Africa Up Close

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

The Central Sahel is increasingly deemed the new epicenter of terrorism, accounting for 35 percent of global terrorism deaths in 2021. Yet as the situation in the region continues to deteriorate, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) both persists and proliferates. For instance, in Mali, where much of the region’s security crisis originates, this conundrum is laid bare.

The Ethiopian federal government’s April 6, 2023, decision to dismantle the special forces (paramilitary forces) of all the country’s regions and reintegrate them into either the national defense force, the federal police, or the respective regional police led to wide public protests in Amhara Region. The incident resulted in human rights violations such as killing individuals by security forces, destruction, and interruption of basic services. Additionally, the internet shutdown continued throughout many parts of the region. The main goal of the decision, according to the federal government, was to strengthen the Ethiopian National Defense Force and enhance its ability to maintain peace and security in the country. On April 15/2015, the government announced its completion of the integration process.

The rivalry between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which helped overthrow Sudan’s civilian administration in October 2021, derives from the two sides’ disagreements on how to begin a new internationally backed transition with civilian groups. In early April 2023, a final agreement was supposed to be signed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the fall of long-reigning despot Omar al-Bashir by a popular revolt. The arrangement called for the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF deputy General, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemedti) to transfer control. Two issues, however, stood out as being very divisive: the first was the precise date the army would be fully placed under civilian control; the second was the timeline for the RSF’s integration into the regular armed forces.

On March 21, Uganda’s Parliament passed the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Bill, widely hailed as among the world’s harshest anti-gay laws. Though same-sex relations were already illegal in the country, this bill further cracks down on LGBTQ+ rights. It imposes the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” (including sex when the “offender” is a person living with HIV), mandates life in prison for those convicted of homosexual relations, instates a 20-year prison sentence for the promotion or abetting of homosexuality, and requires by law that family, friends, neighbors, and healthcare workers report the homosexual relations of their loved ones or face up to six months of jail time.

Are power dynamics in international aid changing? In 2020, the racial justice movement called out the entrenchment of racism in national and international systems, including in foreign aid. Activists and aid workers alike called on the aid industry to stop perpetuating a global system that places wealthy donor countries in positions of power and poorer developing countries as passive recipients.

Vice President Kamala Harris recently made her first official trip to the African continent. Harris traveled to Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia for a weeklong visit. During the White House’s African Leaders Summit in December 2022, the Biden administration promised to make multiple high-level trips to Africa. First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) traveled to different African countries this year. Vice President Harris is the highest-ranking Biden administration official to travel to Africa thus far, and President Biden plans to make a visit later this year.

The Ethiopia’s Tigray war was an armed conflict that lasted from November 2020 to November 2022. The war was primarily fought in the Tigray region of Ethiopia between the Ethiopian federal government and Eritrea on one side, and the Tigrayan forces on the other. After years of increased tensions and hostilities between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Ethiopian government declared war after accusing Tigrayan forces of attacking the Ethiopian defense force’s northern command base. The war, initially limited to the Tigray region, was expanded to the neighboring regions of Afar and Amhara, affecting more than 20 million people, of which nearly three quarters were women and children, and 5.5 million have been forced to flee their homes and take refuge in other regions within Ethiopia.

A plot of land that was in the process of being cleared for agriculture in Kenya. Photo by Amanda Clark

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 70 to 80% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa rely on herbal medicine as their primary form of health care. In some countries, the rates are even higher—in Ethiopia and Burundi, 90% of the population uses traditional medicine to meet their healthcare needs. Other communities use traditional medicine as a supplement to modern (or Western) medical practices–one study shows that 76% of members of Kenya’s Kuku Ranch use both herbal and modern medicine in tandem.¹ Most forms of traditional medicine are herbal or plant-based and thus rely on the accessibility of plant resources.

It has been a decade since African leaders envisioned a fifty-year transformational plan, Agenda 2063, by signing the 50th-anniversary solemn declaration at the African Union (AU) Summit held in Addis Ababa in May 2013. Agenda 2063, under the auspices of the AU, guides the continental, regional, and national development plans to transform the continent with sustainable development.