East Africa Archive

After he stepped down as the U.N. special envoy for Syria in May, Lakhdar Brahimi was asked what he thought would become of the country. “It will become another Somalia,” he replied. “It will not be divided, as many have predicted. It’s going to be a failed state, with warlords all over the place.” As early as 2012, Brahimi began issuing warnings of the “Somalization” of Syria. While analysts following Syria acknowledge it may not yet be Somalia, “Brahimi’s warning is timely and appropriate,” according to Peter Neumann, professor of security studies at the Department of War Studies at King’s […]

In late May, the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab staged two major attacks on the same Saturday, striking Mogadishu’s parliament building as well as pulling off the first-ever suicide attack in neighboring Djibouti. In one day, the group demonstrated not only its continuing ability to strike the heavily defended heart of the Somali capital, but also to reach new targets. The attacks, which killed at least 10 people in Somalia and at least three in Djibouti, occurred after weeks of sustained global focus on Nigeria’s Boko Haram, which kidnapped some 276 schoolgirls in mid-April. They raised the question of whether, amid […]

Fostering agricultural growth is commonly seen as a core strategy for overall development in Africa, particularly for reducing poverty, because the majority of Africa’s poor are largely dependent on farming. Therefore, different African governments have embarked on developing and implementing agriculture-led development strategies. Yet agricultural productivity and growth lags behind overall economic performance in Africa, and the continent’s volatile agricultural performance has fallen further behind the agricultural performance of other developing regions of the world. A little over a decade ago, in July 2003, at the African Union (AU) summit held in Maputo, Mozambique, African heads of state reaffirmed the […]