Africa Up Close

A Nigerian soldier with UNAMID, in Darfur. Photo by Stuart Price / UN Photo, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

The United Nations has long enjoyed legitimacy as the international arbiter on issues of war and peace. A UN mandate signals international support for military action to maintain or restore peace. “Blue Helmets” are usually welcomed as guarantors of peace.

2016 was a difficult year for UN peace missions in Africa. High-profile missions in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mali are at high risk of failure. Even in Darfur, which has been off the front page, violence and suffering continues. The legitimacy of UN peace missions in Africa is now in question because of dramatic failures to protect civilians and widespread sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers.

Commemorative cloth from Yahya Jammeh’s 2006 election campaign. Photo by Tommy Miles, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

Africa and the international community heaved a sigh of relief as Yahya Jammeh, the former President of the Gambia, finally agreed to step down on January 20, 2017. This decision came after months of denying the results of the December 1, 2016 elections in which the coalition opposition candidate, Adama Barrow, a successful property developer, football enthusiast, and longtime resident in the UK, won a plurality of the vote. Jammeh, who had come to power in a military coup and ruled the Gambia with an iron hand for 22 years, brooking no opposition or challenge, had once declared he would be president for “a billion years.” His refusal to accept the election results had been challenged across the board by the newly elected Gambian president, the regional grouping of states called the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the African Union (AU), the United Nations (UN), and key international powers like the United States. His decision to step down brings the immediate crisis to an end, but the Gambia still faces significant challenges in establishing public trust in government and moving forward with development. The success of ECOWAS in forcing Jammeh to step down stands as an example of how Africa can independently handle its security challenges.

LIGHT AHEAD: A view out of the window of a Mogadishu hotel. UN Photo/Stuart Price, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

Somalia’s experience in 2016 highlighted both the opportunities and vulnerabilities at the heart of the country’s ongoing political transition. With the postponement of parliamentary and presidential elections and the inability of the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) to complete many of the core tasks outlined in its “Vision 2016” political roadmap, the year saw a tempering in the domestic and international optimism that characterized the formative years of the FGS under President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (est. 2012). Meanwhile, al-Shabaab’s resilience and resurgence has heightened security concerns, compounding the uncertainty of what 2017 holds for Somalia. The country remains entangled in a web of political hostility and violent conflict, with significant implications not only for Somalia, but also for the region and larger international community.

Many thousands remain displaced by Boko Haram. Photo by EU/ECHO/Isabel Coello, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

Between 2002 and 2011, the BBC and the Guardian consistently rated Nigerians as the world’s happiest people. In sharp contrast, by 2013 a Forbes Magazine survey ranked Nigeria as the 20^th saddest place to live on earth and the country ranked 123^rd on the Legatum Prosperity index. This paper does not attempt to make an analysis of where it all went wrong, as such an endeavour would constitute a voluminous series. However one major factor responsible for this negative attitude transformation is the rise in militancy in the south and terrorism in the north of the country, the havoc wreaked in terms of lives and property, and the growing insecurity. The most notable among these groups is Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group that has plagued the north-east of the country and captured international media attention. This article contends that Boko Haram’s stature as Nigeria’s chief security menace was sustained by certain members of Nigeria’s elite, since it had become a cash cow for them.

Delegates gather in South Africa for a UN climate summit in 2011. Photo by UN Photo/UNFCCC/Jan Golinski, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

Most African states are more vulnerable and less prepared to address climate change challenges than the rest of the world. This observation is supported by a wide variety of sources, including the Climate Vulnerability Index and the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index. And in fact Africans and their political leaders frequently observe that this crisis, manufactured in the developed world, disproportionately affects their continent. During a meeting of the African Union in 2007, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called climate change “an act of aggression” by the rich against the poor.

Garment workers at a factory in Ghana. The Third-Country Fabric Provision in AGOA has boosted African apparel makers. Photo by U.S. Embassy Ghana, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

It has been one year since the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) was renewed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by the Honorable President Barack Obama. The extension of AGOA through September 2025 provides certainty and predictability to the U.S.-Africa economic relationship and conveys a strong signal of confidence to the U.S. business community and African partners.

Supporters of Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP rally during the 2015 election. Photo by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

A year later, Jude Cocodia looks back at Nigeria’s historic election, why it was so important, and what lessons other African leaders could take from it.

The 2015 Nigerian elections saw the defeat of an incumbent president for the first time in Nigerian history, and the peaceful handover of power that followed. This event runs contrary to the trend in Africa, where rulers manipulate state machinery to perpetuate themselves in office, irrespective of being popular or despised by the people.

Ismail Omar Guelleh, president of Djibouti, in Somalia with Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Guelleh coasted to a fourth term this weekend in the tiny East African nation. Photo by Ahmed Qeys / AMISOM Photo, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

On April 8th, Djibouti’s Ismail Omar Guelleh extended his 17-year presidency for another five years after securing 87 percent of the vote. This will be the president’s fourth term leading the country, a feat made possible by a change he made to the constitution in 2010 that unraveled previous efforts to set a two-term limit for Djibouti’s leaders.

Wedged between Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and a narrow strip of ocean that supports over a quarter of the world’s international shipping, the government of this tiny state, which is home to around a million people, wants Djibouti to be more than just a focal point in globalized trade networks.

A Burundian soldier serving in AMISOM guards a position at the edge of Mogadishu, Somalia. Photo by Stuart Price/UN Photo, Creative Commons, via Flickr.

When Burundi’s peacekeepers joined the ranks of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) in December 2007, it signaled that the conclusion of the country’s civil war in 2005 had marked the beginning of a post-conflict identity—one that would see Burundi rapidly integrate formerly warring groups into a newly configured military and define itself as an essential contributor to peace and security on the African continent. Today, that identity is under strain, and the country’s 5,400 peacekeepers, which make up “over a quarter of AMISOM’s force,” face an uncertain future.

Marc Sommers, a former Wilson Center Africa Program Fellow, launched his new book The Outcast Majority at the Wilson Center on Thursday January 11, 2016.

The Outcast Majority: War, Development, and Youth in Africa is born of a growing sense that the status quo won’t work, in Africa or elsewhere. Enormous youth cohorts containing many who feel socially sidelined calls for a response that, at best, is sporadically seen.

The too-common separateness of many ordinary youth raises questions about hallowed development concepts like “community” and “civil society.” Popular macroeconomic remedies for post-war African states tend to run counter to youth ambitions, toward developing rural agriculture and the formal sector while youth increasingly rush into cities and the informal economy.