African Arguments

In the summer of 2023, a young man from Gafsa tried to cross the Mediterranean on a small boat. He did not make it. His story is one of thousands — and it is increasingly understood by Tunisian institutions through the language of border management. It is also a story about who defines what a problem is. In June 2023, the European Commission announced a package for Tunisia: up to €900 million in proposed macro-financial assistance, €150 million in budget support, and €100 million for border mana

Berbera sits on the Gulf of Aden, about 150 miles south of Yemen. Its deep-water berth and the Emirati investment behind it are what Somaliland has been offering Washington. Illustration generated by the author, not a photograph of the port. Somaliland’s president spent two weeks in Washington this month offering almost everything he has. Access to the port at Berbera. Access to the territory’s minerals. Military access, which he called a matter for negotiation and declined to rule out. He only

When one Black South African journalist decided to leave the profession after only four years, she did not walk away because she had stopped believing in journalism: ‘I mourned because I knew I could have done so much in that space.’ Her experience is documented in a 2025 Reuters Institute fellowship paper by South African journalist Bongekile Macupe. After difficult experiences in the newsroom, including during her pregnancy, the journalist eventually decided to leave. Yet her words suggest tha

This article draws on in-person interviews at Mt Suswa, Olkaria, and Menengai with Coalition for Human Rights in Development (CHRD) members and partners directly affected by geothermal projects. Interviews were led by the Coalition’s Research and Learning Facilitator and interviewees identified through the Community Resource Exchange (CRE), a system to facilitate collaborations and co-develop strategies with and among communities defending their rights in the context of international investments

A failed prisoner exchange in Niger has revealed a complex network of Libyan, Nigerien, Chadian, and Russian interests converging on one of the Sahara’s most established smuggling corridors. On the maps that colonial cartographers drew of the Sahara, most features carry the names of the people who ‘discovered’ them, or of the places they resembled. The origin of the name given to the gap in the escarpment where Libya, Niger and Algeria meet is murkier: old French military survey maps simpl

In June 2024, a ransomware attack on South Africa’s National Health Laboratory Service rendered patient records inaccessible, disrupted diagnostics and forced hospitals to cancel surgeries. The incident was a stark reminder that when essential services become digital, attacks on their underlying systems can quickly become disruptions to everyday life. It was not simply a cybersecurity incident affecting an IT network; it affected health institutions’ ability to deliver services. This disti

On 12 September, CNN reported that around fifteen Ukrainian drone specialists are working with the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) in northern Mali. According to two Ukrainians deployed there, the group does not fight on the front line; it trains fighters and helps run operations. A Ukrainian operator told CNN that he coordinates the rebels’ operations remotely and that Ukrainians helped take Kidal earlier this year. Tuareg rebels and al-Qaeda-linked fighters attacked the town simultaneously

A fifth birthday should be unremarkable. For too many African families, it is not. An estimated 4.9 million children died before reaching the age of five in 2024, and nearly six in ten of those deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Most were preventable with interventions we already know how to deliver. In Nigeria, the latest estimate is 116 deaths per 1,000 live births, roughly one child in nine. Judith Leveillee, UNICEF’s field chief in Nigeria, recently told The Independent that child surviv

No one can claim that a return to war in Tigray and northern Ethiopia is a surprise, but it makes it no less horrifying. In just a handful of days, and after months of spiralling tensions and sporadic fighting, the ‘grey conflict’ the federal government pursued against Tigray has escalated into ‘‘full-blown war,’ in the words of Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) vice president Ammanuel Assefa. The atrocities of the Tigray war are all too recent in the mi

When the Pretoria Cessation of Hostilities Agreement was signed in November 2022, international observers prematurely celebrated the end of one of this century’s most devastating conflicts. The silence of the guns in Tigray was treated as a definitive roadmap toward peace. What the international community failed to see was that the Pretoria architecture did not resolve Ethiopia’s core systemic collapse; it merely localized and delayed it. During my two years working from the African

