The Looming Roar of the African Lions: The Potential of Sub-Saharan African Development

Kigali, Rwanda. Creative Commons

A sea of change is beginning to strike Sub-Saharan Africa: economically, politically, and culturally, its immense potential is beginning to rise from the ashes of imperialism and the challenges that it has faced in the global ecosystem. Africa’s young and growing population, vast abundance of natural resources, and enterprising population make it the setting for much of the world’s future, especially concerning the environment and renewable energy. Yet, the continent’s continued vulnerability and inequality present uncertainty. This major shift is inevitable, but the question is whether it will occur on African terms, rather than in service of global powers like Russia and China, who have caught on to the change and reacted accordingly. The rest of the “developed” world seems to be lagging in the attention it pays to Africa’s growing development. But as the continent’s many nations strive to take advantage of this rapid development, one country boldly and proudly stands at the forefront. 

Rwanda, the international aid darling. Rwanda, the careful result of reform and reconciliation. Rwanda, an African Miracle.

Rwanda’s success story following the brutal ethnic genocide in 1994 has been hailed across the world as a model for African development and governance. The capital, Kigali, has painstakingly transformed itself into a global city, dubbed the “cleanest city in Africa,” with its Convention Center being a crowning achievement atop the seat of national pride. Rwanda’s Vision 2020, masterminded by its longtime leader Paul Kagame in 2000, sought to refashion the nation as a “middle-income country” with a modern economy that could compete on an international scale. Most observers would agree that Vision 2020 was largely successful: the level of absolute poverty in Rwanda decreased dramatically [put in data here]. Rwanda now houses a robust service sector powered by tourism, finance, technological innovation, and its strong agrarian economy. Its parliament was the first to have a female majority, speaking to its renewed commitment to gender equality on a national level. Most importantly, at least on the surface, it reconciled its ethnic tensions and established a legitimate state that is safe and secure. 

Rwanda’s success has made it a prized source for international aid, as it becomes the quintessential image of an African state primed for success in contrast to its under-developed peers. Accompanying Rwanda’s success, however, has been an internalized tightening of state power, with attempts to consolidate its regional assets. This can be seen through its support of the M23 insurgency group that is currently ravaging the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). These actions threaten Rwanda’s hard-earned success while damaging its regional influence. 

It is important to note that Africa is not a monolith; its near-infinitely varied people groups, histories, and societies make it impossible to essentialize despite their shared history of Western imperialism and economic struggle. But in many ways, the tale of Rwanda is a microcosm for the larger forces currently at play in the continent. As mentioned, Sub-Saharan Africa will see rapid urbanization and economic development because of its internal advances and greater moves toward integration on the regional, continental, and global scale. This development must prioritize long-term sustainability and African agency amid political turmoil and the lasting scars of colonialism and neocolonialism. 

How the Colonial Past and Neocolonial Present Stifle Development

The long, dark legacy of European colonialism in Africa has posed a myriad of challenges to its attempts at overcoming said history. The colonialism following the Scramble for Africa in 1884 meant that European powers set up the infrastructure and systems for resource extraction but little else. More insidiously, however, European countries intentionally stoked ethnic cleavages to dissolve social cohesion, prevent political uprisings, and exercise a divide-and-conquer style of rule. This is seen predominantly in the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups in none other than Rwanda. Before European coercion, these groups lived mostly harmoniously. But, by provoking these tensions through favorable treatment towards Tutsis, the Belgians sowed the seeds of a longtime ethnic resentment that eventually led to their widespread blame for political instability and subsequent marginalization, and culminating in a disastrous genocide a century later. Even after the decolonisation movement began, the Europeans drew borders with no consideration of the unique social, religious, and ethnic groups throughout the continent (once again treating Africa as a monolith), further encouraging political tensions that would mar the political conditions of many African nations. 

In terms of economic policy, the developed world has structured its economic interactions in such a way that Africa is continually exploited for its resources with little in return. The soil beneath African feet continues to enrich and bless the world with inconceivable abundance. The DRC, for example, holds 78% of the world’s cobalt stores–a critical mineral used in lithium batteries that power much of the world’s modern technology, from phones and computers to technology for defense and renewable energy. Nigeria is home to a large wealth of oil, which makes up much of its modern economy. Countries like Sierra Leone, Botswana, and South Africa constitute much of the world’s diamond market. The diamond market, in particular, can serve as a case study of how systems of African economic exploitation manifest and linger. The De Beers Mining Corporation, founded by Cecil Rhodes, almost single-handedly created the global demand for diamonds and drove their procurement from Sierra Leone and South Africa. The cost of exploitative labor and extraction practices is deeply exemplified in the immense poverty in Freetown or Johannesburg, where the poor toil away while De Beers profits lavishly from the global diamond trade.

