next 24 hours and beyond,” the statement added.

Situated 25 kilometres west of central London, Heathrow serves 200 destinations in more than 80 countries, with passengers having access to four terminals.

Gatwick, Britain’s second busiest airport, said it would accept some flights from Heathrow.

“We are aware of the situation at Heathrow Airport today and are supporting as required. Flights from London Gatwick are operating as normal today,” it said on X.

An 86-year-old and a 96-year-old died last week from the virus, which causes fever and severe joint pain.

Nearly 9,000 cases have been reported on the French Indian Ocean island since August 2024.

With infections rising earlier this month, local officials activated Orsec Plan 4 – an emergency response for medium-intensity epidemics.

“The epidemic has accelerated in recent weeks and is now spreading throughout the country,” authorities said on Friday.

Health response

Health workers have been deployed across the island alongside municipal teams to carry out daily fumigation operations. Around 150 medical personnel are involved in the response.

Officials have advised vulnerable people to get vaccinated.

The chikungunya virus is spread by two species of mosquito, which also transmit dengue and Zika. The disease is not usually fatal, but can be dangerous for older people or those with other health conditions.

The name “chikungunya” comes from the Kimakonde language of southern Tanzania. It means “to become contorted” and refers to the bent posture of people suffering from joint pain caused by the virus.

Reunion experienced a major outbreak in 2005 and 2006, when around 240,000 people were infected and 225 died. Until this current wave, no chikungunya cases had been recorded on the island since 2010.

Vaccine trial

In June 2023, Franco-Austrian drugmaker Valneva published encouraging results from a vaccine trial.

The randomised, placebo-controlled phase three trial tested a live-attenuated vaccine – which uses a weakened version of the virus – to see how well it triggered an immune response.

Out of a subgroup of 266 people who received the vaccine, 263 – or 99 percent – developed antibodies that could neutralise the chikungunya virus, said the study, which was published in The Lancet journal.

In a larger trial involving 4,100 healthy adults, the single-shot vaccine was found to be “generally safe”, with side effects similar to other vaccines.

Only two participants developed serious side effects linked to the vaccine, and both made a full recovery.

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.

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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.

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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”.

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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”.

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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.

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.”

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

In a bar in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, Maya orders an espresso. Five years ago, during the first Covid-19 lockdown, meeting like this in a café would have been impossible. 

“I think it’s crazy that we went through that, and now, I don’t think about it anymore. I love going out. I’m definitely not a homebody,” the 24-year-old told RFI. 

However, she does still have painful memories of that period. Her mother worked at the Regional Health Agency (ARS) and came home with news of terrible statistics every day. 

But the worst, for Maya, came after that first lockdown. “I moved into an apartment on my own, but there I was much more isolated, I think. My studies were bothering me,” she explains.

“Honestly, I kind of fell into depression during that time. It was weird because, at the same time, it was nice not to be confined anymore, in the sense that I was doing a lot of things in my apartment. But I wasn’t stimulated at all. I enjoyed my day itself, but I didn’t see the point of having a second one.” 

Maya is feeling better now and doesn’t miss an opportunity to go out. For her, it’s a way to reclaim some of the youth that was stolen from her.

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

For other young people, however, the outside world has become threatening since the lockdowns. “I’m not necessarily going to walk around, visit Paris, go to museums or things like that alone,” says Élisa, 28. “I’d like to do it more, but I don’t feel capable of it.”

She has always been a bit of a homebody – she likes being in her tidy, cosy apartment, with a book in hand or watching a good TV series. But it was after the lockdown that her anxiety began.

“For example, going grocery shopping takes huge mental preparation. Or if I arrive in a place where I don’t know many people and I’m going to have to socialise, my body reacts, my body can’t breathe, without knowing why,” she said.

“It really annoys me to be like this when I’m in Paris, I’m young, I’m 28. I have so many things to live for and I’m actually getting anxious about things that, objectively, aren’t a big deal.” 

Social media, eco-anxiety and international conflicts

According to a study of 20 million young people in France, published on 7 January in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “a significant increase in mental health consultations, hospitalisations, and prescriptions for antidepressants, mood stabilisers, and antipsychotics was found among young people, particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic”.

The findings continued: “This trend aligned with studies indicating that Covid-19 infection and lockdowns have had biological and societal impacts on the mental health of the youth.” 

The study also found that this change was particularly marked among females 

But while the lockdown has left scars on France’s young people, five years on it is not the sole cause of their distress. 

“It’s true that these particular circumstances did weaken students, isolated them, and may have anticipated this decline in their mental health,” says Melissa Macalli, a researcher at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) who studies the mental health of young adults.

She added: “It’s also true that the causes are probably multiple: worsening instability, feelings of loneliness, the impact of social media. But also collective environmental factors that have been added – especially eco-anxiety, international conflicts and the global political situation, which worries them a lot.”

