AU Summit 2020: AFCFTA: How prepared is Africa for July 1st?

Give vaccines to Africa and ditch unproven third shot, AU says

A deportation flight with Haitian migrants landed in Port-au-Prince on Sunday. According to reports, a total of 320 Haitians were brought back from the United States on three flights that day. Deportees, including women and children, were seen disembarking from one of the planes that arrived at the capital's Toussaint Louverture international airport.

Images show desperate scenes at the airport in Port-au-Prince as a group of migrants gathers around the plane they had just been deported on. After disembarking, the migrants forced their way back onto the runway and were left to pick up their personal belongings that had been dumped out onto the tarmac.

FRANCE 24 spoke to Jerry Tardieu, national coordinator of Haiti's "En Avant" (Forwards) political movement and a former opposition MP. Haiti is still reeling from the July assassination of the president, as well as recent kidnappings of missionaries and a deadly earthquake. Tardieu told us that the widespread chaos in the country can be explained by "a collusive relationship" between the authorities and all-powerful armed gangs. Gangs now control "most neighbourhoods of the capital" Port-au-Prince, Tardieu said.

European foreign ministers discuss the security situation in Mali ahead of this week's AU-EU summit. Also, one month after the re-opening of schools in Uganda, our correspondent takes a look at how children are faring after the world's longest Covid-related class closure. Students' access to education had been crippled for almost two years. Finally, we take a look at how climate change is devastating the land and livestock of Kenyan herders.

Europe and Africa already had more than enough in their in-tray going into their first Brussels summit in nearly eight years. Now you can add coup contagion and the pullout of French-led anti-terror forces from Mali. The day began in Paris for key players in the Sahel. Will the crisis overshadow the EU-African Union summit?

In a interview with FRANCE 24 at the EU-African Union summit in Brussels, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo said the French-led troop withdrawal from Mali required "new arrangements" in the regional fight against terrorism. Akufo-Addo, who is also the current chairman of West African bloc ECOWAS, demanded the departure of "foreign mercenaries" from the region and explained that negotiations are underway with the Malian junta on an election timetable. He called the junta's proposal of a four-year transition "clearly unacceptable" and said a 12-month transition period would be "an acceptable framework", while stressing that this was not official ECOWAS position.

African Union leaders are meeting in Equatorial Guinea. Inflation and war in Ukraine are increasing food prices across Africa. Four AU member states are suspended because of coups.

Macky Sall has told the Russian leader the ban on grain and fertilizer is causing a food crisis on the African continent. Russia says the blame lies elsewhere.

Senegalese President Macky Sall, who is the current chair of the African Union, granted an interview to FRANCE 24 and RFI in Paris. He discussed his meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin last week in Sochi, which focused on the issue of grain supplies stuck in Ukrainian ports. Sall said he stressed to Putin that Africa is suffering from the war in Ukraine, as it already faces a shortage of grain and fertiliser. He warned of a possible "famine" on the continent if African farmers have insufficient fertiliser for their crops.

France is handing over the baton of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union to the Czech Republic. It’s a rotating role that every EU member state holds in turn for six months – meaning that with 27 member states, it only comes around once every 13 and a half years.

Since November 2020, fighting has killed thousands and displaced millions leaving the region in the grip of a humanitarian crisis as it faces acute food shortages.