Africa Up Close

On March 21, 2018, close to 50 African Union (AU) Member States signed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement during the 10th Extraordinary Summit of the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government in Kigali, Rwanda. Photo courtesy of the Government of South Africa via Flickr Commons.

The operational phase of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement was launched in July 2019 amidst excitement and a sense of hope, and rightly so. AfCFTA, which is on course to become the largest free trade area in the world is an agreement among 54 African nations for the creation of a single continental market for goods and services, in addition to the free movement of persons, labor, and investment geared towards a customs union. Its purpose is expanding intra-African trade through harmonized and well-coordinated trade facilitation regimes. It also aims to harmonize trade instruments across the Regional Economic Communities (RECs).

Local fishermen at Lake Victoria, Kenya. Photo courtesy of Ryan Harvey via Flickr Commons. 

Migingo, an island roughly the size of a football pitch on Lake Victoria, has been a site of contention between Kenya and Uganda, due to the large fish population found in the surrounding freshwaters. As populations increase, environmental degradation and pollution put pressure on the flora and fauna in the lake basin, creating a natural resource conflict time bomb. East African countries, especially Kenya and Uganda, are witnessing diminishing returns in fish and related products, leading to rising competition for the increasingly scarce natural resources.

Tomato farmers from USAID’s Tanzania Agriculture Productivity Program in Tanzania. Photo courtesy of USAID via Flickr Commons. 

There are some 40 countries that can easily enter in the category of fragile states today, and a good number of them are found in Sub-Saharan Africa. These are countries with weak governance or institutional incapacity. They fail to carry out some critical governance functions such as ensuring the security of their populations and territory, maintaining the rule of law, and delivering key public services. Life in fragile or weak states is marked by endemic corruption, bad governance, political instability, insecurity, rampant poverty, hunger, high (child) mortality rates, social and political unrest, etc. As time goes by in such an environment, populations and communities tend to have their resilience eroded. They become particularly vulnerable to a range of shocks without the ability to face them adequately. Violence, conflicts, and sometimes the breakdown of institutions start to factor in.

Factory workers produce shirts for overseas clients. Photo courtesy of the World Bank via Flickr Commons.

What are the perceptions of African workers in Chinese firms? How do these perceptions relate to media criticism of Chinese labor practices and the spirited defense of African leadership and Chinese investors against such criticism? For employees that extol Chinese employment, is their position informed by genuine satisfaction, or is it a case of ‘either this or nothing’? These questions inspired me to interview a group of workers in a Chinese-owned retail firm in Kamwala Market in Lusaka—Zambia’s capital city. I also interviewed representatives of workers in a Chinese-run ceramics plant in Kenya. I will test my findings against a 2011 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report about China’s labor practices in Zambia.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed alongside military commanders. Photo courtesy of the Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia via Wikipedia Commons. 

Ethiopia has undergone some crucial political development since the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition elected a new prime minister. Among other achievements, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ended a 20-year conflict with neighboring Eritrea, freed thousands of political prisoners, unfettered the media, and appointed women to 50 percent of cabinet positions. In addition to that, Parliament accepted his female nominees for president and head of the Supreme Court.

President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar at the signing of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ACRSS). Photo courtesy of UNMISS via Flickr Commons.

The signing of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ACRSS) on September 12, 2018, has led to relative peace in South Sudan. Mediated by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)—a regional economic and security bloc—South Sudanese policymakers recently extended the ‘pre-transitional’ period until November 2019 before forming the transitional government of national unity. Given the few months remaining before this new deadline, there are serious concerns that many key tasks remain to be addressed: namely, the issue of the number and boundaries of provinces/states, violent conflicts, a single national army, and securing the funding necessary for implementing the peace agreement. These cumulative factors hamper the peace process, foreshadowing future outbreaks of violence.

A farmer harvesting goods in a farm in Bouar, a town in the Central African Republic. Photo courtesy of the United Nations via Flickr Commons.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019 released on July 15^th is quite alarming. The joint annual report finds that the number of people suffering from hunger or undernourishment continues to increase. This increase has occurred for the past three consecutive years, putting an end to a decade of progress in the global battle against hunger.

A sign display for a Confucius Institute. Photo courtesy of Mark Morgan via Flickr Creative Commons. 

Zambians who have the opportunity should learn Mandarin, fast. In 2019, the Zambian government announced that beginning in 2020, Mandarin Chinese will form part of the Zambian high school curriculum. This move has provoked criticism from those who deem it a sycophantic move by the Zambian government. The accusation finds merit, in part, because the Zambian government is not seen to be introducing Mandarin in good faith, but rather to mollify China, a country to which it is deeply indebted. According to the Jubilee Debt Campaign, a UK-based charity, by 2017 Zambia owed a third of its $9.4bn foreign debt to China. This figure was conservative compared to the $6.4bn established by the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI), of Johns Hopkins University. According to CARI statistics, 73.5 percent of Zambia’s $8.7bn debt is owed to China. These figures do not bode well for perceptions of Sino-Zambian relations, especially among civil society organizations leery of China’s growing presence in Zambia.

The Atlantic Ocean along a shoreline in Ifni, Morrocco. Picture courtesy of mbohl via Flickr Commons. 

African peace and security challenges in relation to the continent’s wider maritime scope and its interplay with external political actors receive little attention. Yet, much of the internal politics that affect peacebuilding in Africa involve interregional actors, such as Europe and the Mideast. This lack of attention is not seen in the South Atlantic where the Zone of Peace and Cooperation in the South Atlantic (ZPCSA), operates as a multilateral platform between some African and South American nations. The ZPCSA’s goal is preserving regional peace and a nuclear-free-zone in regions where documented illegal trafficking flows link South America, West Africa, and Europe, and security challenges plague the Gulf of Guinea, a transport nexus in the Afro-Atlantic oil trade.

H.E. Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the Republic of South Africa, addresses the General Assembly’s seventy-third session. Photo courtesy of the United Nations. 

South Africa was elected to join the UN Security Council (UNSC) as a non-permanent member on June 8, 2018 for the 2019-2020 term, replacing Ethiopia as the third African Council member and joining Equatorial Guinea and Ivory Coast. This is the country’s third UNSC membership, following its prior roles in 2007-2008 and 2011-2012.