This report was adapted from the RFI podcast Reportage en France produced by Lou Ecalle.

The 41-year-old Zimbabwean was chosen after the first round of voting among the 97 IOC members at the 144th IOC session and will take over on 23 June from Thomas Bach.

She will be the first woman and the first African to occupy the top job in an organisation founded 131 years ago by Pierre de Coubertin and Demetrios Vikelas to oversee the organisation of the Olympic Games.

Zimbabwe’s aspiring Olympics supremo Coventry targets development of athletes

“This is not just a huge honour, but it is a reminder of my commitment to every single one of you that I will lead this organisation with so much pride,” said Coventry in her first speech as the planet’s most powerful sports administrator.

“And I will make all of you very, very proud and hopefully extremely confident in the decision you’ve taken today. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and now we’ve got some work together.”

Coventry won her medals – two of them gold – swimming for her country at Olympic Games between 2000 and 2016.

To rise to the top spot, she beat beat off challenges from six other candidates including the Frenchman David Lappartient who heads his country’s national Olympic committee as well as the International Cycling Union.

Olympic gold medallist Sebastian Coe, who leads World Athletics, was also in the running with Morinari Watanabe, Prince Feisal Al-Hussein, Johan Eliasch and Juan Antonio Samaranch whose father led the IOC between 1980 and 2001.

“This race was an incredible race,” added Coventry, who has been her country’s sports minister since 2018. “And it made us better, made us a stronger movement. Thank you very much for this moment, and thank you very much for this honour.”

On the eve of the vote at the exclusive Greek coastal resort of Costa Navarino, Bach graciously offered to share the wisdom and experiences harvested from his 12 years in the job since replacing Jacques Rogge.

.

“If the new president would like to have some advice or support they can call me in the middle of the night,” said the 71-year-old German.

“I don’t know if I’ll respond then but I’ll be happy at any time if they want my advice. If not, I will not impose my advice.”

Coventry will be head of the organisation for an eight-year term which will encompass the Summer Games in Los Angeles in 2028 and Brisbane in 2032 as well as the Winter Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo next February and the French Alps in 2030.

In an interview with RFI just before the vote, Coventry vowed to use the memories of her trials and tribulations as an aspiring athlete in her homeland to improve the lot of up-and-coming youngsters if successful.

“The hardest part of my journey was becoming an Olympic champion,” she said.

“That’s where I believe we should be focusing a little bit more with dedicated programmes to help support directly athletes on their journey to becoming an Olympian. So I would like to do that.”

Faé’s charges go into Friday night’s match in Meknes against Burundi in second place in Group F with 10 points following Gabon’s 3-0 win against Seychelles on Thursday night in Franceville which took them two points clear of the African champions.

Burundi and next Tuesday’s adversaries, Gambia, are respectively ranked 93 and 79 places below the Ivorians.

Despite the disparity, Faé said his men should not take victory for granted.

“We have to play seriously and come out with our heads held high,” added the former Ivorian international.

“Our task is simple. We need to emerge from the next two games with the slight advantage we had before. We must not take the teams lightly.”

Challenge

During the 2023 Cup of Nations, the Ivorians recovered from a chaotic start to grind their way to the final and beat Nigeria.

Faé, who was appointed just before the final match of the group stages, has steered the squad to the 2025 Cup of Nations in Morocco where they will attempt to become the first nation since Egypt in 2010 to defend the continental crown.

“We closed one page last November by qualifying for the 2025 Cup of Nations,” said Faé when announcing his squad for the matches against Burundi and Gambia.

“And we’re here to move towards qualification for the 2026 World Cup which will be an important achievement for Ivorian football. “It’s an obligation for us and we must not fall short.”

The Ivorians last featured at the World Cup when it was held in Brazil in 2014. It was their third consecutive appearance at the quadrennial event and, like in the other two in Germany in 2006 and South Africa in 2010, they failed to emerge from the group stages.

National teams missed out on the two following editions.

Nigeria’s finest are in jeopardy of falling short. They lie in fifth place with three points from their four games and play at Group C pacesetters Rwanda on Friday night knowing that defeat could detonate their chances of the automatic berth reserved for the winners of the nine African qualifying groups.

Both sides will be parading new coaches.

Adel Amrouche will feature in Rwanda’s dugout after replacing Torsten Spittler earlier this month. The former Mali boss Eric Chelle will lead Nigeria.

The 47-year-old took over from interim coach Augustine Eguavoen in January with the mission from the Nigeria football federation to guide the side to the next World Cup.

“Of course I’ve analysed why it didn’t go well for the team before my appointment,” Chelle told RFI.

“I’ll continue to analyse the reasons. But what’s done is done. I’m here to impose a state of mind and to impose a game plan. Ultimately, what interests me is nothing more or less than tomorrow and seeing how my players adapt to this game plan. I know I’m not going to have much time.”

