African Arguments

Internal political betrayal, external cynicism, and the unravelling of the Arab Spring’s last laboratory. On 25 July 2026, thousands of Tunisians took to the streets of central Tunis, not to mark the 69th anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic, but to denounce the power grab carried out exactly five years earlier by President Kais Saied. The demonstrators called for his resignation and an end to what they described as an increasingly authoritarian regime, accusing it of imprisonin

In October 2022, Abdalle Ahmed Mumin — Secretary-General of the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS), the organisation that documents what happens to journalists in Somalia — arrived at Aden Adde International Airport in Mogadishu carrying a ticket to Nairobi. He was travelling to seek medical care for injuries he had sustained during a previous detention. He did not make his flight. According to documentation by the SJS and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), NISA officers detained him at

As Ethiopia’s National Dialogue seeks to chart a path toward peace, it faces an immense task. The Dialogue aims to address some of the country’s most difficult political, historical, institutional, social, and peacebuilding questions. Yet its success may ultimately depend on confronting a more basic question: why do Ethiopia’s major conflicts keep returning? Ethiopia’s National Dialogue Conference, Addis Ababa, 15 July 2026 A problem relocated, not resolved One answer lies in a problem tha

In July 2026, Britain suspended one of its flagship military exercises in Kenya after Nairobi withheld the licences required for troops to train in Laikipia. Five days later, the two governments reached an agreement allowing Exercise Haraka Storm to proceed. The immediate diplomatic crisis ended, but the deeper dispute did not; the standoff revealed that Kenya is no longer questioning the terms of Britain’s military presence but using licensing, parliamentary oversight, and domestic law to

The Winter Circus: A Memoir (2026) by Leo Zeilig is published by the Uganda-based Editor House Facility (EHF). A genre-defying work blending memoir, fiction, and political reflection, it explores what it means to live through personal and global crisis. Moving between intimate experience and wider social forces, it captures a world of deep contradiction: extreme wealth alongside poverty, rising global movements alongside fragmentation. Set across Europe and Africa, it tells of a world on the cus

As international debate surrounding Somaliland’s recognition has returned to global headlines in recent months, questions of sovereignty and diplomacy have dominated the conversation. Reports of Israel’s recognition of Somaliland in December and Somaliland’s opening of an embassy in Jerusalem on 16 June have placed the territory’s political future firmly back in the international spotlight. Yet amid discussions of geopolitics and statehood, another story remains largely a

In Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, two men call themselves president. One is Lieutenant General Tadesse Worede, appointed with Addis Ababa’s approval to run the region until elections could be held. The other is Debretsion Gebremichael, chairman of the party that governed Tigray for decades and led it through a war (2020-2022) that killed an estimated 600,000 people and displaced two to three million. On 5 May, a regional council that had not met in more th

In mid-June of 2026, the two rival factions claiming to be Libya’s official government agreed to a power sharing deal. In it, Prime Minister Abdul Dbeibah, the leader of the internationally recognised Government of National Unity (GNU) based in Triopli in western Libya, and Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the power behind of the unrecognised Government of National Stability (GNS) based in eastern Libya agreed to what is functionally a dual executive system for the new transitional government. Unde

When armed groups attacked the border post of Am-Dafok in northeastern CAR on 30 June 2026, most analysts asked the familiar question: who was behind the attack, and how resilient is Russia’s presence? The right question is different. Why can Russia not simply leave the Central African Republic — even if it wanted to? The answer changes how we understand the nature of external military presence in post-patronage Africa. Not Wagner, Not Africa Corps: A System. The debate over whether the transiti

Dr William Nii Ayitey Menson, Director of Health Financing for Africa at the ONE Campaign, argues that Africa’s health sovereignty will only become real when summit pledges translate into budget releases, functioning services and public accountability. At the African Union’s Extraordinary Summit on Health in Accra, I kept having one uncomfortable thought: I have heard this before. The words were true. Africa must finance more of its own health systems. Primary health care must be stronger. Medic