Much of the focus on neocolonialism has been on debt-trap diplomacy and the controversy surrounding systems of international aid. While international aid to Africa is crucial and has been successful in places like Kenya or Uganda in combating the spread of diseases like AIDS or Guinea worm, systemic corruption means that much of that aid does not reach the people who need it. Aid can often be used as a form of soft power (by Western powers or otherwise), to generate international goodwill for the country providing it. For instance, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has worked to massively upscale Africa’s infrastructure through the construction of railroads, bridges, roads, and ports. Beijing has invested billions of dollars into these projects to expand its soft power. There is widespread criticism of BRI investment as it relates to growing Chinese influence and the narrative of “debt-trap diplomacy,” wherein China finances a project it knows the country cannot pay back and seizes control of said project as a return on investment. Generally, debt-trap diplomacy is a myth; these narratives miss details of the negotiations between countries and usually say investment will benefit African countries in the long term through the resulting economic investment. However, there are legitimate concerns with the BRI, including the lack of transparency on China’s part and the risk of actual (and not perceived) exploitation. All this being said, there are legitimate concerns with foreign investment in Africa and neocolonialism. Often, multinational organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Center (WTO) will make loans to African economies, but with specific lending requirements that prompt African countries to implement neoliberal economic policies that favor the power players on the world market. This leaves African economies reliant on foreign aid and unable to achieve self-sufficiency under an African-led vision for the future. 

Other Models of Development Worldwide

Given the many barriers around participation in the global economy laid out here, how are African countries supposed to overcome these seemingly insurmountable obstacles? We can look to other countries that exemplify the transition from poor, struggling economies to robust and successful ones. Perhaps the strongest historical example is the rise of the four Asian Tigers: South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. These countries, now integral in the globalized world order for their importance to finance and technology, were able to transition from their largely agrarian, struggling post-World War II societies into highly urbanized and educated service economies. A combination of encouragement of popular education and a skilled labor force to serve in new sectors, alongside clever investment in finance and technology, allowed for a major decrease in poverty rates and prosperity in economics, governance, and culture, taking place in only one or two generations. Rapid development has been enhanced by strong government involvement in economic and social policies (especially education and investment in development companies) and a more open market fit for the globalized world. The development of Botswana and the aforementioned Rwanda, two African success stories, have followed similar trajectories. Both nations combined heavy government involvement, an emphasis on education and the stemming of brain drain (the loss of skilled professionals from developing countries to developed countries), a scaling-up of the native industries regarding agriculture and mining, and clever investment in the interest of developing a service economy to overcome and generate wealth. Yet, some issues should be noted with this development: these economic windfalls are often distributed unequally. This is a trait shared both among the Asian Tigers and nations like Rwanda, Botswana, and Nigeria. While the absolute level of poverty decreases, wealth is not enjoyed by the nation at large. Instead, it is concentrated among the upper classes, the political elite, and national oligarchs. This is a challenge that must be addressed through better social policies aimed at decreasing corruption and benefiting the people. 

Intergovernmental Organizations and Greater Economic Integration

Sub-Saharan Africa has already been moving toward the political and economic integration between states that fosters development. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have pursued policies including a shared currency (the West African Franc), free movement between states, and a peacekeeping force, cleverly adapting policies found in other intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) like the European Union (EU). The East African Community (EAC), in a similar fashion, has promoted free trade and an eventual group currency. The African Union (AU) serves as a binding continental force that asserts political and economic priorities. Through organizations like BRICS (comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and expanding into other countries in Africa, the Middle East, and South America) or the African Development Bank, African countries are forming strategic relationships on the world stage. These are all positive efforts that, if thoroughly continued, will result in greater potential for African development.

It is important to note, however, that political and social instability threaten to undermine the strides noted here. Urgent flare-ups of terrorism, perpetrated by groups like Al-Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria, can threaten the lives and livelihoods of communities while discouraging foreign investment and creating greater security risk. The influence of repressive authoritarian governments threatens IGOs as seen by the authoritarian military leaders in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali withdrawing their states from ECOWAS, causing the bloc to lose half of its landmass. Conflicts over land and resources, as can be seen in the Nile River Dam conflict between Ethiopia and Egypt, discourage essential economic cooperation. Corruption is a pervasive parasite that siphons off the monetary earnings and hard work of the African people. The African dream is within reach, but it will take a stringent effort, transparency, and security of African countries to attain and maintain.

