Africa Up Close

At the end of 2021, the Ethiopian Parliament adopted a law establishing a National Dialogue Commission. International and regional diplomats expressed appreciation for the action, indicating that it is a good step towards resolving Ethiopia’s political problems and ending the ongoing conflicts in the country. A principled national dialogue could restore a measure of stability allowing for longer term efforts to address ethnic polarization and intercommunal intolerance to commence. Such a national dialogue must encompass a broad range of stakeholders in all three phases—preparation, process, and implementation—in order for it to succeed. However, there are concerning issues that should be considered before it is too late in the preparatory phase, as the approach taken will influence the ultimate legitimacy of a national dialogue.

“My umbilical cord is buried in South Sudan, and although I am disabled, I want to go back and build my country,” declares Mary, who has lived in Uganda’s Nyumanzi refugee settlement since 2013, when conflict broke out in newly-independent South Sudan. For her and many South Sudanese refugee women living in Uganda, the return home is eagerly anticipated. This goal hinges on the implementation of the 2018 Revitalized Agreement for the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS), which provides a roadmap for an inclusive, united, peaceful and prosperous South Sudan. Similarly, these refugee women are intent on contributing to peacebuilding, unity, and their nation’s recovery as they prepare to return. The case of South Sudanese women living in refugee settlements in the West Nile region of Uganda highlights the value of including refugee women in efforts to build and sustain peace, and their potential to be part of the solution in their countries of origin.

The Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) shows that among young women aged 20–24 years, 40.3 percent were married before the legal age of 18 while 14.1 percent were married before the age of 15. Of girls and women aged 15–49 years in Ethiopia, 65 percent have experienced FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) in various degrees.[i] These statistics rank Ethiopia as having the largest absolute number of FGM cases and the third highest rate of child marriage in eastern and southern Africa.[ii] The same demographic survey shows that a third of women aged 15–49 had experienced either physical or sexual violence.[iii]

This blog was originally posted on NewSecurityBeat, a blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center.

Security conditions in the Sahel are rapidly deteriorating. Since 2016, the region has witnessed a 16-fold increase in terrorist attacks. In Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, 10.5 million people are facing starvation, and with climate-related disasters increasing and intensifying in the region, food insecurity is projected to rise. Against this backdrop, rapid population growth is outpacing governments’ ability to provide access to basic services. These pressures have transformed the central Sahel into the epicenter of a forced displacement crisis, with dire long-term and global humanitarian consequences that reverberate well beyond the region’s borders.

Rebecca, a 28-year-old South Sudanese woman living in the Nyumanzi settlement of Uganda’s Adjumani district, was at the borehole when she first heard the news of a total lockdown. Home to nearly 1.6 million refugees, Uganda had closed its schools and suspended all gatherings, movement, weekly markets, and non-essential businesses to curb COVID-19 transmission. Like the other women fetching water, Rebecca was afraid of the new virus and how quickly it could spread across the refugee settlement. However, within a few weeks their fears had changed. Rebecca and other refugee women peace mediators, who regularly resolve or refer conflict cases in the community, had received several reports of domestic violence, defilement of out-of-school girls, and family disputes over dwindling food rations during lockdown. Local council leaders and local courts were not able to take or hear cases. Refugee women could not mediate conflicts or follow up on reports of violence as this was not considered an essential service.

This blog was originally posted on NewSecurityBeat, a blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center.

Deteriorating security in Ethiopia, a country W.E.B. Dubois once described as where “the sunrise of human culture took place,” is deeply concerning. The last few months have seen a dramatic involution for a country that was once a poster child for sustainable development. The conflict between the government and rebel forces in Tigray is not just a matter of regional security, but a significant blow to the world’s efforts to fight climate change.

The long fight against malaria has hit a turning point and a new sense of hope has arrived, as the World Health Organization approved the first malaria vaccine on October 6, 2021. Malaria is a vector-borne, life-threatening disease which occurs most commonly in tropical and subtropical areas in the world. These areas are prone to the spread of malaria due to an elevated number of mosquitos that carry the malaria disease, weather conditions that allow for transmission to occur year-round, and the low socio-economic stability of these countries that limit efforts to reduce the transmission.

This blog was originally posted on NewSecurityBeat, a blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center.

Thirty-four years ago, Burkina Faso’s president, Thomas Sankara, was murdered. Only now are his alleged assassins on trial. Had he survived, the arid, landlocked country of more than 20 million people might well have taken a far different path to development.

This blog was originally posted on NewSecurityBeat, a blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center.

Secretary of State Blinken is right to focus on climate change and democracy during his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa. At the top of his and everyone else’s mind should be the question: will democratic backsliding in countries like Benin make it more difficult to deal with the effects of climate change? Even more worrisome: will it worsen conflict hotspots, such as the West African Sahel, where climate change is playing a role? All eyes should be on coastal West Africa as countries such as Benin deal with violent insecurity and climate pressure creeping down from the Sahel. My ongoing research in Benin suggests that the country’s democratic local institutions, despite all their faults, are the country’s best defense against the breakdown in rural governance that has befallen Mali and neighboring Burkina Faso. 

The riots that broke out across South Africa in July, 2021, leaving nearly 350 people dead, marked the worst violence in the country since the end of apartheid in 1994. The immediate trigger of the unrest—former President Jacob Zuma’s jailing for contempt of court amid sprawling corruption charges—belied a much deeper cause fueling the violence: inequality and a lack of opportunity for black South Africans. Though dubbed the “rainbow nation,” the legacy of apartheid in South Africa remains strong, with whites still possessing vastly disproportionate economic influence. As recently as 2016, more than 90 percent of wealth in South Africa was controlled by 10 percent of the population—who were mostly white.