NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2025

Somalia’s beaches defy the fear narrative

RECENT media reports have highlighted something few expected to see in Somalia this soon: tourists are returning — not in droves, but in numbers significant enough to challenge the country’s long-standing reputation for danger. Stories of visitors wading into the blue waters off Mogadishu’s Lido Beach, or wandering Somaliland’s markets without escorts, are now appearing alongside the usual conflict-heavy coverage. And that shift, subtle as it may seem, matters far more than the raw numbers. Somalia received around 10,000 tourists in 2024 — a 50 per cent increase on the previous year. In any other country, such a statistic would barely register. But Somalia is not any other country. This is a nation that has spent three decades cast as a global byword for instability. For travellers to return at all is remarkable; for the numbers to rise so clearly suggests a deeper change in perception.

What makes this moment encouraging is that the shift is bottom-up as much as top-down. Yes, the government has pushed reforms, including the launch of a national eVisa system in September 2025 — a symbolic step toward projecting normality and openness. But the real shift is happening in the minds of the travellers themselves. People are beginning to consider Somalia not only in terms of risk, but also possibility.

www.africabrie

Publisher Jon Offei-Ansah

Editor Desmond Davies

Contributing Editors

Prof. Toyin Falola

Tikum Mbah Azonga

Prof. Ojo Emmanuel Ademola (Technology)

Valerie Msoka (Special Projects)

Contributors

Justice Lee Adoboe

Chief Chuks Iloegbunam

Joseph Kayira

Zachary Ochieng

Olu Ojewale

Oladipo Okubanjo

Corinne Soar

Kennedy Olilo

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Consider the scene so often captured in recent photographs: families swimming at Lido Beach, fishing boats bobbing just offshore, children darting through the sand, and a lone soldier patrolling without theatrics. It is a peaceful tableau sitting atop a tense reality — yet it also reflects a Somalia that is undeniably, if cautiously, living.

Publisher

Africa bucks global economic trend

Gorata Chepete

In 2018, six of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world were in Africa, according to the World Bank, with Ghana leading the pack. With GDP growth for the continent projected to accelerate to four per cent in 2019 and 4.1 per cent in 2020, Africa’s economic growth story continues apace. Meanwhile, the World Bank’s 2019 Doing Business Index reveals that five of the 10 most-improved countries are in Africa, and one-third of all reforms recorded globally were in sub-Saharan Africa.

What makes the story more impressive and heartening is that the growth – projected to be broad-based – is being achieved in a challenging global environment, bucking the trend.

Jon Offei-Ansah

Desmond Davies Editor

This is where the value of tourism becomes clear. It is not simply about foreign exchange, hotel bookings or guided tours. It is about narrative power. Every visitor who returns home describing Somali generosity, vibrant coastal life or the resilience of ordinary people chips away at the hardened, one-note image of a country defined only by conflict. These stories spread quietly but widely — and eventually help reframe global expectations.

Deputy Editor

Designer

Simon Blemadzie

Country Representatives

In the Cover Story of this edition, Dr. Hippolyte Fofack, Chief Economist at the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), analyses the factors underpinning this performance. Two factors, in my opinion, stand out in Dr. Hippolyte’s analysis: trade between Africa and China and the intra-African cross-border investment and infrastructure development.

Angela Cobbinah

Contributing Editor

Stephen Williams

Director, Special Projects

Michael Orji

Contributors

Justice Lee Adoboe

Chuks Iloegbunam

The travellers who do come tend to be motivated by curiosity, challenge or a desire to see places the world misunderstands. Many are “country counters” completing global quests. Others are drawn by the thrill of stepping into a place few outsiders visit. But what they leave with is often more profound: an appreciation of Somalia’s humanity beneath the headlines. Their presence also supports Somalia’s long-term ambition to normalise itself in the eyes of the world. Tourism encourages government ministries to invest in infrastructure, streamline procedures and strengthen state capacity. It creates jobs that are immediate and visible: drivers, guides, cooks, vendors, small-business owners. These are the kinds of livelihoods that help rebuild confidence from the ground up.

Joseph Kayira

Yet the optimism should be cautious, not naive. Somalia still faces formidable challenges. Al Shabab remains active in central and southern areas, and its threat has not receded. Millions remain displaced by conflict and climate shocks. Western governments still issue maximumlevel travel warnings. The eVisa system, though symbolically important, is not recognised by Somaliland or Puntland, revealing deep political fractures.

Much has been said and written about China’s ever-deepening economic foray into Africa, especially by Western analysts and commentators who have been sounding alarm bells about re-colonisation of Africa, this time by the Chinese. But empirical evidence paints a different picture.

Despite the decelerating global growth environment, trade between Africa and China increased by 14.5 per cent in the first three quarters of 2018, surpassing the growth rate of world trade (11.6 per cent), reflecting the deepening economic dependency between the two major trading partners.

Zachary Ochieng

Olu Ojewale

Oladipo Okubanjo

Corinne Soar

Designer

Gloria Ansah

But acknowledging these realities should not obscure the signs of momentum. Somalia’s progress is not linear, but it is real. Security has improved in some corridors. Urban reconstruction is visible. And more importantly, everyday Somali life continues — families at the beach, traders in the market, children playing football on the sand. For a country so long associated with conflict, that day-to-day normalcy is itself a form of resistance.

Empirical evidence shows that China’s domestic investment has become highly linked with economic expansion in Africa. A one percentage point increase in China’s domestic investment growth is associated with an average of 0.6 percentage point increase in overall African exports. And, the expected economic development and trade impact of expanding Chinese investment on resource-rich African countries, especially oil-exporting countries, is even more important.

Country Representatives

South Africa

Edward Walter Byerley

Top Dog Media, 5 Ascot Knights 47 Grand National Boulevard Royal Ascot, Milnerton 7441, South Africa

South Africa

Edward Walter Byerley

Top Dog Media, 5 Ascot Knights 47 Grand National Boulevard Royal Ascot, Milnerton 7441, South Africa

Tel: +27 (0) 21 555 0096

Cell: +27 (0) 81 331 4887 Email: ed@topdog-media.net

Ghana

Nana Asiama Bekoe

Kingdom Concept Co.

Tel: +233 243 393 943 / +233 303 967 470 kingsconceptsltd@gmail.com

Nigeria

Somaliland’s emergence as a calm alternative within the wider Somali cultural sphere further enriches this story. In Hargeisa, visitors wander through markets without escorts, explore ancient rock art, and engage freely with local communities. This contrast between Mogadishu’s caution and Somaliland’s relative ease demonstrates the diversity within a region often painted with a single brush. It also offers regional leaders a model of what stability can look like. Somalia’s growing tourism figures may be small, but they are symbolically powerful. They signal a shift in how the world perceives the country — and how the country perceives itself. Against the backdrop of Somalia’s well-documented struggles, even a modest upswing in tourism is a statement of resilience.

The resilience of African economies can also be attributed to growing intra-African cross-border investment and infrastructure development. A combination of the two factors is accelerating the process of structural transformation in a continent where industrial output and services account for a growing share of GDP. African corporations and industrialists which are expanding their industrial footprint across Africa and globally are leading the diversification from agriculture into higher value goods in manufacturing and service sectors. These industrial champions are carrying out transcontinental operations, with investment holdings around the globe, with a strong presence in Europe and Pacific Asia, together account for more than 75 per cent of their combined activities outside Africa.

Tel: +27 (0) 21 555 0096 Cell: +27 (0) 81 331 4887 Email: ed@topdog-media.net

Ghana

Nana Asiama Bekoe

Kingdom Concept Co. Tel: +233 243 393 943 / +233 303 967 470 kingsconceptsltd@gmail.com

Nigeria

If Somalia can build on this fragile momentum — improving safety in key corridors, harmonising its visa regime, investing in hospitality training and strengthening community-based tourism — it could carve out a niche as a destination for culture-seekers, history enthusiasts and adventure travellers.

A survey of 30 leading emerging African corporations with global footprints and combined revenue of more than $118 billion shows that they are active in several industries, including manufacturing (e.g., Dangote Industries), basic materials, telecommunications (e.g., Econet, Safaricom), finance (e.g., Ecobank) and oil and gas. In addition to mitigating risks highly correlated with African economies, these emerging African global corporations are accelerating the diversification of sources of growth and reducing the exposure of countries to adverse commodity terms of trade.

This makes me very bullish about Africa!

Taiwo Adedoyin MV Noble, Press House, 3rd Floor 27 Acme Road, Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos Tel: +234 806 291 7100 taiadedoyin52@gmail.com

Kenya

The point is not that Somalia is suddenly safe. It is that Somalia is changing. And for the first time in a long time, the world is noticing. The beaches of Mogadishu, dotted with families and curious foreign visitors, are beginning to tell a different story: one of recovery, resistance and possibility.

Nnenna Ogbu #4 Babatunde Oduse crescent Isheri Olowora - Isheri Berger, Lagos Tel: +234 803 670 4879 getnnenna.ogbu@gmail.com

Kenya

Patrick Mwangi Aquarius Media Ltd, PO Box 10668-11000

Nairobi, Kenya

Tel: 0720 391 546/0773 35 41

Email: mwangi@aquariusmedia.co.ke

Naima Farah Room 22, 2nd Floor West Wing Royal Square, Ngong Road, Nairobi Tel: +254 729 381 561 naimafarah_m@yahoo.com

Africa Briefing Ltd

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©Africa Briefing Ltd

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United Kingdom

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LEADER COMMENT COVER STORY

Sudan, yet another blot on the African landscape

Silencing the Guns? They are getting louder ECOWAS: people power on the rise

The Economic Community of West African States, founded 50 years ago, has lost its way, as political leaders and functionaries within the organisational structure struggle to meet the aspirations of young and vibrant West Africans who want to shape their own future, concluded a recent conference in Abuja. Desmond Davies, who was in Nigeria, reports

Leaders have failed to deliver

The current state of the regional body underscores the need for deep reflection on how it can move beyond being an elite-driven institution to one that truly represents and serves its people, argues Kayode Fayemi

ANALYSIS

Tanzania’s democracy crisis deepens under Samia

Africa’s restless Gen Z forces a democratic reckoning 6 07 08 14

Tanzania’s 2025 election lays bare rising repression, regional anxiety and the strain on President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s reformist promise, writes Valerie Msoka

Jon Offei-Ansah examines how a digitally connected generation—from Nairobi to Rabat—is challenging entrenched power, demanding economic justice, and reshaping the future of democracy across Africa

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Nations move past the aid era

RMB’s Where to Invest in Africa 2025/26 report, analysed by Jon Offei-Ansah, explores how the continent is shedding decades of aid dependency to embrace trade, industrial value addition and private-sector investment as the real engines of growth

38 46 20 22

Businesses struggling to keep up with modern work culture

While the ongoing battle between return to work and work from home is a misguided attempt to diffuse this tension, organisations should evolve to accommodate the new workplace

Cities failing Africa’s young dreamers

Thembisile Simelane warns that chronic underinvestment and poor planning are trapping Africa’s youth in broken cities

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Sudan, yet another blot on the African landscape

TWENTY years ago, members of the Janjaweed militia, a force made up of so-called Arabs, were wreaking havoc in the western Sudanese region of Darfur – massacring hundreds, if not thousands, of ethnic Africans. The world raised its voice, but nothing changed for the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups.

The International Criminal Court issued a few warrants of arrests for the atrocities being committed in Darfur. Two were specifically issued for then Sudanese President Omar al Bashir in 2009 and 2010.

Today, the Janjaweed has transformed itself into the Rapid Support Forces fighting the Sudanese army in the country’s destructive civil war. Members of the paramilitary RSF have made it again into Darfur and are continuing what they began 20 years ago. El Fasher is now the epicentre of the emerging genocide in Darfur being carried out by the RSF.

A recent Special Session of the Sudan Core Group at the UN was told that the atrocities reported after the fall of El Fasher to the RSF were “horrific: summary executions, sexual violence, abductions”. The meeting attempted to focus global attention on the horrors unfolding in El Fasher.

South Africa failed to arrest al Bashir but has, ironically, referred Netanyahu to the ICC

As the Core Group noted, support for holding the Session “shows staying silent is not an option”. Indeed, the African Union Special Envoy for the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, and his UN counterpart, Chaloka Beyani, have added their voices to the campaign to alleviate the excruciating suffering of the people of Darfur.

Their recent joint statement at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva was unequivocal in its condemnation of the atrocities being committed by the RSF in El Fasher. “This is, unfortunately a humanitarian and human rights catastrophe unfolding before our eyes,” Dieng and Beyani said.

“The situation in Sudan, particularly in El Fasher and the wider Darfur and Kordofan regions, has reached a critical and tragic juncture. Since the outbreak of conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces in April 2023, the civilian population has endured unimaginable suffering.

“Over 14 million people have been forcibly displaced, more than 40,000 killed and countless others subjected to summary executions, mass killings, abductions, torture, rape and attacks on humanitarian workers.”

But would the people of Darfur still be facing this desperate stage in their lives if African leaders and institutions such as the AU had taken strong steps to deal with the problem in the region from the outset? They cannot argue that they were not aware of the seriousness of the situation.

After all, the ICC took the matter very seriously, hence the warrants for the arrest of al Bashir. Despite the indictments, al-Bashir continued to serve as president and was involved in various political activities. The ICC's efforts to bring him to justice faced significant challenges, including the Sudanese government's refusal to hand him over to the court. When he was overthrown in 2019, he was not sent to The Hague to face trial.

But what was the African response to al Bashir as a president wanted by the ICC? South Africa, under President Jacob Zuma, welcomed al Bashir when he visited in June 2015, failing to arrest him in accordance with the Rome Statute that established the ICC.

South Africa, under Zuma, breached its international and domestic legal obligations. The ICC ruled against South Africa accordingly.

Now, it is the same South African government, albeit under a new President, Cyril Ramaphosa, that has referred Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the ICC for alleged genocide in Gaza. How ironic.

The flow of weapons to Sudan, coming from countries such as the United Arab Emirates, must be stemmed. Indeed, this is the right time for a pan-African force to be mustered to go into Darfur to create safe spaces for the population.

Dieng and Bayela have called for action that will ensure justice and accountability for all violations, addressing impunity at every level. They want robust protection of civilians and the upholding of humanitarian law, prioritising access to life-saving aid and the restoration of basic services.

The current situation in Darfur is yet anther blot on the African landscape when it comes to preventing violent armed conflicts on the continent. Although hundreds of thousands of Sudanese have died since the civil war began in April 2023, the incursion of the RSF into Darfur is a major disaster.

Now is the time for the African Union to take the lead in bringing an end to the conflict not just in Darfur but in Sudan as a whole. There have always been half-hearted attempts by the AU to end violent conflicts in Africa. Now is the time for action.

So, apart from the strong statements coming from the AU and UN that impunity will not be tolerated, Africa, with the backing of the international community, must now act to end the war in Sudan that is looking increasingly that genocide is being committed in Darfur, leaving an indelible stain on the world’s conscience yet again when it comes to halting atrocities being committed in Africa.

Silencing the Guns? They are getting louder

SILENCING the Guns – the African Union’s ambitious initiative to end armed conflict on the continent – does not seem to be going anywhere. It is just not working.

Remember, the initial target date was 2020. But with the increase in terrorist activities in the Sahel, unconstitutional political activities and the huge flow of licit and illicit arms into the continent, a new deadline of 2030 was set.

The situation in Sudan is deteriorating fast. In Tanzania, after the October elections, soldiers were accused of opening fire on unarmed civilians, with the death toll close to 1,000.

Many of those killed were innocent people going about their daily business when the trigger-happy soldiers let loose with their weapons. Most of the bodies have not been recovered.

This is the Tanzania of Julius Nyerere, who fashioned a united nation. He must be turning in his grave after President Samia Suluhu Hassan unleashed violence against her citizens because she wanted to hang on to power at all costs.

A southern African friend of mine who is an academic in the US was outraged by “tone deaf African leaders” such as Hassan. “First, she tears her country apart with a fraudulent electoral victory. And now she appoints her family members to the cabinet. Shameless!” He was referring to the announcement that Hassan had not just appointed her daughter to the Cabinet but had included her son-in-law.

Even her inauguration riled my friend. “After claiming a 98 per cent win based on electoral figures that did not correspond to the registered voting population given out earlier by her own government, she then went on to be inaugurated at a military barracks [in Dodoma] with a few invited guests only, upending the tradition of a public swearing-in in a stadium. Was she scared of the 98 per cent who had supported her?”

You might be wondering why I am focusing on Hassan when I am talking about Silencing the Guns. Well, in my experience as a journalist covering Africa, I have noted so many times how political jiggery pokery has eventually led to armed conflicts –sooner or later, West Africa being a major case in point, as I write in my article on ECOWAS @50 in this edition.

Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the current African Union High Representative for Silencing the Guns, must have his work cut out. In 2019, when he was head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), he reported: “Preelectoral and post-electoral periods…continue to be characterised by tensions, antagonistic contests and disputes, including around non-consensual constitutional amendments.

“Addressing such potential sources of conflict remains a major priority ahead of the upcoming cycle of high-stake presidential elections in West Africa … Furthermore, tensions around electoral periods derail the necessary attention to the pressing need to address questions of development and inequality,” he added.

These recurring problems highlighted by Chambas are the bane of the move to silence the guns on the continent. The AU declared the whole of September each year as Africa Amnesty

Desmond Davies

Month that calls “for the surrender and collection of illicit small arms and light weapons without fear of arrest or prosecution”.

A worthy idea. But the problem is that how widely known is Africa Amnesty Month on the continent? More so among those caught up in armed conflicts.

Even the AU itself is in sixes and sevens when it comes to organising the event. It proposes the states and dates for the continental launch, with the UN Office for Disarmament Affair providing technical and financial assistance.

But guess what? This year, after several consultations, the AU Peace and Security Council proposed October 2 and 3 (not September!) for the continental event in Uganda. This was, my contact told me, “for various reasons including availability of officials and other engagements in their calendar both from the AU and host country, Uganda’s side”.

Silencing the Guns must also apply to soldiers who shoot innocent civilians

Mali was the other country that had requested support for the commemoration of the activities. While the AU was going round in circles, other states, including Mali and Kenya, launched their activities.

Since 2020, under the AU–UNODA Africa Amnesty Month project, UNODA, in cooperation with the AU Commission and with implementation support from the Regional Centre on Small Arms (RECSA), has assisted 16 African states in commemorating Africa Amnesty Month and assisted in the voluntary surrender of illicit arms. So far, the project has collected and destroyed more than 22,000 illicit weapons, according to AU-UNODA.

Overall, it is an uphill task for Silencing the Guns if the underlying causes that make the guns getting louder and louder are not directly addressed. These include political intolerance, discrimination, exclusion and economic deprivation. To silence the guns, Africa needs inclusive governance and sustainable development for all.

Crucially, Silencing the Guns must also apply to soldiers who shoot and kill innocent civilians exercising their democratic right to demonstrate against their governments.

We have seen what happened in Tanzania. With prospects of turbulent elections in Uganda next year and Kenya in 2027, Silencing the Guns will be sorely tested. AB

ECOWAS: people power on the rise

The Economic Community of West African States, founded 50 years ago, has lost its way, as political leaders and functionaries within the organisational structure struggle to meet the aspirations of young and vibrant West Africans who want to shape their own future, concluded a recent conference in Abuja. Desmond Davies, who was in Nigeria, reports

IN 1990, the project of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) – that of a socioeconomic regional grouping – was confidently chugging along when it was derailed. When 15 leaders established ECOWAS in 1975, they had high hopes of making regional integration in the lives of their citizens a reality through structures such as free movement of people, a single market and a common currency.