The Way Forward

The future of African development is promising but uncertain. We have seen the success stories, but there is still much ground to cover for the dream to translate to reality. Attention must be paid to nourishing, educating, and honing the skills and passions of the African population. This entails a wide range of actions, from preventing the spread of disease and direct or structural violence to governments providing social services and robust and accessible K-12 and higher education. Attracting diaspora communities abroad through incentives could help reverse the effects of brain drain and bring experts to boost advancements in finance, tech, medicine, or scholarly research. The African people of today must be able to fulfill roles that are necessary to create the Africa of tomorrow. The admirable pursuit of regional integration already shown by states in East and West Africa should continue in a manner similar to the European Union. Moreover, governments must direct international aid and non-governmental organizations towards practical and efficient uses of money and resources. With all of this being said, the world must also respond in kind. Their assistance and investment should not transform into another iteration of exploitation but rather should inhabit mutual collaboration that stresses the agency of African countries. After all, given Africa’s growing importance to the world’s needs, it would be better for countries to work with Africans in a way that they would appreciate and thus reinforce. Ultimately, it will be up to the African people to sail through this sea of change into a better future.

The KDF and Diverging Views on the Protection of Civilians in AMISOM

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It is generally understood that uniformed personnel serving in peace operations, from a variety of different militaries and in a variety of different settings, will understand and conceptualize their experiences and operations in different ways. This is true when we examine how personnel from different Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs) view the Protection of Civilians (POC). As Fiifi Edu-Afful notes in his IPI report on peacekeeping in non-permissive environments, “the mindset of peacekeeping contingents is often predicated on the concepts and attitudes imparted through the training and doctrinal perspective of the TCC that deployed them.” However, what happens when the views of peacekeepers differ from their training? I explore a possible case of this occurring through the example of Kenyan peacekeepers deployed in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). 

Through conducting interviews, reviewing archival documents, and analyzing open-source information, I found that there is a disconnect between what Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) personnel were taught regarding protection and what they actually believe. This article examines that difference, how it came to be, and the implications of the existence of that disconnect for future research and policy. However, it is important to caveat that this research is currently exploratory as it is based on relatively limited data and observations.

This article begins by examining how KDF personnel are taught about POC and what concepts they are taught, which are based around conventional existing UN doctrine. It then looks at how KDF personnel who served in AMISOM actually view POC, which is more outcomes-based, community-focused, and holistic. It then examines possible reasons why this disconnect occurred, building off the KDF’s organizational history and the operating experience they found themselves in in Somalia. It then concludes by presenting some concluding thoughts and implications for policymakers and academics.  

KDF pre-deployment training, mostly based at the International Peace Support Training Center (IPSTC), had limited specialized protection training, and what specialized POC training was offered was based on pre-existing UN doctrine, such as the published “Policy on The Protection of Civilians in United nations Peacekeeping” and the “Protection of Civilians Handbook,” that emphasizes certain methods and objectives  One reviewed training schedule, for infantry units deploying to a UN mission, included only a single 45 minute training block fully dedicated to the “Protection of Civilians.” It’s likely that personnel deploying to AMISOM received similar levels of total pre-deployment training but with even less of a theoretical emphasis on POC. A civilian working at the center noted that both UN and AU pre deployment training used a similar structure and two-week training schedule. However, multiple trainers who worked with the KDF noted that units deploying to Somalia received a stronger focus on “basic soldiering skills,” given the harsh environment and by extension a lesser focus on academic topics, such as the module on POC compared to pre-deployment for UN missions. These modules were usually a combination of lectures, discussions, and scenario-based learning.

While we don’t currently know what material is specifically taught in AMISOM pre-deployment training, a review of training material gives us a strong idea of how the IPSTC conceptualized POC as a general concept before it was made mission specific. This can be determined by their facilitators’ guide for their specialized “Protection of Civilians” course that, while not in and of itself widely attended within the KDF, shows how the IPSTC views POC and might teach at a smaller scale to those deploying to Somalia. 