On Thursday night in the group, Benin drew 2-2 with Zimbabwe to go top with eight points. 

Elsewhere, Cape Verde beat Mauritius 1-0 to exploit Cameroon’s goalless stalemate against Eswatini on Wednesday and take control of Group D.

In Group I, Comoros fluffed their chance to claim pole position. Mali beat them 3-0 to move to within two points of pacesetters Madagascar.

Record

Morocco, who in Qatar became the first African squad to reach the semis at a World Cup, go into Friday night’s encounter against Niger as the only team with a 100 percent record in the African qualifiers.

Head coach Walid Regragui orchestrated the historic surge to glory just over two years ago and has drafted 19-year-old Chemsdine Talbi and 22-year-old Hamza Igamane into the squad to inject some zest to the attack and reward their exploits with Club Brugge and Rangers respectively. 

“The goal is to qualify for the World Cup and to do it as quickly as possible,” said Wagragui on the eve of the clash at the Stade d’honneur d’Oudja.

“We’re playing against Niger and Tanzania and we want to do well to achieve our goals swiftly.”

Africa could have as many as 10 teams competing in the 2026 World Cup.

After the nine group winners qualify automatically, the four best second-placed sides from the nine pools will participate in an African play-off for the right to enter a tournament with teams from five other confederations.

They will battle for two spots for the finals which take place between 11 June and 19 July in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, co-leader of efforts to form the so-called coalition of the willing alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, is expected to address the meeting of roughly 30 military officials.

It comes amid huge questions over what the group can do after Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded an end to Western military aid to Ukraine as a condition for any end to fighting.

Russia has also ruled out accepting any foreign troops on Ukrainian soil as part of a ceasefire agreement.

Starmer and Macron have been trying to build the coalition since US President Donald Trump opened direct negotiations with Russia last month to end the three-year-long war.

They say the group is necessary – along with US support – to provide Ukraine with security guarantees that would deter Putin from violating any ceasefire.

Can NATO survive the presidency of Donald Trump?

Putin-Trump phonecall

But during a 90-minute call on Tuesday, Putin told Trump a comprehensive deal would be contingent on the West halting all military aid and intelligence to Ukraine, the Kremlin said.

The Russian leader told his US counterpart that for a full ceasefire to work, Ukraine must not be allowed to rearm and must halt mandatory mobilisation.

Instead, Russia agreed to a 30-day limited halt on strikes against Ukraine’s power grid. On Wednesday, both Ukraine and Russia accused each other of continuing to strike energy infrastructure targets.

Starmer and Macron have said they are willing to put British and French troops on the ground in Ukraine.

The UK government says a “significant number” of nations are prepared to do the same, but it is not clear exactly how many countries are keen.

Macron says France to ‘increase’ orders for Rafale warplanes

Britain expects more than 30 nations to contribute to the coalition in some form.

The prime minister has said he welcomes any offer of support for the group, raising the prospect that some countries could contribute logistics or surveillance.

His spokesman on Monday highlighted engineering support, the use of airfields and the housing of crews as areas where contributions could be made. 

Starmer told a virtual call of fellow leaders on Saturday that the Thursday meeting comes as planning for the coalition moves into the “operational phase”.

Trump’s indications that Washington will no longer guarantee European and Ukrainian security has spooked the United States’ NATO allies and prompted many countries to make moves towards increases in defence spending.

The US president said on Wednesday following a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that efforts to end the war “are very much on track”.

Benjamin Chambre and the anti-terrorist prosecution team demanded a life sentence for Mehdi Nemmouche, with a minimum 22 years without parole, during an eight-hour hearing on Wednesday in a Paris court.

Calling Nemmouche “a real sociopath devoid of all empathy”, Chambre said he deserves a sentence “that definitively protects society”.

Paris trial begins over 2013 Islamic State kidnappings of Westerners in Syria

Nemmouche, who has claimed he was an Islamic State “fighter” but not a “jailer”, is already serving life in prison for the deadly attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014.

Four French journalists – Didier François, Edouard Elias, Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres – identified Nemmouche as one of their captors when they were held in Syria from June 2013 to April 2014.

Nemmouche is on trial alongside four other men, including Abdelmalek Tanem, for whom prosecutors have requested a 30-year prison sentence.

They said that while he was “less megalomaniac” than Nemmouche, he was part of the small group of French-speaking jailers.

Future of US troops in Syria in question, under pressure from Turkey and Israel

Prosecutors have requested the maximum 20-year sentence for Kais Al Abdallah, a Syrian identified as the former second in command of the Islamic State in Raqqa, who is also on trial in France for holding French hostages.