A Night of Hope. Aweys Addow, who was 19 years old when the flag was hoisted, was present to witness the event at Ficho Goberno, the former site of Mogadishu’s mayoral residence. At 12:00 hours (midnight) on 1 July 1960, Addow was among hundreds of jubilant Somalis who came out to celebrate the birth of the new nation, believing, with the rest of his generation, that Somalia had finally entered a new era based on unity, freedom and national pride. A unified, ethnically homogeneous Somalia

In May 2024, Ghana’s former Ambassador to Burkina Faso, Boniface Gambila, offered a candid description of what happens along Ghana’s 602-kilometer border with its northern neighbor: ‘Believe it or not, they are able to come into Ghana and go back. They move in and go back.’ He was talking about operatives of the Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), al-Qaeda’s Sahelian affiliate, which has spent years waging war in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger while establishing a logistics and support

Ask anyone who has lived in Nigeria what NEPA stands for, and they will tell you it stands for Never Expect Power Always. The National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) was the state monopoly that, for decades, generated the country’s electricity, carried it across the country, and sold it to Nigerians, badly. The joke outlived the institution, but the problem it named did not. The generators still hum outside shops and homes, and the grid still delivers a fraction of what the country needs. The u

In Accra this June, the reparations debate moved from remembrance towards political architecture. Over three days, Ghana hosted the High-Level Consultative Conference on the “Next Steps” to the landmark United Nations resolution on the trafficking of enslaved Africans. The venues told their own story: technical deliberations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a high-level session at the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City, and a Juneteenth commemoration at Christiansborg Castle, also kn

At 1:12 AM, the morning of June 30, my sister sent a message to our family group chat: ‘Lock your doors and bedrooms as well.’ Then, thirty-three minutes later, she sent another one: ‘I’m too scared. I just want to be prepared.’ Another sister of mine replied: ‘You’ll be fine.’ And then, after a pause: ‘Hopefully.’ I live in Germiston, east of Johannesburg. By the time the sun came up, demonstrators were already moving through the CBD, fewer than fifty at first, carrying sjamboks and

Adesina and colleagues through their published article titled, ‘The COVID-19 Pandemic response and the new era of austerity in Africa’ discussed how the economic backslide that swept the African continent since the COVID-19 lockdown was a result of a misaligned response. According to them, the pandemic response policies were predominantly designed for high income countries and instead imposed in under-developed and developing African contexts. In their paper, Adesina et al draw on evidence from

Relatives will always have fights. These come and go, but once an outsider gets involved, this may threaten to collapse the household for good. This is what we are witnessing in the recent diplomatic tensions on the African continent, including xenophobic attacks in South Africa. The rise of undocumented immigrants in South Africa, especially in the cities, is claimed to be a contributing factor to reported criminal activities. The South African Police Service reports that individuals involved i

Across Africa, large-scale infrastructure projects are transforming economies at an unprecedented pace. Between 2010 and 2022, African ports captured an outsized share of global port investment – $13 billion, concentrated heavily in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Senegal, and Ghana. Ports, railways and energy systems are widely framed as the backbone of this growth: essential for trade, investment, and global integration. But that framing rests on a narrow assumption that infra

Africa has long served as fertile ground for distinctive forms of leadership to emerge. Figures such as Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Haile Selassie, and Julius Nyerere, among others, represent the “Mount Rushmore” of African leadership, having left an enduring imprint on the continent’s history and beyond. Notably, some of these leaders’ political trajectories bear a striking resemblance to those of their Western counterparts. To cite, Nkrumah and Charles de Gaulle both pursued national

If you want to understand how protest cycles evolve, look not at the crowds but at the empty streets. On June 25, 2026, Nairobi’s Central Business District was not filled with demonstrators; it was sealed off. Police established roadblocksalong Thika Road, Mombasa Road, Waiyaki Way, and Ngong Road, effectively practising what we call pre-emptive territorial denial—a spatial strategy designed to foreclose the very possibility of assembly. Commuters were stranded, markets shuttered, and publ