The conceptualization of POC offered by the specialized POC course is almost entirely in line with existing UN doctrine. In the course, POC activities are divided into three tiers of operation (Protection through Political Process, Protection from Physical Violence, and Establishing a Protective Environment) across four phases (Prevention, Pre-emption, Response, and Consolidation). In UN doctrine, POC activities are also divided into three tiers of operation (Protection through dialogue and engagement, Provision of physical protection, and Establishment of a protective environment) also across four phases (Prevention, Pre-emption, Response, and Consolidation).

Despite the differences in mandate and operating environment, the use of UN doctrine makes sense. It is already well established, developed, and tested. Thus, it makes sense to teach it to those deploying to AMISOM. Even if the difference in mandate (AMISOM, for example, does not have an active protection mandate unlike many UN missions) makes some parts of it irrelevant. However, the ways in which personnel trained in UN doctrine interact with their operational environment combine to form a new conceptual framework for POC. 

KDF personnel who had served in AMISOM, however, displayed a very different conceptualization of POC. This manifested itself in two ways. First, they conceptualized POC as community based and outcome based rather than process based and based around particular incidents as in standard doctrine. Second, they focused on how POC could “work” for the KDF.

 Firstly, KDF personnel viewed POC on a community level. When asked what a “successful POC” looks like, one KDF officer who had served in AMISOM answered that it involved a scenario with reduced violence, where people could go back to businesses and students could go back to school. Importantly, this is outcome-based. It describes what happens when POC activities are implemented well rather than describing what activities would help create that environment. It was also community-based. It describes improving conditions for the community as a whole rather than protecting specific targeted individuals or groups from imminent physical harm, which is what UN POC doctrine prioritizes. 

There was also a desire to view POC through the lens of AMISOM’s stabilization and peace enforcement mandate. Another KDF officer, who served in AMISOM as part of a EOD unit, described teaching civilians how to recognize IEDs as a POC success. While this obviously mitigates civilian harm and is a clear-cut case of POC, he also highlighted how that was useful for the KDF because it allowed for local civilians to better report possible threats to KDF patrols. Similarly, many AMISOM public statements on POC and increased POC awareness focus on civilian harm mitigation or reducing the threat to civilians from one’s own action, instead of from other actors. This is in order to prevent backlash and loss of support amongst the mission. Several sources spoke of established loss of local support, partially as the result of civilian casualties caused by AMISOM, as a key challenge to mission effectiveness. This suggests that, especially in non-permissive environments where POC is not a core mandated activity, POC activities (such as training civilians to recognize IEDs) is viewed as a means to an end (stabilization) rather than an end in and of itself. 

While there is a clear difference between what KDF personnel are taught regarding POC and what they actually believe, it is less clear why that gap occurs. One reason may relate to the operational environment. AMISOM and the Somali context is very different from the average environment where UN peacekeeping operations operate (such as the DRC and South Sudan) in two major ways: the mission mandate and the operating environment. 

Compared to many other African conflicts, the conflict in Somalia features fewer cases of large scale and deliberate targeting of civilian population. Using data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), we can track violence dynamics. During AMISOM’s 8+ years of operation, ACLED only recorded 37 attacks against civilians with 10 or more fatalities. In contrast, during the first six months of 2022 alone, the DRC saw 29 such attacks, the Central African Republic 12, Mali 34, and South Sudan 19. In contrast to other conflicts, where the large-scale massacre of civilians is a common tactic by armed groups, most Somali civilians who died in conflict die in smaller scale incidents such as assassinations, IEDs, and crossfire during battles between different armed groups.

There are also key differences between UN peacekeeping mandates and AMISOM’s mandate. While all large-scale UN peacekeeping operations are mandated to protect civilians from imminent physical harm, AMISOM lacks such an explicit mandate. However, interviews with KDF personnel showed an internal buy-in to do POC amongst KDF personnel, and conducting POC activities was still encouraged to some extent by AMISOM leadership.

These two factors partially explain the difference in POC conceptualization. In UN missions, where the explicit mandate is to protect civilians from “Imminent Physical Harm,” POC becomes focused on ways to prevent incidents, where “Imminent Physical Harm” occur on a large scale such as massacres. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this, such as mediating local conflict, conducting military patrols, and developing early warning networks, but the objective is the same. The conceptualization of POC develops along that line. In contrast, civilian casualties in Somalia don’t largely occur as a result of large-scale attacks that result in “Imminent Physical Harm.” Instead, they largely occur as a byproduct of the conflict between the government and Al-Shabaab. Thus, the KDF vision of POC, where the successful implementation of POC programs is framed around communities returning to normalcy as a result of stabilizing the community in general, rather than preventing specific negative events. This is speculative, but the view could be that, by reducing and ending the conflict between armed groups, the threat to civilians brought by the conflict is coincidentally ended, thus protecting civilians. The lack of mandate also means that AMISOM personnel aren’t mandated to intervene in cases of “Imminent Physical Harm.” They are, however, mandated to defeat Al-Shabaab and (theoretically) end the conflict and, thus, the threat to civilians as a result of that conflict. 

