Africa Up Close

Downtown Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Photo courtesy of the UK Department for International Development via Flickr Creative Commons.

Ethiopia, with 110 million people, is scheduled to hold a national election in 2020. This follows a pivotal year for Ethiopia, which in 2018 began a political transition marked by new dynamics in the relationship between the government and the people, including the opposition, private sector, and civil society. With the opening of the political space and the return of several opposition political parties and armed groups, the Ethiopian political landscape has witnessed dramatic changes over the last one-and-a-half years.

Voters outside of polling stations during the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s 2018 general elections. Photo courtesy of MONUSCO via Flickr Commons.

The “Sun City Inter-Congolese Dialogue”—the peace process that, in 2003, ended five years of civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—identified the legitimacy crisis of the country’s leaders as a key driver of the conflict.[i] Governance legitimacy, which is critical for peace and stability in the fragile DRC, is again in question following the election of December 30, 2018 that many observers saw as deeply flawed and troubling.

A farmer waters his mango farm in Boromo, Burkina Faso. Photo courtesy of CIFOR via Flickr Creative Commons.

Since the coming into force of the Paris Agreement in 2016, 50 of Africa’s 54 countries have signed and ratified it, while the remaining four countries have only signed it (Angola, Eritrea, Libya, and South Sudan). Scientifically, it is common knowledge that Africa is the continent most vulnerable to climate change. Non-climatic factors—such as economic strength, access to technology, and social policies—are increasingly influencing African countries’ vulnerability. Moreover, some parts of the continent are exposed to climate change more severely than others, and their level of resilience and adaptability differ. For instance, the probability of drought is higher in Southern Africa, desertification is a threat for West Africa, and East Africa faces more flooding. Despite the heterogeneous consequences, three areas of climate impact are critical for most African countries: water stress, food security, and human health. Addressing these challenges requires a concerted effort at the continental level to streamline and coordinate climate policies and actions, improve weather-related information-gathering, and address chronic funding shortfalls for climate change adaptation.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and U.S. President Donald Trump alongside First Lady Margaret Kenyatta and First Lady Melania Trump during a visit at the White House. Photo courtesy of The White House via Flickr Creative Commons.

Hardly had South African President Cyril Ramaphosa settled into his chairmanship of the African Union (AU) and his compatriot, Wamkele Mene, assumed leadership as Secretary-General (SG) of the fledgling and still largely aspirational African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement before both began to face a baptism by fire in the form of the United States’ and Kenya’s intent to pursue their own bilateral free trade agreement—a formidable challenge to the AfCFTA. How Ramaphosa as 2020 AU Chair and Mene as AfCFTA’s first SG confront this bilateralist challenge to continental trade integration will determine much about the AfCFTA’s future as Africa’s flagship for achieving global economic power status within the world’s fast-shifting geo-economic/strategic landscape.

Migrants off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy. Photo courtesy of Vito Manzari via Flickr Creative Commons.

In 2014, a significant number of refugees began pouring into the European Union (EU), fleeing from Africa and the Middle East to escape political conflict, war, famine, and lack of economic opportunity. Many of these refugees entered Italy and Greece by land and sea. Reaching its peak in 2015, the crisis generated over one million migrants in that year alone. Europe’s handling of the crisis was aggravated by various misconceptions, misguided policies, and internal politics. Although the crisis has now abated somewhat, the next large-scale displacement of people is inevitable given global political, economic, and climate challenges. Yet lessons learned from the most recent European migration crisis could help to mitigate the next such crisis.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Isaias Afwerki photographed together. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has ruled the country since 1991. The Front has brought commendable economic growth and development for more than two decades. Specifically, improvements in health, education, electricity, road, telecommunication, and other infrastructures are proudly mentioned. Nonetheless, the party has shortfalls in governance and democratization. There were problems associated with human rights protection and governance, including the prevalence of maladministration and corruption, narrowing of the political space of the country, and the unfair distribution of resources and power. These led to political protests across the country in 2016, 2017, and 2018.

 A Nigerian citizen using his iPhone to connect with the internet. Photo courtesy of ARipstra (WMF) via Wikimedia Commons. 

Social media has emerged as an indispensable tool for accelerated globalization and development in the 21st century. It has created spaces for more interconnectedness among individuals and states. Like other regions in the world, in West Africa, increased internet penetration, mobile services, laptops, and other technological gadgets, have increased interactions and amplified people’s voices in the governance landscape. While social media has become an instrument for social, political, and economic development, it also provides an avenue for potential threats to regional security. Social media has become a channel for terrorist groups and transnational criminal networks to scale-up their operations in the region. However, key stakeholders from within the states and regional security apparatuses have paid little attention to social media threats and their impact on regional stability, focusing only on traditional military response strategies. This missing link continues to undermine the effectiveness of resilience strategies to mitigate threats to security in the region.

President Kagame leading a discussion during the 9th National Dialogue at Parliament. Photo courtesy of the Government of Rwanda via Flickr Commons. 

Young techies are a growing sight on the streets of Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, where not long ago volunteers from an alphabet soup of development organizations once dominated. Indeed, the country’s growth story borders on the miraculous. Since the 1994 genocide, which led to an estimated 800,000 deaths and decimation of its national infrastructure, the Rwandan economy has grown exponentially.

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.

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.