Africa Up Close

Introduction

Libya, Sudan, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Mali, the Central African Republic, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe are some of the countries with either the most pressing security situations or the longest-standing democratic regressions or stagnations in Africa. The countries in the Sahel have been afflicted by continuous internal and cross-border security challenges, such as intense armed conflict and severe terrorist attacks spearheaded by Jihadist groups like Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, and Ambazonia separatists as well as Islamic State-linked groups. Political instability characterized by a slow pace of reforms, economic malaise, and public discontent marred Sudan’s democratic transition. South Sudan has been struggling with the effects of civil war to attain stability. Mali, Chad, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Zimbabwe have all seen different variations of coups and growing authoritarianism in the last couple of years. Libya is in the throes of armed conflict between two rival administrations. Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, government forces are mired in an intractable conflict with Tigrayan nationalists. Mozambique is only just managing to contain an Islamist insurgency in its Cabo Delgado region.

This blog was originally posted on NewSecurityBeat, a blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center.

Often cast into the backwaters of U.S. foreign policy, sub-Saharan Africa now looms large as the Biden Administration grapples with a wide range of global challenges. President Biden will soon host the upcoming Africa Leaders’ Summit in Washington, that acknowledges the U.S. government must do much more in Africa in order to advance U.S. interests and global prosperity.

Africa will play an increasingly important role in the global economy in this century. The war in Ukraine and China’s increasingly aggressive international posture have wiped away Western somnolence. Seeking to counter Russian and Chinese influence on the continent, the U.S. and its Western partners now are scrambling for Africa’s resources and diplomatic support.

One of the world’s deadliest conflicts, the war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, raises serious concern over ethnic cleansing, human rights abuses, and manmade humanitarian crises. Established by the UN Human Rights Council in December 2021, the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE) believes there are reasonable grounds to trust that the Federal Government of Ethiopia and its allies (Amhara regional and paramilitary forces and the Eritrean government) have committed crimes against humanity in the Tigray region. In the same vein, a joint investigation by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHC) point to the same evidence. ICHREE and OHCHR/HER have also documented war crimes and human rights abuses by the Tigrayan Defense Forces—including attacks against Amhara civilians in Kobo and Chenna in August and September 2021. In September 2022, dozens of Amhara civilians were also killed by Tigray fighters in the town of Kobo.

The United States and its Troika partners, the United Kingdom and Norway, have played a critical role in South Sudan’s state-building. The United States, a lead negotiator of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that led to the secession of the south, conceptualized a free, prosperous, and democratic state. However, the past decade has presented a plethora of challenges that have prevented that vision from materializing. A signatory to the latest peace agreement, the United States is responsible for working with South Sudan to achieve this common aspiration.

This article is based on a study[1] for Mercy Corps’ Umoja Kwa Amani (“United for Peace” in Swahili), a 12-month election violence prevention and mitigation program whose goal was to “promote peaceful elections in Kenya by strengthening stakeholders’ capacity to prevent and mitigate election violence and contribute to a peaceful political transition around the August 2022 elections.” The use of technology was a key pillar in the Umoja Kwa Amani (UKA) program in mobilizing community capacities for peacebuilding, conflict mitigation, and civic education, as well as improving coordination and collaboration between and among community, county, and national-level stakeholders in early warning and early response mechanisms. To complement UKA, Mercy Corps implemented a program christened Mitigating Election Violence through Social Media Micro-Influencers, whose goals are to mitigate the potential of social media to incite conflict, promote the digital space as a forum for non-violence discussions, and build evidence around the effectiveness of social media influencers as tools for promoting peace and mitigating conflict.

From toilet paper and baby formula shortages to skyrocketing global gas prices, the past two years presented challenges across the globe In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine War have highlighted the interconnectedness of the world’s economies, especially regarding resource management and supply chains. It has also exposed, more than ever before, who benefits and suffers in these interconnected trade deals. As the most natural resource-rich continent on the planet, yet widely considered the most impoverished, this disconnect raises the question: where is Africa’s wealth going?

From September 12-16, 2022, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Africa Program hosted the 2022 Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding (SVNP) Annual Conference, “Business Unusual: A Rapidly Changing World Calls for Adapting Peacebuilding in Africa.”

The conference convened 26 members and representatives in Washington D.C. from 21 SVNP organizations, SVNP scholar alumni, members of the public, policymakers, practitioners, experts, and international stakeholders to assess the current state of peace and security in Africa and analyze how peacebuilding approaches can or should change to fit the current environment. 

Amidst Ethiopia’s political transition beginning in 2018 along with the ongoing war, the completion of Ethiopia’s fourth decennial national census has slipped through the cracks. Now five years past its originally scheduled date in 2017, the government postponed the census a third time in June 2020. Initially delayed over domestic security concerns, the 2020 rescheduling was in response to COVID-19 hindering the preparation and implementation of the count. As a result, the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) released its first electoral constituencies map in March 2020 using census data from 2007. The electoral map demarcation used census data from 1994—when Ethiopia’s population was roughly half of what it is today. When asked in 2019 about the census, NEBE Chairwoman Birtukan Mideksa said it had no bearing on the then-upcoming election because the NEBE only needed the number of registered voters to structure polling stations and hold elections.

From June 16-17, 2022, members of the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding (SVNP) hosted the Regional Policy Conference, “Peacebuilding in the Great Lakes Region,” in Kampala, Uganda. The Women’s International Peace Centre (The Peace Centre), the Centre d’Etudes pour l’Action Sociale (CEPAS), the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR-Rwanda), and the Centre for Conflict Management (CCM) of the University of Rwanda co-hosted the conference.

Fig. A: Independent research by Pearl Matibe, Research Scholar. Source: US Department of State

How and why do we see more diplomatic engagement between Africa and the United States since the Russia-Ukraine war?

In comparison to the analysis of the 2017-2022 US Department of State’s Public Schedules to 2022’s first six months, travel to Africa tripled for secretaries of state, undersecretaries, and assistant secretaries. In 2017, under Secretary Rex Tillerson, it was over four-times lower, whereas, under Secretary Michael Pompeo in 2018, data indicates increased activity. Compared to prior years, travel to African countries increased threefold, from 6 percent to just under 18 percent after the war started under Secretary Antony Blinken.