While environmental effects of the Somali context were the primary driver in the division between what KDF personnel were taught regarding POC and what they believed, there are probably also other secondary contributing factors. While these factors would require further research to be fully understood, there are some factors within the KDFs organizational culture that might influence the development of their views on POC. The KDF was formed immediately after independence with the assistance of their former colonial masters and have had a close working relationship with the British ever since. The KDF fits the mold of a colonial military, where the military is consistently trained, equipped, and supported by the former colonial power. Compared to many of its neighbors, the KDF has a strong history of political non-interference in domestic affairs. The KDF also hasn’t fought in any major conflicts beyond some small domestic counterinsurgency efforts until their commitment to AMISOM. Several foreign trainers I’ve spoken with highlighted how this level of intensity marked a new challenge for the KDF, forcing the organization to further professionalize, receive additional training, and adopt modern COIN doctrine when they previously never had to. This collective experience means that the Kenyan experience in Somalia is possibly formative for the KDF’s conceptualization of itself and how it operates. The reason why the KDF’s view on POC lines up with the Somali context so well, versus being incorporated into a wider schema, is because AMISOM has represented the first and most dominant experience of the KDF with regards to POC. 

Peacekeeping is becoming an increasingly multilateral institution, as more and more countries from different regions and backgrounds deploy troops to peacekeeping missions. As this article has established, the environment peacekeepers are deployed in has a significant impact on their views towards their activities and peacekeeping concepts. There is room for more research on this topic. While it has been laid out here that KDF personnel have a unique view on protection, there is room to explore how personnel from different TCCs view POC through their own separate lenses. Within that, there is also room to explore how the different combinations of military culture, training/doctrine, and operational experience can impact the perceptions of peacekeepers. This, in turn, will help policymakers, planners, and practitioners better understand the diversity of views within peacekeeping and help them better conduct successful implementations of POC mandates.

The Development of the Modern-Mauritian State

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The small island nation of Mauritius is one of the world’s top destinations for a luxury vacation. Its natural beauty makes it a hot spot for the wealthy communities of Europe and Asia alike; an appeal that draws in around 1.4 million people every year, or about 110% of the country’s population (World Bank). Visitors of Mauritius, lacking any political research, will likely be unaware that the country represents a positive rarity in African politics: a relatively well-functioning democracy. Freedom House, a think-tank that measures democracy around the world, gives Mauritius and 86 out of 100 on their scoring of the country (100 being a full democracy, and 0 being fully undemocratic) (Freedom House). It has perfect civil liberties score and has all but 4 points to have perfect political rights. Its impressive score makes it the most democratic country in Africa, and even ahead of well-recognized democracies such as South Korea and the United States. The country also has the third highest GDP per capita in Africa, at roughly $23,000 (World Bank).  Its political system is characterized by a competitive system with regular elections and a respect for, or at least a tolerance of the rich ethnic diversity that the island possess. The country’s credentials are impressive but are both underappreciated and under reported. This paper will not only attempt to highlight their successes, but also argue that they are the causes of a strong political system that has consistently promoted and adopted policy that has burgeoned economic growth, and used its revenue to expand the political system, all while preserving and expanding political rights for ethnic minorities. I will also argue that relics of the Mauritian colonial structure, while most certainly impeding the country’s political, social, and economic development by subjecting the population to tyrannic rule that fostered a system of slavery and oppression, did nonetheless serve as a foundational starting point, from which the country’s government and economy flourished.  

Mauritian history is much like that of the rest of colonial Africa. Initially established as a Dutch trading port in 1598 (Lange), it was quickly deserted and found itself under the rule of French colonialists. Much of French rule was characterized by a rapid economic development of the island. Sugar production, a staple of colonial trade, was expanded massively. Plantations were created, which led to the importation of slaves from continental Africa. France established Mauritius as key colony in the production of sugar, which led to its transfer of ownership from the French to the British, in the Treaty of Paris in 1814 that ended the Napoleonic Wars. When the British abolished slavery on the island, as it took similar steps in many of its other colonies, the country’s economy still required laborers to work on the ever-growing sugar plantations that gave Mauritius its economic importance. To solve this problem, the British imported indentured workers from its colonies in India and China, who were effectively slaves as they lacked basic political and civil liberties and were sent to Mauritius against their will. Nevertheless, their arrival on the island in the hundreds of thousands forever changed the demographic makeup of the country (Lange).  

