370 - The Perils of Africa, I: Woes Self-Inflicted and Trump-Inflicted
Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Congo
Much of Africa is newly dangerous, troubled, and imperiled. Kenyans are rioting against police brutality and presidential policies; Congolese are killing each other in contests for mineral resources; Sudan's senseless, nefarious, and cataclysmic civil war punishes the innocents; conflicts re-erupt in Ethiopia and Somalia; Islamists hold sway across the Sahel and in Nigeria; Zimbabwe locks up its critics; and South Africa reels from massive police corruption. To add measurably to Africa's misery, Trump and Congress fiddle with funding for HIV-AIDS diagnosis and treatment, vaccine supplies, widespread public health concerns, and water availability. Nevertheless, Trump has without due process sent enforced and unwilling deportees from the United States to two very insubstantial and precarious African countries -- South Sudan and Eswatini.
Kenya's President William Ruto, with whom the Trump administration has had close relations, this week told his national police to shoot protesters in the legs, not just to resist their demonstrations. Increasingly authoritarian in his approach to lawmaking and political discipline in Kenya, Ruto was elected president in August 2022 after a bitter campaign against a sometime ally turned competitor, Raila Odinga. Since then, Ruto's rule has been increasingly troubled, especially this year when he proposed new legal arrangements and increased taxes. Simultaneously, a dissident popular blogger and teacher arguing against the taxes was killed by police (who claimed that the blogger shot himself). The police also shot an unarmed street vendor. Nairobi, the capital city, and much of the countryside erupted, pushing Kenya into turmoil for what has now been four weeks of agitation in the streets of key cities. The mostly youthful demonstrators demand that Ruto resign. They blame him for Kenya's widespread corruption and for cost of living that have spiraled out of control.
Kenyan police, known for their brutality, have been using water cannons and tear gas to hold back crowds of protesters. They also erected barricades to prevent protesters from reaching Parliament or government offices. Hired "goons" broke up peaceful meetings of protesting mothers in Nairobi. Outside the capital city, some policemen whipped protesters mercilessly to prevent them from spreading dissent. This week alone 31 people lost their lives, 107 were injured, and more than 550 were arrested. Last year protesters stormed parliament seeking Ruto's ouster.
The mayhem and killing fields in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo has far different origins. It pits approximately 120 warlord-led gangs against both the hapless national army, regional attempted peacekeepers from the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, and the East African Community. Last week a U.S. brokered truce between tiny but well-armed Rwanda and giant but disorganized Congo helped to slow down and perhaps halt ongoing battles between the Rwandan-backed and -assisted M23 guerilla army and regular Congolese troops. But the truce does not seem to be holding or reducing the shifting of critical Congolese mineral treasures from the Kivu provinces of Congo into Rwanda, for onward sale to the United Arab Emirates and China. M23 still controls the cities of Goma and Bukavu, that it captured from Congo earlier this year.
Farther north, an Islamic State client, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) attacked townspeople close to the Congolese border with Uganda in Congo's Ituri Province. Again, the ADF is seeking to take control of valuable minerals like coltan, copper, and gold mined by artisans in Ituri and North Kivu.
The terrible Sudanese war roils on, with more than 150,000 killed, 12 million people internally displaced and forced to flee across borders, and 25 million suffering acute hunger and shortages of potable water. Along with the tragedy in Yemen, Sudan constitutes the world's most acute humanitarian crisis, with too little being done to end the war or assist the sufferers.
Despite losing Khartoum and two provinces south of the capital, the RSF has increased its competitive position in West Kordofan province and in South and North Darfur provinces, in Sudan's far west. A RSF predecessor, the Arab janjaweed, then led by Hemeti, ethnic cleansed Darfur in 2003-2005, and was reliably accused of genocidal intent and actions. It is once more targeting Fur, Margalit, and Zaghawa Africans throughout the two Darfur provinces, where there is abundant gold, and raping and killing thousands, especially today in and around camps for displaced citizens surrounding El-Fasher, the provincial capital. Africans endangered in Darfur flee when they can across the border with Chad.
