Africa Up Close

Nigeria’s National Assembly. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.  

The Nigerian Senate, through the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information, Alhaji Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, recently announced that it was proposing a law that would seek the death penalty for perpetrators of hate speech. Skeptics thought that the legislative body was again embarking on a familiar, self-serving endeavor to further impunity in the country. Some may laugh at this proposal, but it is very shocking and alarming that such a proposal is being made in a growing democracy like Nigeria, as well as at a time when other countries across the world are making efforts to roll back the use of the death penalty. Merely proposing such legislation speaks volumes to the current state of the Nigerian Senate. Especially in the context of the recent corruption scandal, in which members of the legislature were found illegally pocketing about USD$50,000 that they allotted to themselves monthly, in a country where 65 percent of the population survives on less than one dollar a day amidst pervasive poverty.

African Women Leaders Network. Photo courtesy of the United Nations via Flickr Commons. 

Today, African leaders agree that Africa has a great opportunity to reap economic benefits from strategic investments made to the continent’s current large youthful population. In the 2013 Sixth Joint African Union Commission (AUC) and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) Annual Conference of the African Ministers of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development, policymakers and experts recognized the potential of the demographic dividend to transform Africa by reducing poverty and spurring economic growth. Since then, as a result of continuous engagements between population and development experts and policymakers over the years, several other milestones have been achieved. These include the Addis Ababa Declaration on Population and Development in Africa Beyond 2014; the African Union (AU) Common African Position (CAP) on the Post 2015 Development Agenda; and the Africa Agenda 2063– The Africa We Want. These milestones culminated into the 2017 AU theme, where African leaders committed to investing in Africa’s large youthful population to drive development. We can now say that there is a continental consensus between policymakers and experts on the potential the demographic dividend has to transform Africa.

H.E. President Emmerson D. Mnangagwa at the 25th Session of the Human Rights Council. Photo courtesy of the United Nations Geneva via Flickr Commons. 

Zimbabwe is coming in from the cold. After 37 years of mismanagement and decline under Robert Mugabe, the population of the former breadbasket of Africa had enough, and ousted its leader in November 2017. While in many respects the bloodless coup was simply a re-organization and consolidation of power in the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), Zimbabwe now has the opportunity to shed its pariah status and re-engineer its future. This will not be an easy task as cronyism, corruption, and maladministration have become so commonplace that any move towards just governance will seem radical and viewed (at least by some) as a betrayal.

Fulani herders and cattle in Nigeria. Photo courtesy of Dr. Mary Gillham Archive Project via Flickr Commons. 

The sporadic and ongoing violent conflicts between herdsmen and farmers in rural communities in Nigeria is a serious threat to human security and development in the country. The conflicts also have a strong potential to spread to other neighboring countries in West Africa, but the international community has remained silent on the possibility of the conflict spreading. On New Year’s Day, Fulani herdsmen killed about 73 people in a farming community in Benue state. The victims included women, children, and young and old residents of the community. An arrest or prosecution has yet to happen, and similar violence has occurred across the country since then. A slow response from the government has led to suspicions in the media that the government is in support of the Fulani militiamen involved in the violence. Furthermore, it is alleged that some of the Fulani militiamen migrated from other countries in West Africa to carry out the attack, due to a shared ethnicity that is present in several other countries across the sub-region.

Mining at the Tarkwa Mine in Ghana. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Galamsey”[1]

Africa is endowed with numerous natural resources including gold, ore, copper, bauxite, manganese, and timber among others. Formal extractive companies do not offer much employment to local people, pushing them to find employment through illegal mining practices. The influx of small-scale and illegal miners, mostly Chinese to Africa, has worsened the illegal mining activities on the continent with migrant miners abusing mining laws and mining practices. Mining communities in Africa are experiencing numerous detrimental impacts environmentally, socially, and economically from mining. According to a report by Oxfam Australia, mining can negatively affect people by forcing them from their homes and farms and preventing them from accessing clean land and water.[2]

High school students in Mankon, Bamenda, Cameroon, an Anglophone speaking region that has protested against the Francophone majority. Photo courtesy of Alberto Vaccaro via Flickr Commons. 

The immediate future of Cameroon is fraught with uncertainties. On October 1, 2017, during rallies marked by calls for a secession from French-speaking Cameroon, dozens of people were killed by security forces in the two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest Cameroon. Besides Boko Haram in the North, the resurgence of the Anglophone Problem in the Western regions is the single biggest threat to the unity and stability of Cameroon today. This is especially concerning as the country braces for a challenging electoral year in 2018 amidst calls for President Paul Biya to step down after 35 years in power. The ongoing resurgence of the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon requires immediate international attention. The stability of Cameroon is of crucial importance not only for the sub-region of Central Africa, but also for the fight against terrorism in the entire region. The ruling regime’s poor management (repressive approach) of the ongoing crisis is largely responsible for the escalations in recent months. The way forward to a sustainable solution lies in an inclusive, mediated dialogue geared toward institutional reforms and the promotion of local governance, not only in Anglophone regions but also in the whole country.

A group of children at a South Sudanese refugee camp in Gambella Ethiopia. Photo courtesy of UNICEF Ethiopia via Flickr Commons. 

Historically, the international community’s response to conflict in African countries has been too weak, too little, and sometimes too late, such as the case of the delayed international intervention in the Rwandan Genocide. However, since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, South Sudan has recorded an overwhelming presence of the international community in support of peace and ending the civil war. The question remains then, whether the international community will learn from past mistakes in their efforts to support peace and rebuild South Sudan.

Gambia Street in downtown Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, bustles with traffic. Photo courtesy of David Stanley via Flickr Commons.

Sudan’s reforms are gradual, and the country still faces insurgencies, notably in the south. However, the country’s peace process—partially brokered by Qatar—is ongoing and shows signs of bearing fruit. It was in this spirit that the Obama Administration quietly dropped sanctions against Sudan in its final month in office. As Sudan’s then-speaker of parliament, Ibrahim Ahmad Omar, told me in an interview in Washington D.C., “Sudan can play a role in dealing with terrorism and the flow of refugees from Europe all of these issues.”

Sudanese citizens weigh in on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Musfa, Blue Nile State.  Photo courtesy of the United Nations via Flickr Commons 

On May 22, 2017, President Salva Kiir officially launched the National Dialogue in South Sudan. This National Dialogue process aims to address the complexities of South Sudan’s conflict through discourse that links the national, regional, and grassroots levels in efforts to curb the civil war. The civil war broke out in South Sudan in December 2013, after merely three years of relative peace. Since then, the war has quickly metamorphosed into a complex conflict that includes intense fighting within and between communities in different regions of South Sudan. The conflict is motivated by several underlying political and social-economic factors including ethnic division, resource scarcity, marginalization of groups, and political rivalry mainly between the ruling South Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM) and SPLM-In Opposition. The National Dialogue is a part of an effort employed by the government to firstly confront the causes of the war, and at the same time bring about peace and positive development as the country struggles towards a cease-fire.

Abducted children returned to Ethiopia. Photo courtesy of UNICEF Ethiopia via Flickr Commons. 

The Horn of Africa, and specifically, the borderland regions are areas of increasing criminality. Included in this crime are instances of inter-group child abduction which have become increasingly common along the international border. Most laws focus on parental child abduction, while fewer address abduction of children for criminal purposes. However, insurgents from the Murle people cross the international border and abduct children from the borderland communities of Ethiopia.