As Britain and much of Europe decolonialized in the aftermath of World War II, Mauritius too gained its independence from the British on March 12th, 1968. The country almost immediately adopted a Westminster-like parliamentary form of government, with the position of Prime Minister serving as the head of government, and the more ceremonial role of President serving as the head of state. The legislative body had 70 elected seats. The country’s constitution granted all people equal political representation regardless of their ethnic background, a key facet in establishing the country as a democracy given the diversity in the country. The country’s political system was reflective of this constitutional detail, as well as the country’s diversity, as it established several political parties that represented its various groups. None has been influential in the politics of the country then the Mauritian Labor Party, which was initially formed to represent agricultural workers in wage negotiations with the British. The government has historically maintained a strong social safety net that has prevented poverty and has limited inequality. This system has several functions that make it effective. For the elderly, the government provides a comprehensive pension program that roughly equates to 70 dollars a month. The program is incredibly popular amongst Mauritians, and politicians have been punished electorally for threatening to gut the program (Osei-Hwedie). The Mauritian government also provides free healthcare for all its citizens and pays for both primary and secondary schooling for its children. This keeps kids in school until they are at least 16 years old. The country has two institutions of higher education to serve those with higher academic pursuits. Mauritian students also frequent top schools in Europe and the United States. The plethora of social programs offered by the Mauritian government is made possible by an ever-growing economy that provides much of the funding for the national government (Mehta).  

The country’s economic development ran parallel its political development. Given the country’s natural beauty, tourism emerged as a large segment of the country’s economy. What started with just 1,000 visitors annually at the end of decolonialization, swelled to around 600,000 in the late 1980’s and currently stands at over a million every year.  While tourism flourished, the Mauritian government continued its former colonial exportation of sugar, this time leveraging its strong relationships with France and Britain to negotiate fixed purchasing prices that were higher than the market rate. In addition to an inflated purchase price, Mauritius also levied a roughly 20% tariff on the export, furthering their revenues from the crop . This helped maintain low-skilled labor jobs. Mauritius also expanded into textile production, specifically producing sportswear. This furthered their integration with European markets and served to diversity the economy (Sandbrook). The government established an Export Processing Zone (EPZ) which provides companies with a cheaper means of importing machinery for their goods. The economy has since diversified into banking and businesses and has begun investing in continental African firms (Industrial Free Zones Boost Mauritius' export-led manufacturing). 

Mauritius owes its success to many different factors. The first of which is the strong relationship between its government and its economy. The country has had a fluid relationship between its political and economic institutions, that has been relatively free of corruption. The Mauritian government has exercised its authority on economic matters well, implementing tariffs and negotiating fixed prices for goods, both of which benefited the country’s economy. Additionally, the country’s system of government was designed to be inclusive.  The electoral system encourages the nomination of minority candidates to ensure that the island diverse ethnic groups are represented in politics. The system goes as far as to appoint eight loosing candidates to the legislative branch to ensure representation is maintained. The government also required that parties in the legislative branch form coalition governments. Since each party traditionally represented specific ethnic groups in the country, the coalition requirement functioned to erase the ethnic differences between each party.  

Additionally, the Mauritian governmental structure under colonial rule was much different than the rest of British-controlled Africa. Unlike other colonies in Africa, Mauritius had a much more developed system of governance that included a strong bureaucratic structure. As such the government had 4 times as much state revenue, 3 times as many police officers, and 10 times as many judges as the average British-governed African colony. They had a generally system of state infrastructure, that mimicked Singapore’s government, which too was a post-colonial success. The British also allowed Mauritians to participate in this government, with around 60% of workers in the Mauritian government being Mauritian. Once independence was achieved, Mauritians inherited a much stronger political system then their continental African counterparts. Though colonialization most certainly harmed Mauritian economic and political development, the form of government Britain established made it easier for the country to begin its process of independent political advancement.  

Another reason Mauritius found political and economic success was the division of land that took place in and around its independence. As sugar plantations were dissolved as colonial bosses left the country, the land was reclaimed by the local inhabitants, forming strong village communities. This empowered local leaders, who now possessed land from which they could harvest sugar and lead more productive lives. It also served as the foundation for the development of local political parties, which served to diversity and expand the reach of the Mauritian political system (Lange).  