But 36 years ago, these aims were put to one side as the Liberian civil war, which erupted at the end of 1989, forced ECOWAS leaders to take steps to bring peace and stability to the country and the region. It was easier said than done.

Since then, ECOWAS has been busy firefighting, as conflicts erupted also in Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau and continue today. Right now, ECOWAS is caught in a bind with three members – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – who have opted out of the regional body to form the Association of Sahelian States (AES).

Their beef? They are not happy with the lack of support from ECOWAS in their fight against Islamist militants in their region.

Since 1990 ECOWAS has been busy firefighting

Looking back at the history of conflict in West Africa, it was a miracle that it took 15 years after the formation of ECOWAS before the first flames of rebellion were lit. Indeed, from the outset, some of the founding leaders of the regional body never believed in political pluralism. They were authoritarians who were soon to plunge their countries into one-party states (de jure or de facto).

Sekou Toure in Guinea was a despot. General Gnassingbe Eyadema in Togo was a military dictator. Siaka Stevens in Sierra Leone was a strong-arm leader who used his paramilitary State Security Division (SSD) to cow citizens into accepting his authority. The activities of the notorious SSD undoubtedly formed the basis for the country’s bloody civil war from 1991 to 2002.

In Liberia, William Tolbert and his Americo-Liberian descendants had ruled the roost since 1847. They thought they would be in control forever until Master Sergeant Samuel Doe and his men upended the system violently. Their coup of 1980 was a bloody affair. Tolbert was killed at the Executive Mansion while other top leaders were executed on the beach.

Of the 15 ECOWAS founding leaders, six were military rulers, including General Yakubu Gown of Nigeria (the sole survivor of this group) and Ghana’s General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong.

Considering the ongoing shenanigans, it is understandable why young West Africans are now demanding a re-ordering of the ECOWAS project, They want to have more say in its future. After all, they are the ones who are soon going to take control of leadership roles in their countries.

For two days (October 31 and November 1) ECOWAS headquarters in Abuja hosted the African Public Square (APS) and a meeting of experts on ECOWAS @50 that looked at the future of regional integration. It was the second gathering of the APS, which was established by the African Leadership Centre at King’s College London in 2023 as a continental platform to “facilitate transformative dialogue on peace, security and development in Africa”. The high-level public debate posed the question: Are Regional Organisations a Necessity for Regional Integration? What is Needed for a Future ECOWAS of the People?

Organised in partnership with the Amandla Institute, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and the West African Think Tank Initiative (WATHI), the event reflected on ECOWAS’s journey over the past five decades.

The overwhelming view was that ECOWAS was no longer fit for purpose in its current form because the political leaders had lost the plot. Participants called for an

ECOWAS of the People to help drive regional integration faster.

During the APS, young Africans had their say. Professor ‘Funmi Olonisakin, Vice President, International, Engagement and Services at King’s College London, welcomed their presence. “The promise of an ECOWAS of the People is under threat,” she said, but noted that young Africans, given the chance, were the ones who could move integration in Africa faster. She pointed out that state-led initiatives of integration in Africa were failing.

Prof Olonisakin founded the African Leadership Centre (ALC) at King’s College London 15 years ago. It has trained over 250 young Africans during this period.

With a West African population of over 400 million, 65 per cent of whom are under the age of 24, Prof Olonisakin said that it was obvious that it now had to be ECOWAS of the People for the next generation. “ECOWAS at 50 gives us the chance to look back in looking forward,” she added.

But in looking forward, there is the small matter of getting ECOWAS top brass on side. There has been fierce

Time for stocktaking: leaders at their ECOWAS @50 meeting

criticism from civil society groups of ECOWAS officials such as its President, Dr Omar Alieu Touray, and AbdelFatau Musah, Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security.

This is understandable because they bear the brunt of the confusion that has engulfed ECOWAS. Their critics have not been too happy with the manner in which they appeared to have danced to the tune of the US and France by threatening to place sanctions on Niger with a further threat of invasion. This came even though it was obvious

that Nigeriens fully backed the coup that turfed out the Americans and French from the country.

Michael Amoah, a UK-based Ghanaian academic, was scathing in his criticism of Touray and Musah in his recent book. Decolonizing African Politics; Bridging the Contours of Debate. After excoriating Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s “subservient and ignorant foreign minister”, Amoah writes: “… the equally subservient top brass at the ECOWAS Commission in Abuja were totally irresponsible in the way they heeded so eagerly to the United States and France whose foreign policy interests in the form of mines,

military bases and drones in Niger were at risk because of the Niger coup”. He adds: “These foreign powers egged on ECOWAS to invade Niger, while Tinubu and ECOWAS were prepared to assemble the intervention force regardless of the prevailing analysis that such an invasion would turn West Africa into a security hazard.

ECOWAS top brass

danced to the tune of the US and France

“It beggars belief that ECOWAS could not protect the foreign policy interests of its member-states against

neocolonial presidents and puppets, but had been hoodwinked by the interests of foreign powers to want to fight its own member-states.”

Continuing, Amoah writes: “It became the prevailing public opinion that ECOWAS should metamorphose and recalibrate as a matter of urgency. Among the strong feelings floating around [was] that both Omar Alieu Touray, the President of the ECOWAS Commission, and AbdelFatau Musah, the Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, at the time of the Niger crisis should be fired or made to resign; and certainly, Tinubu should not have been re-elected as Chair of ECOWAS for another term.”

This, though, did not happen. Given this harsh criticism of the two top officials at the ECOWAS Commission, it was not surprising that during the two-day meeting, ECOWAS bigwigs kept a low profile.

Indeed, at the end of the Abuja meeting, Musah told participants that ECOWAS had kept “a strategic silence… to give the people of West Africa their say on regional

Under fire: ECOWAS President Omar Alieu Touray and Abdel-Fatau Musah, Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security

integration”. He said that by mid-2026, an ECOWAS Social, Economic and Cultural Council would be in place “to give the people of West Africa more say about how ECOWAS functions”. He added: “We want ECOWAS citizens to take the lead in member states.”

This could make the difference that young West Africans are hoping for. Of course, it is a big ask. After all, are young West Africans fully cognisant of the overarching aims of ECOWAS when it was established in 1975?

For many young West African men and women who want to create a fully integrated community, they are still

hampered by the mind-boggling bureaucracy that makes intra-West African travel and trade such a minefield.

But one thing is clear: there is no stopping the rise of people power among the young, vibrant and tech-savvy West Africans. So, as the region marks half a century of ECOWAS’s existence, the Abuja meeting underscored a growing call among African thinkers and institutions to reimagine regionalism from the ground up – one that is participatory, equitable and responsive to West Africa’s diverse realities., and being led by young people.

African Public Square: a continental platform to ‘facilitate transformative dialogue on peace, security and development in Africa’

Leaders have failed to deliver

The current state of the regional body underscores the need for deep reflection on how it can move beyond being an elite-driven institution to one that truly represents and serves its people, argues Kayode Fayemi

THIS is a timely and critical conversation taking place on the shifting dynamics of change within ECOWAS, the deepening security and governance challenges in the sub region and the future of regional integration in West Africa. It follows the meeting of ECOWAS founding leaders that we convened in June chaired by the only living founding father of ECOWAS, Nigeria’s General Yakubu Gowon, and attended by the Commission’s President, Dr Ali Oumar Touray, and most of his living predecessors in office.

ECOWAS is in danger of being reduced to an inchoate bureaucratic juggernaut

This important gathering presents us with an opportunity to reimagine the regional integration project in all its dimensions, including economic, security, political and structural. In doing this, we must acknowledge the significant contributions of ECOWAS in shaping regional peace and development.

From inception, ECOWAS has been a pacesetter among the regional economic communities on the continent. ECOWAS pioneered norms and standards on peace and security as well as on democracy and good governance. It also provided the models of managing international peacekeeping operations with its laudable rescue missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone and later in Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia and Guinea Bissau.

Under normal circumstances, even without its current challenges, a strong case could be made for a reinvention of the West African integration project. The grounds for such a reinvention are many, and they were already a source of discussions well before the 50th anniversary of ECOWAS.

At one level, there were strong concerns that the promised transition from the ECOWAS of rulers – an elite club of incumbent political leaders – to a Community of the people, centred on citizens was not happening, at least not as quickly and effectively as was wished. At another level, concerns were cumulating that the much-promised internal reforms designed to make the Community more agile had stalled, with the consequence that the organisation was becoming much more remote from the peoples of West Africa it was meant to serve, and in danger of being reduced to an inchoate bureaucratic juggernaut.

Furthermore, for all the efforts that had been made in adopting various inter-West Africa trade promotion policies, progress was far from being optimal. And on such critical matters as the ECOWAS single currency, its promised launch had become an endless wait as the target date kept being shifted on account of various technicalities. Obstacles to intra-West African investments and the flow of services have persisted beyond what can be easily explained, suggesting a deficit of political will among leaders. While steps were taken to improve the internal finances of the Community, the problem of inadequate funding of many of its programmes and agencies remains a huge challenge, a situation which exposed the Community to external manipulation by various donors who have not lost any opportunity to embed themselves in its structures and processes.

The uncoordinated response of West Africa to the European Union’s free trade proposals, packaged as the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) is a case in point.

Clearly, the current state of the regional body underscores the need for deep reflection on how ECOWAS can move beyond being an elite-driven institution to one that truly represents and serves its people. The challenges of poverty, inequality,

reality, in all

governance deficits and insecurity cannot be effectively addressed by ECOWAS in its current form. There is an urgent need for a new, citizen-centred approach that responds to the real concerns of ordinary West Africans, rather than focusing solely on the priorities of political leaders.

It is also my hope that a key part of our discussion will focus on security and the role of the military in addressing instability in the region. It is now evident that traditional military strategies alone are inadequate in tackling the complex threats posed by insurgent and terrorist groups. Many of these groups are deeply embedded within communities and even, in some cases, within the military itself.

What is needed is a more sophisticated intelligence-based approach, combined with efforts to address the underlying social and economic drivers of insecurity. We need a comprehensive human security strategy that deals with issues of poverty, inequality and governance failures, which extremist groups continue to exploit.

While it is understandable that many citizens are frustrated with civilian governments that have failed to deliver on governance and security, we should also not mince words that military rule is not a viable alternative in tackling governance deficits. History has shown that military regimes do not provide sustainable solutions.

In fact, in the three countries that have now exited ECOWAS, terrorism and insecurity have worsened since the military took over. The challenge for ECOWAS is how to engage these regimes

while also ensuring a pathway back to credible democratic governance.

It is crucial that ECOWAS continues to leverage diplomatic efforts in finding pragmatic ways that do not alienate the breakaway states further but instead brings them back into a cooperative regional framework. The current effort of the Commission in this regard is noted.

ECOWAS has always been a flexible and adaptive regional body, accommodating different sub-regional groupings like UEMOA, CENSAD, the Mano River Union, and others. There is no reason why AES (the putative Sahelian bloc of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger) cannot continue to be part of ECOWAS, even if they insist on maintaining a distinct identity. The goal should be to preserve regional cooperation, stability and development, rather than encouraging further divisions.

All of the issues confronting the region collectively reinforce the urgency of rethinking and reimagining ECOWAS’s role in a changing West Africa. The regional body cannot continue business as usual. It must evolve to reflect the realities on the ground and to rebuild trust with its citizens.

Fifty years is a significant milestone in which ECOWAS has accomplished a lot, but it must also serve as a moment of reckoning: a time for deep reflection, bold reforms, and a renewed commitment to the principles of regional integration, security and inclusive governance. The future of West Africa depends on the choices we make today, and it is clear that ECOWAS must embrace change if it is to remain relevant in the years ahead. AB

Dr Kayode Fayemi is Founder of the Abuja-based Amandla Institute for Policy and Leadership Advancement (www.amandlainstitute.org).The above was his presentation at the African Public Square and ECOWAS @50 meetings in Abuja on October 31 and November 1.

In

three countries that left ECOWAS, terrorism and insecurity have only grown worse under military rule.

How to make the Community work

ECOWAS should no longer be seen as a distant monument but an integral part of each member state for mutually prosperous interaction regardless of what geopolitical changes may transpire in the future, writes Gabriel Eke

ANYTHING that is not properly designed eventually collapses under the weight of its own flaws. Institutions, like buildings, require strong foundations, sound architecture and regular maintenance to stay fit for purpose. When these are absent, decay sets in.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is now facing this moment of reckoning. For too long, it has felt like a distant bureaucracy – a club of politicians and technocrats detached from the daily realities of ordinary West Africans.

Yet, the organisation was founded in 1975 with a bold promise: to integrate the economies and destinies of the region’s people. If that vision is to survive, ECOWAS must be redesigned – not as an elite project, but as a people’s project.

First, ECOWAS must shed its static headquarters mentality. Instead of being anchored to one city, its operations should rotate across member states. This symbolic and practical shift would remind every citizen that ECOWAS belongs to them, not to a few bureaucrats in Abuja. Each member nation should feel the presence of the organisation – hosting meetings, driving initiatives and shaping the agenda. Regional integration cannot thrive if it feels foreign to the people it claims to serve.

The seat of ECOWAS in Abuja: West Africa must shed its static headquarters mentality

To stay relevant, ECOWAS must adopt what can be called twinning of agendas: a unified set of regional priorities that all member states pursue within clear timeframes. Imagine all ECOWAS nations focusing, for two years, on one concrete goal: say, achieving food security, or strengthening local governance, or boosting digital connectivity. This would foster both accountability and healthy competition, uniting the region through shared purpose rather than rhetoric.

To measure progress, ECOWAS must embrace clarity on what truly constitutes governance, development and infrastructure. Governance means ensuring citizens have access to food, water, healthcare, security and justice, the basic pillars of statehood.

Development means that most citizens can afford food, shelter and clothing. Infrastructure means the collective ability to build and maintain the physical and technological systems that sustain a modern society. When these standards are met, integration becomes meaningful.

Reform must also happen from the ground up. A biannual ECOWAS People’s Forum – where communities

share success stories of resilience and innovation – could serve as a new engine of regional solidarity. From womenled farming cooperatives in Mali to youth tech hubs in Ghana, the lessons of local excellence can guide regional policy more effectively than any consultant’s report.

Reform must also happen from the ground up

Ultimately, ECOWAS must confront a deeper truth: its borders, governance structures and even its political logic are still haunted by the legacy of colonialism. The arbitrary borders drawn at the Berlin Conference of 18841885 fractured natural communities and imposed alien systems of power.

This historical disfigurement continues to undermine unity and accountability. To move forward, West Africa must reclaim its own design, one rooted in indigenous models of cooperation, justice and shared prosperity.

Young West Africans – most of the population – are impatient for change. They want jobs, safety, freedom to move and dignity. They are no longer inspired by slogans or summits. ECOWAS can either evolve into a true platform for regional empowerment or fade into irrelevance.

It is time for an ECOWAS of the people – mobile, democratic, visionary and grounded in the daily lives of its citizens. The future of West Africa depends on it.

Gabriel Eke is a surgeon, poet, strategist and a member of the Fatherland Group, “a global network of forward-thinking Nigerians armed with a new understanding of our past, our present and our future”. www.fatherlandgroup.org

How has ECOWAS fared in delivering needed peace?

West African economic integration is impossible in a context of coups, insurgencies and fractured governance, writes Theodora

Williams Anti

WEST Africa has grappled with violent conflicts, insecurity and political instability since the early 1970s, around the time the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was established. Conceived as an economic bloc to advance the collective interests of its member states, ECOWAS would soon discover that peace and security are not peripheral concerns but central to its very survival and success.

The bold vision of regional economic power, prosperity and influence cannot be realised without the foundational assurance of peace, whether within individual states or across the region. Economic integration is impossible in a context of coups, insurgencies and fractured governance.

Fifty years on, the question is: how has ECOWAS fared in delivering the peace necessary for sustainable economic development and how does the future look like?

Since 1970, Africa has witnessed approximately 13 major wars and insurgencies. West Africa alone accounts for four of these, a little over 30 per cent, underscoring the region’s disproportionate burden of violence and instability. These conflicts have not only devastated lives but have also tested the limits of ECOWAS’s peace and security mechanisms.

The Liberian Civil Wars (1989–1997, 1999–2003). These were two extremely bloody conflicts that claimed over 250,000 lives and displaced more than one million people. ECOWAS’s ECOMOG intervention marked its first major peacekeeping deployment.

The Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002) was a brutal conflict infamous for the use of child soldiers and widespread atrocities, often fuelled by the illicit trade in “blood diamonds”. ECOWAS played a critical role in supporting disarmament and post-war recovery.

The Boko Haram Insurgency (2009–present) is an ongoing conflict centred in northeastern Nigeria but spilling into Niger, Chad and Cameroon. It involves an Islamist militant group and has triggered a regional military response, with ECOWAS coordinating humanitarian aid.

The Jihadist Insurgency in the Central Sahel (2012–present). This is a severe and escalating crisis affecting Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Over the past decade, violence has intensified, destabilising governments and prompting successive coups.

These figures do not even account for the dozens of coup d’états, electoral violence and political transitions that have further strained the region’s stability. From Guinea to Niger, democratic reversals have become alarmingly frequent, challenging ECOWAS’s normative frameworks and its ability to enforce constitutional order.

ECOWAS significantly rose to the occasion in several of these key moments of regional crisis. Its rapid deployment of peacekeepers under the ECOMOG banner in Liberia and Sierra Leone played a decisive role in ending brutal civil wars and stabilising political transitions.

In 2016, ECOWAS demonstrated its diplomatic strength by preventing post-election violence in The Gambia, ensuring a peaceful transfer of power through strategic mediation. The bloc also exerted sustained diplomatic pressure during the Ivorian crisis and post-electoral violence between 2002 and 2011, contributing meaningfully to conflict resolution and national reconciliation.

In response to decades of conflict and instability, ECOWAS has transformed from a purely economic bloc into one of Africa’s most assertive regional actors in peace and security. This evolution is anchored in a robust legal and institutional framework known as the ECOWAS Peace and Security Architecture (EPSA), designed to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts across the region. The Architecture includes:

• Revised ECOWAS Treaty (1993). This expands the bloc’s mandate to include political stability, conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

• The 1999 Protocol on Conflict Prevention established ECOWAS’s legal right to intervene in member states during crises, including unconstitutional changes of government.

• ECOMOG (ECOWAS Monitoring Group): A regional peacekeeping force deployed in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau and Côte d’Ivoire.

ECOWAS’s ECOMOG mission in Liberia marked its first major peacekeeping operation

• ECOWARN (Early Warning and Response Network): A system for monitoring and analysing conflict indicators across member states.

• Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance (2001): Codified democratic norms and zero tolerance for military coups.

Together, these instruments reflect ECOWAS’s commitment to a proactive, rules-based approach to regional peace and stability.

Despite its significant strides in promoting peace across the sub-region, ECOWAS has also exhibited notable weaknesses and persistent challenges. These include inconsistent enforcement of its protocols, limited investment in preventive diplomacy and the exclusion of civil society – particularly women and youth – from peace processes.

The bloc’s overreliance on external funding, growing perceptions of political bias and a tendency toward elitist decision-making have further eroded public trust and undermined its legitimacy.

These shortcomings have not only weakened ECOWAS’s credibility but also threaten the very foundation of regional integration. When peacebuilding is driven by elite interests and disconnected from grassroots realities, the vision of a united and peaceful West Africa becomes increasingly fragile.

