Africa

After a devastating two-year civil war, the Ethiopian government and Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) signed a cessation of hostilities agreement on 2 November. The war killed over 500 000 people and displaced millions.

But the agreement still hasn’t received universal support across the Ethiopian political elite and their constituencies. A commitment to peace among these groups is as important as that of the government and the TPLF. Securing it could ease the implementation of potential sticking points in the peace agreement such as disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration.

On November 21, 2022, Mali’s interim Prime Minister Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga posted a statement on social media to say that Mali has decided “to ban, with immediate effect, all activities carried out by NGOs operating in Mali with funding or material or technical support from France.” A few days before this statement, the French government cut official development assistance (ODA) to Mali because it believed that Mali’s government is “allied to Wagner’s Russian mercenaries.” Colonel Maïga responded by saying that these are “fanciful allegations” and a “subterfuge intended to deceive and manipulate national and international public opinion.”

Un soldat malien et un civil ont été tués dans une “attaque terroriste” dans l’ouest du pays, a indiqué jeudi à l’AFP un responsable administratif local.

L’attaque a eu lieu mercredi soir à Yélimané, ville proche de la frontière avec la Mauritanie, dans la région de Kayes, zone où les attaques djihadistes sont rares.

Au Burkina Faso, le président de la transition, capitaine Ibrahim Traoré, a annoncé qu’une tentative de coup d’État a visé son pouvoir la semaine dernière. Il a rencontré plusieurs organisations de la société civile, jeudi 1er décembre à Ouagadougou, pour faire le point sur les actions à venir dans le cadre de la lutte antiterroriste et solliciter leur soutien dans la veille citoyenne. Il voudrait ainsi mettre fin à toute tentative de déstabilisation de la transition.

Les quatre hommes soupçonnés d’avoir voulu renverser l’Etat auraient été torturés puis assassinés. Le gouvernement a ordonné une enquête.

Le gouvernement de Sao Tomé-et-Principe a ordonné, jeudi 1er décembre, une enquête sur « des actes cruels et inhumains » présumés commis par des militaires sur des hommes accusés par le premier ministre d’avoir tenté, le 25 novembre, de mener un « coup d’Etat », annonce STP-Press, l’agence de presse publique.

A looming crisis of succession in several African countries indicates a troubling persistence of ego-driven political paternalism.

Democratic transition in Africa offers much to celebrate. For one thing, support for democratic principles, especially among young people, remains robust. Contra creeping anti-democratic sentiment across the West (for instance, research by UK-based think tank Onward found that “60% of 18- to 24-year-olds agree that having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament or elections is a good way to run the country, more than double the number in 2017”), a high percentage of young Africans continue to express strong support for core democratic values, including freedom of belief and universal suffrage.

In the hunger map of present day world, Somalia is probably the most seriously affected country of the 21st century. Somalia is reported by the UN to have lost 260,000 lives in and around 2011 to hunger and famine deaths, one of the very few countries in the world to have such a high number of recorded hunger deaths in recent times, despite having a population of only around 17 million or so. Today, just a decade or so later, the country is probably in an even worse situation.

The UK, Côte d’Ivoire and other nations plan to pull their troops out of the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, clouding its future as it undergoes internal review. In this Q&A, Crisis Group experts discuss the mission’s challenges and scenarios for what could come next.