East Africa Archive

If Mozambique has attracted international headlines over the past year, it has been mainly for the return to armed conflict in central Mozambique by the ex-rebels Renamo as well as for new discoveries of world-class gas reserves in the country’s offshore waters. But while the results of Mozambique’s municipal elections, which took place on Nov. 20, have not attracted the same level of international attention, they are an important indicator of the health of political pluralism in a country touted as a post-conflict success story with impressive GDP growth. The election results will influence how the Mozambique government deals with […]

Lists of African success stories do not tend to include Chad. More than half of the country’s citizens live below the poverty line. According to data collected by the United Nations, most have spent less than two years at school. From 2008 to 2010, the European Union and U.N. deployed peacekeepers to the country’s unstable eastern border with Sudan. At one point, rebels managed to assault the capital, N’Djamena. Yet this year, Western powers and the U.N. have turned to Chad to help manage new crises in Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR). The supposed basket case has suddenly […]

The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) took a turn toward peace today as M23 rebels reportedly gave up their 20-month insurgency. The Congolese army, re-engineered after a humiliating defeat by the rebels last year, pushed the M23 out of its remaining strongholds with help from a precedent-setting U.N. intervention brigade and an intensive new focus on the conflict by the U.S. and other international actors. But as Anthony Gambino wrote in a WPR briefing in July, ending the M23’s fight is only one step in a much larger process: The key question now is whether the international community has […]