The recent exit of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger from ECOWAS is a direct consequence of these unresolved challenges and systemic weaknesses. Their withdrawal under the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) reflects deep-seated frustrations with what many perceive as inconsistent enforcement of protocols, exclusionary decision-making and a regional architecture that prioritises elite interests over grassroots realities. It is a stark reminder that legitimacy cannot be sustained through sanctions and treaties alone.

Clearly, ECOWAS and its member states must do far more to foster a peaceful, secure and politically stable sub-region. These conditions are indispensable for meaningful economic development.

The events of recent years have made it evident that regional integration cannot thrive amid persistent insecurity and fractured

ECOWAS: how it all began

THE idea of a West African economic community began to take shape during the 1960s following the wave of independence across the region. Newly sovereign states faced similar challenges: fragile economies, heavy reliance on former colonial powers and limited trade links with one another. In response, regional leaders began advocating for closer economic cooperation as a path to collective strength.

In 1964, a meeting of West African states held in Accra explored the possibility of establishing a regional economic union. Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah strongly promoted the idea of a political federation. However, many other leaders favoured a more gradual, economically driven

governance. The lessons of the past five decades, and especially the recent rupture with the Alliance of Sahel States, underscore the urgency of reform.

This reflection echoes several critical recommendations as ECOWAS commemorates 50 years of regional integration. To reclaim its legitimacy and fulfil its founding promise, ECOWAS must strengthen and invest in preventive diplomacy by supporting local peace infrastructures and community-based mediation networks; and reform decision-making structures to reflect the diversity of West African societies and dismantle elitist barriers to participation.

Legitimacy cannot be sustained through sanctions and treaties alone

It must also invest in regional self-reliance by reducing dependence on external funding and building sustainable, homegrown peace mechanisms; institutionalise inclusive governance by involving citizens especially women and youth and strengthening the ECOWAS Parliament as a relevant decision-making body; and ensure accountability and consistency in enforcing protocols and democratic norms, regardless of political or geopolitical interests.

It is crucial that ECOWAS takes a hard look in the mirror, confronts its shortcomings, and learn from its missteps. This means revisiting past interventions, listening to the voices that were excluded, implementing its protocols equally and rebuilding trust from the ground up. Only by doing so – through inclusive governance, consistent leadership and a renewed commitment to its founding principles – can the bloc reclaim its legitimacy and fulfil its promise as a true community of peoples, not just states.

approach, which caused the initiative to stall.

The idea was revived in 1972 when General Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria and President Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo embarked on a joint diplomatic mission to rally support across West Africa. They engaged heads of state directly, presenting the case for a regional economic community.

This led to a series of meeting and technical consultations held in Lome and Accra where government representatives worked to design the proposed community. They agreed on principles such as free movement of people and goods, harmonised tariffs and economic integration.

On May 28, 1975, 15 West African countries convened in convened in Lagos and signed the Treaty of

Lagos, which formally established the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The core objective was to create a unified regional market that would allow west African nations to trade, move and develop together.

A draft treaty had been prepared earlier in Ghana during the previous year and was subsequently endorsed by foreign ministers at a preparatory meeting in Liberia. This version was formally launched at the Lagos summit and became known as the Treaty of Lagos.

It became the organisation’s founding document and ECOWAS was formally established with institutional structures, including a Council of Ministers and an Executive Secretariat, laying the groundwork for what would become one of Africa’s most enduring regional bodies.

Theodora Williams Anti is Executive Director of the Foundation for Security and Development in Africa (FOSDA) based in Accra.

Tanzania’s democracy crisis deepens under Samia

Tanzania’s 2025 election lays bare rising repression, regional anxiety and the strain on President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s reformist promise, writes Valerie Msoka

TANZANIA’S 2025 general election, delivered as a near-total victory for President Samia Suluhu Hassan, was meant to seal her political authority. Instead, it jolted the country and unsettled its neighbours. What should have affirmed democratic legitimacy instead became a symbol of exclusion, intimidation, and declining political freedoms. Observers from the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) publicly concluded that the vote failed to meet democratic standards. Civil-society coalitions went further, urging the AU and SADC to reject the results entirely and press for new elections.

For Samia, once celebrated as a reformist and unifying presence, the disputed poll marks a defining moment. Her political blueprint — the 4Rs of Reconciliation, Resilience, Reforms, and Rebuilding — now faces its most serious test. The events around the election force a difficult question: can a leader who came into office promising openness and inclusion survive within a party system built on control, not competition?

This article explores Tanzania’s contested election through four lenses: the evolution of the 4Rs, the stalled constitutional agenda, the shadow of abductions and disappearances, and the entrenched power dynamics within CCM.

From the beginning, the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) shaped the electoral environment. Two major opposition parties, CHADEMA and ACT-Wazalendo, were disqualified on technicalities, removing meaningful competition before the campaign began. The 98 per cent victory Samia eventually secured resembled Tanzania’s one-party era, not the multiparty democracy restored in the 1990s.

AU observers reported irregularities ranging from ballotstuffing and unexplained delays to a heavy security presence at polling stations. The government also ordered an internet shutdown, which crippled communication on polling day. Multiple activists and journalists were arrested prior to the vote, with reports of enforced disappearances.

Government officials dismissed the allegations as foreign meddling, portraying the measures as necessary for stability.

But the contradiction was impossible to ignore: a leader who championed reconciliation appeared presiding over an election shaped by repression. What was meant to consolidate authority ended up fuelling concern that Tanzania’s democratic experiment is in regression.

Tensions erupted even before the results were announced. Protests in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, and Mbeya were met with tear gas and live ammunition, leaving several dead and dozens injured. Hundreds were arrested. The scale and speed of the violence shocked a nation long considered one of East Africa’s most stable.

But these riots were not spontaneous. They were the culmination of months of intimidation: the prosecution of opposition figure Tundu Lissu on treason charges, renewed pressure on civil-society organisations, and the quiet suffocation of independent media that had briefly enjoyed a revival under Samia’s early tenure.

The state’s refusal to engage with dissent created a vacuum quickly filled by anger. Citizens were not only rejecting the election results but demanding recognition in a political process that had excluded them. The violence reflected the breaking of a social contract long strained by distrust and manipulation.

The AU’s declaration that the election ‘fell short of democratic standards’ was unusually direct. SADC echoed similar concerns, citing harassment and intimidation. But many doubt that their statements will yield concrete action.

For Samia, once celebrated as a reformist and unifying presence, the disputed poll marks a defining moment

Africa’s civil society delivered the strongest response. Thirteen organisations urged the AU and SADC not to recognise Samia’s new term, warning that the erosion of democracy in one country weakens the entire continent.

The East African Community, however, was conspicuously muted. Its limited observer mission praised Tanzania’s ‘peace and stability’, downplaying credible reports of abuse. This silence reflects a wider regional trend in which stability is prized above democracy, even at the cost of legitimacy.

When Samia became president in 2021, she was celebrated as a breakthrough figure — Tanzania’s first woman president and one of Africa’s few female heads of state. Her early steps backed that optimism: unfettering the media, meeting with opposition leaders, and signalling a more open political direction.

But Tanzania’s political environment is shaped by entrenched patriarchal norms and dominated by CCM elites, former security chiefs, and conservative powerbrokers. To secure her place within this hierarchy, Samia has often mirrored the coercive instincts of her predecessors.

Her 4Rs, once a symbol of national healing, now risk being reduced to political branding. The challenge lies not in her gender but in the nature of CCM: a party whose DNA equates dissent with disloyalty and central authority with political survival.

Samia’s historic role remains significant, but the limits of any individual leader within such a system have become painfully evident. The real question is whether any president — man or woman — can democratise a party designed to rule indefinitely.

Samia’s 4Rs were conceived as a roadmap for national recovery after the divisive rule of the late John Magufuli. Each pillar represented a specific ambition:

• Reconciliation: restoring dialogue and political participation.

• Resilience: strengthening institutions to withstand turbulence.

• Reforms: updating restrictive laws and expanding civic space.

• Rebuilding: restoring both domestic and international confidence.

Yet each pillar has been strained.

Reconciliation faltered as opposition figures were barred, detained, or silenced.

Resilience weakened as institutions acted more as extensions of CCM than guardians of democratic norms. Reforms stalled, leaving restrictive media, assembly, and electoral laws intact.

Rebuilding suffered as donor confidence wavered and regional condemnation mounted.

Restoring credibility to the 4Rs requires political courage. Reconciliation must be more than a slogan. Resilience must involve genuine institutional independence. Reforms must be anchored in constitutional change. Rebuilding must prioritise trust, not control.

At the centre of Tanzania’s democratic malaise lies the unfinished business of constitutional reform. Civil-society groups, religious institutions, and opposition parties have long demanded a new constitution to curb presidential powers, ensure judicial independence, and protect political pluralism.

The process launched under President Jakaya Kikwete stalled under Magufuli’s authoritarian turn and has remained stagnant under Samia. But the disputed 2025 election has reignited calls for change.

A new constitution would rebalance power between citizens and the state and establish the legal backbone for free and fair elections. Yet inside CCM, many see such reform as a threat to the party’s dominance.

Samia faces a difficult choice: revive the constitutional agenda and risk alienating powerful internal constituencies, or maintain the status quo and deepen the crisis of legitimacy.

The violence reflected the breaking of a social contract long strained by distrust and manipulation

Her leadership moment demands a decision.

Among the most disturbing developments of Tanzania’s recent political landscape is the resurgence of abductions and enforced disappearances. Human-rights organisations have documented more than 200 such cases since 2019, a trend that persisted into the 2025 election period.

Victims include activists, journalists, and political organisers. Some reappear after days or weeks, traumatised but silent. Others remain missing.

The security apparatus enjoys near-total impunity. Abductions serve as a tool of repression, instilling fear and suppressing mobilisation. The long-term consequences are corrosive: civic participation declines, journalists self-censor, and trust in the state collapses.

The 4Rs cannot succeed without confronting this machinery of fear.

Beyond formal institutions, Samia must navigate the informal power networks within CCM — the real guardians of the party’s authority. These networks of regional barons, business interests, security veterans, and ideological loyalists shape the decisionmaking environment.

Their priority is continuity, not reform. Any agenda that threatens the established balance is resisted, often subtly but decisively.

Samia must balance appeasing these forces while pushing for the changes necessary to restore Tanzania’s democratic health. This is a political tightrope with high stakes: too much compromise risks further regression, while open confrontation could destabilise her position.

Tanzania now stands at a historic crossroads. Samia Suluhu Hassan’s disputed re-election has strained her reformist image and shaken public confidence. Yet the very philosophy she championed — reconciliation, resilience, reforms, and rebuilding — could still chart a way out of crisis if restored with sincerity and urgency.

Reclaiming the 4Rs would require freeing political prisoners, reopening civic space, depoliticising institutions, advancing constitutional reform, and establishing accountability for abuses. It would also involve confronting the entrenched power networks within CCM that have long equated political control with national stability.

Regionally and internationally, Samia retains symbolic significance as a trailblazing woman leader. But symbolic capital fades quickly when repression mounts.

Whether she becomes a transitional figure presiding over democratic decline or a decisive leader who confronts the machine that constrains her will define her legacy — and Tanzania’s democratic future.

Africa’s restless Gen Z forces a democratic reckoning

Jon

Offei-Ansah

examines how a digitally connected generation—from Nairobi to Rabat—is challenging entrenched power, demanding economic justice, and reshaping the future of democracy across

Africa

FROM Antananarivo to Rabat, Nairobi to Lagos, a generational awakening is transforming African politics.

The continent’s Gen Z — born between the late 1990s and early 2010s — has emerged as a restless political force, unwilling to inherit the failures of its elders. Over the past 18 months, protests led by young Africans have overturned governments, forced policy U-turns, and redefined the relationship between citizens and the state.

These movements are not commanded by political parties, trade unions, or charismatic opposition figures. Instead, they are decentralised, digitally coordinated and defiantly post-ideological. What unites these protesters is not a single manifesto but a shared sense of betrayal — a conviction that democracy has become hollow, and that leaders elected to serve have instead governed to survive.

We still believe in democracy — we just don’t believe in their version of it

In Kenya, months of protests under the hashtag #RejectFinanceBill2024 forced President William Ruto to withdraw unpopular tax proposals. In Madagascar, student-led demonstrations over crumbling dormitories and frequent power cuts escalated into a national uprising that ended with President Andry Rajoelina’s removal from office. In Morocco, youth anger at lavish World Cup spending while hospitals and schools languish has spurred the country’s largest protests in over a decade.

This generational wave of rebellion, stretching from North to Southern Africa, represents more than isolated grievances. It signals a fundamental rupture in the social contract between governments and governed — one where promises of democracy are no longer enough without delivery.

The economic context behind this revolt is as urgent as its political dimension. Africa’s youth have borne the brunt of global economic shocks over the past five years. The Covid-19 pandemic

Morocco’s ‘GenZ 212’ collective is using memes and quick-hit videos to mock official propaganda and spark sudden street protests

decimated tourism, trade, and informal employment — lifelines for millions. When the war in Ukraine disrupted global food and energy markets, the impact reverberated across the continent, which depends heavily on grain and fuel imports from Russia and Ukraine.

Inflation surged while debt levels soared. Sub-Saharan Africa’s average debt-to-GDP ratio climbed from around 35 percent in 2013 to nearly 60 percent by 2022. As interest payments consumed national budgets, governments slashed subsidies and raised taxes, often under the guidance of the International Monetary Fund.

The outcome was a perfect storm of economic austerity and social frustration. Kenya’s proposed taxes on essentials such as bread and sanitary pads ignited outrage. Nigeria’s abrupt removal of fuel subsidies pushed transport and food prices beyond reach.

In Angola, a 33 percent fuel price hike triggered nationwide protests, while in Ghana, frustration with debt restructuring and youth unemployment has stirred renewed activism online.

Morocco’s crisis epitomises the contradictions of economic modernisation without social justice. Despite billions poured into hosting the 2030 FIFA World Cup, hospitals in rural areas remain understaffed, and public schools overcrowded. When eight women died in childbirth in Agadir in August, the tragedy became a national symbol of skewed priorities. Chants of ‘Stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?’ echoed across cities, capturing a wider continental sentiment: that governments celebrate prestige projects while neglecting basic human needs.

Beneath these protests lies a deeper paradox. Young Africans overwhelmingly endorse democracy in principle but reject it in practice. According to Afrobarometer, nearly two-thirds of youth across 39 countries prefer democracy to any other form of government. Yet 60 percent are dissatisfied with how it works in their own countries, and more than half say they would accept a military takeover if elected leaders abuse power.

This signals not a rejection of democracy itself but disillusionment with its performance. Voter turnout among young Africans is declining sharply — barely two-thirds voted in their last elections compared to over 80 percent of older citizens. But in every other form of civic engagement, from protests to online activism, the young lead.

“We still believe in democracy,” a Kenyan protester told Africa Briefing. “We just don’t believe in their version of it.”

This sentiment reflects a profound legitimacy crisis. For decades, Africa’s democracies have emphasised elections as the ultimate test of accountability. But for Gen Z, legitimacy comes from delivery — jobs, education, and basic services — not ballots alone.

The architecture of today’s Gen Z protests mirrors the technology that raised them. They are horizontal, fast-moving, and visually powerful. Platforms like TikTok, Discord, and X (formerly Twitter) act as both organising tools and narrative battlegrounds.

In Kenya, viral videos of police violence during the June 2024 protests triggered a public backlash that forced Ruto to back down. In Nigeria, the hashtag #EndBadGovernance built on the legacy of the 2020 #EndSARS movement, expanding its critique from police brutality to corruption and inflation. Morocco’s “GenZ 212” network uses memes and short videos to ridicule official propaganda and mobilise flash protests.

This digital fluidity gives the movements tactical advantages. They can mobilise thousands without a central command, making it difficult for governments to infiltrate or suppress. Yet it also limits their staying power. Without leaders or negotiating structures, they often struggle to transform street energy into institutional reform.

Madagascar’s experience offers a cautionary tale. When Rajoelina’s government collapsed, the military swiftly filled the void, promising order but entrenching its power. The youth movement that had catalysed change found itself sidelined — a

Africa’s Gen Z is not rejecting democracy; it’s demanding that democracy finally deliver

reminder that spontaneous revolt, without political infrastructure, risks being co-opted.

What makes this moment distinct is its cross-border resonance. A protest in Nairobi trends in Accra within hours; a Moroccan activist’s video is subtitled and shared in Dakar. The grievances differ — taxes, fuel prices, or corruption — but the narrative is shared: Africa’s youth are tired of waiting for change.

This digital solidarity has created what analysts call a “protest contagion”, where civic mobilisation in one country inspires others. The collapse of Madagascar’s government reverberated across the region, emboldening activists in Zambia and Ghana.

However, as recent coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger illustrate, frustration with civilian rule can also breed nostalgia for strongmen who promise stability. Gen Z’s disillusionment risks feeding both democratic renewal and authoritarian regression. The line between reform and rupture has never been thinner.

The Gen Z uprising represents the most significant test for African democracy since the 1990s transition wave. Its demands are not revolutionary in the old sense — they are moral and material. Young Africans are asking for accountability, opportunity, and dignity.

Governments that ignore them do so at their peril. Repression, as history shows, only postpones reckoning. Yet to sustain its impact, the youth movement must evolve from street-level reaction to structured engagement — building civic organisations, policy agendas, and alternative leadership pipelines.

If Africa’s Gen Z can channel their defiance into constructive politics, they could yet renew the democratic project that their parents began. If not, the continent risks drifting into cycles of protest and populist authoritarianism.

As one Senegalese activist put it recently: “We are the democracy our leaders failed to build.”

Africa’s Gen Z revolt is not a rejection of democracy — it is its wake-up call. It demands that democracy become more than ritual elections and empty slogans. It insists that freedom must come with fairness, and legitimacy with service delivery.

Across the continent, leaders face a choice: rebuild trust through inclusive governance, or confront an increasingly radicalised generation with little patience left.

The energy, creativity, and digital power of Africa’s youth could either become the engine of reform or the fuel of instability The outcome depends on whether governments respond with empathy and action, or repression and denial.

For now, the message from Africa’s young protesters rings clear: democracy must deliver — or risk losing its generation. AB

Africa’s Gen Z revolt isn’t rejecting democracy — it’s demanding that it finally means more than ritual elections and hollow slogans

How Gen Z is upping the ante on African leaders

Young protesters are bringing to the fore a deep anger over the lack of opportunities and political exclusion, thus forcing governments and older generations to rethink how they are governed, writes Crystal Orderson

WATCHING live images on social media of the Gen Z protests in Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, alongside President Andry Rajoelina fleeing the country, underscores a critical point: African leaders who ignore the socio-economic issues facing young people will provoke anger that could ultimately lead to their removal from office.

The significant Malagasy youth population called for change similar to that seen in other parts of Africa and Asia. The protests have also revealed how Gen Z is challenging traditional power structures, questioning political elites, confronting corruption and poor governance.

High unemployment and growing inequality are

major drivers of change in the Global South

Furthermore, this generation has lost trust in ruling political parties and their leaders and is not shy in expressing frustration over the lack of opportunities. This growing discontent has ignited a wave of local grassroots activism and has reshaped the political landscape in some countries.

Over the past few months, we have witnessed young people challenging dominant political powers across various regions, from Kenya to Nepal, Morocco to Indonesia, and now in Madagascar. They have effectively utilised social media as a tool for mass mobilisation, confronting traditional media and political elite power structures.

In Madagascar, where the median age is just 19, protests erupted, primarily led by Generation Z. Initially focused on the pressing issue of electricity and water shortages, the demonstrations then broadened to encompass a range of critical

concerns. These included unemployment, corruption, poor governance and inadequate basic services for millions of people.

