Africa Up Close

Nobel Square in Cape Town, South Africa. Photo courtesy of FedericoLukkini via Flickr Commons. 

On the 18th of July, the cavalry came to Cape Town.

In a surprise move, the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) arrived in Manenberg and began conducting search and seizure operations—their mission—combating the startling rise of gang-related violence in Cape Town.

Pictured here is a rural scene in Uganda, taken in 2010. Photo courtesy of the US Army via Flickr Commons. 

In October of 2012, I was seated with a small group of residents in a village in rural eastern Uganda. These residents were participants in my focus group interview, and the matter of discussion was land. Those present accused certain local government officials of “grabbing” land from their village and complained that their voices were not being heard by the central government. The words used by one middle-aged man to express the prevailing sentiments at the meeting were concise and without need for parsing: “We are refugees in our own homeland.”

The 2009 uprising in Madagascar that led to the overthrow of President Marc Ravalomanana and the subsequent intervention of the African Union (AU) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) shook Madagascar to its core. The political crisis, which began with tensions and protests, culminated in violence against the opposition, a Malagasy military intervention, and the ousting of the president. President Ravalomanana’s removal was followed by an AU and SADC intervention to mediate and resolve the conflict.

STUCK IN THE SAND: Mauritania’s continued democratic development depends on a few key decisions. A car lodged in the desert in Tunisia. Photo by fjaviernunez, Creative Commons via Pixabay.

Mauritania has reached a pivotal point in its post-2008 coup political transformation, when military officers overthrew the country’s first democratically elected government. The country is situated where the Maghreb states of North Africa meet the Sahel states south of the Sahara. Neither wholly Arab/Berber nor wholly Black West African, its history and culture are deeply entwined with both regions. Outsiders often mistakenly relegate the country to a secondary status; however, if Mauritanian leaders make the right decisions on three important issues, the country can become a democratic development leader in the greater Maghreb-Sahel region, just as it has been a leader on counterterrorism. These three issues are the government’s continued fidelity to Mauritania’s constitution, full government partnership with civil society, and renewal of the country’s institutions by full political participation in fresh elections by all democratically-inclined parties.

Photo by Devon Knudsen
Buckets of charcoal in Kenya

Partially in response to being a hub of environmental conflict, Kenya is also a hub of environmental activity. As the home of Wangari Maathai and the U.N. Environment Program, Kenya is also a founding member of IGAD, originally IGADD, when the DD’s stood for drought and development. Expansively mandated, IGADD was an impressive African environmental initiative to respond to what, even in the 1980s, was recognized as a major impending crisis. More recently, CNN Hero Evans Wadongo, Goldman Prize winner Ikal Angelei, and Global Energy Award finalist Teddy Kinyanjui are proof of how Kenyan youth are using their renowned entrepreneurship to help their communities.

Africa’s growth performance remains relatively impressive, growing at 3.3 percent in 2014 up from 3.2 per cent in 2013,[2] driven mainly by improving regional business environment, good governance, sound macroeconomic management, increasing investments in infrastructure, and increasing trade and investment ties with emerging economies .

Declaring it “the most substantive project the AU has ever signed with a partner,” Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, chairperson of the African Union Commission, praised China late last month for agreeing to help the African continent knit its disparate infrastructure together.

The Young Professionals in Foreign Policy Africa Discussion Group recently worked to unravel some of the knots in the details of Nigeria’s postponed elections, which the Jonathan Administration has delayed for six weeks.The decision to put Nigeria’s democratic process on ice is officially attributed to security concerns. In the context of Boko Haram’s insurgency in Nigeria’s north, voter disenfranchisement and violence are undoubtedly real threats. Yet the tenuous nature of the claim that a six-week delay can make an impact on a six-year insurgency has lead many observers to reframe the shift as something more cynical, and more anti-democratic.

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         Zimbabwe is expiring, again. More banks are failing, beer sales – a key indicator – have slumped dramatically since 2013, tourist arrivals are down, and the business confidence index is at lowest ebb since the wildly inflationary days of 2008. Most tellingly, President Robert Gabriel Mugabe in January told civil servants to be patient – he “hoped” that they would soon be paid their monthly wages on a regular basis (something which had not happened often in 2014).

As Burundi approaches elections this year, there are underlying pressures that leave little room for hope of reform. Violence and political tension plague the nation, depriving citizens of certain basic rights. This article takes an in depth look at political parties, previous elections and prospects for the 2015 elections in Burundi.  It is the second to a two part series. Please find the first part here.