Africa Up Close

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

On February 25, Nigeria will hold its presidential election. The stakes of this ballot could not be any higher—especially for the climate. Climate change is an existential and current reality in Nigeria, and the coming decade will be crucial to meet the nation’s sustainable development goals. It will take political will to make climate justice a reality, and Nigerians now have the opportunity to choose leaders who will either make or mar the action to address this threat.

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.

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.

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.

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

“The food system is complex; it is not just about food production,” said Florence Odiwuor, a Kenyan Southern Voices for Peacebuilding Scholar, at a recent event on the role of food security systems in sustainable peacebuilding in Africa hosted by the Wilson Center’s Africa Program. As a lecturer at the School of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Environmental Studies at Rongo University, Odiwour observed that given the food system’s interconnectedness with issues like education, gender, finance, and labor, “disruptions or failures in the [food] system have caused a lot of conflict in [Kenya].

Introduction 

Elections are among the most effective ways of promoting participation in governance, representation, and uniting diverse groups–where the process is free, fair, and just. Nigeria has conducted many elections and witnessed a plethora of electoral problems, which the roots lay in systemic disjuncture amid efforts by government and election management bodies to transform the electoral processes and safeguard the integrity of election outcomes. While there has been persistent agitation against exclusion, the government has made some efforts to use legislation and eliminate the semblance of disparity in opportunities for elective positions. The essence is to mitigate exclusion that countermands the quest for inclusive electoral process. However, monetized politics introduced and sustained by older politicians remain a disincentive for youth participation. The problem has become a dilemma for the extant politicians that are wealthy and influence the system in their favor and the emerging forces of youth agitations in Nigeria.

Compared to the recent history of terrorism in Nigeria’s Northern region, the Southwest, South-South, and Southeast regions have been relatively peaceful. However, on June 5, 2022, an attack which claimed more than 40 lives and injured 56 congregants was carried out during a Pentecostal service at the St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Southwest Nigeria. This recent mass killing, demonstrated the expanding geography of terror into southern Nigeria and the contagious nature of terrorism in a formerly peaceful region.

Due to the Russia-Ukraine war, a new global disaster is threatening to plunge Africa into increased risk of famine and deprivation. Ukraine and Russia are among the world’s foremost breadbaskets. Together, they provide around 30 percent of the world’s wheat and barley, one fifth of its maize, and over half of its sunflower oil. Ukraine is the largest exporter of sunflower oil, the fourth largest exporter of maize (corn), and the fifth largest exporter of wheat. UN Assistant Secretary-General Amin Awad said, “This war will have no winner. Rather, we have witnessed for 100 days what is lost: lives, homes, jobs and prospects.” The war has worsened a food security crisis that is already burgeoning in many countries. High commodity prices and supply chain disruptions are hitting the global community hard. The UN has also consistently stressed the threats of famine that vulnerable states around the world including Africa face as a result of the war.

The long fight against malaria has hit a turning point and a new sense of hope has arrived, as the World Health Organization approved the first malaria vaccine on October 6, 2021. Malaria is a vector-borne, life-threatening disease which occurs most commonly in tropical and subtropical areas in the world. These areas are prone to the spread of malaria due to an elevated number of mosquitos that carry the malaria disease, weather conditions that allow for transmission to occur year-round, and the low socio-economic stability of these countries that limit efforts to reduce the transmission.

Frederik Willem (‘F.W.’) de Klerk, the last leader of apartheid South Africa, died on November 11, 2021.

Nothing new was expected of de Klerk when he became President of South Africa in 1989. A member of the ultra-conservative “Dopper” wing of the Dutch Reformed Church, he progressed through the strict rites of passage common to Apartheid leaders–membership of the Voortrekkers, the Federation of Junior Rapporteurs, the Afrikaans Student Union, and the supreme accolade of an invitation to join the Broederbond, the elite, secret society dedicated to promoting Afrikaner interests. His father, Senator Jan de Klerk, was almost elected (ceremonial) State President, and he served as Labour Minister under Prime Minister J. S. Strijdom, who was married to F.W.’s aunt. Like them, his politics were hard-line and traditional.