In a bid to appease the protesters, Rajoelina responded with some promises and reform. He fired his Cabinet and appointed a new Prime Minister, Ruphin Fortunat Dimbisoa Zafisambo. At the time, Rajoelina said the new premier must be “capable of restoring order and regaining the people's trust, with a focus on improving living conditions and advancing key national priorities”. Rajoelina also made a set of promises that would bring change, but it seemed it was a little too late for people.

High unemployment and growing inequality have been some of the major drivers of change in countries across the Global South. Madagascar is one of the world's poorest countries. The World Bank estimates that three-quarters of the population live below the $2.15-a-day poverty line, and that the average annual income is about $600.

It also ranks in the bottom 20 of the UN Human Development Index. These stark statistics indicate a pressing need for economic reforms and development initiatives.

Rajoelina miscalculated the support of the army, who later joined the mass protests. Ironically, they are the ones who helped the former DJ and mayor of the capital come to power. During his DJ days, Rajoelina was once nicknamed “TGV” after the French fast train, for his energy and enthusiasm. He took power in a 2009 coup, making him the country’s youngest head of state in history at the age of 34.

At the time, his ascent was an important turning point in the country’s political landscape, as Rajoelina promised to bring change and development. However, his tenure was also marred by controversy, with critics questioning his governance and the sustainability of his reforms. Now, years later, it has come back to haunt him.

In a statement, the African Union called on all Malagasy parties to act with “responsibility and patriotism to safeguard unity, stability and peace, in full respect of the constitution and established institutional frameworks”.

Peter Mutharika, the newly elected Malawian President and Chair of the Southern African Development Community’s Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, said SADC stood in “solidarity with the government and people of Madagascar during this challenging time.” He called on all stakeholders in

Madagascar to “exercise maximum calm and restraint, safeguard the rights, freedoms and dignity of all citizens, respect the rule of law and uphold constitutional governance”. The statement added that it was ready to assist the country; however, with Mutharika still settling into his new role as head of State, I do wonder what else SADC will do for the country.

The opposition in parliament told media outlets that Rajoelina had fled the country on October 12 after soldiers defected and joined the protesters. It has been reported that a French aircraft flew Rajoelina out of the country. He later took to social media platform Facebook, where he said he had to "move to a safe location to protect his life" and that he would not “allow Madagascar to be destroyed”.

Following Rajoelina's flight from the country, parliament voted to impeach him. The new regime then announced that it had stripped Rajoelina of his citizenship.

Africa has a massive youth population, which has implications for health, education and employment. African leaders seem to be out of touch with this generation.

The UN says there are more than 1.22 billion young people in the world. Africa is home to nearly 400 million young people between the ages of 15-35 and 60 per cent of the continent's population is under the age of 25. According to the UN population fund, young people (10-24) make up 32 per cent or 208 million of the population in East and Southern Africa.

African leaders seem to be out of touch with the young generation

Gen Z protests are bringing to the fore a deep anger over the lack of opportunities for young people and forcing governments and older generations to rethink how they are governed. They are also challenging the political elites that have been responsible for the deep structural issues in the economy.

The protests are driven by anger and political exclusion. African leaders must heed this warning: neglect the suffering of the youth, the jobless and the marginalised, and you will bear the consequences. Gen Z is making political and social changes without asking for permission. This generation's voice is louder than ever, demanding accountability and transparency from those in power.

This paper was first published by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) in South Africa. The opinions or recommendations are strictly those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the IJR.

The protests lay bare a Gen Z that is openly challenging old power structures, calling out political elites, and pushing back against corruption and poor governance

Scramble for Africa 2.0

The continent is facing a new age of “post-liberal” conquest because of its fragmented, incoherent and uncoordinated response to the “new interventions” by the major powers, argues Medhane Tadesse

AFRICA is under threat from a new age of conquest, generating new vulnerabilities with all its natural and political resources, including sovereignty and data mining. This is being achieved by weaponising ongoing wars: that is, peace agreements, fragile statehood and digital sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Africa’s fragmented, incoherent and uncoordinated response to the “new interventions” is playing into the hands of major powers, particularly the Trump administration, in which their coercive-transactional foreign policy is starting to fashion “client states with resources” that will do their bidding.

This also speaks to a lack of a robust continental leadership space in defence of Africa’s interests or the African Union’s founding principles. The second is weak and disorientated leadership and the decline of nationalist and ideologically oriented governments and political elites on the continent.

Central to the new age of conquest is the laser type focus on usurping African mineral resources on a bilateral basis by the Trump administration which is readily supported by some African leaders and conflict actors. Many leaders have sold themselves in multiple ways to foreign actors and individual external benefactors.

Western, mainly US, economic and diplomatic pressures are not totally delinked from the usage and recalibration of wellknown neocolonial instruments on African soil. New military ventures in Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti or the clinging to the Batuk military base in Kenya are just a few notable examples.

The deals and the threat of economic sanctions or tariffs, close to economic terror, seem to have also the tone of curtailing economic and political relations with rival powers, weakening

Deal making with the US or new Gulf powers means the continent is increasingly vulnerable to brutal exploitation

Donald Trump with the DRC’s Therese Kayikwamba Wagner (right) and Rwanda’s Olivier Nduhungirehe (left) at the White House

the conduct of independent foreign policy by African countries. Western powers have always been pressurising weak countries to secure unwarranted benefits, but the crudeness of the exploitative dynamics driving such deals today is particularly new since the end of the Cold War.

Given Trumpian focus on coercive diplomacy to secure submission and surrender of natural reserves, several African states have already begun bartering crucial natural resources –including minerals – in exchange for humanitarian or military support. These can be seen in US overtures in the DRC, Somalia, Sudan, and the European Union in Mozambique.

Armed conflicts, such as in the DRC, Mozambique, Sudan, Somalia or even Gaza, are being turned into militarised forms of economic destabilisation all in the name of forced ceasefires and peace agreements. Kinshasa’s proclivity to sign a mineral deal with the US for support against Rwanda-backed rebels –providing American companies access to lithium, cobalt and coltan – is highly instructive of what is evolving.

A new formula for “peace-making” is emerging. If we consider the DRC, perhaps Sudan next and an Ethiopia-Egypt rapprochement, or even Gaza, US efforts at ceasefires and mediation could be seen as a straightforward application of extractive peace-making; whereby a global power is taking the lead in bulldozing peace and political talks primarily to increases its share of the rents that come out of such deals.

Many African countries,

which are among the world’s poorest, are

paying millions to Washington lobbyists

sovereignty means the continent is increasingly vulnerable to brutal exploitation of its natural resources without an iota of transparency.

Worse still, many African countries, which are among the world’s poorest, are paying millions to Washington lobbyists. These include paying large amount of money for negotiations to offset deadlines of debt repayments which many African countries are unable to meet.

Reportedly, around 60 per cent of Africa’s GDP is spent on debt servicing, which significantly redirects resources needed for life-saving efforts and social well. This is a manifestation of a broader global order in which financial interests, military influence and strategic alignments matter more than people’s lives or democratic aspirations.

The application of such coercive transactional methods on Africa is not only reserved to Western governments. It includes, and in fact suits, Gulf and Middle Eastern powers that support rival factions in African conflicts in which geopolitical patronage is being turned into spoils, as particularly unaccountable regimes are highly vulnerable to exploitation by external authoritarian actors.

The sole focus of external actors, both old, new, “middle and meddling” powers is on extraction which is being done by weaponising political instability and paralysis in regional mechanisms, as policy sovereignty becomes increasingly discredited by all involved. Achieving this does not require killing or finishing of the state all together; it only requires gutting the state and turning it into a shadow of its former self. This is fundamentally changing the nature of statehood and sovereignty (including ceding digital sovereignty). This will again push back the continent to the frontiers of a shifting global (dis)order and threaten to deepen the global landscape that places Africa at a disadvantage.

Interstate relations and the global trade regime is being turned to a spectacle of pure plunder. Many speak of the emergence of a multilateral world but as far as Africa’s international relations are concerned this can only be described as a “multi-mineral” world.

Multilateralism is on the back foot, being replaced by bilateral and transactional tools as major and middle powers rush to divide up political, diplomatic and military tasks in order to accomplish a specific goal powered by crude national interests.

Deal making with Washington or new Gulf powers in the context of ongoing wars, fragile statehood and weak

The resource deals or wealth surrender demonstrate that African countries and the continental body can be muzzled into silence by coercive diplomacy from boisterous foreign leaders. Africa’s prospects are being worsened, owing to the global resurgence of “looting states”, the transformation in the nature and capacity of state violence, the emergence of militia states and the continued weakness of regional institutions. The imminent peril is that these developments, combined, are ensuring the full return of the plague of predation and the rentier state in Africa, an antithesis of the security-development paradigm that had dominated the policy debate and praxis in global and Africa’s political economy since the end of the Cold War.

Medhane Tadesse is an academic on peace and security issues in Africa. He has acted as a security sector reform (SSR) adviser to the African Union.

The resource deals show how African states and their continental bodies can be pushed into silence by the coercive diplomacy of forceful foreign leaders

Pretrial detention’s hidden toll on women in postconflict Africa

By centring women's voices and integrating feminist legal theory with regional precedent, we can build justice systems that serve not just the law but the lives they are entrusted to protect,

argues Cheryl Sembie

AMINA’S voice trembles as she recounts the moment her life was turned upside down. A 25-year-old mother of three, she was detained for “causing obstruction” while selling bananas in a crowded market. With no lawyer, no money for bail and no male guarantor to vouch for her, she was held in detention for months. Her children waited. No one explained what would happen next or when she might be released.

Amina's story is not unique, as it reveals a silent crisis across many African justice systems, where they are fragile, overburdened and shaped by colonial legacies. These systems routinely detain women for survival-linked offences. Women are caught in a web of poverty, patriarchal legal norms and institutional silence.

Many African justice systems are overburdened and shaped by colonial legacies

Their detention violates the rights enshrined in the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, the Maputo Protocol and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Yet these guarantees remain elusive due to structural and systemic inequalities in the justice system, which are derived from colonial legacies and institutional neglect, and routinely fail to uphold these rights.

All these instruments guarantee protection against arbitrary detention and affirm the right to legal representation and a fair trial. Yet, for women navigating post-conflict justice systems, these promises remain elusive.

Pretrial detention refers to the confinement of individuals before they are formally convicted. It is widely recognised

across the globe as overused and often abusive. Nevertheless, its gendered aspects remain inadequately explored.

In post-conflict African contexts, justice systems are often fragile, overburdened and shaped by the legacy of colonial laws. Women, especially economically marginalised ones, face unique vulnerabilities: being detained for survival-based infractions like loitering, petty theft or vending without a permit; bail processes that require a male guarantor (a man who guarantees the accused’s appearance in court, which disproportionately disadvantages women without such kinship support); and legally gender-neutral procedures that inadvertently ignore caregiving roles and domestic responsibilities, often held by women

For example, in the 2022 case of Equality Now v Ethiopia, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights reaffirmed the state's obligations to eliminate gender-discriminatory barriers to access to justice, especially those that harm women without male kin or legal literacy.

Some courts have attempted to advance gender-sensitive jurisprudence; however, these efforts remain sporadic. While courts in Tanzania and Uganda show growing awareness, consistent implementation remains elusive.

Data from the UN and regional justice institutions reveal troubling trends. Women increasingly represent a growing portion of the pretrial detained population. For instance, the Women in Detention in Africa Report by the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights estimates that women account for approximately 14 to18 per cent of pretrial detainees in some countries. This rising figure is due to survival-related offences. Many women are detained for non-violent, survival-linked offences such as street vending or loitering. Legal illiteracy, informal barriers to bail and the critical caregiving roles women fulfil remain largely unrecognised.

Public trust in courts remains low, particularly regarding fairness to women. Afrobarometer surveys in Sierra Leone and Uganda show that fewer than half of the respondents believe women receive equal treatment in legal proceedings.

My field interviews with paralegals and court officials from 2022 to 2024 confirmed that many mentioned an unwritten rule stating that bail is more accessible for women when a male relative is present. These firsthand accounts have influenced the

next stage of my capstone, which combines comparative legal analysis with field-based interventions.

In response to these gaps, I am developing the Gender and Bail Index (a field-informed framework) to document informal bail barriers, visualise gendered disparities and support advocacy across six African jurisdictions. This Index is grounded in comparative legal analysis and firsthand accounts, aiming to complement incomplete international datasets, such as the World Prison Brief and UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) incarceration statistics.

While technological innovations present promising pathways to improve access to justice for women in pretrial detention, these tools must be approached with caution, as they can also perpetuate or exacerbate gender biases if not designed inclusively In many post-conflict African contexts, marginalised women face significant barriers to benefiting from technologies like mobile legal aid apps, virtual consultations and electronic monitoring systems due to persistent digital divides, including limited access to smartphones and the internet, low digital literacy and sociocultural constraints.

Moreover, emerging algorithmic decision-making tools and electronic surveillance risk-embedding stereotypes and biases disproportionately impact women, especially caregivers and women experiencing poverty. These technologies may intrude on privacy and autonomy; for instance, through excessive electronic monitoring that fails to consider women's domestic responsibilities, potentially creating new forms of control that reinforce structural inequalities.

Addressing these risks requires a gender-sensitive approach to the design and implementation of technological solutions, including community participation, digital literacy programmes and robust oversight to ensure privacy and fairness. Such innovation can then align with international legal standards, such as the Maputo Protocol, empowering affected women rather than excluding them.

During a focus group I facilitated with four formerly detained women, they shared their experiences, from arrest to release. Their stories revealed an absence of legal aid; a lack of knowledge about their rights; and denial of bail due to the absence of male relatives

One woman shared poignantly: “Because I had no one to call, I stayed in that place for two months.” These stories reinforce the urgent need for reform that centres women’s lived experiences, such as Amina, the banana seller, who was just one among many.

These recommendations echo policy suggestions from UN Women and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, particularly the call for gender-sensitive judicial reform.

Justice is often cited as the foundation of post-conflict recovery. But justice for whom? For women jailed for selling fruit or sleeping on the street, the question remains unanswered.

Women, especially economically marginalised ones, face unique vulnerabilities

Gender-blind reforms fail to confront informal barriers. Women heads of households are frequently denied bail simply because they do not conform to outdated expectations embedded in traditional court practices.

This practice violates multiple protections guaranteed by: Article 8 of the Maputo Protocol; and the Bangkok Rules, which advocate non-custodial measures, especially for women caregivers.

Justice officials and paralegals I interviewed offered promising local insights but also pointed to systemic silences. By centring women's voices and integrating feminist legal theory with regional precedent, we can build justice systems that serve not just the law but the lives they are entrusted to protect.

Legal literacy

Translate rights education in local languages

Maputo Protocol Representation

Hire female paralegals and lawyers HANDBOOK FOR LEGISLATION ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Cheryl Sembie is a legal scholar and justice reform practitioner with over 14 years of experience working across Africa's justice and governance sectors. She is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa and a 2025 Research Scholar at the Leaders of Africa Institute.

A stark portrait symbolising the silent suffering of women trapped in unjust detention systems

African feminist worldmaking

Awino

Okech argues that rising ethno-nationalism is tightening control over women’s reproductive freedoms and attacking institutions that produce critical knowledge

TWO questions have remained constant in my intellectual inquiry. First, how do those relegated to the periphery of society at the intersection of gender, race and class transform power and recentre equitable outcomes for all as part of the post flag independence nation-state building projects? Second, how do we centre feminist imaginaries as the site for transformational nation and statemaking projects?

I studied at the University of Nairobi at the height of the Bretton Woods Institutions’ structural adjustment programmes (SAPs); the decimation of public universities during this period due to donor conditionalities that included the requirement to divest from higher education.

Reproduction as a technology of violence relies on surveillance and control of women’s bodies

The period 1998-2002 coincided with the consolidation of Kenya’s second wave democracy movement. In 1991, Section 2a of the Constitution was repealed, thereby reintroducing multi-partyism. NGOs grew as the vehicles for delivering public goods and the 20plus-year rule of Daniel arap Moi was slowly being chipped away. Additionally, the spectre of politically ignited ethnic clashes became a feature of how Kenyans were scared into the perception that a multi-party environment would be a source of division rather than one that created space for more generative political futures.

Working with other young Kenyans organising under the banner of Amani People’s Theatre (APT) – Amani means peace in Kiswahili – APT was interested in the role of liberatory methodologies, as developed by Paulo Freire, in working with displaced communities in the broad area known as the Rift Valley, a historical epicentre of violence and the breadbasket of the country.

Prof Awino Okech: ‘Debates on gender and sexuality are redrawing the boundaries of who can lay claims to the nation-state’

Our objective was to examine the causes of conflict, community repair and conflict relapse. In a country whose politics is often reductively read as being ethnic in character, it is critical to note that those we worked with never spoke about how much they hated the neighbouring community.

It was their material realities emerging as contestations around the proverbial national cake that served as the bedrock for the politicisation of ethnicity and subsequently the ethnicisation of politics. We can draw parallels to the rhetoric that underpins Make America Great Again, Brexit and various fascist movements re-emerging across the UK and Europe.

This period of deep praxis work invested in historicising ethnonationalist politics and the socio-economic questions that heightened vulnerabilities exploited by the political elite. Three questions we grappled with were:

• How do we reconcile land as a means of production alongside its ancestral importance? The land question is not only about who controls the means of production but also its role as a site of homemaking.

• Understanding reproduction as a technology of violence. Every conflict produces national discourses about women as producers, healers and guardians of the nation based on their reproductive capacities. All these discourses rely on various levels of surveillance and control of women’s bodies.

• What forms of political organisation and social contracts are central to redressing structural inequalities?

The late Professor Wangari Maathai, whose favourite reminder still resonates: ‘It's the little things citizens do that make the difference. My little thing is planting trees’

Whilst pursuing my PhD at the University of Cape Town, I took a short detour to manage a pan-African programme on gender and conflict with ACORD International. I was involved in transnational work with colleagues who were grappling with some of Africa’s most deadly conflicts and their aftermaths: a post-genocide Rwanda, the intractable conflict in the DRC and the conflict in the greater north of Uganda.

My PhD from the University of Cape Town’s African Gender Institute is published as a book, Widow Inheritance and Contested Citizenship in Kenya, in which I think through the meaning of a cultural practice as a vehicle for nation and state-building. My research shifted focus from mainstream approaches to analysing widow inheritance as a women’s rights abuse issue to examining cultural practices as a framework through which nations organise material claims to the state and the role of women’s bodies as vectors for managing those contested claims.

In this period, my work was also animated by contemporary questions of asymmetrical conflict, discourses on “war on terror” and its material implications for security. We know that across the African continent contemporary approaches to dealing with asymmetrical conflict and defining national security objectives are influenced by the legacies and continuities of the 9/11 twin tower attack in the US.

The American Patriot Act of 2001, which was the American policy response after the 9/11 attack, has been copy-pasted across various jurisdictions with deleterious effects including sanctioning the arrest, detention, extra-judicial killings and even disappearance of so-called suspects, all ostensibly to secure people.

We know that this idea of safety often occurs by criminalising communities through overt and covert ways such as economic

Across Africa, protests

rose from 2,250 in 2011 to 10,605 in 2020 at its peak

deprivation, surveillance and over policing which only lead to communities that are resentful of the state due to their peripheral status.

The project that has animated my research and public facing work in the last five years – and its importance in this historical moment –involves social movements. Across Africa, the number of protests rose from 2,250 in 2011 to 10,605 in 2020 at its peak. These protests are catalysed by a range of issues but at their base are governance deficits manifest in the manipulation of elections through power-sharing agreements, corruption and service delivery questions.

