Africa press review
Headlines: Algeria celebrates 60 years of independence
Audio 03:43
Festive atmosphere in the streets of Algiers the day after independence in July 1962. Keystone-France / Gamma-Rapho
By: Frédéric Couteau Follow
3 mins
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July 5, 1962 – July 5, 2022: 60 years later, journalist Omar Flici remembers.
He was 12 years old and he tells in the columns of the daily
Le Matin
: “
For at least ten days, Algiers was no longer a city but a permanent party.
The women no longer spoke, they uttered dinghies all day long.
The children had become children again.
The big ones too.
There was a sort of joyful anarchy.
(…)
To be able to live without fear, to imagine that we could circulate freely, to cry out our joy without having to justify ourselves was unheard of, it was almost unbelievable.
While we had been forbidden to be Algerians, we bicots, fig tree trunks, ratons, crouilles, monkeys, bougnoules, sub-humans, that day, everything seemed allowed, everything seemed possible
".
► To read also: Algeria, the long road to independence
A hope for the youth?
The government daily
El Moudjahid
welcomes the fact that the independence celebrations have been organized in connection with the youth... "
By associating the celebration of the national independence day with that of the youth, Algeria intends to entrust its destiny to young people full of ambition and highly respectful of the sacrifice of their elder freedom fighters,
writes
El Moudjahid.
Since its emancipation from the colonial yoke, the country has made the fight against illiteracy, the training of executives and skilled labour, its hobbyhorse.
Mission accomplished,
exclaims the government daily.
Nobody can put under a bushel an achievement that can make young people play a full role in the process of emancipation of society, to set themselves up as essential partners, even if obstacles still stand his path.
»
A mess ?
Obstacles to the aspirations of young people and more generally to the development of the country, there are still some and they are numerous, affirms the jurist Massensen Cherbi, interviewed by
Le Monde Afrique
: "
on the one hand, the oil revenue, which made it possible to buy social peace, thwarted the diversification of the economy and deepened dependence on hydrocarbons.
On the other hand, relative enrichment has not fulfilled aspirations for fulfillment.
There is even the impression of a great waste,
considers this professor of law,
in view of the potential which the country had and still has and which should have allowed it to go forward
”.
2024: secure elections in Mali and Burkina Faso?
Also on the front page, the lifting of ECOWAS sanctions against Mali and Burkina Faso and the announcement of elections in 2024, and this question raised by the daily newspaper
Today
in Ouagadougou: Mali and Burkina Faso will be- they secure enough in two years so that the election can take place in peace?
No, say certain Burkinabè political voices, like Hermann Yaméogo, president of the UNDD, who believes that "
calling the Burkinabè to the polls should be the last thing we should think about in Faso, as the urgency remains and stay safe.
Mali held elections in 2018,
recalls
Today, with an insecure country, and ignoring whole sections of its territory.
Election at a discount, but election validated all the same.
In 2020, there were also elections in Burkina, which, according to the authorities of the time, were made possible thanks to negotiations with the terrorists, accompanied by the payment of a large sum to these bloodthirsty crooks of shadow
”.
So,
Today wonders,
"
are we going to apply the same strategy in these two countries, Mali and Burkina, to hope to reach the completion point of these transitions which is the passage of power to civilians through the ballot box? ?
If so, with the support of ECOWAS?
EU and AU?
»
So many questions still unanswered, especially since the Islamist terrorists are not giving up: on July 3, at the very moment when the ECOWAS summit was taking place in Accra, a village in the center-north was attacked in Burkina Faso.
Result: twenty civilians killed.
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Algeria
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ECOWAS
mali
Burkina Faso