Africa Up Close

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.

Observers who follow Burundi closely have had a growing fear that the nation is slipping slowly back into the awful years of intercommunal violence, civil war, bad governance, and a failed economy.  Burundi’s 2005 election cycle and ratification of a new constitution had inspired new hopes for advances for democracy, the rule of law, protection for human rights, and reconciliation and inclusion after the successful integration of armed rebel groups into the security and political fabric of the nation.

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The success of Asian and Latin American countries in embarking on structural transformation of their economies to significantly uplift living standards of the poor raises several important questions for Africa. First, can Africa draw lessons from these countries? Second, what is the role of industrialization in the process of transformation? Third, how does the global trading system support this transformative agenda? Fourth what roles should agriculture and green economies play in initializing and sustaining transformation?

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An interesting new book offers considerable food for thought about the ongoing efforts to build an effective set of Somali security services. Roy Licklider’s edited volume, New Armies from Old: Merging Competing Military Forces after Civil Wars provides a useful overview of current knowledge on this important topic based on several macro-level analyses and eleven national case studies (Sudan, Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Rwanda, Philippines, South Africa, DR Congo, Mozambique, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, and Burundi).

At the recent BRICS Summit, Leaders announced new initiatives, including a New Development Bank (NDB) for infrastructure and sustainable development.  In the same timeframe, China will join with its allies to launch a new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).  These initiatives provide a counter-point to the US-led World Bank and the Japan-led Asian Development Bank.

The 6^th annual BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit held July 14-16 this year in Fortaleza, Brazil, marked a crucial milestone for this historic grouping. It marked beginning of the institutionalization process of its core objective, global economic reform, with the unveiling of the ‘New Development Bank’ (NDB) and Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA). Mainstream financial media may be wary of the Fortaleza Declaration, with its tendency to question revisionist non-Western initiatives that appear against the status-quo of a Western-dominated global economy. But this is shortsighted. Rome was not built in a day.

Rereading a blog post that I contributed to Africa Up Close almost two years ago, I’m struck once again by how challenging it is to work in the world of peacebuilding.  We might spend years in a community, a country, or a region, working to effect positive change, ever hopeful that our efforts will take root.  Yet sometimes we see little change or the changes are ephemeral, unexpected, or even unwelcome.  Are our efforts ill-conceived? Under-resourced? Mismanaged?  Too early?  Too late? One hopes to learn from experience, to retain those lessons learned, implement them in future projects, and share the learning with others.  Yet, that seemingly straightforward process can be so hard to execute effectively.  (Perhaps I am just a slow learner…)

The Criminalization of Somalis in Kenya

The latest spate of Kenya’s high-handed treatment of Kenyan-Somalis, following spiraling insecurity, could potentially harm the country’s long-term efforts to eliminate terrorism and produce unintended consequences.  The attack on the Likoni church in Mombasa recently and the subsequent blast in Eastleigh – a Nairobi suburb predominantly occupied by the Kenyan- Somalis – are grim reminders of Kenya’s precarious security situation since sending troops into Somalia in October 2011 in the pursuit of al-Shabaab and Al Qaeda-affiliated organizations.