Mali

Twenty people were wounded on Thursday in northern Mali’s restive Kidal region, including 18 UN peacekeepers from Chad, in a rocket attack on a military base for U.N., French and Malian forces, a UN spokesman said.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said she supports sending more troops to Africa's Sahel. Although France already has a strong deployment, they've asked for support and Germany cannot "duck away" from the region, she said.

Malian leader meets representatives of political and rebel groups in a bid to find solution to rising violence.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou agreed on Thursday to propose a postponement to early 2020 of a meeting of Sahelian country leaders due to take place in France this month, the French presidency said. The decision to postpone the event, which was to address French military presence in the region as well as the fight against so-called jihadist organizations, follows an attack on a remote military camp in Niger.

The G5 Sahel countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – are confronted with multiple challenges. This report uses the International Futures forecasting system to analyse the likely development trajectory of these five countries to 2040 in agriculture, demographics, infrastructure, governance and education. It compares these prospects with the combined impact of a positive Desert Flower scenario and a dystopian Sahelistan scenario and presents recommendations for the future.

President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday demanded West African leaders dismiss growing anti-French sentiment across the region if they wanted France's military to continue its operations against Islamist militants.

Security in Mali has become critical, with unprecedented incidents of communal violence and increasingly more deadly terror attacks, reported a UN human rights expert on Monday, following a 10-day visit to the country.

President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday he has ordered his military to assess its operations against Islamist militants in West Africa and all options are open, after 13 soldiers died during a combat mission this week.

Thirteen French troops were killed in a midair collision between two helicopters in Mali on Monday night as they fought Islamic militants in the west African country.

[…] Since 2016, however, MINUSMA’s effectiveness in terms of stabilization and the protection of civilians (PoC) has decreased. … Currently, MINUSMA is at a crossroads. It needs time to succeed, but this is also valuable time that Mali does not have at the moment, during which civilians are dying in attacks, and major mission funders like the United States are losing interest in supporting a costly UN peace operation that is not able to deliver quick results.