This Week in Africa
February 4, 2022
Into Africa is back. The Carnegie Africa Program and the African Politics Conference Group are now on Twitter. And Ufahamu Africa has a newsletter. Here is the week in Africa:
Quote of the week
“For my Ghana, His Excellency President Nana Akufo-Addo and I have identified digitisation and automation, the so-called ‘fourth industrial revolution’, as the best way of improving rural opportunity and securing our urban areas.” – Ghana’s Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia
Coups in West Africa
Burkina Faso experienced another coup last week. There was also an attempted coup in Guinea-Bissau early this week. One challenge is that Jihadists are creating turmoil across the region. China is drifting away from its allies on military coups. Biden needs to do more than just talk about democracy in Africa. The US trained the coup leaders. ECOWAS suspends Burkina’s membership after the coup. Ghana’s president made a strong case for the return to civilian rule. This site provides useful graphics and data on the global instances of coups.
Sean Jacobs wonders: Are strongmen and liberal democracy our only choices? Lidet Tadesse asks: Where is the African Union during these coups? Ruth Maclean wonders: Why now? Portia Crowe provides this take. Maggie Dwyer explains how Burkina’s coup leaders capitalized on grievances within the military ranks. Nick Westcott emphasizes these four factors, including the inability of the state to provide security and work with international actors. Dr. Lassane Ouedraogo explains what’s behind the coup, especially the president’s inability to govern a destabilized state. And Howard French is clear: Don’t write off democracy in Africa just yet.
Africa in 2022
SIPRI’s Issaka Souaré asks: What does 2022 have in store for Africa? GIGA’s Julia Grauvogel and Christian von Soest outline Ten Things to Watch in 2022. And The Frame (“We are migrants, we are urbanites, we are believers”) provides its ten things to look out for in 2022.
Ethiopia’s civil war
Economic sanctions won’t bring peace to Ethiopia. Nearly 40 percent of Tigrayans face “extreme lack of food.” An estimated 5,000 people have died from the blockade. Eritrea’s involvement in Tigray could backfire. Some ethnic Tigrayans who work for Ethiopian Airways are fleeing the country on their planes. Here is what we know about the use of drone strikes in the conflict. This is how the Ethiopian government is manipulating the media. Laetitia Bader explains what the international community can do to prevent more massacres. Peace still feels elusive to many residents in Tigray.
Struggle for rights and freedom
Sudan’s resistance committees take center stage in the fight for civilian rule. This is a great portrait of Ghanaian artist and LGBT+ activist Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi who is fighting against the government’s criminalization of homosexuality. Patrick Gathara discusses Charles Njonjo’s legacy and the humanization of public monsters. Africans expect their governments to do more, especially with respect to basic services like providing water and sanitation. Meet the floating pastors of the DR Congo. CDD-Ghana has this new report on the rising price of politics in the country.
How to make sure that IDPs can participate in elections in West Africa? Who will succeed Nana Akufo-Addo as the NPP flagbearer in 2024? How are African armies fighting the COVID pandemic?
African international relations
The African Union—Twenty years on. Leading Democrats introduce the Prosper Africa Act. Learn more about the revised agreement on the African Union mission in Somalia. This piece explains evolving France-Africa relations. Is there progress in Somaliland’s quest for recognition? Does democracy improve public goods provision?
Security and instability
There are new calls to resolve the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon. New evidence shows that soldiers went on a rampage in the North-West region in December 2021. Killings by Islamist militia in the DRC rose by almost 50% in 2021. At least 60 people were killed in a militia attack.
Africa’s rapid urbanization
Ghana pushes back on the “scourge of urban warfare.” Learn more about Talent City, the charter city in Lagos that Iyinoluwa Aboyeji hopes will succeed. Remember, Silicon Valley’s next big thing is building cities. This looks interesting: “Trembling city: Policing Freetown’s war-peace transition.” Nigeria continues its assault on informal settlements in Port Harcourt. BRT on small streets.
This is a fascinating article (with neat photos) of Senegal’s shift to recycling plastic and its impact on livelihoods. Kenyan cities (and all cities, really) need to match sewerage with population growth. This is how gender impacts transport access in Uganda. A high-voltage power cable fell in a Kinshasa market, killing at least 26 people. Learn more about the emission impacts of electrifying motorcycle taxis in Kampala. Accra, a beautiful city!
