For the time being, the 37 year-old has the backing of former colonial power France.

President Emmanuel Macron went to N’Djamena for Friday’s funeral of Mahamat’s 68-year-old father who died at the hands of rebels a day after winning his sixth term as President of the troubled, largely desert country.

Constitutionally, Chad’s parliamentary speaker should have taken power and moved to elections within 18 months.

But the constitution and parliament have both been scrapped by the military council that put the son at the helm.

The country’s borders have been closed and a night time curfew is being enforced

France’s decision to back this move “for reasons of security following extraordinary events” puts its at odds with the international community.

The African Union, which is bound by its basic law to red card any unconstitutional change in government, has called on Mahamat to restore the country to legality.

Chad’s opposition has called the new power structure a “dynastic coup” and its trade unions are calling for a general strike until the constitution is restored.

There is an uneasy calm in Chad following the move that has played into the hands of the rebel Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT).

Mahamat realises this. He has made frequent appeals over national radio for peace and insisted that he open to dialogue.

The opposition will not take up this offer while he claims to be president.

France’s support comes because of Chad’s pivotal role in the fight against jihadis in the Sahel – that strip of land between the Sahara and the North African coastal states.

Idriss Deby was an inveterate supporter of the group of five Sahel states.

These include Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger and Mali.

In N’Djamena on Friday, Macron impressed on their leaders present the need to stand united against militant Islam threatening all their countries.

Will they heed the call from their former colonial power, who provides Chad with intelligence and security?

Or will they fall into line with the African Union that is bound to exclude Chad from the continental body’s deliberations until the constitution is restored?

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Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed says the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be filled with or without an agreement with the riparian countries Sudan and Egypt who view the dam as an existential threat.

They rely on the Nile for more than 90% of the water needs in their largely desert countries.

Ahmed recalls that Ethiopia was left out of negotiations on the use of the Nile waters between Britain, as the colonial power, with Egypt and Sudan.

He maintains that building the dam, which will make Ethiopia a hydro-electrical-generating power, is its sovereign right.

His predecessors warned that they would go war to protect their access to the Nile waters. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi subsequently ratcheted things down in favour of negotiations.

Recently though, both he and his Sudanese neighbour have resorted to bellicose language.

Egypt would not allow a drop of Nile water to be stolen from it, he said.

Sudan’s Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas warned “all options are open” in safeguarding his country’s access to the water.

Both the riparian countries and Ethiopia have in turn gone to the United Nations Security Council swapping accusations of negotiating in bad faith.

As African Union Chairman last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa attempted, without success, to mediate an agreement on the filling and operation of the GERD.

Current AU chair, Congolese President Felix Tshisikedi had a bash at mediation earlier this month that also ended in deadlock.

Al Sisi has taken yet another diplomatic initiative, sending his Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on a six-nation African safari, hoping to win support from continental partners.

Shoukry visited the Comoros, South Africa, the DRC, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia.

In South Africa, the minister engaged in some fence mending.

He thanked President Cyril Ramaphosa for his mediation last year.

It is no secret that Egypt was highly suspicious of these efforts, suspecting that Ramaphosa was biased in favour of Ethiopia

Shoukry’s trip will be viewed favorably by African leaders who hold fast to the principle of African solutions to African problems.

However Al Sisi maintains his wish to see the United Nations, the European Union and the United States involved in trying to get Ethiopia to take a more understanding view of Egyptian and Sudanese fears.

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Not surprisingly France’s President Emmanuel Macron was among the first world leaders to congratulate Joe Biden on winning the US Presidency.

Paris and Washington have a crowded schedule of business, starting with Biden bringing the United State back into the climate change agreement signed  in the French capital four years ago.

Biden will be an extremely welcome participant at the climate summit in Scotland.

France continues to control the file on this make-or-break issue for the world.

Running close behind welcoming America’s more prominent green agenda , France is looking for increased US support for the initiative to fight Islamist jihadis in the that strip of land between North Africa and the Sahara Desert known as the Sahel.

President Donald Trump has effectively told Macron that this French-led initiative is to Paris’ account.

Washington’s has given $8,5 million to Chad to help it counter ISIS terrorism.

This pales next to the boots on the ground and cash contributed to the G5 comprising Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania.

The group was set up in 2014 when Mauritania held the AU presidency.

It has been underpinned by two resolution of the United Nations Security Council.

The world organization has committed 10 000 troops to its anti terror group in the region known as MINUSMA.

France has put its muscle where its mouth is with 3 000 troops from Operation Barkhane .

France stepped into drive out the Islamists who took advantage of a 2012  coup in Mali.

Things have become vary complicated since then and France could do with help form a fellow permanent Western member of the UN powerhouse.

Ibrahim Boubakar Keita, installed in 2012, was unseated in another coup last August which led to Bah Ndaw becoming become the interim president.

Further confusing things, Amadou Toumani Tourè, who led Mali for a decade during which he introduced democratic reforms before he deposed in the 2012 putsch, died in Turkey this week.

It will be impressed on Biden that Germany has provided 900 troops to the Sahel operation and the European Union  has chipped in 50million euros.

Even the cash-strapped African Union has contributed $3 million.

The world is waiting on the new administration in Washington.

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In journalism 101 we were taught never to give the oxygen of publicity to quack remedies for dreaded diseases.

