American Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Visit to South Africa, Rwanda, and DRC this week was definitely the week’s most dramatic geopolitical development, coming so close after the heels of Russian Foreign Minister’s Lavrov’s trip.
Election Drama (and a count that seemingly will never end). Mass protests in a coastal West African nation. A visit from the American Secretary Of State to the heart of the continent, and Country Music loving Gambians????
It’s been quite a week for anyone interested in the continent. With that in mind, here’s some of the more interesting pieces that I found informative or just relevant that relate to Africa, with added analysis from myself. Let’s dive in.
WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK
1. Sierra Leone experiencing rampant protests amid a cost of living crisis + inflation
It would be an understatement to say Sierra Leone has had a hard time of in the past few decades. The country experienced a destructive 1990s civil war that was born partly out of Liberia’s own conflict. It is Sierra Leone’s Civil War which popularized the very term “Blood Diamonds”, a war so protracted, that it only ended due to a joint British - ECOWAS intervention in 2002.
If that wasn’t enough bad luck, the country then suffered immensely from 2014 onwards as one of the prime countries hit by the Ebola pandemic, which reversed a lot of the gains the country painstakingly made in the 2000s. Prices are now rising on the streets of Freetown due to food imports + fuel increases. Its led to an explosion of protest activity within Freetown. Protest activity that’s now being strongly repressed in an overtly violent fashion by President Bio, a man with his own controversial past and who hasn’t exactly become a major popular figure during his first term in office.
Sri Lanka serves as a frightening specter for the entire global south of how far these concerns can consume a country, so while I doubt Sierra Leone will spiral out of control to that extent, it may be useful to keep one’s eyes on the country. Furthermore while it may be Sierra Leone today, this has the potential to definitely spread towards other countries on the continent.
2. Antony Blinken has some hard words for Rwanda
Rwanda has been a darling of the West for so long, and Paul Kagame so often compared to Lee Kuan Yew as a kind of transcendental transformative African leader, that one is always shocked when that treatment ceases even if it is only for a short while.
This summer, tensions have drastically increased in Eastern DRC again as M23, one of Congo’s biggest rebel forces, has been on the warpath. M23 is a militia that many analysts and even IGOs such as the UN claim is funded/supported by Rwanda. This time, the response from Kinshasa as well as locals on the ground has been emotionally heated on a different level, with even threats of war coming from Congolese military. The whole drama has attracted the focus of the East African Community (of which DRC and Rwanda are both members), which is even sending a peacekeeping force to the region to help Congo battle varied militia threats.
It’s with this background that Blinken’s visit to Kigali was so unique in that instead of being a celebratory session of Kagame, it was a loaded visit that carried seemingly subliminal threats and a sense that while still a bold Western asset (look at his recent partnership with the UK on refugees) the shine may be coming off just a bit, both regionally and abroad in the West.
3. Madagascar’s Forgotten Famine
For the past three years, the southernmost region of Madagascar, known as Grand Sud has suffered from an intense famine that has now affected around 1.3 million people. What’s been very notable about that famine is that its being attributed as the first famine that is a cause of climate change, with low rainfall in the past three years in the region driving residents of the region into pure desperation.
Now certain think tanks + scientists + the opposition to the sitting government attack this worldview, suggesting that the government has long neglected Grand Sud, that existing roads to the region are barely existent, and that a water pipeline to the region from Central Madagascar(where the majority of the population resides and that has good water resources) should have been built decades ago, that weak governance is the cause, not climate change.
Given Africa will have its own climate change dynamics, and that famine politics is still relatively semi common on the continent, this is an interesting discussion that will probably involve other countries in the near future.
Madagascar as well barely also gets coverage on the international scene, which is a shame as it’s truly one of the most fascinating African countries and its deep difficulties have important lessons for all African states. Imagine a country that is a third larger than California, with abundant nature that is “megadiverse” and unlike that elsewhere, and whose people are a fusion of Bantu African and Pacific Asian groups, and you have Madagascar.
4. Africa finally gets a super league of its own
Last year’s announcement of the European Super League launched a million protests, thinkpieces, and even governmental intervention as Europe totally rejected a consolidation of its elite football teams into one showpiece league. The complete reverse happened in Africa this week, where most of the continent issued a giant “Meh”.
The announcement promises the formation of a league that will start in August 2023 and feature around 20 to 24 of the continent’s most storied teams, from Simba SC in Tanzania to Al Ahly in Egypt to Orlando Pirates in South Africa. The scale of rewards promised is over $100 million and that has the potential to jolt elite African football and offers more funds to them than what they currently get in the moribund African Champions League and of course their own national leagues.
A lot has to still be done in terms of coming up with a realistic schedule, broadcasting deals, and getting player sign on but in my opinion this is a must needed action. Elite African football is in a stagnating state and something needs to be done to actually empower our richest teams to retain their best talent, further develop their youth pipelines, and more importantly get more eyes on a football mad continent on them. South America proves that having a competitive local football scene is often a boon to national teams as well as local economies. There’s no reason Africa can’t have that either.
5. Country Music and its cult following in African Countries
This was a great article as it looks into how exactly American country music developed a large following on the continent, even detailing the history back to the 1930s. This is a subject I had little knowledge of, so it was fascinating as a whole to learn more, even as an individual who’s not that into country music.
Tweets I Liked
We are currently still as of Sunday evening in Nairobi still awaiting results from an election that took place on Tuesday. I’ve been pretty confident that we’re heading for RutoWorld and the voting patterns confirm this, but it still has been disappointing that the vote counting has been this slow, and it’s just added to political stress in both major political alliances. I agree with well known political analyst Rashid Abdi that you may want to divorce the presidential race from the others just to ensure faster processing.
I found this a deeply provocative thread and one that we don’t ask ourselves just too often yet, maybe because we’re still in the earlier phases of the transformation its bringing to society. I would be tempted to say its shaken up E-commerce in a meaningful way but curious to see what others think as I can see how its also impacted music/beauty/food/tourism as well.
I found this an extremely interesting tweet from Toyyib as I agree and think this is a sentiment that needs to spread further among educated classes on the continent, if one is earning that much on the continent, either from a business or remote work there’s no true point in relocating to the West. Such an individual is a stronger asset to local African economies and likely would face higher taxes/expenses upon relocation to the West.
Thanks for reading my roundup! These will normally be weekly releases, and will alternate between being paywalled and free.