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France seeks Niger development plan to fight militant

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French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to announce concrete projects to help the development of Niger after holding talks with President Mahamadou Issoufou and his ministers at the presidential palace in Niamey on Saturday to help tackle militants in West Africa.

Macron spent the night at the French air base in Niamey for an early Christmas dinner with the 500 soldiers who are part of around 4 000 French troops remaining in West Africa’s Sahel region under Operation Barkhane – a cross-border anti-terrorism operation mostly in Mali and Niger.

French-backed African counter-terrorism force, known as the G5 Sahel and composed of the armies of Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad, launched a symbolic military operation to mark its creation in October amid growing unrest in the region, whose porous borders are regularly crossed by jihadists, including affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Macron, who sees the full implementation of the G5 force as a long-term exit strategy for his own forces that intervened in 2013 to beat back an insurgency in northern Mali, said he wanted to work on the development of Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, to defeat militants in the region.

 

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