Each day it is criss-crossed by invisible travellers who arrive after placing themselves in the hands of human traffickers, under cover of darkness, crossing the frontier with Sudan along paths lost in the thick undergrowth. Welcome to Metema, a city in the north-west of Ethiopia, on the Sudan border, the launchpad of the migration routes of eastern Africa.

It is here that the journey begins across the Sudan and Libya to reach Europe, undertaken by  Ethiopians, Somalians and especially Eritreans, who are already in the refugee camps in Ethiopia. Metema check-point is known all over central east Africa. They come in buses from  Addis Ababa, or hidden in private vans or cars. “This place is full of human traffickers. But no, I would rather not speak about these things: my life would be in danger if they came to know I spoke to ferengi (white people)”, a man tells us on the road that leads straight to Sudan.
The payment for crossing the frontier is anywhere from one thousand to three thousand Birr (from 30 to 100 Euro). A good proportion of the money is used to bribe the police.

In recent months, the government of Addis Ababa has tightened controls and arrested some of the major traffickers, but the illegal migration through Metema continues. Each night, in the confused network of tracks leading to the frontier, the undocumented migrants wait for the moment when they can cross over. Hamid is one of those boys who already tried to make the crossing through Libya, only to be caught by the Sudanese police and sent back. Today, he lives in one of the camps scattered throughout Tigray, the northern region of Ethiopia that shares a  911 kilometre border with Eritrea. “I approached a trafficker of Ethiopians. It is not hard to find them. They took me on a lorry up to Gondar  and then to  Metema where I spent a couple of nights before secretly crossing the frontier, in the direction of Khartoum. The police caught me there in the capital and sent me back. The Ethiopian police then sent me back to my refugee camp”.

According to UNHCR data, there are 130,000 Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia, concentrated mostly in Tigray. Humanitarian organisations say that around 4,000 Eritreans flee their country every month. Following the procedure, refugees in Ethiopia are registered at one of the twelve entry points along the border. They are then taken to Endabaguna, a hotspot where they spend about twenty days when they are assigned to one of the four refugee camps in the area: Schi-melba, Mai  Aini, Adi Harush and Hitsats, run by the Ethiopian government’s Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs (ARRA), in collaboration with the Ethiopian UNHCR.
To approach these immense areas of tin-roofed living modules is like coming into contact with disturbing lost and meaningless locations. Testimonies given by refugees are shocking: “We have no freedom of movement and we are tightly controlled. Anyone misbehaving is kept far from the programmes of relocation in Europe, our only hope of leaving this place with security. The other way is that of escape, as a boy did the other night. He just disappeared. The first stage of the journey is Metema”, they tell us.
Others speak of very difficult episodes: “Violence often breaks out and there are suicides every week. We spend the days thinking how we can get away and escape. It becomes an obsession that worms its way into the mind”.

Fear has grown among the Eritreans after the peace accord between Ethiopia and Eritrea signed last July. They are now worried that, with the conflict between the two countries at an end, repatriation will begin. “For us, going back would mean death as we are considered traitors in our own country”, they explain. And there is more. Witnesses tell us the camps are rife with spies sent by the Eritrean regime: false refugees mix with the real ones to observe people and see to it that the relatives of those who ever speak out against the Eritrean regime are punished. With their network of roads and the tiny commercial activities, a few refugees have managed to start, the refugee camps have the appearance of precarious urban centres where the days are passed between the barbed wire fences and the surrounding lunar landscape of the Tigray highlands. It is no surprise that Metema, 480 kilometres to the west, with its shapeless frontier city profile, full of poorly-stocked shops  and huts, is seen as one of the gateways to paradise. A young Eritrean we met outside a hut in Mai Aini told us: “We know that some die in the desert and others drown in the sea and that the the European governments have closed their ports but we still want to get out of here. Escape is our only hope”.

Marco Benedettelli

The long-awaited bridge spanning the Gambia River will open in July. The facility, which is set to revolutionise travel and trade in the region, will also improve the relationship between Dakar and Casamance.

It took almost 50 years, decades of discussions and a strong contribution from the African Development Bank. But eventually the bridge, which connects the north and south banks of the Gambia River, is there, ready to be crossed by next July.The Gambia is a strange geopolitical reality, one of the most striking results of the European colonialism in the continent. This small country is 48 km wide at its greatest width, it is a narrow strip of land that winds its way along the banks of the homonymous river, creating an enclave in the Senegalese territory. This territory was the British colonizers’ commercial base to access the slave market in West Africa.

According to legend, the distance of the borders from the Gambia River corresponds to the area that British naval cannon of the time could reach from the river’s channel. Today the colonial empires no longer exist, but an uncomfortable legacy often characterized by lack of infrastructures has remained. This is the case of the Gambia, whose homonymous river could only be crossed by using extremely dilapidated car ferries. This means that, before the opening of the bridge, despite there are several ferry crossing points along the Gambia River at many small terminals as well as the main one at the Banjul Ferry Terminal on the Atlantic coast, and the Farafenni Terminal in the inland, it could take hours depending on border checks and ferry wait times, or even weeks for trucks and heavy vehicles to cross the tiny country.

