There have been a number of false dawns when it comes to elections in South Sudan, but the authorities have said the long-delayed first-ever vote will take place in December.

The leaders of the world’s youngest country have not been tested at the ballot box since independence in 2011 and President Salva Kiir has been in office for 15 years.

According to the original plan, the general election was supposed to have happened in 2015 but a civil war meant that had to be postponed.

The 2018 peace deal, which created a unity government with Kiir at its helm and rival Riek Machar as his deputy, envisioned an election in 2022 but the vote was never organised amid tension between the country’s leaders.

Continued issues between the two men could yet delay the vote further.

Machar was sacked as vice-president and arrested earlier last year and charged with murder, treason and crimes against humanity, which he denies. He has been under house arrest in the capital, Juba, since March last year as fighting persists in some areas of the country.

There have been warnings, including form the UN that the violence could once again spill over into full-scale civil war.

When announcing the 22 December date for the vote, electoral chief Abednego Akok Kacuol acknowledged that unresolved legal amendments and persistent funding gaps continued to hamper poll preparations.

“The political will is not ours; it lies with the government,” he said.

Asked what would happen if funds were not secured within six months, Kacuol said his commission would continue planning while adjusting toward a “realistic electoral timeline”.

In a statement on Monday, the presidency said Kiir was committed to implementing the 2018 peace agreement and keeping South Sudan on track toward peaceful, democratic elections.

It said preparations for inter-party dialogue on election-related issues were progressing and would provide a platform for building consensus among political stakeholders.

But opposition groups and civil society organisations have raised concerns over security conditions, political freedoms and electoral readiness.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO), the party of Machar, warned about the poll preparations, saying holding elections remained a “dangerous” matter.

“Anyone coming to register voters and campaign in territories controlled by the mighty SPLM-IO, you will be a prisoner of war,” Nathaniel Pierino, acting chairperson of the group, said in a post on Facebook.

“Be reminded, the country is at war,” he added.

Guinea has banned the export of unrefined gold in an effort to promote domestic processing of the precious metal.

The policy – effective immediately – comes after Guinea’s President Mamadi Doumbouya met industrial and artisanal gold producers and buyers, and aims to boost the economy and create more jobs.

“Guinea will now require its gold to be processed within its own borders.

Guinea is Africa’s sixth largest gold producer, according to the World Gold Council.

Other African nations have taken similar steps to increase domestic processing and value addition in the mining sector in recent years.

In Tanzania and Uganda, the export of unprocessed minerals and metals such as gold and copper is already banned, while Ghana is set to ban raw gold exports by 2030.

Africa’s top lithium producer, Zimbabwe, has banned concentrate exports of the metal used to make batteries from 2027.

Gold is one of Guinea’s main exports, shipping more than 22 tonnes of the metal in the first quarter of this year, according to the authorities.

A new refinery is near completion in the capital, Conakry, where the country’s gold will be sent before processing and export. It has a reported capacity of 250 tonnes a year so should be able to handle the country’s current production.

Foreign companies operating in the country have been warned that they risk losing their licenses and having their mining contracts terminated if they violate the directive.

Guinea is also the world’s largest producer of bauxite, used to make aluminium.

The US government says it will stop funding programmes in South Africa intended to tackle the spread of HIV and Aids.

More than eight million South Africans are living with HIV – the highest number of any country in the world.

The US State Department appeared to link the decision to South Africa’s alleged failure to protect the white-minority Afrikaner community – an allegation the South African government has repeatedly rejected.

South Africa’s health ministry responded by saying that though it had not been informed of this decision, it had “long been working on a self-reliance plan”.

Until 2025, the US was supporting South Africa’s efforts to deal with the virus with an estimated $400m (£300m) a year through the President’s Emergency Fund for Aids Relief (Pepfar).

But since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, relations between the two countries have increasingly soured.

Shortly after he came into office, Trump issued an executive order alleging that “countless” South African policies dismantled equal opportunities and fuelled violence “against racially disfavored landowners”.

This is disputed by the South African government, which says its Black Economic Empowerment policy is needed to correct economic inequality dating from the apartheid era.

The executive order also highlighted South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and its links to Iran.

The White House said that given these “unjust and immoral practices”, further aid to South Africa would not be provided.

Trump has also alleged that there is a “white genocide” taking place in South Africa, which has led to the administration setting up a refugee programme for Afrikaners – descendants of western Europeans who settled in southern Africa in the 17th Century. They are now just about the only refugees being allowed into the US.

The genocide claim has been widely discredited.

Pepfar funding, which had been providing about a fifth of South Africa’s total spending on HIV programmes, got a reprieve last October with what was called a “bridge plan”.

But a US State Department official has confirmed that a “phased drawdown” of Pepfar funding would now start.

This was because of “South Africa’s failure to make demonstrable progress on policy requests by the administration”, the official said.

The intention of the US government was to “foster self-reliance” and reduce dependency on American funding, they added, pointing out that “South Africa is a middle-income country and is more than capable of supporting its own health programs”.

South Africa’s health ministry has said that while Pepfar contributed to the country’s HIV programme, the provision of life-saving antiretroviral drugs was funded entirely separately, with most coming from the government.

Attempts to mend US-South Africa relations have floundered. These include a high-profile White House meeting between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa just over a year ago when the US president confronted his counterpart with his claims of white persecution.

The US also boycotted the G20 meeting, a gathering of the world’s major economies, hosted by South Africa last November.