In conclusion, the development of the modern-Mauritian state is rooted in a strong political system that catered to the needs of the economy, creating a strong flow of revenue that was used to fund social programs.  

Works Cited 

“BTI 2022 Mauritius Country Report.” BTI 2022, https://bti-project.org/en/reports/country-report/MUS#pos2.  

“GDP per Capita (Current US$).” Data, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD.  

“Industrial Free Zones Boost Mauritius' Export-Led Manufacturing.” UNIDO, https://www.unido.org/stories/industrial-free-zones-boost-mauritius-export-led-manufacturing.  

“International Tourism, Number of Arrivals - Mauritius.” Data, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ST.INT.ARVL?locations=MU.  

Lange, Matthew. “Embedding the Colonial State: A Comparative-Historical Analysis of State Building and Broad-Based Development in Mauritius.” Social Science History, vol. 27, no. 3, 2003, pp. 397–423. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40267814. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.  

“Mauritius: Freedom in the World 2022 Country Report.” Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/country/mauritius/freedom-world/2022.  

Mehta, Rani. “Ethnicity, Ethnic Relations and Development of Mauritian Society.” Indian Anthropologist, vol. 45, no. 1, 2015, pp. 47–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43899415. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.  

Osei-Hwedie, Bertha Z. “Successful Development and Democracy in Africa: the Case of Botswana and Mauritius.” Il Politico, vol. 65, no. 1 (192), 2000, pp. 73–90. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24005439. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.  

Sandbrook, Richard. “Origins of the Democratic Developmental State: Interrogating Mauritius.” Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines, vol. 39, no. 3, 2005, pp. 549–581. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067498. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.  

“Why Africa's Island-States Are Generally Freer.” The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/06/26/why-africas-island-states-are-generally-freer.  

“BTI 2022 Mauritius Country Report.” BTI 2022, https://bti-project.org/en/reports/country-report/MUS#pos2.  

“GDP per Capita (Current US$).” Data, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD.  

“Industrial Free Zones Boost Mauritius' Export-Led Manufacturing.” UNIDO, https://www.unido.org/stories/industrial-free-zones-boost-mauritius-export-led-manufacturing.  

“International Tourism, Number of Arrivals - Mauritius.” Data, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ST.INT.ARVL?locations=MU.  

Lange, Matthew. “Embedding the Colonial State: A Comparative-Historical Analysis of State Building and Broad-Based Development in Mauritius.” Social Science History, vol. 27, no. 3, 2003, pp. 397–423. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40267814. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.  

“Mauritius: Freedom in the World 2022 Country Report.” Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/country/mauritius/freedom-world/2022.  

Mehta, Rani. “Ethnicity, Ethnic Relations and Development of Mauritian Society.” Indian Anthropologist, vol. 45, no. 1, 2015, pp. 47–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43899415. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.  

Osei-Hwedie, Bertha Z. “Successful Development and Democracy in Africa: the Case of Botswana and Mauritius.” Il Politico, vol. 65, no. 1 (192), 2000, pp. 73–90. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24005439. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.  

Sandbrook, Richard. “Origins of the Democratic Developmental State: Interrogating Mauritius.” Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines, vol. 39, no. 3, 2005, pp. 549–581. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067498. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.  

“Why Africa's Island-States Are Generally Freer.” The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/06/26/why-africas-island-states-are-generally-freer.  

Burkina Faso and the Resurgence of Coups in West Africa

nytimes.com

Towards the end of January, the Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration (MPSR) announced that the government and national assembly had been dissolved, and they had removed democratically-elected Roch Marc Kaboré from his position as president of Burkina Faso. Kaboré was detained and replaced by Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, an overnight curfew was implemented, land and air borders were closed, and the constitution was suspended for one week. A coup d’état had struck.

While this is the most recent one, a trend has emerged in the past year and a half as Mali, Guinea, and Chad have faced military takeovers. There is a resurgence of coups in West Africa, and the contributing factors are not adequately being mitigated. With the presence of everything from violent extremism to poverty, democratic institutions are struggling to stay alive in the region, and there has been controversy regarding international response. Moreover, discussion of this subject has been full of generalizations and blanket policy suggestions. Examining the coup in Burkina Faso can provide a deeper understanding of the circumstances in West Africa and why it is important to acknowledge each country’s distinct identity, advancing the global conversation surrounding intervention and aid.

