In the two years she has been in power, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has implemented a series of domestic political reforms, while consolidating her power base within the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party. Her reform agenda has been a welcome transformation. But for now, it has yet to be institutionalized.
A major theme of this year’s G-7 summit was the stated efforts by the rich, industrialized nations that make up the group to engage with the Global South. But that did not translate to substantive outcomes, as the Global South’s concerns took a back seat to the West’s geopolitical competition with an axis led by China and Russia.
Ghana’s latest IMF bailout was necessitated by a combination of global shocks and domestic factors, primarily a spending spree by President Nana Akufo-Addo’s administration. Akufo-Addo campaigned for the presidency in 2016 on the promise of change. Seven years on, change has indeed come. But it has not been in the promised direction.
New tensions in South Africa’s relationship with the U.S. emerged last week when Washington’s ambassador to Pretoria accused the country of providing arms to Russia despite Pretoria’s stated nonalignment in the war in Ukraine. The dispute could have implications for Washington’s “reset” of its relations with African countries.
Since 2017, Cameroon has been engulfed in a bloody civil war, forcing more than 1 million people to flee their homes. Diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict have repeatedly failed. Now divisions among the armed separatist movement fighting the government risk escalating the conflict, raising further obstacles to reaching peace.
Liberia is scheduled to hold its next general election in October, a vote that will determine the country’s next president and its national lawmakers. Amid domestic challenges, as well as a growing fear of democratic backsliding in the region, the upcoming polls could have major domestic and regional ramifications.
The commanders of armed groups in African countries are often portrayed as erratic tyrants with little understanding of the world—in both Hollywood films and in news coverage. Yet as clashes in Sudan escalate into civil war, it is becoming increasingly clear that the geopolitical sophistication of such warlords has been underestimated.
Three visits to Nairobi this week by major dignitaries is the latest indication of a recognition by global actors of Africa’s increasing importance in international affairs—and Kenya’s aspiration to be a major voice for Africa in global affairs. But Nairobi must now demonstrate its readiness to assume such a responsibility.
Few conflicts have been predicted by so many observers, so far in advance, as the fighting that erupted on April 15 in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. Almost every external and domestic powerbroker that has exerted influence over Sudan’s development over the past four decades shares in the blame for this devastating cycle of violence.
Zimbabwe is expected to hold its second general election this year since a military coup ousted dictator Robert Mugabe in 2017. But while Mugabe’s ouster gave way to cautious optimism about a new dawn in the country’s post-independence affairs, the hope for a more peaceful and prosperous Zimbabwe has all but evaporated.
The China that is reemerging onto the world stage after its multiyear pandemic shutdown is very different than the one that launched the Belt and Road Initiative a decade ago. Beijing seems interested in reshaping its role as an international development partner. The results of those efforts could transform global development itself.
A controversy over a Netflix docudrama about Cleopatra escalated last week, when the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities asserted that Cleopatra was fair-skinned. The statement capped two weeks of debate about her ethnicity, after Netflix cast a mixed-race British actress in the leading role for “Queen Cleopatra.”
On March 21, nine Algerian migrants died when the boat taking them to Italy capsized in the Mediterranean Sea. The tragedy highlights the cost of migration, which is not limited to lives lost. The highly publicized reports of migrant deaths have increasingly shaped a vision of migration as a symptom of a broader social tragedy.
On June 24, Sierra Leone’s voters will go to the polls to elect their next president and parliamentary representatives, with the economy at the forefront of their minds. Indeed, despite ethno-regional loyalties that have historically shaped voting patterns, concerns over the economy are likely to determine the election’s outcome.