Firmin Ngrebada, the prime minister of the troubled Central African Republic, announced on Thursday that his government had tendered its resignation.

Ngrebada wrote on Twitter that he had "presented (his) resignation to the president," Faustin Archange Touadera.

However, presidential spokesman Albert Yaloke Mokpeme told AFP that he may be asked to stay and form a new government.

"We will know within a few hours if the president keeps the prime minister on," Mokpeme said.
 
A former chief of staff to Touadera, Ngrebada had been in post since early 2019.

Central African Republic is the second least-developed country in the world, according to the UN and suffers from the aftermath of a brutal civil conflict that erupted in 2013.

Touadera was re-elected in December on a turnout of fewer than one in three voters.

The ballot was hampered by armed groups that at the time controlled around two-thirds of the country, and rebels mounted an offensive in the runup to polling day.
 
Since then, the army, backed by UN peacekeepers, Rwandan special forces and Russian paramilitaries, has wrested much of the territory from rebel control.