My work has intervened in these debates through three questions:

• What do feminist theories and movements show – not tell - us about building transformative change?

• How do we prepare for just and equitable power to curtail the inevitable usurpation of people’s power as was seen in Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe, to name a few?

• How do we ideologically and intellectually prepare the next generation of feminist intellectuals and activists?

The Feminist Movement Building Schools and the PhD fellowships at the Feminist Centre for Racial Justice are a direct intervention on question three: how change happens and what will sustain transformative and just societies remain a pressing and urgent question today.

We are witnessing moral panics animated through debates on gender and sexuality to redraw the boundaries of who belongs and can lay claims to the nation-state. Ethno-nationalism is being reified and there is a heightened surveillance of women’s reproductive capacities and freedoms as part of affirming racially and ethnically pure nations. There is a direct attack on critical knowledge production and research and the institutions that deliver this.

So, what do we do? Let me invoke a global trail blazer, the late Professor Wangari Maathai. One of my favourite quotes from her states: “It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.”

So, what are my little things? I retain a commitment to strengthening African feminist epistemic communities through transnational and multidisciplinary collaborations beyond the academy because it is this cross-sector work that in my view offers a critical antidote at this moment.

I invest in partnerships with African research institutions such as the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and academic centres on the continent, as is evident in the Feminist Centre for Racial Justice’s partnership with the School of Women and Gender Studies at Makerere University.

I am keen to broaden access to knowledge from leading African feminist practitioners and intellectuals which occurs through the Runway to Feminist Justice podcast.

Awino Okech is a Professor of Feminist and Security Studies at SOAS University of London and founding director of the Feminist Centre for Racial Justice. Professor Okech’s work is grounded in African feminist, queer and black internationalist thought as central frameworks for thinking about power and justice. Across her work is an exploration of Pan-African feminist and Internationalist strategies for liberation. She was appointed as a Professor at SOAS University of London in September 2023 and delivered her professorial inaugural lecture on October 23, 2025.

For more about Professor Okech’s publications visit: https://www.awinookech.net/publications

Kenya’s police reforms: progress on paper, corruption in practice

Until hiring, promotions and prosecutions are shielded from political and financial patronage, corruption will continue to erode public safety and trust in Kenya’s police reform drive, argues Merceline Odhiambo

INTERVENTION by the courts in police recruitment, deadly protest crackdowns and a shocking custody death have thrust police accountability back into Kenya’s national conversation. The Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) documented 65 fatalities, 342 civilian injuries and 171 police injuries from the June–July 2024 protests.

As in the past, families have watched swift statements fade into years of stalled investigations.

Without visible justice, every new inquiry risks becoming another press conference standing in for accountability.

The 2024–25 protest wave was overwhelmingly youth-led—and overwhelmingly male in its casualties. Nine in 10 injured protesters were young men. Women and girls, meanwhile, faced distinct risks: harassment during dispersals and barriers when reporting abuse.

Inside the National Police Service (NPS), women still make up under 10 per cent of officers, and fewer than half of police stations have a functioning gender desk. Reforms that ignore this reality risk failure.

Gender desks need proper staffing, training and links to legal and health services, while the Service must recruit and promote women on merit.

Teacher and blogger Albert Ojwang was arrested on June 6, 2025, over an online post allegedly defaming Deputy Inspector General Eliud Lagat. Two days later, he was found dead in his Nairobi Central Police Station cell.

When compliance can be negotiated at a roadside, road safety becomes a casualty

A government autopsy contradicted police claims of suicide, revealing injuries consistent with assault. President William Ruto acknowledged that Ojwang had died ‘at the hands of police’, and Inspector-General Douglas Kanja publicly retracted the suicide claim.

One officer has been charged, several suspended, but the real test is whether this rare moment of candour leads to convictions, not just headlines.

In August 2025, the government launched a Panel of Experts to design a framework for compensating victims of protest-related abuses dating back to 2017. Chaired by Prof. Makau Mutua and vice-chaired by Law Society of Kenya President Faith Odhiambo, the panel’s work was quickly halted by court orders. No claims are being processed, another example of an accountability initiative stuck in procedural limbo.

On October 2, the Employment and Labour Relations Court froze the National Police Service Commission’s recruitment of 10,000 constables. The suspension reopened long-standing doubts about bribery, influence and opaque criteria in police hiring. Digitising forms and setting entry standards matter little if citizens believe the process remains vulnerable to capture.

In 2024, 4,748 people died on Kenya’s roads: 424 more than in 2023 despite recurring traffic crackdowns. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) continues to rank the Traffic Police among the most bribery-prone institutions.

When compliance can be negotiated at a roadside, road safety becomes a casualty. Technology helps, but not if corruption remains cheaper than compliance.

Within the Service, informal networks still determine who rises. Officers without powerful backers stagnate; those with them soar. The result: demoralisation, rent-seeking and performance decline.

Kenya does not lack reforms, only enforcement. Transparent shortlists and merit-based promotions could inject fairness into a system suffocated by patronage. If we can livestream ballot tallies, surely, we can publish promotion results.

What would make a difference?

• Make hiring and promotions transparent: Publish scorecards of applicants and results. Invite independent observers. When courts intervene, release a public audit instead of disputing the ruling.

• Reduce opportunities for cash deals: Rotate officers in cash-heavy posts like traffic and borders. Enforce asset declarations and random lifestyle audits.

• Move cases faster—and publicly: Give the ODPP deadlines to act on IPOA files and display every case stage on a public dashboard.

• Measure safety and not arrests: Judge police performance by lives saved and complaints reduced—not arrest counts.

Kenya already has the tools: a progressive Constitution, an independent prosecutor (ODPP), a civilian watchdog (IPOA), and clear HR laws for the police. What’s missing is political courage.

Let watchdogs investigate freely. Suspend implicated officers – junior or senior – and explain it publicly. Fund oversight agencies adequately. And make recruitment and promotions open, auditable and merit based.

In 2025, the choice is clear: either make police hiring, promotions and prosecutions independent of patronage, or continue leaving public safety to luck and outrage.

Kenya’s police reform blueprint is solid; its execution is not. The next frontier is integrity: protect clean recruitment and timely prosecutions, and measure success by safety and trust, not spectacle.

If the government wants lasting credit, it must finish the job, because justice that stops at a press conference is not justice.

Merceline Odhiambo is a Governance and Gender Specialist, Founder of Grassroot Women and Politics, and an alumnus of the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London where she completed her MSc Fellowship in Global Leadership and Peacebuilding in 2024.

Teacher and blogger Albert Ojwang was arrested on June 6, 2025, for an online post allegedly defaming Deputy Inspector General Eliud Lagat. Two days later, he was found dead in his cell at Nairobi Central Police Station

Raila Odinga: Peacemaker. Disruptor. Teacher.

Kenya’s former Prime Minister, who died on October 15 and was buried on October 19, rewired the country’s politics in ways few leaders ever have, writes Merceline Odhiambo

IN life, Raila Amolo Odinga was loved and feared in equal measure –proof that true leadership is rarely smooth. Flawed like any human but formidable in conviction, Odinga was a peacemaker who offered his hand in reconciliation and a disruptor who raised his fist when principle demanded.

He never wore the presidential sash, yet he carried a presidential burden. “Hard times don’t create heroes,” he once reminded us. “It is during hard times that the hero within us is revealed.” And in our hardest moments, Raila kept showing up.

Odinga never became president, but he became something rarer: the people’s president. Kenya’s politics bent around his presence.

Before and after protests, clergy, diplomats, journalists and wananchi (ordinary people) alike waited to hear what he would say. A single press conference could stall a reckless agenda; a single handshake could restart a national conversation.

And he shook hands – famously: with Mwai Kibaki after the bloody election violence of 2007/2008; with Uhuru Kenyatta in 2018; and later, with William Ruto when the nation’s stability required dialogue over division. These were not betrayals of the opposition but acts of statesmanship – gestures from a leader who knew that legitimacy requires both pressure and peace.

Odinga’s clearest legacy endures in the progress of women

Raila was oppositional enough to be a thorn, patriotic enough to be a stitch. He steadied the table even as he rattled the cutlery. Power never softened his insistence that democracy must include more voices, especially women’s.

Among his enduring legacies was his belief in gender equality, not as tokenism, but as governance. Odinga helped embed gender parity in the 2010 Constitution’s two-thirds principle and kept pressing Parliament to implement it when politics stalled.

In 2022, he chose Martha Karua as his running mate; the first time a major coalition placed a woman that close to State House. Under his party, ODM, women rose from candidates to commanders. Gladys Wanga’s election as Homa Bay Governor – and later as ODM’s National Chairperson – signalled that women were now steering party strategy, not just appearing on its posters.

“Those who say women cannot lead are fools,” he said in 2024. “We must give women leadership opportunities and respect them so we can prosper as a country.”

He also understood that representation without safety was a broken promise. As gender-based violence surged, he condemned it forcefully, calling for survivor-centred services, professional policing and zero tolerance for political intimidation.

Raila Odinga was loved and feared in equal measure

Equality, for Raila, was lived as much as legislated. Speaking at a wedding in 2025, he said: “A husband is not a leader to the wife; they are equal partners in marriage.” It was simple – and seismic.

His home reflected that belief. Ida Odinga was not a shadow beside her husband but an educator, organiser and advocate in her own right. His daughters – Winnie at the East African Legislative Assembly, Rosemary in Kibra politics – and his sister Ruth, former Kisumu Deputy Governor, embodied a family tradition of public service not reserved for sons.

Raila taught that opposition was not destruction; it was instruction. You can hold a nation together with one hand and push it forward with the other. He believed leadership was measured by how one treated those with the least power.

He did not always get it right. No one does. But he shifted Kenya’s expectations; of whom can lead, how loudly citizens may speak and how democracy should perform. Under his influence, women’s inclusion became baseline, not headline; freedom of speech felt less like privilege and more like oxygen.

Kenya has been grieving. The region has paused. The world has taken note. Odinga was loved and hated, too.

Without his gravitational pull, what trajectory will Kenya take? What becomes of the Luo community’s political future now that the king is gone? Crowns, after all, are not buried – they are inherited, contested, reinvented.

His clearest legacy endures in the progress of women and the insistence that democracy be practiced daily. He taught us that nations, like homes, were built on partnership, not hierarchy.

Raila Odinga was a statesman who never ruled officially yet lived like a king. He was granted a presidential farewell because the nation knew what it owed him because of his courage. A thorn in the side of complacency. A lighthouse in the fog of our politics.

Kenya will move on – as it always does – but it will not forget who taught it to move forward. There was no one like Raila Odinga. Perhaps there never will be.

Merceline Odhiambo is a Governance and Gender Specialist, Founder of Grassroot Women and Politics, and an alumnus of the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London where she completed her MSc Fellowship in Global Leadership and Peacebuilding in 2024.

Bullets that carry consequences

As South Africa’s weapons keep finding their way into the hands of those who silence others, the cost is not just reputational – it is human, writes Atilla Kisla

FEW nations speak the language of peace and human rights as fluently as South Africa. “Silencing the guns” in Africa is a publicly declared goal by the South African government. It forms part of a foreign policy based on peace, human rights and democracy.

For many years, South Africa has been advocating for these principles. In the Gaza situation, it did so despite the pressure from more powerful states.

At the UN, in the African Union and other major multilateral forums, South Africa often represents a voice of reason and peace. However, stepping away from the podium and cameras, the reality is not as clear-cut as one might expect.

An indicator of South Africa’s real commitment to human rights, democracy and peace can be found in its records of arms exports. A recent report published by the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), The Great Hypocrisy of South Africa’s arms exports, reveals a sobering truth about South Africa’s genuine commitment to ‘silencing the guns’, human rights, peace and democracy.

South Africa’s

arms exports laws are among the world’s toughest, but the practice of exports reveals double standards

As the largest arms exporter on the continent that has exported arms to 25 African countries between 2022 and mid-2025, South Africa carries a special responsibility – legally and morally. Against that backdrop, a key question that derives from SALC’s report is whether you can claim to champion human rights while cashing in cheques from military juntas, authoritarian regimes or countries accused of human rights abuses.

One entity that is meant to stand between South Africa and unlawful arms exports is the National Conventional Arms Control

Despite South Africa’s strict arms-export laws, actual practice shows glaring double standards that expose a deeper hypocrisy

Committee (NCACC). It is supposed to be the moral and legal firewall of South Africa’s foreign policy and adherence to the rule of law. Despite all that the NCACC is meant to be, SALC’s report reveals three very concerning instances in which the NCACC has granted arms exports. First, arms exports to countries that underwent a military coup. Second, arms exports for a UN peacekeeping mission that ceased to operate. Third, arms exports to countries accused by UN experts of having committed international crimes.

While South Africa’s laws for arms exports are among the world’s toughest, the practice of exports reveals double standards that reflect a larger hypocrisy. The NCACC’s legal duty is clear: before a single weapon is exported, they must ask whether it could fuel repression, enable or contribute to human rights abuses, or violate international law.

If the answer is yes, the deal should stop there. But it has not. Under the NCACC’s watch, South Africa has authorised arms

In 2024, the NCACC approved the export of 15 armoured combat vehicles, claiming they were for the UN mission in Mali — even though MINUSMA had officially closed on 31 December 2023

sales to Guinea and Burkina Faso after military coups in each of these countries, to a UN peacekeeping mission in Mali after that mission ceased to operate and to countries that are accused of having committed war crimes.

A body that is meant to function as a gatekeeper has left the gate wide open. If South Africa wants to seriously carry its weight as a messenger of peace, the NCACC must start acting as a “control committee” and stop acting as the courier of hypocrisy and double standards.

The law is not too complicated. If a country has experienced a military coup that constitutes an unconstitutional change of government and represses its own people or violates human rights or fundamental freedoms, you do not sell arms. And yet, that is exactly what South Africa has done.

According to the NCACC's own records, after military coups in Guinea and Burkina Faso, South Africa has exported arms –millions of rands’ worth – to regimes that have been accused of silencing dissent, enforced disappearances and attacks against civilians. In both countries, Guinea and Burkina Faso, the military junta has promised a transition to a civilian government, only to break that promise and postpone democratic elections.

One cannot call for democratic principles, peace and human rights in such situations if one's military vehicle is parked in the yard of the generals.

Every bullet, every tank, every vehicle has a destination and carries a consequence

Another staggering example is Mali. In 2024, the NCACC authorised the export of 15 armoured combat vehicles. According to the NCACC, those vehicles were intended for the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA). There is only one “small” problem with that statement: MINUSMA had officially ended by 31 December 2023 based on UN Security Council resolution 2690, adopted on June 30,2023, which formally ended

the mission, requiring a drawdown of operations and withdrawal of personnel to be completed by December 31, 2023.

A closer look at the actual exports to Mali is even more concerning. While South Africa exported two armoured vehicles in 2022 and then again in 2023, the number of the exports of vehicles in 2024 went up to 15. Why would the NCACC authorise the export of 15 vehicles if the UN peacekeeping mission has already ended and withdrawn?

A request on further information by SALC on these exports remained unanswered as do questions on the current status of those vehicles and why it was necessary to increase the amount of vehicles by 650 per cent from the previous two years.

In July 2024, SALC obtained an order from the High Court in Pretoria. The Court could not have been clearer. It stated that the NCACC had an obligation to suspend any existing export or contract permits pertaining to the transfer of arms to a country that (i) “has experienced an unconstitutional change of government”; and/or (ii) ’”is reasonably suspected, by a special rapporteur, independent expert, or other person in terms of a United Nations mandate, of having committed any crimes against humanity, war crime, or genocide.”

The judgment clarified the NCACC’s obligation under section 14 of the NCAC Act and is a victory for arms trade litigation, basically telling the state that if any of these situations occur, you must suspend.

And yet, somehow, South Africa continues to export arms to countries that fall under the order. Two countries that stand out in that regard are Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Both countries have repeatedly been accused by UN experts of having committed war crimes in the Yemen conflict.

Based on the arms export reports SALC analysed in its report, exports to the two countries in question continue which strongly suggests that the NCACC has not suspended such permits.

How do you defend such actions? How do you explain that you call on states to stop supporting Israel with arms, and yet you yourself are exporting arms to countries that have also been accused of war crimes?

Each time a permit is signed, it feels administrative, distant. But every bullet, every tank, every vehicle has a destination and carries a consequence.

If a government uses South African equipment to break up a protest or suppress dissent, that is not a matter of foreign policy. It is a matter of human lives. These stories seemingly do not appear in NCACC's spreadsheets. But they are the hidden chapters of the export statistics — the human cost of a system that keeps signing permits long after the law and conscience say stop.

An economy that supports repressive regimes is not sustainable and seriously impacts South Africa’s credibility as an advocate of “silencing the guns”, human rights and peace.

If state authorities do not start implementing binding law, the outcome is selective morality – which is not morality, it is diplomacy for sale. The law must be applied equally without double standards. Otherwise, this selective morality turns solidarity into symbolism and exposes a hypocrisy at the heart of South Africa’s foreign policy: justice for some, silence for others.

Dr Atilla Kisla is the International Justice Cluster Lead at the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) and the lead-author of SALC’s report, The Great Hypocrisy of South Africa’s Arms Exports.

Why the world needs Matthew Crentsil to lead UNHCR now

As the clandestine proceedings continue in the search for the next UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Africa Briefing backs a Ghanaian contender for the position who leads from knowledge, not theory; who understands that refugee protection is not just a legal obligation but a moral imperative; and who can inspire confidence in host countries, mobilise global solidarity and steer the UNHCR through turbulent times with wisdom and integrity

IN a world where forced displacement has reached unprecedented levels – over 120 million people globally – the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) must be more than a symbolic figure. It must be led by someone who has walked the dusty roads of refugee settlements, negotiated humanitarian access in hostile territories and reformed systems from within. That person is Matthew Kwesi Crentsil.

With over 36 years of humanitarian service – including 31 with the UNHCR – Crentsil, from Ghana, has led large and complex refugee operations across Africa and Latin America and served in diverse capacities in Asia and Europe. From Uganda’s sprawling refugee settlements to Venezuela’s politically charged humanitarian corridors, he has delivered protection, dignity, and hope to millions. His leadership is not theoretical –it is grounded in the lived realities of displacement.

Displacement has evolved dramatically over the past century. From the post-World War II refugee movements that led to the creation of the UNHCR in 1950, to the Cold War-era asylum seekers, and more recently, the mass exoduses triggered by civil wars, climate change and economic collapse, each phase has brought new challenges.

Today, displacement is increasingly protracted, urbanised and complex. Refugees are no longer just fleeing war; they are escaping failed governance, environmental degradation and systemic poverty.

No African has ever led the UNHCR, despite the continent’s central role in global displacement

Africa and the Global South bear the brunt of this crisis. Over 44 million forcibly displaced persons reside in Africa, more than a third of the global total. Countries like Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Chad host millions, often with limited resources and minimal international support.

Meanwhile, the Global North tightens its borders, leaving frontline states to shoulder the responsibility. This imbalance demands leadership that understands the political, social and economic dynamics of displacement – not from a distance, but from direct experience.

Crentsil’s candidacy is not just historic; it is imperative. No African has ever led the UNHCR, despite the continent’s central role in global displacement. Crentsil brings authenticity, strategic foresight and operational excellence.

He understands the delicate balance host countries must maintain between humanitarian generosity and national stability. His leadership style is pragmatic, inclusive, and deeply respectful of host communities and displaced populations alike.