And they have asked for life in prison for the two men on trial who are presumed dead, Salim Benghalem and Oussama Atar. The latter was already convicted and sentenced to life in prison for ordering the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.

The trial, which is due to run until Friday, continues on Thursday with the defence.

(with AFP)

Officials did not give details about the circumstances of Grondeau’s release, which came on Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Iran has previously freed prisoners on this occasion.

Another French national who had been under house arrest in Iran fir severak months, and who requested anonymity, was also allowed to leave Iran, a diplomatic source told the AFP news agency. 

Grondeau, who turns 35 next week, has been hospitalised for medical tests after becoming weak during his detention in Tehran’s Evin prison.

He was arrested in October 2022 in Shiraz, southern Iran, during protests that erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old died after being detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly failing to wear her headscarf properly.

Grondeau was sentenced to five years in prison for “conspiracy against the Islamic Republic”. His family rejected the charges, saying he was in Iran on a tourist visa as part of a world trip.

Until January, he had been identified only by his first name. He then chose to go public about his detention.

“Most of the questions were, ‘Did you take part in a demonstration,’ ‘List all of the Iranians that you met during your trip,’ ‘Why did you come to Iran?’ ‘You’re not a tourist,’” Grondeau said in a phone call aired by France 2 public television and France Info radio.

“One day you think you’re going to be freed very quickly, the next you think you’ll die here. You become a human who has been stocked away indefinitely because one government is seeking to exert pressure on another.”

Iran did not immediately acknowledge his release.

Western prisoners in Iran are often freed in exchange for concessions.

Two other French citizens – Cécile Kohler, a teacher, and her partner Jacques Paris – remain in detention. They were arrested in May 2022 and accused of trying to stir up labour protests. Their families have denied the charges.

France has described them as “state hostages” and said they are innocent.

In announcing Gondeau’s release on X, French President Emmanuel Macron said “our mobilisation will not weaken” to ensure their release.

Western countries have long accused Iran of jailing foreign nationals on trumped-up charges to use them as bargaining chips.

(with newswires)

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, his government has cut federal research funding and sought to dismiss hundreds of federal workers pursuing health and climate research.

“I learned with concern that a French researcher who was heading to a conference near Houston was forbidden from entering US territory before being expelled,” Higher Education Minister Philippe Baptiste told AFP on Wednesday.

“This measure was taken by the US authorities because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed his political opinion on the policies of the Trump administration on research,” he said.

A diplomatic source said a space scientist was stopped at the US border on March 9, with officials combing through the contents of his work laptop and phone during a “random” security check.

Trump’s cuts to US-funded media a blow to press freedom, EU warns

US agents found messages about the treatment of scientists under the new US administration that “showed hatred towards Trump and could be qualified as terrorism”, the same source said.

They seized his equipment and sent him back to Europe on March 10, they said.

Another source with knowledge of the case said the scientist was accused of owning “hateful and conspiratorial messages” and was told the FBI would investigate, though they then dropped the case.

Baptiste emphasised the importance of “freedom of opinion, free research and academic freedoms” and said he would defend these as long as they were “within the limits of the law”.

The French foreign ministry said that its consular services had been informed of the incident, and that the United States was “sovereign” in deciding who could enter and remain on its territory. But it said it “deplored the situation”.

Spotlight on Africa: Is the future of aid at risk and ready for change?

The US Embassy in Paris redirected an AFP request for comment to the US customs, but the latter did not immediately reply.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the US government believes its border agents are entitled to examine the contents of people’s electronic devices as part of random security checks.

Rights groups including the ACLU sued the US government in 2017 over the increasing use of warrantless searches of cellphones and computers at the border, saying they were “unconstitutional”.

According to the ACLU, it won the case in an initial federal court ruling but it was later overturned on appeal in 2021, prompting it to ask the US Supreme Court to hear the case.

Baptiste this month urged French research institutions to consider welcoming scientists abandoning the United States because of Trump’s funding cuts.

The report, published on Thursday to coincide with World Happiness Day, reveals that France has fallen lower than ever in the global happiness rankings despite its reputation for quality of life.

“The report analyses population behaviour worldwide between 2022 and 2024,” the UN said in its publication, examining data collected before recent political changes in major economies.

Finland continues to hold the top spot for the eighth consecutive year, while the United States dropped to 24th place – its lowest position since the report began in 2012, down from its peak ranking of 11th.

Behind the numbers

The ranking is based on the Cantril ladder method, where respondents evaluate their lives on a scale from zero to 10, with 10 representing the best possible life and zero the worst.

The assessment considers multiple factors including GDP per capita, freedom, generosity and healthy life expectancy. Each year, around 100,000 people respond to the survey, representing approximately 1,000 individuals per country.

A separate study by polling firm Ipsos, conducted in partnership with engineering school CESI, painted a different picture of happiness in France. According to the “Ipsos Happiness Index 2025,” France ranks among the happiest countries in the G7.