That’s why you don’t read, hear or see about cures for cancer in anything approaching responsible media.

Believe me, these emerge daily from the crazies and the con-artists seeking attention or a fast buck.

So it was to be expected that miracle antidotes to COVID 19 would be flung at editors very early on in the pandemic.

They could safely ignore almost all them –  until heads of state got involved.

Madagascar’s deejay turned President Andry Rajoelina seeks international endorsement of a remedy for COVID 19 made from the leaves of the artemisia which has provided relief to some malaria sufferers.

He could have saved his blushes had he sat in on my journalism cadet course all those years ago.

And the bench next to him could usefully have been occupied by the United States television game show star turned President  Donald Trump who advocated another outdated malaria remedy, the outdated chloroquine,  for curing COVID 19.

That was before he  threw the medical reins between the horses last month and urged COVID 19 patients to inject disinfectant and shine ultra violet light into their bodies.

Time magazine reports the American Association of Poison Control Centres finding a 121% increase in poisoning from bleach and other disinfectants in April 2020 over the same month the previous year. 

Rajoelina cannot match Trump’s lethal milestone. However his angry assertion that the African Union has rejected the herbal remedy known as COVID ORGANICS only because it was not developed by a European company shows he has a sense of the ridiculous every bit as well-developed as his Washington counterpart.

And he evidently shares the Donald’s penchant. for disregarding the media that does not reflect his  views.

How else could he have overlooked the storm last month when two French doctors suggested that the COVID 19 vaccine be tested on poor Africans because they have not taken protected measures?

Doctors Camille Locht and Jean-Paul Mira have had the good sense to apologize for hurt and offense they caused.

The Africa’s continental body was furiously adamant that it citizens would not be used as guinea pigs.

So has the World Health Organisation,  Like the AU the WHO give the thumbs down to COVID ORGANICS  which has reportedly been tested on 20 people for two weeks. Hardly decisive.

Rajoelina can draw some comfort from the favorable attention his peers have given the Malgash remedy.

Tanzania’s President John Magafuli,  who evidently believes that his chemistry qualification  entitles him to be a COVID 19 maverick, sent a plane to collect a load of the remedy  in Antananarivo.

Guinea Bissau, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Niger  have also bought consignments.

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize is quoted as saying South Africa will help test and analyse COVID ORGANICS.

I fully support African solutions to African problems. But this is surely a classical case for caution. 

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They say they’ve driven the Islamist terrorist off  their hideouts on the islands in the giant Lake Chad.

Chad army spokesman Colonel Azem Agouna says Operation Bohoma Anger was launched after Boko Haram killed 100 of his soldiers last month.

52 Chadian soldiers died in the operation that ended earlier this week.

In addition to the 1000 Boko Haram killed, Chadian troops destroyed 52 large motorized canoes known as pirogues belonging to the terrorists. 

President Idriss Deby has visited the area.

He said it was a pity Chad was not supported by neighbors Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon against the jihadis that threaten them all.

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France’s Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly will go to Washington this week to secure continued US support for the fight against Islamist extremists in the Sahel.

Ends intro

Jihadis have used northern Mali to mount a series of attacks on that country and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

The US has supplied drone support, logistics, intelligence and transport for the so-called G5 group of Sahel countries, backed by UN and French troops, fighting terrorists.

There have been suggestions that President Donald Trump is losing interest in this battle and France Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly is heading to Washington to urge him to maintain his support.   

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He was speaking at a summit in Pau he hosted for the five countries facing increasing violence from the so-called Islamist State in Greater Sahara.

President Emmanuel Macron is concerned about the anti-French sentiment expressed in Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso about its military support for the fight against jihadis.

France has 4500 troops in the region where it stepped in to stop Mali being overrun by terrorists.

At the Pau summit he committed a further 220 troops to the operation which will now have a joint command structure.

The six countries present called on the United States to continue what they called its crucial support for their fight.

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Some were on the  refueling truck blown up by the device and others died when the convoy come under attack by jihadis lying in wait.

The truck was travelling to Alatona near Mali’s border with Mauritania.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have died in attacks by Islamist insurgents since 2012, making Mali the most deadly country in which to be a peacekeeper.

More than 140 soldiers have been killed in the last quarter of 2019 in Mali.

France intervened six years ago to stop its former colony being overrun from the north.

It still has at least 1000  troops in the country supporting those from Mali’s neighbours Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania and Chad. 

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The jihadis approached the fishing village disguised as traders.

The attack on the remote village took place before Christmas.  News of it has taken a fortnight to emerge.

Boko Haram was formed in Nigeria a decade ago and and since spread its operations in Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

The victims from last month’s attack are mainly Cameroonians but many other nationals are fishermen on Lake Chad.

An unknown number of people remain unaccounted for.

The island has a become fertile ground for terrorists because the multi-national task force charged with patrolling the area is finding it too expensive and too dangerous to cover properly. 

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He has also prayed for and end to wars in Africa.

There was a heavy African flavour to the traditional Christmas message read by Pope Francis.

He prayed for migrants seeking refuge from violence and better lives for their families, and urged the United Nations to take more muscular actions to deal with their plight.

And he prayed for peace in Burkina Faso where a Christmas Eve attack by jihadis has left 35 people – many of them women – dead.

He also prayed for South Sudan, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Nigeria.

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