The UNHCR is at a crossroads. It faces a severe funding crisis, with voluntary contributions from a handful of donors proving insufficient. Crentsil prioritises broadening the donor base: mobilising support from governments, private sector actors, diaspora communities and non-traditional donors. He has a track record of making humanitarian financing more resilient and sustainable.

But funding alone is not enough. The UNHCR must refocus on its core mandate: protection, asylum and durable solutions. Overambitious reforms that dilute this focus risk undermining refugee protection and discouraging host countries from keeping their doors open. Crentsil understands this. He has led efficiency reforms that saved millions without compromising protection standards. His approach to change management is grounded in field realities, not abstract models.

Crentsil champions solutions that address root causes: conflict prevention, climate adaptation and debt relief. He advocates for sustainable reintegration and voluntary repatriation, not just containment.

His vision aligns with the broader UN reform agenda, but he brings a unique ability to navigate its complexities, having served in both field and headquarters roles.

In an era where humanitarian leadership is often politicised or technocratic, Crentsil offers something rare: credibility. He has earned the trust of host governments, donors and displaced communities. His leadership is not about grandstanding; it is about impact.

The world needs a High Commissioner who leads from knowledge, not theory. Someone who understands that refugee protection is not just a legal obligation but a moral imperative. Someone who can inspire confidence in host countries, mobilise global solidarity and steer the UNHCR through turbulent times with wisdom and integrity.

The time for African leadership is now. The time for Matthew Kwesi Crentsil is now.

Matthew Crentsil: grounded in the lived realities of displacement

Nations move past the aid era

RMB’s Where to Invest in Africa 2025/26 report, analysed by

Jon Offei-Ansah

, explores how the continent is shedding decades of aid dependency to embrace trade, industrial value addition and private-sector investment as the real engines of growth

THE Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) Where to Invest in Africa 2025/26 report arrives at a moment of historic change.

Following what the bank calls a ‘super-year for elections’, the continent is confronting a new reality: the era of guaranteed Western aid is drawing to a close.

Chief economist Isaah Mhlanga writes that political upheaval, fragile commodity markets and a turbulent global trading system have combined to create macroeconomic shocks on a scale unseen since the global financial crisis. Donor fatigue in Washington, London, Berlin and Paris has made official development assistance an increasingly unreliable pillar of African finance.

According to the report, 2024 marked the first time in three decades that the US, UK, Germany and France simultaneously reduced aid budgets. The OECD now projects a further fall of up to 17 percent in 2025. RMB cites Financial Times analysis warning that up to $74 billion in aid could vanish within the year — a cut it describes as ‘disastrous’ for fragile states still recovering from pandemic-era debt shocks.

Yet within this crisis lies an opportunity. For RMB, the sharp contraction in donor flows could finally jolt African governments into deep structural reform — a transition from externally funded consumption to trade-driven productivity.

RMB draws a crucial distinction between emergency relief, which saves lives, and long-term development aid, which can stifle initiative. Echoing economists such as Dambisa Moyo, the report argues that ‘no nation has moved from poor to rich through aid’. Instead, growth has always stemmed from industrialisation, trade and domestic investment.

The numbers bear out that warning. Mozambique’s aid inflows equal roughly 15 percent of its national income; Malawi, Rwanda and Madagascar also depend heavily on external grants. When donors retrench, fiscal gaps yawn open. RMB’s analysts contend that such dependency perpetuates a ‘soft budget culture’ in which policy discipline fades and private enterprise retreats.

The bank notes that Africa now receives less than 4 percent of global foreign direct investment (FDI) — a share that has barely improved in two decades despite the continent’s demographic dividend and resource wealth. Bridging that gap, it insists, requires governments to nurture credible institutions, protect property rights and integrate into global value chains.

Encouragingly, there are green shoots. Africa attracted a record $97 billion in foreign direct investment in 2024, up 75 percent year-on-year, according to UNCTAD data cited by RMB. North Africa led the surge, with Egypt alone pulling $35 billion, while South Africa, Morocco and Tunisia also gained ground.

This rebound reflects investor confidence in countries that demonstrate policy clarity, fiscal restraint and openness to innovation. It also signals that investors are looking beyond raw commodities to manufacturing, renewables and services. RMB highlights logistics corridors in East Africa, fintech ecosystems in Nigeria and Ghana, and green-energy investments stretching from Namibia to Kenya as case studies of capital following reform.

Nevertheless, the gap between capital supply and developmental need remains vast. Africa’s annual infrastructure financing requirement, estimated at $130 billion, still dwarfs inflows. RMB’s prescription is straightforward: governments must lock in macroeconomic stability, simplify tax regimes and honour contracts if they wish to transform episodic capital surges into sustained industrial growth.

Trade, not aid, is now the organising principle of Africa’s economic survival strategy. RMB argues that export diversification offers the surest route to resilience amid rising global protectionism. Its 2025/26 edition introduces three new analytical frameworks — an export-potential model, a growth model and a currency-valuation tool — designed to identify sectors where African economies can build comparative advantage.

The ranking covers 31 countries representing 90 percent of Africa’s GDP and 83 percent of its population. It combines 20 indicators grouped under four pillars: economic performance and

RMB: The era of guaranteed Western aid is drawing to a close

potential, market accessibility and innovation, social and human development, and economic stability.

The methodology rewards policy credibility, not size. Mauritius and the Seychelles top the index once again, reflecting institutional maturity and strong human-capital investment. Larger economies such as Egypt, South Africa and Morocco follow closely, underscoring that scale still matters when matched with sound governance.

RMB situates its findings in a year of sweeping political transition. More than 60 countries held elections in 2024, including 16 across Africa. Botswana ended six decades of oneparty dominance; South Africa entered coalition politics for the first time; and Ghana returned President John Mahama to power amid IMF oversight and public frustration over living costs.

Such shifts are redefining macroeconomic policy. Commodity markets remain uneven: oil-exporters like Nigeria and Angola face revenue compression, while gold-rich states such as Ghana and Tanzania have profited from investor flight to safety. RMB cautions that political turbulence can unsettle markets, but it also opens space for reform. Nations that embrace fiscal transparency and industrial value addition, it argues, are best positioned to attract durable capital.

Case studies of transition

Nigeria’s fall, reform and recalibration

Nigeria’s tumble from 9th to 18th place in RMB’s ranking followed the government’s decision to float the naira and end fuel subsidies. The immediate effect was painful — the economy’s dollar value halved — yet the reform removed distortions that cost 3 percent of GDP annually. RMB sees the reset as the foundation for long-term competitiveness and a cleaner fiscal slate.

Côte d’Ivoire’s rise through value addition

The standout performer is Côte d’Ivoire, which vaulted from sixteenth to eighth place. By investing in local processing of cocoa and cashew nuts, expanding agro-industrial parks and exploring offshore energy, Abidjan has embodied the trade-overaid doctrine. Foreign investors now view the country as West Africa’s new manufacturing hub.

Zambia’s resilience in adversity

Zambia, too, climbed five places despite drought and power shortages. Debt restructuring and a revival of copper output — aided by AI-driven exploration from KoBold Metals — have stabilised its outlook. RMB regards Zambia as proof that credible reform can crowd in both concessional and commercial capital even amid climate stress.

Together, these examples reinforce the report’s thesis: policy courage and productive investment matter more than donor benevolence.

The Where to Invest in Africa index rewards structure over sentiment. Mauritius and the Seychelles maintain the top two positions thanks to stable governance, transparent financial sectors and diversified economies. Egypt, South Africa and Morocco round out the top five, combining scale with infrastructure readiness.

At the bottom, Zimbabwe remains last — a warning of how currency volatility, policy inconsistency and political risk deter capital. RMB stresses that rankings are diagnostic, not deterministic: ‘Every environment has opportunities,’ the authors write, ‘but investors must match strategy to structure.’

The data also capture continental divergence. East Africa’s integration momentum contrasts with stagnation in parts of Central Africa where governance remains weak. For investors, the message is nuance: Africa is not a single market but 54 distinct investment stories bound by shared potential.

The shift from aid to trade unfolds against a global backdrop of uncertainty. The United States, under President Donald Trump, has turned inward; Europe faces fiscal strain; and China’s lending spree has slowed. Multilateral finance is contracting just as Africa must fund energy transitions, climate adaptation and digital infrastructure.

RMB argues that these headwinds make domestic reform non-negotiable. Competitive markets, clear rules and reliable data will determine who attracts the next wave of capital. The report highlights positive signals: Moody’s upgrade of Zambia’s outlook; Côte d’Ivoire’s successful $2.6 billion Eurobond issuance — the first by an African nation since 2022 — which drew $8 billion in orders; and Kenya’s steady rise in ICT exports.

Such examples demonstrate that Africa’s narrative is shifting from dependency to agency. Where governance aligns with investor confidence, the continent’s risk premium narrows, unlocking cheaper finance and faster growth.

RMB closes with a clear vision: Africa’s future must be shaped by partnership, not patronage. The continent’s young demographics, expanding digital base and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) provide the architecture for a selfsustaining growth model.

But partnership demands accountability. The report insists that while foreign capital remains vital, Africa’s true transformation lies in building export-driven productivity, strengthening regional supply chains and deepening local capital markets. It urges governments to create a ‘facts-based, data-driven’ policy culture that distinguishes ‘signal from noise’.

‘We invite you,’ writes Mhlanga, ‘to partner with us as you grow your businesses in Africa and in helping Africa rise and take her rightful position as a growth frontier.’ His appeal captures the spirit of a continent eager to replace the language of charity with that of commerce.

The RMB Where to Invest in Africa 2025/26 report is more than a ranking exercise; it is a manifesto for economic selfdetermination. As aid budgets shrink, the imperative for trade, industrialisation and investment has never been clearer.

Africa’s challenge is not a lack of potential but of policy coherence. To convert uncertainty into opportunity, nations must integrate regionally, export competitively and govern transparently. RMB’s research shows that the foundations are being laid — in Côte d’Ivoire’s processing plants, Zambia’s mines, Kenya’s tech corridors and Egypt’s green-energy zones.

If the coming decade belongs to those who trade, not those who wait for aid, Africa’s next growth cycle could indeed be earned, not granted.

Ghana returned President John Mahama to power amid IMF oversight

Africa reclaims the narrative on credit ratings

Moody’s downgrade of Senegal and Bloomfield’s upbeat verdict expose a widening rift in how Africa’s economies are judged. As global agencies fixate on dollar debt, local analysts argue it’s time Africa defined its own credit story, writes Jon Offei-Ansah.

WHEN Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Senegal’s sovereign rating to Caa1 in October 2025, the decision jolted investors from London to Lagos. The agency cited mounting debt pressures and tightening liquidity, painting a picture of a country edging toward fiscal stress. Yet, almost simultaneously, Bloomfield Investment Corporation, an Abidjanbased African rating agency, reaffirmed a far more optimistic BBB+ rating for the same economy—praising what it called Senegal’s ‘solid fundamentals’ and resilience.

This divergence was not just technical. It encapsulated a deeper tension between how global and African analysts view financial health. To many observers, it raised an uncomfortable question: why do agencies looking at the same set of numbers see such different realities?

The short answer lies in what they measure. Moody’s, like other international agencies, focuses primarily on a nation’s ability to service debt in foreign currency—usually US dollars. Bloomfield, by contrast, assesses local-currency credit quality, weighing domestic productivity, governance and economic structure. It’s the difference between asking whether a government can find enough dollars to repay a Wall Street bondholder, and whether its economy is actually functioning well enough for its people and businesses to thrive.

Credit ratings are effectively financial report cards for nations. They distil complex fiscal and political dynamics into a single letter grade that shapes a country’s access to capital. A top-tier AAA rating signals near-certain repayment; descending through the alphabet to the C-grades implies growing risk.

For sovereign borrowers, these grades carry real costs. A one-notch downgrade can add hundreds of basis points to the interest charged on new debt. Over billions in borrowing, that translates into hundreds of millions of dollars diverted from health, education or infrastructure to service creditors. The rating becomes a self-reinforcing loop: the lower it falls, the more expensive it becomes to borrow—further constraining public finances and, ironically, justifying the downgrade.

But African countries face a peculiar disadvantage. The major global rating firms—Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch— were all born in early-twentieth-century America, built to evaluate mature, industrialised economies. Their frameworks assume deep capital markets, long institutional histories and stable currencies. When applied to African nations—where capital markets are emerging, informal economies are vast and currencies can swing with global commodity cycles—those same models often misfire.

Analysts at Daba Finance, a pan-African digital investment platform, note that such misalignment means African risk is frequently over-priced. ‘When global agencies rate African sovereigns through developed-market lenses, they end up

penalising growth economies for structural features rather than actual default probability,’ said one Daba Finance strategist in a recent commentary. ‘That extra premium inflates borrowing costs across the continent.’

In Senegal’s case, Moody’s saw warning signs everywhere: the debt-to-GDP ratio had ballooned from around 40 percent in 2014 to roughly 119 percent in 2024, with much of it denominated in foreign currencies. From a global investor’s standpoint—one concerned about being repaid in dollars—such figures set off alarms.

Bloomfield, however, saw a country that had nearly doubled its economic output in a decade, invested heavily in infrastructure, and benefited from growing regional trade through WAEMU and ECOWAS. From a domestic perspective, the fundamentals looked steady. Both views were defensible; each measured a different kind of strength.

This pattern is not unique to Senegal. Côte d’Ivoire holds a Ba2 from Moody’s but an A+ from Bloomfield. Benin sits at B1 internationally versus A+ locally. Togo gets B3 from global raters and BBB- from regional ones. The gaps often trace back

Dakar’s skyline under clear Atlantic skies — a symbol of Senegal’s economic resilience amid shifting global credit perceptions

to differing assumptions about external vulnerability versus domestic momentum.

For decades, African policymakers have argued that Westerncentric credit methodologies underestimate the continent’s economic complexity. They discount factors such as demographic dividends, mobile-money revolutions and the resilience of informal markets that often sustain livelihoods when formal systems falter.

The UNDP’s 2025 Credit Ratings Publication makes a similar case, warning that traditional frameworks ‘amplify perceptions of risk without sufficient attention to structural transformation or domestic market deepening.’ Daba Finance analysts echo this sentiment, pointing out that African economies are increasingly driven by digital finance and local consumption—sectors barely visible in global models built for manufacturing and export-heavy economies.

International ratings also exert what economists call a sovereign ceiling effect: no company in a country can be rated higher than the state that hosts it. As a result, even financially sound African firms are penalised by their sovereign’s low rating, raising their borrowing costs and slowing private-sector growth.

‘It’s not just governments paying for these downgrades,’ a Daba Finance macro-analyst told said. ‘Every business that tries to raise capital locally or regionally feels the impact. It becomes a systemic drag on African enterprise.’

Recognising these distortions, African policymakers and institutions are building their own rating ecosystem. Bloomfield has been a pioneer, operating since 2007 and covering more than twenty markets. Another major step is the forthcoming African Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA), established under the African Union’s guidance and set to begin operations in 2026 from its headquarters in Mauritius.

Unlike global agencies, AfCRA will specialise in localcurrency debt assessments and private-sector ratings, aiming to support the growth of African bond markets and reduce exposure to foreign-exchange shocks. The African Development Bank and regional investment forums have also backed initiatives to strengthen domestic credit analysis, arguing that such institutions are better equipped to grasp Africa’s economic nuances.

Bloomfield’s managing director summed it up succinctly at a recent regional conference: ‘We are not in competition with Moody’s; we are complementing them. They rate external debt. We rate Africa’s capacity to sustain itself.’

The stakes are high. When Moody’s downgraded Zambia to default in 2020, it triggered capital flight and complicated debtrestructuring talks, even though many African analysts believed Zambia’s long-term fundamentals were improving. A similar scenario in Senegal could deter investment just as major oil and gas projects near completion—projects expected to transform the country’s fiscal landscape.

For Daba Finance, such volatility underscores the need for diversified rating sources. ‘A plural ratings environment improves transparency,’ the firm wrote in a July 2025 research brief. ‘Investors can cross-reference both global and African methodologies to get a fuller picture rather than rely on a single, possibly skewed lens.’

Toward a dual-ratings future

As Africa’s capital markets mature and regional economic integration deepens through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the case for home-grown credit intelligence grows stronger. Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa are nurturing domestic institutional investor bases—pension funds, insurers and asset managers—who primarily invest in local-currency securities and require ratings that reflect domestic realities, not just dollar exposure.

The future may not be about replacing Moody’s or Fitch, but about creating balance. International ratings remain vital for global investors, yet African agencies offer indispensable insights into local credit conditions. When their assessments diverge sharply—as in Senegal’s case—it should prompt deeper inquiry, not automatic deference to the global brand.

Ultimately, Africa’s financial narrative deserves to be told through multiple voices, including those grounded in its own markets, data and lived experience.

Moody’s and Bloomfield may never converge perfectly, but their coexistence could enrich understanding. One tracks how external creditors view Africa’s risk; the other measures how Africans are managing that risk from within.

For the continent’s policymakers and investors, the lesson is clear: Africa’s credit story must be written on its own terms, through frameworks that capture both its vulnerabilities and its potential. As analysts at Daba Finance argue, ‘The problem isn’t that Africa lacks creditworthiness—it’s that it’s often being evaluated by people who don’t live its economics.’

That sentiment, echoed from Dakar to Abidjan, signals a quiet revolution in how Africa values itself—and how the world might soon learn to do the same.

Moody’s October 2025 downgrade of Senegal to Caa1 sent a sharp jolt through investors from London to Lagos

Gulf billions redraw Africa's economic future

As Gulf capital floods into Africa, over $200 billion from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar is reshaping the continent’s energy, mining, and infrastructure sectors. From Zambia’s copper belt to Kenya’s solar plains, the investments promise transformation—but, writes Jon Offei-Ansah, the challenge will be ensuring this new wealth builds inclusive, lasting prosperity

AFRICA’S investment landscape is being transformed — not by the usual powers in Washington or Beijing, but by the Gulf. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar have emerged as the continent’s most ambitious new investors, together pledging over $200 billion across energy, mining, infrastructure, tourism, and technology. These are not short-term plays. They mark a long-term rebalancing of Africa’s partnerships as the Gulf states convert oil wealth into global influence.

At the centre of this shift lies the UAE’s consolidation as one of Africa’s biggest investors and Qatar’s bold entry with its first continent-wide investment offensive. Their moves are reshaping how capital, energy, and resources intersect across Africa.

Between 2019 and 2023, the UAE invested more than $110 billion across Africa, making it the world’s fourth-largest investor after the United States, China, and the European Union, according to Gulf News and the Emirates News Agency (WAM). More than $70 billion of that went into green and renewable-energy projects, confirming the Emirates’ strategy to lead the clean-energy transition.

At the 2025 UAE–Africa Tourism Investment Summit in Dubai early November, Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, Minister of Economy and Tourism, said: “The UAE continues to consolidate its position as one of Africa’s key strategic investment partners. Our investments reflect not only our confidence in the continent’s potential but also our commitment to sustainable and inclusive growth.”

Over 100 projects worth around $6 billion were showcased at the summit, drawing delegations from more than 20 African countries. Al Marri added: “Today, the UAE and Africa stand at a pivotal moment in developing a resilient and sustainable tourism sector… with the potential to generate 70,000 job opportunities across Africa.”

UAE’s push now extends deep into mining, positioning Abu Dhabi and Dubai as central players in Africa’s resource economy. UAE-linked firms such as Ambrosia Investment Holding and AD Ports Group have “injected billions into Africa’s mining and logistics sectors, boosting gold output and trade routes.”

