Africa

This week the US House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa held a critical hearing regarding a long standing crisis with the title “ A Dire Crisis in Sudan: A Global Call to Action”. The subject matter is indeed timely, The situation in Sudan has gotten worse however the situation has been overshadowed by other crisis spots.

Disinformation campaigns seeking to manipulate African information systems have surged nearly fourfold since 2022, triggering destabilizing and antidemocratic consequences.

The proliferation of disinformation is a fundamental challenge to stable and prosperous African societies. The scope of these intentional efforts to distort the information environment for a political end is accelerating. The 189 documented disinformation campaigns in Africa are nearly quadruple the number reported in 2022. Given the opaque nature of disinformation, this figure is surely an undercount.

Africa’s complex security landscape was buffeted by the compounding effects of the growing regionalization of conflicts, militant Islamist group offensives, military coups, and external actor rivalries.

A look back at 2025 in graphics reveals an African security landscape being reshaped by growing external interventions, militaries emboldened to seize and consolidate power, and the proliferation of drones that expands the reach and lethality of armed combatants. The confluence of urbanization, demographic pressures, and the increasing regionalization of conflicts is further straining Africa’s already fragile security environment. Despite these challenges, numerous African countries have made noteworthy progress over the past year in building out their communications, road, rail, and space infrastructure to expand economic productivity and opportunities for the continent’s 1.5 billion, mostly youthful, citizens.

Gulf state actors are expanding their engagements in critical infrastructure, ports, and the security sector in East Africa as they seek opportunities and compete for influence—reshaping the investment and political contours of the region.

Amid mounting domestic pressure on President Saied, the Trump administration should take modest but useful and forward-looking steps like lifting tariffs, supporting less-politicized trade projects, and otherwise backing the people’s vision for a more prosperous future.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has sentenced former Janjaweed commander Ali Muhammad Ali Abdelrahman, known as ‘Ali Kushayb’ and feared in Darfur as the “Colonel of Colonels” to 20 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in 2003–2004. The sentence, handed down on today in The Hague, follows his October conviction on 27 counts, including murder, torture, persecution, rape, and the forcible displacement of civilians.