Africa Up Close

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.

Schoolkids in Rwanda use computers distributed by American NGO One Laptop per Child. The initiative has come in for criticism over price, impact, and educational priorities.
Photo by One Laptop per Child, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

In light of the ongoing process to craft the post-2015 development agenda and Sustainable Development Goals, it is imperative that the international community takes the right approach towards development in Africa. Realizing large-scale goals such as ending poverty, achieving gender equality, and ensuring access to energy for all is extremely difficult, especially given the cross-cutting nature of these issues and the number of actors involved. The world has spent decades and billions of dollars working towards these lofty goals through aid programs and loans, yet has consistently fallen short.

Photo Courtesy of Eduardo Fonseca Arraes via Flickr.

Football, the world’s most popular sport with 3.5 billion fans, is steadily rising in viewership as the industry’s worth is growing by millions. This heightened popularity is accompanied by the rise of big dreams amongst Africa’s youth of becoming the next Didier Drogba or Michael Essien, Africa’s football superstars who play for European club teams. For many of these youths – and their families – football stardom represents a golden ticket out of poverty that bypasses the shoddy education system. For this, families are willing to risk everything to see their sons play professionally and provide for the family.

Over the past few weeks the international community has been reeling from Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir’s visit to South Africa, which is largely being touted as a flagrant disregard for international law. Al-Bashir is wanted on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in connection to the Darfur conflict, responsible for 300,000 deaths and the displacement of over two million people since 2003.

As Burundi implodes due to yet another instance of African misgovernance, South African President Jacob Zuma, in the wake of South Africa’s second bout of xenophobic violence (the first being in 2008), warned his peers to take responsibility for the problem of migration. They “cannot shy away” from reasons citizens are fleeing from home.