Ambrosia recently acquired a 50 per cent stake in Allied Gold’s operations in Ethiopia and Mali, pledging $375 million to expand production by 290,000 ounces annually by 2026. In Zambia, a UAE-based consortium, International Resources Holding Limited, took a controlling $1.1 billion stake in Mopani Copper Mines in 2023 — a deal expected to raise employment and output while modernising processing facilities.

Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, Minister of Economy and Tourism, says the UAE is strengthening its role as a key strategic investor in Africa, backing the continent’s potential and pledging support for sustainable, inclusive growth

These ventures are vertically integrated with UAE-managed logistics and export infrastructure — linking resource extraction to transport corridors. Analysts note this gives the Emirates control over key nodes in the global supply chain for copper, gold, and other critical minerals essential to the energy transition.

A UAE executive told Africa Briefing: “We’re connecting upstream production with downstream logistics so that African commodities reach global markets efficiently and responsibly.”

Beyond mining, the UAE’s renewable-energy champion Masdar is building major solar and wind projects in Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa. The Financial Times has called the Emirates’ strategy ‘commercial diplomacy at scale’, combining profit with influence.

For African governments, the benefits are tangible: jobs, infrastructure, and technology flows. Al Marri said: “Tourism and investment partnerships with African nations are a strategic pillar for expanding opportunities for Emirati companies, opening new markets, and facilitating knowledge exchange.”

Still, watchdogs warn of governance risks. CEO Today Magazine flagged “labour conditions, environmental safeguards, and transparency issues in some Emirati-backed projects.” Even so, Emirati capital has become essential for economies hungry for investment but wary of conditional Western loans.

While the UAE consolidates, Qatar is on the move. In September 2025, Africa Briefing reported that Doha-based Al

Mansour Holdings unveiled a $103 billion investment plan spanning six African nations — thought to include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Burundi. The strategy targets infrastructure, energy, and technology to ‘dismantle infrastructural bottlenecks, modernise energy supply chains, and introduce technological innovations that stimulate sustainable growth.’

A statement from Al Mansour Holdings said the partnership “recognises Africa’s potential as a burgeoning market and positions Qatar as a development partner, not merely an investor.”

Mining is also central to Qatar’s African expansion. The Africa Briefing investigation Qatar races for Africa’s critical minerals revealed Doha’s intent to invest in copper, cobalt, graphite, and lithium — the building blocks of the clean-energy economy.

Zambia and the DRC supply copper and cobalt; Zimbabwe leads in lithium; Mozambique exports graphite; Botswana combines copper with diamonds.

A Qatari official quoted in the report said: “Our investments will align with Africa’s industrialisation goals. The focus is on value addition and sustainable practices, not just extraction.”

Analysts interpret this as part of Doha’s effort to diversify beyond gas and secure early control of minerals essential to electric-vehicle and battery technologies.

The South China Morning Post called it “Doha’s boldest diversification bid yet — using finance and technology to gain soft-power influence across resource-rich Africa as Western investment retreats.”

The UAE’s engagement is broad and diversified — spanning tourism, logistics, energy, real estate, and mining — while Qatar’s is concentrated and strategic, focused on infrastructure, technology, and critical minerals. Both share a common goal: diversify economies, secure resources, and project influence through investment diplomacy.

Their combined $213 billion commitments now place Gulf investors ahead of several Western states, underscoring a shift in Africa’s financing architecture.

According to a Nairobi economist, “The Gulf states are rewriting Africa’s investment playbook — they bring cash and credibility, but also new forms of dependency if African countries don’t set the rules.”

For Africa, the upside is compelling. Gulf capital can close the continent’s $100 billion annual infrastructure gap, accelerate renewable-energy access, and develop mining value chains that feed global industries. By linking extraction to ports, logistics, and power, Gulf investors could finally integrate Africa’s resources into sustainable industrial growth.

Yet the risks are real. Without transparent governance and local-content safeguards, new dependencies could replace old ones. Mining and energy deals must serve national development priorities and communities, not just foreign balance sheets.

An African Development Bank analyst told Africa Briefing: “The success of Gulf investments will depend on how well governments integrate them into their own industrial and social strategies — not on the size of the cheque.”

Debt exposure remains another concern, especially where public-private partnerships conceal state liabilities. Civilsociety groups are pushing for open contracts and community consultation in mining regions.

The Gulf surge is also geopolitical. As China slows its Belt and Road expansion and Western lenders pull back, Gulf states are moving into the gap with capital and soft power.

The UAE’s port network — stretching from the Horn of Africa to Angola — secures maritime trade routes. Qatar’s targeted partnerships deepen its footprint in southern and central Africa, reshaping the balance of influence.

This marks the rise of a new multipolar Africa, where Gulf capital joins Asian and Western finance as an equal pillar. For African leaders, it expands diplomatic options — but also demands sharper negotiation to ensure mutual benefit.

The next stage will determine whether these pledges become transformative or transactional. The UAE’s mining and renewable-energy ventures must deliver measurable benefits; Qatar’s critical-minerals push must translate into jobs and processing capacity.

For Africa, the priority is clear: harness Gulf capital for industrialisation, green growth, and social progress — not for another cycle of extraction.

As Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri said in Dubai: “Our partnership with Africa is built on mutual respect and shared ambition. Together, we can create a new map of prosperity that connects our regions for generations to come.”

If that vision holds, Africa’s partnership with the Gulf could mark one of the most consequential economic realignments of the 21st century.

How to uncover ghost workers

Companies can avoid losing millions by using methods such as monthly checks on hiring changes and annual face audits, facilitated by modern payroll platforms

THE damage caused by payroll fraud and ghost employees is often catastrophic: large sums lost and additional spending in investigations and prosecutions. In many cases, the companies forgo legal actions and fire the fraudster, who often moves to a new business and restarts their crimes.

“Most companies unfortunately only uncover payroll fraud by accident.” says Yolande Schoültz, founder of South African law firm Y-Schoültz, and an expert who has investigated many such cases. “They don't realise it's happening, and it can cost them millions,"

People do not know what they do not know

Companies can avoid losing millions. Using methods such as monthly checks on hiring changes and annual face audits, facilitated by modern payroll platforms, they can reduce fraud risks and organically extend role-based oversight across different departments.

Spotting payroll fraud is not difficult when companies are diligent, and with the right processes and precautions, they can avoid the risks of ghost employees and other related crimes.

Schoültz highlights several common ways that payroll fraud occurs. The best-known is to add ghost employees, which can be fake employees who do not exist but also employees who were let go but never removed from the payroll. The payroll administrator instead keeps them on the books and changes the bank account details. Another scheme is to find employees who are paid irregularly, pay them monthly and direct the new payments to a different bank account.

These activities are relatively easy to uncover, but companies do not pay attention because payroll operations are often isolated and arcane. One issue is who has oversight: is payroll part of finance or human resources?

It should be both, with finance being primarily responsible. But payroll is often left alone. As long as people are paid, nobody asks questions.

However, they should take an interest because payroll fraud can be extraordinarily damaging. According to Occupational Fraud 2022: A Report to the Nations, released by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the world’s largest antifraud organisation, five per cent of company revenue is lost to fraud committed by employees.

Schoültz cites a case where a company lost over R7 million across several years through roughly 13 ghost employees. “It's like a slow bleeding wound. The fraud usually extracts small amounts across multiple fake employees and over many years,” she says.

In this case, the payroll administrator's lavish lifestyle gave them away, with investigators asking how they could afford luxury cars, holidays and other perks on their salary. Yet, a natural distrust of payroll staff is not healthy or productive, and there are better ways to find and prevent payroll fraud. The most effective method is requiring employees to physically present themselves.

Schoültz notes: “An annual face-to-face audit is very effective. Have people come with their ID books and match them to a payroll list. This must ideally be through an independent person, not from the company, because some payroll fraud is done in cahoots with several people.

“An independent annual face audit is the best way to know if there are ghost employees. It also works to check employee movements every month, to check the terminations and new hires.”

It is also crucial that finance departments take payroll oversight seriously, Schoültz adds. “People don't know what they don't know. A lot of times when I get called in to do risk assessments, it's very rare that I meet the head of finance.

“But payroll is a finance-driven department. It is often the company's biggest expense, yet it's neglected.”

Many companies have the same question: is payroll oversight the responsibility of finance, HR, or someone else? Isolated payroll systems do not resolve such questions, whereas payroll platforms facilitate role-based permissions allowing access to different teams. says Sandra Crous, MD of payroll provider Deel Local Payroll.

“There are amazing capabilities in modern payroll systems, such as automated reporting, remote administration and alert systems that inform different stakeholders. You can expand and streamline payroll processes so that people in finance or HR have passive visibility over payroll events. Legacy payroll systems typically sit in a corner somewhere, with few people even knowing what's going on there,” Crous adds.

Not knowing has a price tag. According to the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals, South African companies lose upwards of R100 million annually through payroll fraud – more than cash transit heists. But a little diligence can avoid such damage, says Schoültz. “People just don't check. They don't have the know-how because payroll is really a very underestimated department in a company.

Is payroll oversight the responsibility of finance, HR, or someone else?

“People receive their salaries, but they don't understand how that works. The last thing people actually have time for is the payroll. They just want their employees to get paid, but they don't understand what is inside that system, and it continues like that."

In all this, a substantial number of companies still use payroll software that is at least 10 years old. This is prehistoric considering the features of cloud-native payroll platforms, such as self-service access, earned wage access, process automation, remote administration, flexible reporting and automatic legislative and software updates.

With cloud-native software, a payroll administrator can remotely access and process salaries securely. A travelling manager can seamlessly check and approve requests on their smartphone. Executives in charge of finance can examine audit trails and generate custom reports directly.

Cloud software improves productivity, saves substantially on payroll processing costs and reduces mistakes by 60 per cent. It also reduces total cost of ownership – economies of scale create lower usage and licensing costs that companies can easily increase or decrease.

Yolande Schoültz, founder of the South African law firm Y-Schoültz and a seasoned investigator of such cases

Businesses struggling to keep up with modern work culture

While the ongoing battle between return to work and work from home is a misguided attempt to diffuse this tension, organisations should evolve to accommodate the new workplace

WORKING remotely has benefits, as does working from the office. Both concepts are part of changing workplaces. Rather than choosing sides, workplace cultures should evolve to embrace these new dimensions.

Tensions between working remotely and in the office are well-documented. Employees treasure their hard-won autonomy, the option to work remotely (WFH), and not being judged by how long they sit at a desk. Many executives see human contact as the foundation for strong workplace cultures and insist on return to work (RTW) as the way forward.

At a glance, the latter have the momentum. Most recently, Microsoft joined the RTW trend by requiring employees to be in the office at least three days a week, while Amazon requires five days a week.

Businesses are realising that simply rewinding the clock has consequences

But business experts warn against rushing back to the previous status quo. The new workplace culture grasps how people work at least as much as where they work.

“Work hasn't been limited to an office for at least a decade,” says Sandra Crous, MD of payroll provider Deel Local Payroll in South Africa. “When businesses decide about where they want their people, they should modify their culture and not romanticise a style of working that hasn't existed for quite some time.”

Businesses are realising that simply rewinding the clock has consequences, ranging from talent retention, missing goals and falling morale to legal consequences, especially when they contravene labour laws around due process.

An office is important. It represents the essence of an organisation and provides a common space for its people. Even so, it is not the same office of a decade ago.

Technologies like video meetings and messaging platforms alter how people produce results. Many employees embed with customer teams or work on a customer's schedule, often remotely or at the latter's offices.

Companies are hiring people for their skills and competitive costs, regardless of which country they live in. Productive workforces increasingly integrate part-time, contract and freelance workers.

These changes became embedded during the pandemic years. The battle between RTW and WFH is a misguided attempt to diffuse this tension. Instead, business cultures should evolve to accommodate the new workplace.

Technology is at the heart of the change. This cultural reconfiguration needs flexible and feature-rich business software, while outmoded software creates more rigidity. Payroll software, a cornerstone of employer-employee relations, is one of the worst holdups.

Traditional payroll software makes it much harder for payroll, HR and finance staff to align with employees. According to the 2025 Deel Australia Payroll Report, 56 per cent of payroll staff flag inflexible reporting as a major barrier, 41 per cent struggle to respond to employees in a timely manner and 40 per cent frequently encounter payroll system errors.

More specifically, many point to difficulties managing hybrid, remote and global workforces. “The office may have changed, but we still often meet payroll teams who say they have to keep doing things like they did 10 to 20 years ago,” says Crous. “That means old and inflexible systems that sit in a corner and grow more isolated from the modern direction their companies are moving in.”

Remote work versus working at the office should not be opposing ideas. They are both part of the new workplace. Companies using modern software platforms enjoy the flexibility to find the right balance for their unique culture and requirements, says Crous.

“In the modern workplace, these options work alongside each other. The key issue is which parts of the business are lagging and how to improve them. For payroll, the answer is simple –use cloud-native platforms.”

Balancing remote autonomy with office culture — the new reality reshaping how Africans work

Africa’s energy future: optimism is warranted

The real issue is not whether Africa can bridge its debilitating power gap; it is whether we, as Africans, are prepared to take ownership of the problem and act with determination to find solutions, argues Osa Igiehon

AS Africa Energy Week wraps up in Cape Town, we are faced with a pressing question: can we genuinely fulfil the promise of eradicating energy poverty by 2030? The answer hinges not on foreign investment or external solutions, but rather on a crucial factor: African responsibility for our own challenges.

Currently, around 600 million Africans live without electricity. In Nigeria alone, over 85 million individuals lack reliable access to power, despite the continent's vast natural gas reserves that could potentially electrify the region.

This paradox of resource abundance juxtaposed with energy scarcity highlights a significant crisis of purpose and execution within our energy sector. The real issue is not whether Africa can bridge this debilitating energy gap; it is whether we, as Africans, are prepared to take ownership of the problem and act with determination to find solutions.

For far too long, Africa's energy narrative has been dictated by external forces. Policies have been crafted by consultants, timelines set by financiers and agendas shaped by global institutions.

This dependency has fostered a culture of blame, where external factors such as sanctions, market fluctuations and investor hesitance are cited as reasons for our failures. However, these excuses do not account for the fact that proven reserves remain untapped, gas continues to flare while millions remain in darkness and oil production has seen a decline over the past two decades.

The uncomfortable truth is that Africans must develop and implement solutions that are grounded in our local realities. No one understands our complexities better than we do, nor do they care more about our development. The moment we take full ownership of our challenges is the moment we can begin to make real progress.

Accountability is not merely a buzzword; it is a measurable standard. Take Nigeria's OML 17, for example – one of the country’s most intricate onshore assets. Under new management, production doubled within just 100 days, achieving a remarkable 99.8 per cent reconciliation factor in a region historically plagued by losses.

Every drop of oil reached the terminal, and every molecule of gas contributed to Nigeria’s domestic market, powering homes and industries

alike. The success of OML 17 serves as a replicable model for other countries like Congo, Angola and Gabon, which face similar challenges with aging infrastructure and declining production.

Energy poverty will only end when Africans collectively decide to not live in darkness

The methodology is proven, the approach scalable and the results demonstrate that African-led operations can achieve world-class performance when accountability is prioritised. These achievements did not arise from foreign expertise or massive capital influxes. They emerged from rejecting the notion that theft and inefficiency are inherent to African operations.

When Africans apply their skills with purpose, create transparent systems, engage communities as partners and hold themselves to high standards, transformation is not just possible, it is inevitable.

Can Africa truly eliminate energy poverty by 2030? While the timeline is undeniably ambitious, the focus should not solely be on the date itself but rather on establishing the systems and local ownership necessary to make progress a reality.

To meet the energy needs of the continent, Africa requires approximately $2 trillion in infrastructure investment by 2030. Current investment levels fall significantly short of this target, and global capital increasingly favours markets with proven governance.

To attract the necessary investment, we must demonstrate that African operations can yield returns, safeguard asset and benefit local communities. Optimism should not stem from wishful thinking but from tangible evidence that Africans can seize control of their destiny.

Each successful operation and community partnership serves as proof that the narrative of needing external management is outdated.

Africa’s energy future must transition from a history characterised by extraction to one focused on sustainable development. This shift requires measurable commitments: building local workforces, investing in training, developing indigenous expertise, engaging communities as partners, adhering to global standards and investing local capital alongside foreign investments.

Energy poverty will not dissipate simply because 2030 arrives; it will end when Africans collectively decide that living in darkness is unacceptable and take decisive action to change it. The resources, technology, and talent are already present.

What remains is the courage to fully embrace the challenge and propel the continent toward energy sufficiency. As we move forward, it is imperative that we harness our collective potential and take ownership of our energy future.

Can Africa truly eliminate energy poverty by 2030?

Osa Igiehon, a transformational energy business executive, thought leader and innovator, is the CEO of Heirs Energies, an African energy company.

Cities failing Africa’s young dreamers

Thembisile Simelane warns that chronic underinvestment and poor planning are trapping Africa’s youth in broken cities

SOUTH Africa's Human Settlements Minister, Thembisile Simelane, says Africa’s urban centres are chronically unprepared for rapid growth—and millions of young Africans are paying the price.

Speaking to urban studies scholar Edgar Pieterse, she highlights how weak governance, chronic underinvestment, and fragmented planning have left cities unable to generate jobs or provide sustainable living conditions. The result, she warns, is a continent full of ‘empty shells’ rather than thriving urban ecosystems.

Edgar Pieterse: African countries seem consistently unprepared to manage rapid urbanisation, despite seeing millions of young people move to cities every year. Why do you think this is happening?

Until we centre human dignity in our planning, we’ll keep building empty shells instead of cities that truly serve their people

Thembisile Simelane: We must look closely at our role in the AU-STC 8—the African Union’s Specialised Technical Committee on Urban Development and Human Settlements. It was established in 2014 as a consultative body for sustainable development across Africa, but it remains severely underresourced and largely inactive.

The focus stays inward on individual member states. We rarely exchange lessons or use the platform effectively. But the bigger problem is chronic underinvestment. Cities struggle to raise revenue—whether from government, businesses, or households. Without adequate income, they cannot plan properly for today’s needs, let alone future growth.

Municipalities often talk about eradicating poverty and creating jobs, but what economic activities do they actually initiate to drive industry? I told Ekurhuleni’s mayor recently: ‘You are an industrial city. You can’t just complain about revenue. What are you doing to propel industries forward?’ Cities could offer tax rebates, municipal incentives, or targeted benefits to attract investment—but most don’t.

EP: What are the deeper systemic challenges you’re seeing?

TS: There’s a fundamental lack of coordination. Our housing plans don’t align with those of the Transport Ministry, yet we’re building houses while they’re constructing roads. People need both for work and home life. Without this connection, residents end up spending far too much on transport.

When President Thabo Mbeki launched regional economic development, the goal was to master it domestically and then extend it regionally—identifying who uses your coal, your gold, your agricultural output. That thinking helped shape metro districts meant to create regional economies beyond municipal boundaries. But they’re largely non-functional.

Today, we have 44 district-level ‘shells’ with limited roles. Municipalities like those in Gauteng’s Vaal Triangle should plan together because they form a single economic belt. Instead, they plan separately—and identically. Review their municipal development plans; they’re almost interchangeable.

EP: What kind of skills and capacity building do you think are needed?

TS: We must join what I call a ‘skills revolution’ for urban planning. We need trained professionals who understand the economic and spatial dimensions of urbanisation. How do we engage NGOs, academics, and research institutions in this?

Planning cannot be reactive—where people settle randomly and we rush to provide services later. It requires deliberate design. Yet implementation is our weakest point. We hold summits, sign

agreements, and take study trips, but two years later, little has changed.

Urban planners are often trained without grounding in economic fundamentals. Their plans don’t link urban design to job creation. Integrated human settlement planning must make employment a core pillar.