“The feeling of happiness is particularly high in France,” Ipsos found.

That study, carried out between 20 December 2024 and 3 January 2025 with nearly 24,000 participants, found that 73 percent of French residents reported feeling happy, a slight increase from the previous year but a significant drop since 2014.

UN ranks Nepal as South Asia’s happiest country, India among saddest

Family matters most

Family remains central to French happiness, with nearly half (47 percent) of respondents “citing their children and loved ones as their main source of joy,” Ipsos said.

Friendships also contribute significantly to well-being for approximately one-third of French people (29 percent), while feeling loved matters to 27 percent.

“The home is a refuge for 26 percent of French people, offering comfort and security,” Ipsos noted in its findings.

Despite positive social connections, financial difficulties represent the primary source of unhappiness for almost half (48 percent) of French respondents.

Nearly one-third (29 percent) “feel a lack of meaning or direction in their lives” affecting their well-being, while 26 percent “are concerned about political instability and social tensions, which negatively influence their morale,” the report stated.

Mental health challenges, including anxiety and depression, affect one in four French people (25 percent), with a similar proportion suffering from physical health problems.

Generational differences

The Ipsos study highlights significant generational disparities, with baby boomers (born 1946-1964) emerging as the happiest demographic globally, with more than 75 percent reporting happiness.

In contrast, Generation X (born 1965-1979) appears to be the least content, though a majority (68 percent) still describe themselves as happy.

While the research confirms that higher income correlates with greater happiness – 75 percent for high earners versus 62 percent for those with modest incomes – family bonds and affection remain the essential foundation of happiness beyond financial considerations.

In a letter addressed to diplomats stationed in Niamey, the Nigerien Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Monday the country’s withdrawal from the International Organisation of Francophonie (OIF), our regional correspondent reported.

Neighbouring Burkina Faso had already made the same decision, OIF spokesperson Oria K. Vande Weghe told French-language international channel, TV5 Monde the same day.

On Tuesday, Malian authorities announced the same – meaning all three of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) countries have now withdrawn from the organisation.

Founding member

With the exit of Niger, the OIF is losing one of its founding members. The organisation was founded on 20 March, 1970, in Niger’s capital, Niamey, under the leadership of then Nigerien president, Hamani Diori.

Niger was, however, suspended from the OIF in December 2023, following its coup d’état.

Niger suspends cooperation with international Francophone body

Burkina Faso and Mali were also suspended following their own military coups – with the OIF sanctioning them in 2022 and 2020 respectively.

Nonetheless, the OIF says it considers these multiple exits regrettable.

“It’s never good news to learn that a state wants to leave,” Vande Weghe told RFI’s Africa service. “Of course, we regret the impact this could have on ongoing projects. The secretary-general’s intention will be to seek the opinion of states to see to what extent the OIF can remain engaged with the populations of these countries.”

She added that the organisation cares about French-speaking communities in non-member countries, saying: “So there’s no reason for this to stop for Niger.”

Creating distance from France

The withdrawals of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali will not be immediate, however, with their exits taking effect after six months.

Paris has not yet officially reacted to the news, but diplomatic sources said it had taken note of the decisions.

The trio of Sahelian countries, all currently led by coup leaders, have made no secret of their desire to distance themselves from France, their former colonial power.

The OIF also provides support to its member states – until this week, numbering 93 – in developing or consolidating policy and carries out international policy and multilateral cooperation activities, in accordance with its main mission of promoting the French language and cultural and linguistic diversity.

Macron hosts francophone summit to boost influence in French-speaking world

Celebration of language

The theme for this year’s International Francophonie Day, marked annually on 20 March, is “je m’éduque donc j’agis” – “I educate myself, therefore I act.” 

The awareness day is marked by community events around the world, centred around the French language.

In Cameroon, for example, slam poetry events are organised – an artform that requires a certain mastery of language.

French is growing in popularity in the country, according to RFI’s correspondent in Yaounde, with more and more successful slam artists participating in international events, thanks in part to the emergence of small venues throughout the country.

“Sharing our poetic texts has always been an opportunity to free ourselves from this inner overflow, from this inner suffering, an individual and collective therapy through the text of poetry,” said Jean-Claude Awono, of ‘La ronde des poètes’ (The Round of Poets). 

Podcast: French song’s popularity abroad, screens in school, France’s Nobels

Such events encourage people to express themselves in French, and to play with words.

Lajoya Sène, whose stage name is Maua Ya Jua in Dakar, does exactly that in Senegal.

This Congolese-born, Dakar-based singer, storyteller and poet co-created the “philo-poets” workshops for children aged 6 to 15 with the help of a school teacher, Cynthia Sauvain.

Children come to them to compose and then recite texts in French, in a space where they can reconnect with their rich imagination, she told RFI.

