Politics in Angola, Africa’s second largest oil exporter, has caught observers by surprise. The new president, João Lourenço, has launched a vigorous anti-corruption crusade that has directly targeted his predecessor’s family, the powerful Dos Santos Clan. 

Lourenco, known popularly as J-Lo, was expected to quietly acquiesce to the family’s enormous  economic power, accrued during the 38-year rule of President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos. Instead, Lourenco has launched a number…

Congo, one of Africa’s largest but most fractious countries, saw its opposition parties agree in November to a single candidate for the December 23 presidential election, the relatively unknown politician Martin Fayulu. In keeping with Congo’s confused polity, this unity of purpose lasted just a few hours. The country will now face a three-way electoral battle, but one that is still likely to spell the end of Joseph Kabila’s 17-year long rule of the country.

Fayulu was chosen to run…

The United States is moving towards ending Western isolation of Sudan. US State Department officials met with Sudanese Foreign Minister Al-Dirdiri Mohamed Ahmed in Washington last month to finalise plans to remove the “state sponsor of terrorism” designation that is presently applied to Khartoum. 

Sudan was blacklisted in 1993 and has since been unable to attract foreign investors, access multilateral financial aid and otherwise benefit from the global economy. The Barack Obama…

Africa suffers the worst brain drain problem of any developing region with even medium level skilled workers like nurses and technicians among those who leave. In the field of science the loss is even greater. The Global State of Young Africa survey of young African scientists has been trying to identify the barriers that they face to staying in the continent. The survey concluded that “the extreme factors include war and political instability. But the more common ‘pushes’ are a desire for…

The Addis Ababa-Djibouti freight railway, a much-touted component of the Belt Road Initiative in Africa, came under unusual criticism from a senior Chinese financial official. An official of the China Export and Credit Insurance Corporation, known as Sinosure, complained his agency had incurred $ 1 billion in losses because of the project’s poor planning.

The $ 4 billion railway is the economic backbone of a Chinese push for influence in the Horn of Africa. Though completed last year,…

Closer Looks at Chinese Investment

How Chinese investment and debt finance impacts Africa continues to be a major source of contention. A stream of studies indicate a more nuanced reality between claims China is a benign partner in Africa’s development and claims China is driven solely by geopolitical interests.

Yu-Shan Wu, Chris Walden and Cobus van Staden of the South African Institute for International Affairs studied responses to the Belt Road Initiative…

How Chinese investment and debt finance impacts Africa continues to be a major source of contention. A stream of studies indicate a more nuanced reality between claims China is a benign partner in Africa’s development and claims China is driven solely by geopolitical interests. 

Yu-Shan Wu, Chris Walden and Cobus van Staden of the South African Institute for International Affairs studied responses to the Belt Road Initiative and showed African governments are not…

The Jubilee Debt Campaign released a study on Africa’s external debt and the contribution of China’s official lending. Overall, Africa’s debt problems continue to increase. External government debt payments have doubled in just the past two years from an average of 5.9% of government revenue in 2015 to 11.8% in 2017. 

While exact figures are difficult to calculate, the study…

The West African state of Togo shutdown its internet on 5th September for a week. The government wished to stop youth from mobilizing online to hold protests against the reining Gnassingbe family. But the result also provided the world an experiment in what a society would do if it suddenly lost the internet.

Local and foreign media reported that the country, where WhatsApp is ubiquitous, experienced a more attentive civilian workforce, a rise in old-fashioned social interaction such…

China’s aid programmes are winning “hearts and minds,” especially in Africa. AidData, which assesses development programmes in the College of William and Mary, in its 2017 Listening to Leaders Survey placed China’s aid programme as the 21st in the world in terms of “perceived influence,” up from 29th only three years ago. India’s aid programme saw a jump from 31st to 24th. This placed both of them higher on the table than the larger aid programmes of Japan and Canada.

AidData also…

Chinese President Xi Jinping bowed, rhetorically, to growing criticism of his country’s investment and aid programmes in Africa at the annual Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). He promised “five Nos” would govern China’s policies with the continent: no change to development paths, no domestic interference, no imposition of China’s will, no seeking of political gain and no “strings” to financial assistance. Xi said his country had “full respect for Africa’s own will.”

The 2018…

A Development Reimagined’s study assessed the soft power of various countries in Africa by looking at their “most visible, and sometimes controversial, public diplomacy tool, their cultural institutes." The study merged both major institutions like Alliance Francaise centres with smaller language training points.

The study toted up over 600 such institutes in Africa, noting this was less than 14 percent of the total number of such institutes worldwide.

Their distribution was…

Three banks – UBS, JP Morgan and Citibank – will carry out the planned public offer for shares in the holding company of its African business of India’s largest mobile telephone carrier, Bharti Airtel. This is the latest indicator of how much the once loss-making Africa operations of Bharti Airtel have turned around.

Bharti Airtel first announced its intentions to launch an initial public offering in February. The reports said Bharti Airtel plans to list a quarter of the equity of its…

A recent study by the Counter Terrorism Centre in West Point concludes that the Islamic State (IS) has nine regional branches in Africa and commands roughly 6,000 fighters across the continent. With the IS being wiped out in Syria and Iraq, its four-year-old presence in Africa may become its main base of operations and recruitment.

The largest IS affiliate is the Islamic State West African Province with an estimated 3,500 fighters. This IS cell is a result of a split within the Boko…

Kofi Annan, the first black African to become United Nations Secretary-General and co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, died on August 18 at the age of 80. A Ghanaian by origin his many accomplishments include the creation of the Millennium Development Goals which provide targets for social development for developing countries to this day, the establishment within the UN of the Peacebuilding Commission and the Human Rights Council, and the setting up of the Kofi Annan…

South Africa’s outgoing anti-corruption investigator, public protector Thulisile Nomkhosi "Thuli" Madonsela, released a 355-page report on how much the Gupta brothers, an Indian business family originally from Saharanpur, held sway over the government of ex-prime minister Jacob Zuma. The report implicates Zuma, at least three of his ministers and the Guptas in a web of corruption.

Among its revelations were that the Gupta brothers had the remarkable ability to promote or remove…

Farmers in Niger have, through their own efforts, planted millions of Gao trees and successfully made degraded land fertile again. According to scientists, the Gao revolution is the largest scale positive transformation of the environment ever done in Africa. The best part is that the farmers have not been funded or pushed to do this: they have been planting Gao trees because they have experienced the remarkable regenerative capabilities of the tree.

The Gao, known in English as the…

Just before his country went to the polls on July 30, former Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, announced he would not support his own party, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), in the coming Zimbabwean elections. He said he would prefer the main opposition candidate, Nelson Chamisa.

Mugabe was overthrown in an internal coup by his own defence minister, Emmerson Mnangagwa. While ZANU-PF is expected to win, in part because of its control over the state…

Ethiopia’s new leader, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, has been in office for barely four months but has already achieved the political equivalent of rock star status. Abiy came to power after months of protests against the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) forced the resignation of his predecessor. While Ahmed comes from one of the four constituents of the EPRDF, he is the first to come from the section representing the Oromo – the country’s largest but politically…

Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to South Africa for the annual BRICS Summit in late July. Along the way, he made state visits to Rwanda and Uganda. This was the first such a visit by an Indian leader to Rwanda.

In visiting Rwanda and Uganda, Modi completed an Indian diplomatic outreach to the countries of East Africa. India has focussed prime ministerial and presidential visits to the region as part of a larger attempt to develop stronger ties with littoral Indian Ocean nations.…