Africa Archive

International conflict management is not necessarily a rewarding occupation for people who have neat and orderly minds. Well-made plans tend to fall apart in fast-moving crises. As I noted in a chapter in a book on the Security Council published earlier this year, the recent history of United Nations peace operations is basically a story of “one damn thing after another.” U.N. forces have repeatedly been caught off-guard by upsurges in violence and entangled in intractable struggles that they can help mitigate but cannot resolve. This is not only true for the blue helmets. In the United States, analysts once […]

Looking back on the past year, it would seem from merely scanning the headlines that the world is becoming a deadlier, more violent place. The year began with a series of bloody massacres by the Nigerian terrorist/insurgent group Boko Haram, which has become the deadliest such group in the world. Next came the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks in Paris, after which the violence seemingly continued without pause. The Sanaa mosque bombing in Yemen killed 142 people; the al-Shabaab attack on a university in Kenya took another 147 lives; the massacre perpetrated by the self-declared Islamic State in Kobani, […]

According to virtually all participants and observers, Burkina Faso’s election on Nov. 29 was the most democratic and competitive in its history. The crowds of voters and party workers who celebrated in the streets cheered the winner, President-elect Roch Marc Christian Kabore. But they also applauded the electoral process itself, coming as it did after nearly three decades of former President Blaise Compaore’s autocratic rule and a year and a half of exceptional turbulence that saw both his ouster in a popular insurrection and a failed coup attempt by his military supporters. For many Burkinabe, the advent of a freely […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of corruption and various countries’ efforts to combat it. Last month, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta called corruption a national security threat and announced a series of measures to help in the fight against corruption. In an email interview, Samuel Kimeu, the executive director of Transparency International-Kenya, discussed corruption in Kenya. WPR: How big of an issue is corruption politically in Kenya, and what are the obstacles to reform? Samuel Kimeu: Corruption is a big issue in Kenya for the general public, government and the private sector. […]

People who write about international politics inevitably make a lot of incorrect predictions. It is sometimes useful to look back and ask why our prognostications were wrong. At the start of this year, I asked, “Where will international stabilization forces intervene in 2015?” My best guesses were Ukraine, Nigeria, Libya and Syria. There has been much talk about deploying peacekeepers to these war zones over the ensuing 12 months, but markedly less action. In retrospect, it seems clear that governments and international organizations have taken a cautious approach to mounting new missions in high-risk environments in 2015. But there are […]

Last week, thousands of protesters took to the streets of South Africa’s major cities, demanding that President Jacob Zuma step down. Controversy has mounted over his Dec. 9 decision to sack the country’s widely respected finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, who he subsequently replaced with an unpopular former mayor. The shakeup immediately sent shockwaves through South Africa’s economy and the rand, the country’s currency, falling. That prompted Zuma to rescind the initial nomination and instead appoint Pravin Gordhan, a well-regarded former finance minister who served from 2009-2014, assuaging some fears. Many saw Zuma’s decision to remove Nene as strategically shortsighted, but […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of corruption and various countries’ efforts to combat it. Earlier this month, Tanzanian President John Magufuli fired the head of the ports authority along with several high-ranking officials in the Transport Ministry for their alleged corruption. In an email interview, Semkae Kilonzo, the coordinator at Policy Forum, a network of nongovernmental policy organizations in Tanzania, discussed the country’s fight against corruption. WPR: How big of a problem is corruption in Tanzania, and in what areas—including which levels of government—is its impact most felt? Semkae Kilonzo: Corruption, […]

More than any other outside power, France is currently investing the most military and political resources to combat terrorist groups in West Africa and the wider Sahel. Driven by a perception of a clear and present danger, French security policy in the region has undergone a fundamental shift in recent years, but not in the direction that many policymakers in Paris had hoped at the beginning of the century. Instead of slowly decreasing its military presence and political involvement in its former colonies’ internal affairs, France has stepped up both amid new realities and interests. Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian […]

In recent years, Algeria has focused more of its foreign policy on its immediate neighborhood, both in North Africa and farther south in the Sahel. Its busy foreign minister, Ramtane Lamamra, has been active in mediation efforts in Mali, Libya and Tunisia, earning plaudits from Western partners. Some officials and observers have seized on this foreign policy outreach as a purported “awakening” of Algerian diplomacy in Africa, a revitalization of the country’s historically strong role in continental affairs. Lamamra himself highlighted Algeria’s important regional efforts in an interview in October with the French daily Le Monde. But has Algeria’s Africa […]

Last month, clashes between the Congolese army, backed by U.N. peacekeepers, and the Islamist Ugandan rebel group the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) left at least 30 dead in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In an email interview, Daniel Fahey, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, discussed the ADF and its role in the DRC. WPR: What is the current size and geographic reach of the ADF, and what are the group’s objectives and grievances? Daniel Fahey: The estimates of the ADF’s size in late 2015 range from 100 to 250 combatants. The ADF’s footprint […]

Across Africa, there is renewed interest in strengthening infrastructure. In November, the African Development Bank held its “first-ever Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa Week” in Abidjan, the economic capital of Cote d’Ivoire. The conference emphasized infrastructure, especially transportation and communications, on the continent. Infrastructure development is important not just to economies, but also to politics. In Africa’s two most populous countries, Nigeria and Ethiopia, the politics of infrastructure look very different, but the stakes are equally high for ruling parties. In Nigeria, questions of infrastructure relate to core dilemmas in Nigerian politics and policy. Since returning to civilian rule […]

With just two and a half months to go before presidential and legislative elections in Niger, the political climate is turning increasingly sour. The tensions ahead of February’s vote broke into the open last month when former Prime Minister Hama Amadou—the leader of the opposition Moden Lumana party who has declared his plans to stand as a presidential candidate next year—was arrested on his arrival in Niamey. Amadou had fled into exile in Paris in August 2014 after being accused of involvement in a baby-trafficking scandal. He has repeatedly claimed that the attempts to charge him in connection with the […]

Current ambitions to stabilize and reshape fragile states are of very recent origin. Most of the techniques and tactics that are now fashionable were unheard of a decade ago, and virtually none of them predate the end of the Cold War. As author and researcher Graeme Smith has noted, that makes international development and security assistance akin to pre-modern medicine, “when the human body was poorly understood and doctors prescribed bloodletting, or drilled into skulls to treat madness.” Of late, the patients of international intervention have not been doing well. In late 2012, a military coup in Mali made a […]