Check out Isaac Samuel’s article on Morocco, Songhai, Bornu and the quest to create an African empire to rival the Ottomans. CFP: African Infrastructural Futures. And this is a good blog series on the transition to an urban world.
All politics is local
In Tuesday’s newsletter, I discussed how all politics is local. Read more about what local power tells us about national politics. I suggest that who has power in Africa’s local spaces – especially in big cities at the grassroots – will likely shape national politics well into the future. I draw from four examples from South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, and Nigeria.
Research corner
Read this: Oumar Ba’s “The Europeans and Americans Don’t Know Africa’: Of Translation, Interpretation, and Extraction.” This article examines counterterrorism in Nigeria and its impact on security. Jess Auerbach’s article examines ideological contestation in Angola’s emerging higher education sector. Check out Florian Krampe’s article that explores UNEP’s Environmental Cooperation for Peacebuilding Program. This article analyzes memories of the Belgian Blue Helmets in Rwanda. Take a look at this set of essays on ecologies of war. This article has a good title: “Imagine dying from an overseas disease, when you do not even own a passport.” Philippe Frowd examines the politics of non-state security provision in Burkina Faso. This is a very important article on enduring corruption and organizational hierarchy in the Kenyan police service.
Mariel Reiss’s book is out soon: Constructing the East African Community: Diffusion from African and European Regional Organizations. The Work of Hospitals: Global Medicine in Local Cultures looks good. Check outDane Degenstein’s The War on Drugs in Tanzania: Prohibition and Punishment.
China and Africa
What does China and Africa’s partnership mean for the world? Do Africans think they’ve borrowed too much from China? Chinese trawlers leave Sierra Leone fishermen suffering. China built a toll road in the DR Congo that went straight to the ruling family’s home. Kenya refuses to release the loan contracts for its Chinese-built railway.
The week in development
According to the Afrobarometer, over the past decade, perceived legitimacy of taxation has dropped by an average of 10 percentage points. This is worrisome. KOKO aims to replace charcoal in the cooking fuel market. This is why The Gambia should fast-track gender quotas for women. Learn more about divestment from oil companies in the Niger Delta. 2022 could be a boom year for Nigerian retail investment apps. Norma Altshuler discusses how governments can use better, faster, and cheaper evidence to improve people’s lives. Uganda’s nightlife is roaring back. Nigerian startups are spending millions on celebrity endorsements. South Africa’s census will start with the homeless.
What is Nigeria’s government for? What does Africapitalism actually mean? Has South Africa’s economy been structurally transformed? Can Universal Basic Income help prepare countries for shocks like pandemics (evidence from Kenya)? Has Africa passed the worst of COVID? Alice Evans asks Nwando Achebe: What were gender relations like in pre-colonial Africa?
And Astrid Haas provides this excellent thread on knowledge production in the online class “African History through the Lens of Economics.”
Africa and the environment
The West is accused of climate hypocrisy as emissions dwarf those of poor countries. This is how climate change is causing insecurity among vulnerable groups in Kenya. Kheira Tarif examines climate change and violent conflict in Africa. Morocco’s phosphates cache eases food crisis. Storm Ana’s devastation in southern Africa highlights need for early warning. The storm shows the reality of the climate crisis. A drought threatens the Horn of Africa. This post discusses how to put Africa on the path toward universal electricity access. Learn more about unintended consequences of climate change mitigation for African river basins. Kenyan farmers suffer losses as climate change grips.
African Politics Conference Group
Come to the APCG Online Colloquium on February 17 from 9-10 am EDT for Réginas Ndayiragije’s paper, “Presidents, ministers and governors: The evolution of ethnic power-sharing in Burundi at critical junctures.” Sign up here.
Daily life
Dami Ajayi argues that 2021 was the best year for Afrobeats in 20 years. It’s time for jollof. And beans. And fish (with teeth). I’d like this beer, please. Learn more about the musical connections between Cuba and Mali. This looks fascinating: Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography. These scarves.
AFCON celebrations! Team Senegal!
All the best,
Jeff and Phil