Southern Africa Archive

On March 24, Ansar al-Sunna, a militant group linked to the Islamic State, launched a bloody attack on the coastal town of Palma, in northern Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, leaving at least 61 dead and scores more unaccounted for. The assault, which lasted more than a week and took place near a major liquefied natural gas plant under construction by the French energy giant Total, made global headlines and shined a spotlight on a fast-growing insurgency. Though the group has since been pushed out of Palma by Mozambican security forces, the attack highlights the danger should the insurgents expand their […]

When an obscure rebel group briefly laid siege to a hotel in Palma—a tiny enclave of the global energy industry in northern Mozambique—in late March, the story briefly became one of those one- or two-day wonders common to the Western media’s coverage of Africa. This typically means momentary headlines from a place that most readers have never heard of, and that most mainstream editors traditionally exhibit little interest in delving into more deeply. As is so often the case with the coverage of violence from outposts like these, what made this particular news “newsworthy” was the fate of a small […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. Benin, Chad and Djibouti held presidential elections over the weekend, although opposition leaders in all three countries, as well as outside observers, said the outcomes were predetermined. Not surprisingly, early returns have the incumbents easily winning all three contests. In Benin, the run-up to Sunday’s vote was marred by violent protests and accusations that President Patrice Talon was undermining what has been one of West Africa’s most stable […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. The latest attempt by Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to negotiate a resolution to their decade-long dispute over Addis Ababa’s controversial dam project on the Nile River’s largest tributary failed this week, bringing the region closer to a crisis. Tensions were already high heading into the meetings in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital, with Egyptian officials warning that it was the last chance to reach an agreement […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. For more than a week, Islamic State-linked militants have laid siege to Palma, a coastal town in northern Mozambique that serves as a hub for natural gas projects worth a combined $60 billion. The sustained attack has left dozens of people dead, potentially displacing tens of thousands more. It is the most severe escalation of a jihadist insurgency that began in 2017, and is expected to exacerbate an […]