Africa Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. For well over a year, Togo’s notoriously fractious opposition managed to stick together. Beginning in August 2017, when thousands of people participated in rallies calling for the ouster of President Faure Gnassingbe, the various factions projected a united front even as the government used lethal force to disperse their supporters, implemented an internet shutdown and went ahead with controversial legislative elections. That unity, however, may now be crumbling. Several parties have broken ranks with the coalition of 14 opposition […]

Moscow's relationship with Sudan is far from new, but Russian activity in Sudan is deeper now, and Russia cannot afford to sacrifice the benefits of having Bashir in its orbit. As protests in Sudan calling for the removal of President Omar al-Bashir enter their fourth month, Russian support for the regime has begun to attract international interest. Much has been written about Russian activity, whether overt or covert, in places like Syria, the Central African Republic and Venezuela. But until now, comparatively little attention has been given to Moscow’s involvement in Sudan, which is a linchpin of Russia’s approach to […]

China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative has the potential to be a win-win for China and for the developing countries in Africa and Eurasia that are involved, but only if it can overcome some major obstacles. Find out more – when you subscribe to World Politics Review. China is using its influence to build a global economic network for trade and development, with itself as the driver. China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative—known as OBOR as well as the Belt and Road Initiative, and unveiled by President Xi Jinping in 2013—has been touted as the blueprint for this new global […]

Two weeks after Cyclone Idai made landfall in Mozambique, unleashing heavy rain and winds of more than 100 mph on the port city of Beira, the scale and precise nature of the devastation is still coming into focus. Receding waters have allowed more stranded people to receive aid, while also revealing more fatalities; as of Wednesday, the official death toll stood at 468 in Mozambique, along with 185 killed in Zimbabwe and 60 in Malawi. Hundreds of thousands of people in southern Africa have been displaced, and the United Nations estimates that nearly 2 million people have been affected by […]

Zimbabwe’s informal mining sector is in the spotlight after an accident at a gold mine killed at least 24 people last month. As many as 70 informal miners were believed to be working inside two abandoned mineshafts near the town of Battlefields, southwest of Harare, when the underground tunnels were flooded by water from a burst dam. Eight miners were rescued but others are unaccounted for and feared dead, as authorities struggled to drain water from the shafts. President Emmerson Mnangagwa officially declared a state of disaster and pledged all available government resources for rescue efforts. According to many mining […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. The gunmen often arrive on market day, surrounding civilians who gather in northern Burkina Faso to buy and sell goods. After detaining groups of men—up to 14 at a time—they drive off. Within minutes, they execute the men, often on the side of the road, close enough for those back at the market to hear the gunshots. It’s a scenario that has played out at least nine times in Burkina Faso in recent months, according to a report released […]

Amid widespread criticism of its response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa five years ago, the World Health Organization took stock of what went wrong. In a report released in 2015 before the outbreak had even ended, its Ebola Interim Assessment Panel urged the WHO to “re-establish its pre-eminence as the guardian of global public health” and to “undergo significant transformation in order to better perform.” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus vowed to act on these recommendations when he ran to become the WHO’s new director-general in 2017, during its first-ever open election campaign, in which the director-general was selected in […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. French President Emmanuel Macron’s latest Africa trip took him to a region where France doesn’t wield much influence. But the themes he stressed over four days in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya this week were familiar, underscoring the priorities of a government that, while unhappy with certain aspects of its role in Africa, has no plans to fundamentally alter it. Macron’s first stop was Djibouti, a former French colony that is home to a French naval base as well as […]

Thousands of supporters of Benin’s political opposition flooded the streets of the country’s largest city, Cotonou, on Monday, bearing flags, vuvuzelas and banners with slogans denouncing the government. But while the country is set to hold legislative elections next month, the rally was not a standard show of support to get out the vote. Rather, its organizers were demanding something more fundamental: that opposition political parties be allowed to participate at all. Because of changes to Benin’s electoral rules, only two parties have met the requirements to field candidates for the polls scheduled for April 28, and both of them […]

In any other country, the news that peaceful demonstrations had forced the incumbent president to drop his unpopular re-election bid would have been a startling announcement. But given Algeria’s political system, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s move to withdraw his candidacy for a fifth presidential term and postpone April’s elections, made public on Monday, was welcomed by protesters as only a good start. Amid a growing protest movement, Algerians are being cautious about Bouteflika’s announcement because of what they call le pouvoir—the shadowy “power” that rules Algeria, made up of an assortment of aging army generals, secret service operatives and party apparatchiks. […]

Are U.N. peacekeeping missions no longer relevant to today’s conflicts? Or do we just need to change the goals? Find out more when you subscribe to World Politics Review (WPR). There were understandably mixed feelings at the United Nations in June, when the organization marked the 70th anniversary of modern U.N. peacekeeping missions. The Security Council sent military observers to the Middle East in 1948 to supervise the end of the first Arab-Israeli war, marking the first of over 70 U.N. missions that have become the organization’s trademark. U.N. officials used this year’s anniversary to honor the efforts of today’s […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about press freedom and safety in various countries around the world. The first documented slaying of a journalist this year took place in Ghana when Ahmed Hussein-Suale, a member of the highly regarded investigative outlet Tiger Eye P.I., was gunned down near his family home in Accra on Jan. 16. Police believe he was assassinated for his journalistic work. In an interview with WPR, Vivian Affoah, a program manager at the Media Foundation for West Africa in Accra, discusses Hussein-Suale’s case, the obstacles that Ghanaian journalists face in their work […]

The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled last week that the United Kingdom must cede control over the Chagos Islands, an Indian Ocean archipelago that was separated from Mauritius several years before Mauritius gained independence in 1968. The 13-1 verdict, while nonbinding, was an embarrassing defeat for the U.K. and a victory for many Chagossians who have sought to return to their homeland since being expelled in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for a U.S. military base on the island of Diego Garcia. In an interview with WPR, Marko Milanovic, a professor of public international law […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Just a month ago, officials in and beyond the Central African Republic were celebrating the signing of a peace deal between the government and 14 armed groups. Though the talks that led to the deal were hardly the first attempt at ending a conflict that dates back to 2012, Marcel Plichta noted in a recent briefing for WPR that the text included “significant concessions made on all sides” and was the first “to emerge from direct dialogue among all […]

Ahead of the elections held late last year in the Democratic Republic of Congo, outgoing President Joseph Kabila sat down with the managing editor of Jeune Afrique for one of several interviews he granted to international outlets during his final weeks in office. At the time, many analysts expected the presidential vote to be rigged in favor of the ruling party’s candidate, and speculated that Kabila, who had been in office for 18 years, would continue to rule from the shadows rather than truly ceding control. Asked about his plans, Kabila told Jeune Afrique that the winner of the election […]

LAGOS, Nigeria—The last time a leader of an opposition party in Nigeria rejected the results of the country’s presidential election, nearly eight years ago, hundreds of people were killed and tens of thousands displaced in the ensuing violence. Now there are fears of a similar scenario unfolding as Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president long tainted by corruption allegations, heads to court to challenge the outcome of the Feb. 23 election that President Muhammadu Buhari easily won. Atiku, as Abubakar is widely known in Nigeria, lost by nearly 4 million votes, with 11,262,978 against Buhari’s 15,191,847. He and his supporters […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Algeria’s ailing, 81-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, announced his candidacy for a fifth term last month in the quietest manner possible, issuing a statement to the state news agency. Given his health problems, which have kept him largely out of the public eye in recent years, analysts speculated that Bouteflika was incapable of launching his re-election bid any other way. The response by Algerians, however, has been anything but quiet. In recent days, they’ve taken to the streets in the […]