(with newswires)

France on Wednesday formally notified the European Commission of its regulations on the production and authorisation of medical cannabis, a key administrative step towards finally fully legalising its use.

“It is a new step towards the development of a regulated access to medical cannabis in France,” the Health Ministry said in a statement in which it extended access to the drug for the hundreds of patients involved in the experiment, through the end of March 2026.

The experiment ended in December 2024, and patients had initially been given a six-month extension, leading to concern from them and their doctors that they would be forced to find alternative treatments, which have proven difficult to find.

In 2023, lawmakers had voted to approve the sale of medical cannabis products for a five-year period, but the law was never acted because it required the Health Ministry to send it to the European Commission.

After months of uncertainty – and political chaos, with eight health ministers have been appointed since the start of the experiment in 2021 – the process is once again moving forward.

The move helps clarify the situation for manufacturers of cannabis extracts, who had geared up for production during the experiment but had been left in legal limbo when the process stalled.

“We remain mobilised to ensure the creation of a drug supply chain, with all those who have been involved from the beginning,” Ludovic Rachou, President of the Uivec union of cannabis extract manufacturers, said in a statement.

It could take several months for experts at the European Commission to finally approve the regulations, and then the French high health authority (HAS) will need to rule on how medical cannabis could eventually be covered by the public health insurance.

(with AFP)

“We are not bellicose, we do not want war with Algeria. It is Algeria that is aggressing us,” Retailleau told Sud Radio.

The minister’s comments mark a significant escalation in rhetoric, coming just two days after France suspended a visa exemption agreement for Algerian diplomatic passport holders.

Retailleau described the visa suspension as the first step in what he called a “graduated response” to Algeria‘s position, warning that further actions could follow.

“We have begun implementing it with the suspension of facilities for the Algerian nomenklatura [political elite],” the minister said.

The diplomatic row intensified on Monday when Algeria firmly rejected a list of deportable citizens provided by Paris, stating its “categorical rejection of threats, attempts at intimidation, injunctions and ultimatums” from France.

“The graduated response allows us to say ‘we are not the aggressor’,” Retailleau said.

The French minister accused Algiers of obstructing repatriation efforts, saying: “Algeria must not haggle when we have proof, with an identity document and a passport, that the person is Algerian. They must be readmitted.”

France threatens to suspend visa perks for Algerian diplomats amid deportation dispute

Threat to historic agreement

The dispute follows a warning issued in late February by Prime Minister François Bayrou, who threatened to “denounce” a 1968 accord that grants Algerians special status in France regarding movement, residency and employment.

Bayrou set a six-week deadline for Algeria to begin accepting its citizens facing expulsion from France or face termination of the agreement that dates back to France’s colonial relationship with Algeria.

However, President Emmanuel Macron appeared to adopt a more conciliatory approach in early March, stating he was “favourable, not to denouncing, but to renegotiating” the historic accord.

When questioned about reports he might resign if the government abandoned a tough stance toward Algeria, Retailleau responded that “obviously” if he “encountered an obstacle that could jeopardise the security of our compatriots, then I would have to question myself”.

With Franco-Algerian relations at an all-time low, can they get back on track?

Deteriorating relations

Relations between France and its former colony have been worsening for months, particularly following Macron’s recognition in July last year of Morocco‘s autonomy plan for Western Sahara – a territory the United Nations still considers to have an undefined status.

Algeria, which supports the independence of the disputed territory, viewed the move as a betrayal.

The dispute over deportations marks the latest chapter in the increasingly strained relationship between the two North African neighbours, with no clear sign whether diplomatic negotiations can de-escalate the situation or if further retaliatory measures will follow.

The complaint was submitted to the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office in Paris on Tuesday by “Restitution pour l’Afrique” (RAF), a collective of 11 NGOs from six African countries: Togo, Guinea, Cameroon, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Democratic Republic of Congo.

The collective accuses the French conglomerate of systematically using corrupt practices to secure lucrative port concessions in at least five African nations before selling its African logistics operations for €5.7 billion in 2022 to Swiss-Italian shipping giant MSC.

“We are trying to condemn the Bolloré method, the practices and the system that was put in place to win elections and have interests and dividends by managing ports in Africa,” said Jean-Jacques Lumumba, president of the RAF collective.

The complaint represents a new approach by targeting those allegedly paying bribes rather than the traditional focus on African officials receiving them.

“This complaint focuses on the corrupters, that is, those through whom money is injected into territories where it is later laundered,” Paris-based lawyer Antoine Vey told the French news agency AFP.

Documented allegations

The complaint details allegations across multiple countries. In Cameroon, a national anti-corruption commission report cited in the complaint claims Bolloré Group withheld €60 million in fees and fines it should have paid to the state for its operations at Douala and Kribi ports.