EP: How do you see disaster risk and climate change fitting into the G20 agenda this year?

TS: While we’re not a priority sector in the G20, there’s potential in the Disaster Risk and Mitigation Working Group. Our experience in Mthatha shows how disasters can reverse progress on inequality.

We still have families living in temporary shelters—women with children whose homes were destroyed. Municipalities know which areas are vulnerable, yet they fail to act. Ten children drowned recently when their transport was swept away after heavy rains. Those roads should have been closed.

Our disaster financing focuses on recovery rather than prevention. People still live dangerously close to Mthatha

Dam because we lack the foresight to relocate them during calm periods. Disasters cross borders—the El Niño effects in Mozambique affect us too. We need greater global cooperation, technology sharing, and capacity building from developed countries. That’s our potential entry point into G20 dialogue, even if we’re not formally prioritised.

EP: What gives you hope that things can change?

TS: We need to be intentional about systems thinking and long-term planning. Look at Dubai—they plan decades ahead. New York still benefits from infrastructure built in the 1800s because planners had a century-long vision.

But at the core, this is about dignity. We must rebuild cities around human dignity—it’s a human rights conversation. Until we centre people in planning, we’ll keep producing empty, dysfunctional cities instead of places that empower citizens.

The potential is there. All we need now is the political will to make it happen.

South Africa’s Human Settlements Minister, Thembisile Simelane, says Africa’s cities must place human dignity and long-term planning at the heart of development

Another addition to the call for reparative justice

Desmond Davies reviews a book which argues that there is more to reparations than just money, as the debate on the deleterious effects of the enslavement of Africans and colonisation of their continent continues apace

Reparations: History, Struggle, Politics and Law, by Kwesi Pratt Jnr; Pan-African Progressive Front, Accra (2025)

AS an avowed pan-Africanist with Marxist theory leanings, Ghanaian author and journalist Kwesi Pratt has added his own take to the robust argument for those who enslaved Africans and colonised their continent to make amends for the centuries of hurt that they caused. He notes that this “legacy… continues to shape [Africa’s] economic systems, political institutions and social hierarchies”.

The call for reparations is not an appeal to guilt

He writes: “The call for reparations is therefore not an appeal to guilt; it is a demand rooted in justice, history and international law.” But, unlike others in the quest for reparations, Pratt does not focus solely on financial compensation.

He argues “reparations are not just about money”, adding: “They are about land, dignity, language, memory and sovereignty. They are about transforming a global system built on theft into one that honours the stolen. And most of all, they are about affirming the agency, worth and future of Africa.”

There lies the rub. Those who feel uncomfortable, when Africans on the continent and Africans in the diaspora bring up

the issue of reparations, tend to argue that financial reparations cannot be quantified after such a long time. But British plantation owners in the Caribbean who were deprived of their slaves were

compensated by the British government after the abolition of the trade in Africans by an Act of the British parliament in 1833.

So, that is what is fuelling the sentiments for financial reparations. If slave owners can get compensation, so too should the slaves who laboured without any recompense.

For many in the reparations debate, they tend to discount the role of African slave traders and the wealth that they also built. Pratt calls the Africans who sold slaves to Europeans “middlemen”. I think they were active in the ghastly business. They were not on the periphery. The Europeans stayed in the forts and castles built along the coast of West Africa while the Africans went into the interior to bring their human cargoes for the Transatlantic journey.

Elmina Castle in Ghana. Goree Island in Senegal. Bunce Island in Sierra Leone. These were the major hubs for the Transatlantic Slave Trade for over 400 years.

There is thus a need for the descendants of West Africans who sold their people into slavery to at least spiritually atone for the role of their ancestors. Looking back, all of those who were shipped out from West Africa must surely have placed a curse on those who sold them into slavery.

Is it any wonder that West Africa is in so much in disarray today? Until there is spiritual atonement for the role West Africans played in the slave trade, the region will continue to be troubled by the souls of those who died on the journey and those who went through so much anguish in the Americas.

While the financial compensation debate continues, Pratt aptly calls for reparations to become a vision for liberation. Noting that the colonial structures in Africa were all about exploiting the continent rather than developing it, he wants African governments to invest more in their citizens.

But this is nothing new. As he himself points out, since independence African countries have been trying to navigate the colonial structures that they inherited. However, these countries have been hamstrung by the global economic landscape that is skewed in favour of the developed nations.

Therefore, there must be a change of mindset among Africans. Education, as Pratt himself points out, is crucial. He argues that the colonial system has hampered learning in Africa – more so on the historical front.

But after 60 years of independence there should be history being taught in African schools from an African perspective. Indeed, in the 1960s and 1970s seminal tomes on African history by the acclaimed Ghanaian historian, Professor Adu Boahen, were required reading in schools in West Africa.

He played a major role in the UNESCO-funded 11-volume General History of Africa, a monumental work that took 60 years of collaboration among over 550 historians and specialists. Naturally, Western members of UNESCO were not happy with this project that was backed by Amadou Mahtar Mbow from Senegal, the first African to serve as UNESCO Director General, from 1974 to 1987. They withdrew funding from the organisation.

Pratt’s thoughtful work must now serve as a spur for a similar project on African history funded by the African Union that has belatedly jumped on the reparations bandwagon. And there is no shortage of African historians who can put the needed volumes together through rigorous research.

Ghana could start the ball rolling. Indeed, in his Forward, President John Mahama notes: “The future [the book] imagines is not built on forgetting but on truth-telling, reckoning and the radical possibility of repair.”

This “truth-telling” must now be undertaken from the African perspective. AB

Pratt describes the Africans who sold enslaved people to Europeans as “middlemen”

A close-up of migration

Mounira Chaieb reviews a film with a message that says that the grass is not always greener on the other side, as many young people from the Global South think about going to Europe

Souleymane’s Story, Directed by Boris Logkine

AT first glance, Souleymane’s Story by the French director Boris Logkine, appears to be the diary of an African immigrant in Paris – another story in the growing number of immigrant narratives. In 90 minutes, the film unfolds at a frantic pace the essentials of the lives of immigrants and asylumseekers: the behind-the-scenes workings and their complexities, their relationships with each other and with their families, their perspective on this new and unfamiliar country and their methods of obtaining asylum.

Souleyman is invisible in a foreign land and being scammed by his own people

This is all focused on Souleymane, played Abou Sangaré, an undocumented immigrant who left his country Guinea, in search of a better life. In France, he is not allowed to work until his case is resolved. Between checking his phone and delivering on his bicycle, Souleymane does not stop.

We follow him through the streets of Paris over two intense days that encapsulate his entire existence, where simple tasks intersect with the constant anxiety and tension of survival – not just in the city, but in the country, and perhaps even in life itself.

His day seems endless and its rhythm gruelling. He rides his bicycle hectically day and night, through frantic city traffic under the harsh light of its sombre yellow hues at night and its radiant blue glow during the day to get more orders and deliver meals. He tries to be polite and respectful of social norms, but sometimes he loses his temper involuntarily. He is stressed by the race against time and the need for rest.

Through a loophole, Souleymane turns to someone who allows him to use his name on a delivery app, only to be exploited and scammed by the same person as the problems pile up. Other migrants steal from him. Sometimes he must sleep rough, having missed a bus that transports refugees to a night shelter. A bus packed with the exhausted bodies of workers like him, who have only a few hours before another frenzied day begins in a consumer society that shows no mercy to someone in their situation, stripped of papers, a sense of belonging and overwhelmed with anxiety.

Meanwhile, out of the saddle, he has to prepare for a crucial interview in two days’ time that will decide his asylum application, using a fictional story of political persecution, coached by another entrepreneur. The interview will determine his fate in France.

Amidst the plethora of films that address immigration and asylum as vague concepts or political issues, this one is frank about the everyday deceits that Souleymane is caught up in. It seeks to give voice to an individual story often sank by mainstream narratives and avoids simply presenting a political issue, instead giving a human face to a human condition.

It transforms a harsh daily reality into a drama devoid of embellishment or sensationalism. Thus, our understanding of Souleymane deepens. We come to know him slowly, through exhausting exchanges: a teenager with a girlfriend back home whom he loves dearly, is faithful to and wants her to be happy even if she decides to marry someone else.

Even though the touchy subject of immigration can lead to polarisation and dehumanisation, Souleymane is not an isolated case; he is a human being with simple aspirations, doubts and an

extraordinary inner strength, but ultimately, he is just a small part of a larger picture.

And whether someone has hung the England flag from their city in the North or posted angrily on Facebook from a French or German city, a man like Souleymane may be part of the reason. He could also resemble the figure about to bring their dinner.

Adding a unique depth to the film is the director's choice of amateur actor, Abou Sangaré, who not only plays Souleymane but also offers a condensed version of his life. His face and body language convey a sincerity that might not have been possible had the actor not lived in the delivery industry.

Before taking on the role, Sangaré was a young Guinean man facing deportation from France. However, after winning the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival last year, he was granted a one-year residency permit, renewable for another year.

When the day of the interview arrives, Souleymane sits waiting his turn, trying to hide a bloodstain on the hem of his white shirt after being pushed down the stairs by the same guy who let him use his account on the app. In the corridor, following the immigration officer, he remembers the events of the days leading up to this fateful appointment.

The viewer watches with anxiety as he hesitates, scratches his head and looks down while he recounts conflicting details of his persecution as a political activist back home in Guinea: a story the immigration officer has heard so many times before. The officer with a kind face, encourages him to take his time as she is there to listen. An immigration officer with compassion and empathy; I wonder if that is the film’s way of apologising for the way the French system treats immigrants or if it is another stereotype about Africans always needing help.

But it is impossible not to hope for rays of sunlight to infiltrate these dark days in Souleymane’s life. And the sunlight comes when he decides to follow the advice of a fellow immigrant, a North African from the name and the features, to tell the truth as it is. When he finally does, it liberates him.

Souleymane had crossed the Sahara Desert to Algeria, then Libya and from there to Italy then France because he needed to work so that he can help his sick mother. His father chased her away because she suffered from mental illness, something not well understood in Africa and therefore considered witchcraft. Another stereotype there too, perhaps.

Souleymane cannot hold his tears while he tells his story to the immigration officer. Whether he gets his status resolved or not, it does not matter. The film paints an honest portrait of someone attempting to scrape by in precarious circumstances. It tries to challenge some of the preconceived notions about immigrants and asylum seekers.

For me Souleymane’s Story is also a message that the grass is not always greener on the other side as many young people from the Global South think about Europe and plan to migrate surreptitiously. Though very strong and resilient, in France, Souleymane finds himself fighting multiple battles alone: being invisible in a foreign land and scammed by his own people, totally isolated and missing family and friends because he lost his support network.

Mounira Chaieb is a Tunisian freelance journalist and writer, based in London. Souleymane’s Story is part of the Royal African Society’s Film Africa season in London in November.

Boris Logkine directed Souleyman’s Story

Camden: the beating heart of pan-African London

From Padmore to Claudia Jones, from Nkrumah to today’s activists, Camden has shaped more than a century of Pan-African resistance, culture and political vision. Jon Offei-Ansah reports on the founder of UK’s Black History Month, Akyaaba Addai-Sebo’s reflections on how a London borough became the lodestar of a global movement

THERE are moments when a room is more than a room, when an address carries the weight of history, and when the act of gathering becomes an act of remembrance and defiance. Such was the atmosphere when Akyaaba Addai-Sebo stood in the Claudia Jones Room at Camden Town Hall in London this October. For him, Camden is not just a borough; it is a living archive, a political workshop, a sanctuary, and the centre of gravity for the pan-African and anti-racist movements that shaped the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This is no nostalgia. It is lineage.

Addai-Sebo’s connection to Camden stretches back four decades, and his relationship with figures like Claudia Jones is more than intellectual—it is lived history. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he served as Operations Manager for the Notting Hill Carnival, under the leadership of Dr Claire Holder, with cultural organiser Ansel Wong on the board. It was a period when Carnival was still wildly political, still rooted in anti-racist organising, and still carrying the imprint of Jones herself, whose activism and journalism helped build the infrastructure for diasporic cultural resistance.

Long before that, Camden had been home to a flourishing Black radical tradition. Addai-Sebo recalls arriving in the borough in 1984, drawn by the Book Fair hosted by Darcus and Leila Howe and the Race Today Collective, and then working closely with the Greater London Council and the African Refugee Housing Action Group (ARHAG). By the mid-1990s, he had moved into 25 Azania Mews in Kentish Town, where he lived until 2012. For him, Camden has always been a cradle of possibility.

As Chair of ARHAG, Addai-Sebo’s work was hands-on. The organisation partnered with MPs, councillors and council officers to provide dignified social housing for refugees and migrants, not as charity but as a right. In the early days, the borough offered ARHAG derelict housing stock to renovate; eventually, the organisation built its own schemes, often naming the developments after Pan-African icons.

It was a labour of love, but also a form of apprenticeship. Through that work, ARHAG acquired invaluable skills in construction, management and community development. Its executive officer, Ronnie Moodley, had fled apartheid South Africa; Addai-Sebo himself had arrived in London as a hunted man. On January 4, 1984—coincidentally the birthday of his mentor C. L. R. James—the Rawlings military regime in Ghana sent a death squad to seize him. He escaped, and by dusk, police notices branded him a wanted man.

London, and Camden in particular, became his refuge.

"Sweet Camden is always on my mind," he says, echoing Ray Charles. And in that sentiment lies the emotional geography of

Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, founder of the UK’s Black History Month, delivers his keynote address in Camden, speaking beneath the gaze of Claudia Jones, whose portrait is displayed beside him

pan-African London: Camden as sanctuary, Camden as memory, Camden as witness.

The borough played a key role in one of the most important cultural and political innovations in late-twentieth-century Britain: Black History Month. In 1987, Camden became an early and enthusiastic backer of the African Jubilee Year Declaration and the movement it ignited. The result was not just the nowfamiliar annual observance, but a deeper cultural season— Camden Black History Season—that acknowledged the borough’s embeddedness in Black British and African diasporic history.

Addai-Sebo is generous with his praise: Camden’s political leadership, its administrators and its community networks were essential in making Black History Month what it is today. "Alleluia Camden," he says, saluting the borough’s unwavering commitment.

To understand why Camden holds such significance, one must see the borough as an open-air political archive.

It was here, for example, that Addai-Sebo in 1988 declared at the Africa Centre that "the refugee is a human being first"—a statement whose simplicity belies its political clarity. In June 2022, at Kenwood House, he read his poem "I Am James Somerset" at the commemoration of the landmark 1771 Somerset v Stewart case, where Lord Mansfield ruled against the forced deportation of an enslaved African. The judgment sent political shockwaves through the British Empire and paved the way for abolitionist movements.

But it is Camden’s layered pan-African past that remains its most enduring contribution. To listen to Addai-Sebo narrate it is to hear a century’s worth of names weaving together into a tapestry of resistance.

From the late nineteenth century, Camden was a magnet for African, Caribbean and Black American thinkers and organisers.

Henry Sylvester Williams conceptualised the first pan-African Conference while studying law at Gray’s Inn. Dusé Mohamed Ali mentored Marcus Garvey from his base near Euston. The West African Students’ Union (WASU) thrived at its hostel at 62 Camden Road, producing leaders who would later spearhead independence movements.

Through the interwar years, Camden was the beating heart of Black intellectual London: Amy Ashwood Garvey founded an Afro-Women’s Centre in Bloomsbury; Sierra Leonean organiser I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson sharpened his radical politics here; Dr Olabisi Awonoor-Renner worked in the area’s medical and political circuits.

Into the 1940s and 1950s, that legacy intensified. George Padmore, arguably the single most influential pan-African organiser of the twentieth century, held court at 22 Cranleigh Street. Kwame Nkrumah lived nearby in Burghley Road, forging strategies that would soon make Ghana the first independent subSaharan nation. Jomo Kenyatta, later leader of Kenya, also passed through these networks.

Padmore’s flat became the workshop for the liberation of Africa. Dorothy Pizer, his intellectual partner, ensured that the research, correspondence and political blueprints flowing through their home reached the right hands. Their Camden flat shaped the ideological spine of the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress, which helped accelerate the wave of independence struggles.

C. L. R. James, though often travelling, participated in study circles there, sharpening the Marxist-Pan-African synthesis that would influence freedom fighters across the continent.

By the 1960s, Camden was a hub for South African exiles such as Joe Slovo and Ruth First. Claudia Jones—deported from the United States for her communist beliefs—wrote, organised

and mobilised across Camden’s halls and theatres. Paul Robeson sang at the Unity Theatre, raising funds for anti-colonial struggles. Miriam Makeba electrified venues like the Jazz Café, turning performance into political witness.

The borough’s long cultural memory is now formally recognised through plaques, heritage walks and commemorative sites—but what Addai-Sebo emphasises is that Camden’s radicalism was never ornamental. It was functional. It held movements together.

For Addai-Sebo, Camden is more than a historical landscape. It is a spiritual terrain. When he walks through the borough, he says, he feels as though he is in a ghost town—not empty, but populated with ancestors whose presence sharpens one’s moral clarity. The maternal power of Amy Ashwood Garvey and Claudia Jones, the intellectual ferocity of James, the visionary drive of Nkrumah: all of it feels near.

This sensibility is deeply African, rooted in the idea of duality—the balance of male and female principles, represented in symbols like the ankh and the akuaba. Colonialism attempted to destroy that equilibrium, systematically dismantling African languages, cultures, governance traditions and spiritual systems. Pan-Africanism, he argues, aims to reclaim that stolen legacy.

At its core, pan-Africanism confronts white supremacy not only as ideology but as an economic system built on land theft. The Berlin Conference of 1884–85, which parcelled the continent into European fiefdoms, was justified through church doctrines that rendered African societies as heathen and disposable.

Thus the slogan "African lands in African hands" is not merely rhetorical; it is the foundation for any true liberation project. It was the animating principle of the Manchester Congress and the quiet code amongst the initiates of the movement.

The debate over where to begin the decolonisation push— Ethiopia, Liberia, Sierra Leone—was intense. Sierra Leone had Wallace-Johnson’s organisational brilliance; Liberia had its unique history of repatriation. But fate intervened: Nkrumah received a letter inviting him to serve as organising secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention.

He consulted James and Padmore in Camden. They brought Wallace-Johnson into the conversation. They compared histories of resistance, assessed resources, and envisioned the risks. Ultimately, they chose the Gold Coast as the most strategically sound base for launching a continental liberation movement.

Their decision—made in Camden’s homes and cafés— changed the course of Africa.

In November 1947, Nkrumah and Kojo Botsio sailed from Liverpool. Wallace-Johnson, already engaged in reconnaissance across West Africa, later joined Nkrumah in Accra. Padmore, operating from London, completed the triangular architecture of the movement. The colonial government responded by banning Padmore’s writings.

But the momentum was unstoppable.

Today, as Africa contends with renewed forms of external control, resource extraction and geopolitical pressure, Addai-Sebo sees Camden as a reminder of what collective action can achieve. The borough’s Pan-African heritage is not merely historical; it is instructive.

The lesson is simple: liberation begins with organised thought, organised people and organised space. Camden offered those conditions then; Africa must cultivate them now.

And so, as he closed his address, Addai-Sebo invoked the ancestors once more: "The wise is spoken to in proverbs." The message lands softly, but its implications are sharp.

Camden is not simply on his mind. It is part of the DNA of modern African political consciousness—a reminder that global freedom struggles often begin in the smallest of rooms.

Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta, whose time in Camden’s panAfrican circles helped shape the liberation strategies that later led Ghana and Kenya into independence