On March 23, 2026, a Federal High Court in Abuja handed down a 72 year sentence, to be served as eight years concurrently, to Chukwunyere Nwabuoku, the former acting Accountant General of the Federation, for laundering funds while he ran finance for the Ministry of Defence. At first glance, it looks like a rare victory for accountability. It is also, on closer look, proof of how unusual accountability has become. A review of 393 corruption cases involving Nigerian public officials between 2013 a

Over the past few years, access to digital music platforms has changed what is possible for artists in countries such as Togo. A musician no longer needs to be based in Paris, London, Lagos or Johannesburg to place a release on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and other international services. In theory, the distance between a young artist in Lomé and a global audience has become much smaller. But access to streaming platforms is only the beginning. Distribution is not the same thing as career deve

The first piece documented who disappeared into Somalia’s detention system. The second — “The Journalists Who Disappeared” — documented who was silenced for reporting it. This piece documents the officials whose orders produced those outcomes — and the institution that now protects them. They are not in hiding. They are not in exile. They are not facing investigation. They are sitting in the House of the People of Somalia, protected by parliamentary immunity. In a country where the courts answer

This piece is the winner of the Canon Collins 2026 essay competition. The annual competition invites essays that demonstrate thought leadership and offer fresh perspectives on issues affecting southern Africa. ++++++++++ An essay on why a pen aimed at the Constitution is a dagger aimed at the people   The Obituary of a Promise There is a moment in a nation’s life when the law stops being a shield and becomes a shroud. Zimbabwe arrived at that hour on 16 February 2026 when the government g

Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in 2005, seemed to vindicate a model for how wars might end in the Horn of Africa. Under the auspices of the African Union, led by hegemonic Ethiopia and backed by the United States, it wrangled the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army to the table with the promise of redistributing oil rents, and set the pathway for southern Sudan’s eventual secession in 2011. It had many faults, not least the failure to incor

On Dennis Pritt Road in Nairobi’s Kilimani district, long queues formed outside the Burundian embassy on 7 September. People were waiting for laissez-passers, temporary travel documents enabling them to return home without valid passports. The embassy had offered to issue them free of charge. Early social-media reports also referred to Congolese nationals preparing to leave Kenya. None of those in line had necessarily received an individual deportation order. They were responding to someth

On 21 August, armed men entered a mosque in Dekara village in Niger State while Friday prayers were underway. At around the same time, nearby settlements were also raided. A few days later, a video circulated on social media showing hundreds of people, including women, children and elderly people, sitting on the ground in a wooded area. One of the armed men addressed their families, asking them to identify their relatives in the footage. The exact number of people abducted remains unclear. Local

By the time Nigeria puts together all of the policies needed to regulate artificial intelligence, elements of the technology might have already been implemented. In May, Nigeria’s federal government unveiled an open-access, multilingual voice and text assistant called GovGuide Nigeria, built by Publica AI with Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, NCAIR and Meta. Its stated goal is to assist Nigerians in accessing government services in English

Since 2023, 14 African countries have introduced export restrictions on unprocessed critical minerals, requiring “local beneficiation” – or in-country processing and manufacturing – prior to export, and demanding technology and financing. Wealthier countries are also supporting the idea of local beneficiation and stepping up investments in resource-rich countries, promising this will help to lift them out of poverty. Behind these promises, however, they are perpetuating a top-down, economic mode

Congo already has electricity it cannot deliver. Inga’s problem is not the dam. Everyone is arguing about who will finance 44 gigawatts. Almost nobody is asking why the 1,775 megawatts already built runs at half output and reaches almost no one. One refurbished turbine explains it. Inga I was commissioned in 1972 with six turbines and 351 megawatts of installed capacity. Inga II followed in 1982 with eight turbines and 1,424 megawatts. Between them, the two dams have long operated at rough