In Ghana, Bolloré allegedly convinced then-president John Dramani Mahama in 2014 to award a port contract “secretly and without tender” despite 56 companies competing for the project.

The complaint claims this resulted in “a net loss of $4.1 billion for Ghana”.

The 2003 no-bid award of the Abidjan container terminal in Côte d’Ivoire by then-president Laurent Gbagbo drew criticism, with the World Bank’s country director describing it as “a contract that fundamentally violates principles of good governance”.

Nearly 60 percent of African youth want to emigrate because of corruption

This is not the first time Bolloré’s African operations have faced legal scrutiny.

French authorities began investigating the company in 2013 over suspicions it used its political consulting subsidiary, Euro RSCG (now Havas), to help presidents Faure Gnassingbé and Alpha Condé win their 2010 election campaigns in Togo and Guinea in exchange for port concessions.

Bolloré settled part of the case in 2021 by paying a €12 million fine. However, in 2024, prosecutors requested a trial for Vincent Bolloré on charges of corruption and complicity in breach of trust.

“The group has already acknowledged that some of these activities took place. Is this the tip of the iceberg?” Vey asked.

Seeking restitution

The collective hopes the case will trigger the application of France’s 2021 law, which allows for the reallocation of seized assets from corruption cases to fund development projects in affected countries.

“The goal is to target dirty money taken by the corrupter and return it to the African people who were harmed,” Lumumba said.

“This money means fewer hospitals, fewer schools, fewer roads, fewer infrastructure projects. And it’s a future that we’re taking away from our young people.”

Until its 2022 sale to Swiss-Italian shipping giant MSC, Bolloré Africa Logistics employed over 20,000 people across more than 20 African countries and operated 16 port concessions along with warehouses and transportation hubs.

European countries including France have been seeking to boost defence spending and ramp up production of weapons in the face of possible US security disengagement and Russian aggression.

Speaking during a trip to a military base in Luxeuil-les-Bains in the country’s east on Tuesday, Macron said France was going to “increase and accelerate the Rafale orders”, adding that the air and space force would benefit from more orders for the warplanes produced by French aerospace company Dassault Aviation.

The decisions on additional investments to respond to the “acceleration of events” would be announced in the coming weeks, he said.

“Our country and our continent will have to continue to defend themselves, to equip themselves, to prepare if we want to avoid war,” Macron said.

“No one can say what will happen in the coming months and years. What I want is for us to be ready. What I want is for us to be protected.”

Last year, the country’s air force had 108 Rafale jets, and the navy had 41 such warplanes. France was due to receive 56 additional aircraft before Macron’s announcement.

Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu has recently said it is necessary to acquire 30 more Rafale warplanes.

The site in Luxeuil-les-Bains will by 2035 become “the first base to receive the next version of the Rafale and its hypersonic nuclear missile”, Macron said.

He said the state would invest nearly 1.5 billion euros to adapt the base.

What would a French nuclear umbrella over Europe really mean?

According to the Elysee, the airbase plays “a central role in protecting the interests of the Transatlantic Alliance (NATO) and beyond”.

Macron stressed the importance of nuclear deterrence, vowing to “continue to strengthen each of its components”.

France and Britain are the only European countries to have nuclear weapons.

In early March, Macron said he would discuss extending France’s nuclear deterrent to European partners.

Later Tuesday, the French president was set to travel to Berlin for talks with Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz and chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz.

(with AFP)

Cameroon opened the door for Libya, Cape Verde or Angola to take control of their 2026 World Cup qualifying group following a shock 0-0 draw in Eswatini on Wednesday night.

The Group D pacesetters, boasting seasoned campaigners such as Vincent Aboubakar and Bryan Mbuemo in the forward line, went into the game against the pool makeweights as favourites to dispatch them to a fifth consecutive defeat.

But the hosts soaked up the pressure to blunt an attack that had notched up nine goals in its previous four matches.

The result at the Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit provided Eswatini with their first point of the campaign and left Cameroon on 9 points.

Cape Verde will go top on Thursday afternoon with victory over Mauritius. Libya can leapfrog Cape Verde if they see off Angola on Thursday night.

Cameroon’s stutter confirmed the analysis of the South Africa coach Hugo Broos during the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations in Cote d’Ivoire.

“This tournament has shown us that the so-called little countries have made a lot of progression,” said the Belgian just before his team beat Democratic Republic of Congo to take third place.

Progress

Cote d’Ivoire, who ultimately claimed the 2023 Cup of Nations crown, could go into Friday’s clash in Burundi in second place in Group F should Gabon take all three points from their home game against Seychelles who have lost all four of their matches.

During the 2023 Cup of Nations, the Ivorians recovered from a chaotic start to grind their way to the final and beat Nigeria.

