Africa Up Close

Baohan Straight Street, an African area in the Dengfeng Subdistrict of Guangzhou, China. Photo courtesy of Anna Frodesiak via Wikimedia Commons.

Africa has been taken aback by the discrimination against black people currently happening in China’s Guangzhou city. China, after having reportedly made headway in containing the coronavirus, is concerned that black Africans might bring a second wave of infections.  A McDonald’s outlet in Guangzhou put it bluntly with a recent notice that read: “We’ve been informed that from now on black people are not allowed to enter the restaurant. For the sake of your health, consciously notify the local police for medical isolation; please understand the inconvenience caused.” Gabriella Dilan, a Ugandan medical student studying in Wuhan, recently told Al Jazeera’s The Stream that Africans in that part of China were subjected to more days of isolation and had their medical clearances withheld for longer periods of time than did non-Africans. This, in turn, prevented Africans, for longer periods than non-Africans, from accessing banks and other facilities that would require leaving one’s dwelling place.

Libya Citizens along the Libyan-Tunisian border. Photo courtesy of the EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations Department via Flickr Commons.

World leaders met in Berlin on January 20 to enforce an arms embargo and ceasefire to end the long-running civil war in Libya. A little over two months later, the fighting restarted and intensified as the world’s attention turned to the global fight against coronavirus. In Libya, the Government of National Accord (GNA) announced emergency measures and restrictions in recent weeks, urging citizens to self-isolate to stop the spread of the virus. Meanwhile, residents in Tripoli described the resumption of Khalifa Hafter’s self-styled Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) offensive on Tripoli and resulting fear as the “worst since 2011,” with the attackers shelling homes, killing six civilians, and injuring six more.

Nigerian snipers conduct an operation “Silent Kill” demonstration during African Land Forces Summit in Abuja, Nigeria on April 17, 2018. Photo courtesy of Spc. Angelica Gardner via United States Army Africa. 

The key issue that continues to threaten peace and security in Nigeria, and to a large extent the rest of the West African sub-region, is terrorism. The region’s most nefarious perpetrators are Boko Haram and the Islamic State in the West African Province (ISWAP). Related issues that further undermine peace in the region are both structural and geographical. Structurally, complex inter-group relations, poor economic conditions, and intense political grievances have created fertile ground for terrorists and generated societal demands for better representation at sub-national levels. These issues have been further compounded by the challenges of state-building in West Africa and the greater Lake Chad Basin. Geographically, the interconnectedness of states in the region and their porous borders allow violent extremism to spill across national borders. Other issues that have fuelled terrorism in the region include abuses by state security forces and unchecked government corruption.

A Somali man photographed after receiving remittances in Mogadishu, Somalia. Photo courtesy of AMISOM Public Information via Flickr Commons. 

The increasing importance of remittances in global financial flows has elicited calls by experts in the development community for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries to harness the enormous potential of remittances for development. In response to these calls, migration and remittances featured extensively in deliberations on financing implementation of the post-2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Maputo, Mozambique. Photo courtesy of Hansueli Krapf via Wikimedia Commons.

In October 2017, an extremist group conducted a two-day attack on police stations in Mocimboa de Praia, Cabo Delgado in Mozambique, leaving seventeen dead. While tragic, the incident was not uncommon when examined through the lens of the escalating violent extremism across the continent, particularly in the Sahel region. In Mozambique, the intensity of its situation quickly escalated as the aforementioned extremist group continued to perpetrate attacks throughout Cabo Delgado province. Since its first attack in 2017, the group has killed over 400 Mozambican civilians and caused the displacement of another 100,000.

Members of al-Shabaab disengage and lay down arms in Somalia. Photo courtesy of  AMISOM via Flickr Commons. 

Globalization and information technology have increased the free movement of people, goods, and information from one territory to another, highlighting the interdependence and interconnectedness of the world’s people and economies. However, the world’s increasing interconnectedness, while generally a boon for society, also benefits criminals. They exploit the blue sky of globalization by increasingly becoming transnational and borderless. One of the manifestations of this is the existence of illicit networks in the Horn of Africa and their linkages to the global criminal world.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Isaias Afwerki photographed together. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has ruled the country since 1991. Since then, the party has brought commendable economic growth and development including improvements in health, education, electricity, road, telecommunication, and other infrastructures. The same cannot be said on the governance front where the party has demonstrated shortfalls. Over the years, there have been problems associated with human rights abuses, corruption, narrowing of the political space, and unfair distribution of resources and power. In combination, these led to political protests across the country in 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Ethiopian Veterans Kagnew Battalion who served alongside during the Korean War. Photo courtesy of U.S. Army Africa via Flickr Commons.

According to South Korea’s Blue House Spokesman, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed called South Korean President Moon Jae-In on March 30. The two leaders exchanged their concerns about COVID-19. During the phone call, Abiy told Moon that COVID-19 was the biggest upcoming issue in Africa. He expressed concern about the economic damage Ethiopia is suffering due to COVID-19. At the same time, he commended “brother-like Moon’s response to COVID-19” and said the African continent needs Moon’s experience and global leadership to fight the virus. Moon, in return, thanked Abiy for providing a chartered flight for South Korean troops to return home from their mission in South Sudan. He also asked for Ethiopia to assist any South Koreans in Africa who seek to fly back home during the pandemic crisis.

Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) participants at a summit in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of the White House via Pete Souza. 

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Ambassador Tibor Nagy, participated in a March 3 discussion sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Africa Program regarding African policy during the current United States administration. Referencing the previous Wilson Center event at which he spoke in 2018, he discussed the priorities he had laid out when he took on his position, the first of which was to harness the potential of youth populations throughout Africa. Ambassador Nagy’s focus on engaging youth coincides with the end of a decade-long initiative called the Decade of Youth Development in Africa, an African Union (AU) framework that aimed to create more youth development plans and boost resource allocation for youth-related programs. In the face of projections that “by 2030, 375 million young people in Africa will reach working age,” the Decade of Youth Development in Africa has been a necessary step for pushing African governments to respond to their growing youth populations.

Ebrié port in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

“We went through, just in the last 20 years, this big debt forgiveness for a lot of African countries……now all of a sudden are we going to go through another cycle of that?” These were the remarks of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy at a press conference in Pretoria, South Africa in June 2019. He was, of course, referring to the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative that was rolled out by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1996 with the noble mission of ensuring that “no poor country faces a debt burden it cannot manage.” The initiative resulted in billions [i] of dollars in debt relief for the world’s poorest countries—mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa.