Africa Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. A coup attempt in Ethiopia’s Amhara region last weekend left dozens of people dead and prompted a security crackdown as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed attempts to maintain his reformist agenda in the face of this latest, and deadliest, challenge to his administration. On Saturday, forces aligned with Brig. Gen. Asaminew Tsige launched simultaneous attacks on the region’s police headquarters, president’s office and ruling party center in the regional capital, Bahir Dar, killing the governor, his adviser and the attorney general, according to […]

GULU and KAMPALA, Uganda—Earlier this month, a family with a five-year-old boy left the Democratic Republic of the Congo and entered Uganda. They skirted the official crossing point, using an unmarked footpath. The family had attended the burial of a relative in Congo, who had died of Ebola. Since the Ebola epidemic in Congo began in August 2018, more than 1,500 people have perished, making it the largest Ebola outbreak ever in Congo and the second-largest on record. The virus has been notoriously difficult to treat and contain, due to Congo’s instability and its porous borders. Unrest in Congo has […]

BAMAKO, Mali—“The terrorists are quick,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters after a summit with the leaders of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso in Ouagadougou in May. “This is why we have to be quicker, so that we can beat them.” What happens in the Sahel, the vast sub-Saharan region of Northern Africa, “is not only the responsibility of the region, but is also a European responsibility,” Merkel added in what was for her some uncharacteristic alarmism. “If chaos gains the upper hand here—something we want to prevent—other areas would be impacted.” The sight of Merkel standing side […]

Thousands of people gathered in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, earlier this month to protest against a faltering economy and widespread corruption in the government. They blame President George Weah, a former football star who took office last year amid heightened expectations. Since then, corruption has continued to run rampant and economic conditions have only worsened. In an email interview with WPR, Elizabeth Donnelly, deputy head of the Africa Program at Chatham House in London, discusses the recent demonstrations and whether there is anything Weah can do to regain his “man of the people” image. World Politics Review: How significant was the […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. The death of Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, in a Cairo courtroom Monday has put another spotlight on the repressive regime that replaced him in a 2013 military coup. Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian government has imprisoned thousands of dissidents and members of Morsi’s now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, while also cracking down on freedom of expression and tightening its control over the media. True to form, Sisi’s government even restricted how journalists could report on Morsi’s death this week. […]

On June 3, the eve of the 30th anniversary of China’s bloody dispersal of demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, Sudan’s military authorities launched their own massacre of unarmed pro-democracy protesters. State-linked paramilitaries attacked a peaceful sit-in in the capital, Khartoum, claiming, without proof, that it had been infiltrated by drug dealers and criminals. More than 100 people were killed, according to doctors’ groups in Khartoum. Scores of bodies were dumped into the Nile River, women were reportedly raped and hospital staff attacked as they tended to the injured. That the atrocities echoed those conducted in Darfur for more than a […]

Every expert on transnational jihadism knew that eradicating the Islamic State’s self-declared “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq would not lead to the end of this brutal, malignant movement. Since it had become as much an ideology and a brand as an actual organization, holding physical territory and establishing a proto-state were important but not vital for the Islamic State, at least in the near term. In response to its battlefield defeats in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has been dispersing, keeping its brand alive with hopes that someday it can take another shot at creating a state. For now, […]

ASMARA, Eritrea—The streets of Eritrea’s capital in the runup to this year’s Independence Day celebrations on May 24 were unusually quiet. But cafes and restaurants were full of many Eritreans from the diaspora who had traveled back to mark 28 years of national independence. “I come every year on this occasion,” an Eritrean living in Germany told me, “to celebrate my country.” Most of the people I know who put up with life in Eritrea the whole year, however, do not feel like celebrating. For them, the holiday is a day off work that they will spend at home, in […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. With the massacre of at least 35 civilians this week in a small village in central Mali, including 24 children, the country’s ongoing cycle of ethnic violence appears to be escalating. A militant Islamist uprising that began in 2012 exacerbated existing tensions between the region’s pastoralist Dogon communities and the semi-nomadic Fulani herders, in the form of tit-for-tat killings between the two ethnic groups. The scale and intensity of those attacks are increasingly on the rise. Dogon militants appeared to massacre Fulani […]

President Peter Mutharika was sworn in for a second term in Malawi late last month, but opposition protesters are challenging the legitimacy of his recent reelection, based on widespread allegations of vote-rigging. Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, has been rocked over the past two weeks by steady protests that have included demonstrators storming government buildings to demand that opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera, who finished a close second in the election, be sworn in as president instead. Last Thursday, police used teargas to disperse a rally outside the headquarters of the opposition Malawi Congress Party, which Chakwera heads. That clash occurred while Chakwera […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of anongoing seriesabout education policy in various countries around the world. Thousands of teachers went on strike and marched for better working conditions in Morocco in recent months. The waves of demonstrations, which occasionally turned violent as police used water cannons to disperse the protesters, have since subsided as teachers have returned to classes. But there is potential for further unrest if the government doesn’t meet the teachers’ key demand: being accorded full civil servant status. In an email interview with WPR, Aboubakr Jamai, dean of the School of Business and International Relations at […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. On Tuesday, the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Sudanese security forces staged their own brutal crackdown on demonstrators in the capital, Khartoum. More than 100 protesters are estimated to have been killed and many of their bodies dumped in the Nile, while paramilitary forces injured and raped hundreds more, according to a Sudanese doctor’s organization. The violence apparently began with an early-morning raid by the paramilitary Rapid Security Forces on a protest camp that has been stationed outside the military’s […]

After my first book came out in 2004, I received a surprise phone call from an assistant to former United States Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, asking if I would meet with him to talk about Africa. Sitting together in his executive’s office at Citibank’s headquarters in Manhattan, he averred that if Al Gore were to win that year’s presidential election, he could return to a leading position in government, and he wanted to know if there was one initiative Washington could take to engage with Africa, what would I suggest? This was a tall order, not least because I had […]