The UAE materially and financially enables the RSF to continue its war against the national army. But the Trump administration does other business with the UAE, thus failing to stop the Sudanese massacres.
Compared to Kenya, Congo, and Sudan, Ethiopia's continued government battles with rebel forces in Amhara, Tigray, and Oromo provinces are less dramatic and producing fewer civilian deaths. But they testify to Ethiopia's continued instability despite its recent ambitious joining of BRICS, the growing prosperity of its trade with China, and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's backing by the UAE, which seeks economic gains in Ethiopia as in Sudan. Medicins sans Frontieres, the French-based medical relief organization, blames Abiy's army for shooting three of its local workers in cold blood, an accusation that highlights how insecure Ethiopia has become under Abiy, a Nobel Peace Laureate.
Near Ethiopia, in the Puntland region of Somalia, Ethiopians escaping their country for employment opportunities in Saudi Arabia are being compelled to become soldiers of the Islamic State. The latter seeks further to enflame the Cape Guardafui region at the northeastern most point of Africa, where Puntland, a semi-autonomous part of Somalia, has long contested lands athwart its shared border with Somaliland, the long breakaway internationally unrecognized republic that faces the Gulf of Aden. Puntland-Somaliland clashes this week were allegedly encouraged by the Federal Republic of Somalia inciting a clan controlling the area east of Berbera. Puntland then invaded, and the battle is ongoing.
None of the African-on-African imbroglios (except Sudan's) compares in its impact on the immediate- and long-term health of Africans as does the Trump administration's attempt (just now possibly paused) to roll back the supply of anti-retroviral drugs against HIV-AIDS by crippling PEPFAR, its halt to vaccine supplies and vaccine development through GAVI, and its destruction of USAID medical assistance across the continent. Management and Budget Director Russell Vought lied to Congress about PEPFAR backing abortions in Russia, and about everything else that PEPFAR was allegedly doing when he testified earlier this week in favor of a major cut to PEPFAR funding. Fortunately, yesterday, a few Republican senators pushed back and managed to restore much of U.S. funding for PEPFAR. It appears that $400 million will not be forfeited. Maternal health, malaria, nutrition, and tuberculosis programs may also be spared. But the threat against Africa's health outcomes by the Trump administration remains an ongoing concern.
As much as Africans kill each other, wantonly, so this Trump presidency and the UAE contributes mightily to the continued precarity of African outcomes and longevity. Experts estimate that Trump will kill millions of Africans this year, and many more will suffer severe hunger, fatal illnesses, and stunted growth thanks to his initiatives. The end of American official empathy needlessly decimates Africa.
To be continued next time.
As an American born in Tanganyika, now Tanzania, I am so incredibly impressed with your coverage of African issues. I apologise for the typo now corrected!
Much of the conflict in Africa is being fueled by mass migrations due to climate change, especially in West Africa where nomadic peoples (herders) are moving south and are in conflict with farm cultures over water resources and grazing land. This is driving many into the cities where there is insufficient infrastructure to support the population increase. Huge slums are developing with little sanitation and water, and few jobs. It is a recipe for conflict, and increasing crime.
I think the East African population movement is split, primarily northward towards Europe, with countries south of the DRC moving towards South Africa. As European governments move to the right, anti-immigration policies are increasing, and that will tighten the bottleneck that will trap East African climate refugees in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia. Egypt's ability to accommodate refugees will be overwhelmed by the Palestinians being forced out of Gaza. European humanitarian resources will be focused on rebuilding Ukraine.
Africa will be the hotbed of conflict and humanitarian crises over the next decades. Russia and China and the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and now Trump's America, are only interested in securing rights to natural resources. Their infrastructure development is focused on extraction and transport of those resources, not on the welfare of the population. The rights they want can be obtained cheaply through bribery and graft. Millions of Africans will die because they simply are not a big enough market in world GDP to matter.