Casamance: less isolated at last
The bridge is a safer, quicker, and alternative route to the risky ferry crossing or the long detour between the northern and southern parts of Gambia and Senegal. The facility is expected to reduce travel time, boost trade and unite communities that were previously isolated. For years, many Senegalese living in the capital, Dakar, and other parts of the north had to drive for hours to skirt around Gambia or wait in long lines for a ferry to reach the isolated southern region of Casamance, which has always been affected by the physical and administrative ‘distance’ from the Senegalese political centre, due to the cumbersome presence of the foreign enclave and its chronic lack of infrastructures.

The Casamance region is the southern region of Senegal which, although connected in the East to Senegal, is separated from the rest of Senegal by The Gambia. In 1982, resentment about the marginalization and exploitation of Casamance by the Senegalese central government gave rise to a still ongoing low-level conflict between the government of Senegal and the independence movement in form of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance  (MFDC). The 1.9km bridge near Farafenni connects the two halves of The Gambia, while allowing the inhabitants of northern Senegal to easily reach the Senegalese region of Casamance to the south.
Until now, the crossing was done with an unreliable ferry or it was necessary to take the almost 400 km road to circumvent Gambia. Truck drivers could spend days, and sometimes a week, in a queue to cross the river, which meant a huge loss on perishable goods. “It is now possible to travel from Dakar, the capital of Senegal, to Ziguinchor in Casamance in about five hours, instead of a full day or more”, explains Modou Mbaye, driver of one of the several seven-seater collective taxis, the most popular public transportation among locals.

The bridge, was started in 2015, and cost a little over 75 million Euros. The facility was financed by the African Development Bank, and in a smaller part by Saudi and Emirate funds. The hypotheses and proposals for its construction date back to the time of the independence of the country from the United Kingdom, in 1965. Its realization has also important political implications, marking a very significant step forward in the relations between Gambia and Senegal, as well as a relevant political and economic recovery of the Gambia, a nation which is still affected by the 22-year authoritarian regime of former president Yahya Jammeh, in exile since 2017, who was accused of having plundered the state coffers. “Commencement of this bridge dates as far back as 1970. However, due to several political and practical problems, construction didn’t start until 2015,” explains Mamadou Samba Diallo, head of the project division of the Senegalese infrastructure ministry. “I wonder if former president Jammeh really wanted the bridge… fortunately, the facility is now there”, he concludes.

Stefano Fasano

According to the World Bank, 41% of the inhabitants of the continent do not exist in law. They have no identity documents issued by state civil offices. A problem affecting human rights, it fuels illegal trafficking and slows the economy.

According to Unicef (United Nations Children’s Fund), 95 million children born in Sub-Saharan Africa are ‘invisible’ since their births
are not registered.
The World Bank states that there are one billion people in the world who cannot demonstrate their identities: more than half of these live in Africa and amount to 41% of the population of the continent (1,2 billion).

The countries most affected are Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Tanzania. In the DRC, the birth of a child within a year is declared only in one out of every five. The fact of being registered is no guarantee of a birth certificate since, to obtain one, the fees required are beyond the means of the poor.
The Universal Declaration on Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations, says that each person has the right to their own identity. This right is recognised by the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and by the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, these principles are not applied to everyone in Africa.

The lack of registration can be attributed to many factors: the distance to the office in question, ignorance of how to register and what it costs. In many cases, and the UN itself confirms this, the sum demanded for registration also includes a fine for any delay. It must be noted that, in ten African countries, it is obligatory even to register marriages. It is clear that young people under eighteen receive no protection. In Sudan, there is no minimum age for marrying; neither is there any legal framework for registering civil acts – a bottomless administrative pit.
This situation has serious consequences. It undermines the quality of democracy itself since the absence of registration places creates restrictions on the right to vote or be elected. “The creation of electoral lists must reflect the population of voting age so as to promote free and fair elections”, observes the Beninese André Franck Ahoyo, a consultant to the World Bank.

This situation, instead, condemns millions to uncertainty and exclusion. “Having no ID card means one cannot avail of health care, education, social protection or other essential services”, affirms Kristalina Georgieva, Director of the World Bank and former European Commissioner for humanitarian affairs. These ‘unknown people’ cannot open a bank account, obtain a loan, start a business or obtain a Simcard. It is important to register ordinary citizens so as to prevent the excessive growth of the informal sector that is fuelled by illegal or forced labour, and to establish a fiscal base.
Consequently, people try to improvise somehow. In West Africa, primary schools admit children with no identity cards but documentation is required to enter university. Having a large number of young people with no documents has, of course, consequences in the field of security: it makes it easy to recruit child soldiers in central Africa, for example, and there are many Jihadi candidates, especially in the Sahel area,
not to mention human trafficking, illegal adoptions, prostitution and illegal marriages.

An improvement in civil services would make it possible to relieve congestion in the courts where 90% of the cases are land ownership conflicts due to the lack of property deeds. Amina Mohammed, Vice Secretary General of the UN, believes that identification can definitely play a decisive role in the creations of sustainable development.
Since, September 2018, the World Bank has created a fund of one billion dollars to finance the process of identification for one billion people in 30 countries, 23 in Africa. Africa alone would need six billion dollars. Unicef is working together with health services to make sure each new-born child is legally registered. (F.M.)