Emerse Faé, who was appointed just before the final match of the group stages, has steered the Elephants – as they are nicknamed – to top spot in the 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign with three wins and a draw.

“We closed one page last November by qualifying for the 2025 Cup of Nations,” said Faé when announcing his squad for the matches against Burundi and Gambia.

“And we’re here to move towards qualification for the 2026 World Cup which will be an important achievement for Ivoiran football.

“It’s an obligation for us and we must not fall short.”

The Ivorians last featured at the World Cup when it was held in Brazil in 2014. It was their third consecutive appearance at the quadrennial event and, like in the other two in Germany in 2006 and South Africa in 2010, they failed to emerge from the group stages.

National teams missed out on the two following editions.

“Our task is simple,” added Faé. “We need to emerge from the next two games with our slight advantage. We must not take the teams lightly. We have to play seriously and come out with our heads held high.”

Challenge

Nigeria, who are seeking a seventh appearance at the World Cup, play their next two games against Group C pacesetters Rwanda on Friday and Zimbabwe next Tuesday.

The Nigerians have yet to win a game in the pool. After three draws and a defeat, the footballers from Africa’s most populous country lie in fifth place behind South Africa, Benin and Lesotho.

However, victory at the Amaharo Stadium in Kigali would catapult them back into the thick of the action for the automatic qualifying berth.

Rwanda, under the German Torsten Spittler, were impressive in the opening tranche of games to take them to the top of the group.

But the 63-year-old departed in January and his replacement, Adel Amrouche, will oversee the crunch against Nigeria who will also be sporting a new coach in the shape of Eric Chelle.

The 47-year-old took over from interim coach Augustine Eguavoen in January with the mission from the Nigeria football federation to guide the side to the next World Cup.

Morocco, who in Qatar became the first African squad to reach the semis at a World Cup, go into Friday night’s encounter against Niger as the only team with a 100 percent record in the African qualifiers.

Head coach Walid Regragui orchestrated the historic surge to glory just over two years ago and has drafted 19-year-old Chemsdine Talbi and 22-year-old Hamza Igamane into the squad to inject some zest to the attack and reward their exploits with Club Brugge and Rangers respectively. 

“The goal is to qualify for the World Cup and to do it as qucikly as possible,” said Wagragui on the eve of the clash at the Stade d’honneur d’Oudja.

Speed

“We’re playing against Niger and Tanzania and we want to do well to achieve our goals swiftly.”

Group A leaders Egypt enjoy a four-point advantage over Guinea-Bissau who kick off the games in the pool on Thursday against Sierra Leone.

Egypt play in Ethiopia on Friday night after Burkina Faso’s tie against Djibouti who prop up the table. 

Africa could have as many as 10 teams competing in the 2026 World Cup.

As well as the nine group winners, four of the best second-placed sides will compete in an African play-off for the right to enter a tournament with teams from five other confederations.

They will battle for two spots for the finals which take place between 11 June and 19 July in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Since the start of the year, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has moved to drastically cut the country’s long-term aid commitments, aiming to save approximately $60 billion on overseas development and humanitarian assistance programmes.

The United Kingdom has also announced a deep cut in its budget for emergency and development aid, which it says it needs to do to develop its defence strategy. Other European countries have indicated that they might do the same.

France launches commission to evaluate overseas aid, amid far-right criticism

These decisions are already impacting emergency aid systems in many countries, including Sudan and Congo, as well as public health initiatives in nations such as Kenya and South Africa.

Sudan reels as US suspends aid amid ongoing war

Spotlight on Africa reached out to three experts involved in rethinking the future of aid.

Jeffrey Okoro is the executive director of the NGO CFK Africa in Kenya. He said that since the decision of the US government to freeze US Agency for International Development (USAID) spending in January, Kenyans working in healthcare have been hit hard. The decision has already disrupted efforts to stop the spread of diseases like HIV and tuberculosis.

“A sizeable portion of the Kenyan government funding for health counselling comes from international organisations from foreign governments,” Okoro told RFI from his office in Kenya.

US grant cuts could affect two million worldwide, disrupt HIV aid in Kenya

Meanwhile, Ivor Ichikowitz, chairman of the philanthropic Ichikowitz Family Foundation, based in Johannesburg, which focuses on growth and development across the African continent, says that the decrease in aid and the rise of European investment, as discussed at a conference in South Africa recently, could, in fact, have positive results.

EU flags stronger partnership with South Africa with €4.7bn investment

We also  talk to Patrick Gathara, a Kenyan columnist and senior editor at The New Humanitarian, a website covering conflicts and humanitarian issues. He argues that the aid industry has long reinforced imperial domination, and its collapse could create an opportunity to establish a new order. He explains how.

Episode mixed by Erwan Rome.

Spotlight on Africa is produced by Radio France Internationale’s English language service.

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.

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 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.   

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.