Growing Violence in West Africa

The buildup to the coup in Burkina Faso was multifaceted, but a major reason for the overthrow was the rising threat from violent extremists. As with the 2020 coup in Mali—the one often seen as the trigger for the other military takeovers—many civilians thought that their government had failed to protect them. Since 2016, over 230 terrorist attacks have taken place in Burkina Faso. Last November, 53 people were killed after a gendarmerie post was attacked, which was “the worst strike on Burkinabe security forces in years.” Just one month later, a civilian militia trained by the government to contain insurgents was ambushed, and at least 41 members were killed. According to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, “violent events linked to militant Islamist groups” increased by 70 percent between 2020 and 2021 in the Sahel region, and the United Nations reported that almost 12,000 people were displaced within two weeks in December. There were at least 2,354 fatalities from the violence in 2021. 

Many believed that the government response was not enough, and the people of Burkina Faso made that clear. As gunfire erupted at Kaboré's residence and several of the country’s military barracks on the day of the coup, protests raged in the capital. The headquarters of Kaboré’s party was looted and set on fire, and people were tear gassed by police as hundreds marched through Ouagadougou. The events of this day showed what Damiba explicitly said in his first speech since taking power: the takeover was due to their former leader’s failure to stop attacks across the country. 

Repercussions Regarding Sanctions and Aid

A major player in how the world has responded to the coups is the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). After the coups in Mali and Guinea, ECOWAS responded by closing member states’ borders and imposing economic sanctions. However, these sanctions were highly controversial, in part because the affected economies were already poor. If the goal of these sanctions is to promote stability in the region, the long-term consequences may backfire. As explained by the International Peace Institute, the sanctions may be “necessary” but “counterproductive,” and the people whose lives could be altered the most would be marginalized groups in rural areas, those displaced from the violence, and unemployed youth. A large portion of the protestors on the day of the coup in Burkina Faso were showing up in solidarity with the affected population in Mali. 

While the possibility of sanctions remains and ECOWAS has warned of them, Burkina Faso has only been removed from the bloc thus far, and the African Union (AU) also suspended the country pending the reinstatement of the constitution. Additionally, while sanctions have not been imposed, the United States has paused $450 million in aid to Burkina Faso. The United States has been the largest international donor to the country, but U.S. law requires the suspension of non-humanitarian aid to countries where a democratically-elected government has been taken over unconstitutionally, and there is still much uncertainty regarding Burkina Faso’s path forward. Although the constitution has been restored now and MPSR ensured “the continuity of the state pending the establishment of transitional bodies,” those transitional bodies are yet to be established. 

In a more recent development, Burkina Faso may see a steep decline in aid due to the invasion of Ukraine. For example, the Norwegian Refugee Council spokesperson in West and Central Africa said, “Some donors have already indicated that they would proceed to a 70% cut of our funding to support operations in Ukraine…” Additionally, a regional advocate from Refugees International said that “Russia is one of the leading grain exporters in the world,” and more people in sub-Saharan Africa will be in need of emergency food assistance as the international community cuts ties with Russia. Finally, certain impacts of foreign aid on political stability as a whole are still debated, but time will tell whether the military government is able to successfully carry out their plans. 

However, a timeline has been given for the transition of power in Burkina Faso, and it was announced a week after the invasion of Ukraine. Damiba was officially inaugurated as president back in February and a team of 25 ministers stood by his side, but it took until March for other plans to be released. On March 3, an economist and professor named Albert Ouedraogo was announced to be the interim prime minister, and the plan as communicated by the military government is for Damiba and Ouedraogo to work towards political stability for the next three years before hosting elections. 

International Response to the Coup

Countries in other parts of the world have also reacted to the coup, including France. Although France has been less involved in Burkina Faso than it has in some neighboring countries, Burkina Faso is a former French colony, and France has about 5,000 soldiers in the region. For years, France has been trying to halt militant attacks from extremists by sending in troops and working with the groups in power, but after the events of January, the country is in a tough place. After the takeover of Burkina Faso, President Emmanuel Macron said, "I would remind you that our priority in the region is to fight against Islamist terrorism,” but it should be noted that Macron has an upcoming election to think about. While he has already been reducing the number of troops in the area, if France takes any drastic measures, those actions would reflect on him.

Russia is also worth discussing, for reasons beyond the invasion of Ukraine. In Mali, the junta has relied on security from the Wagner Group, a paramilitary organization backed by the Russian government, and this group has been deployed in Libya and the Central African Republic as well. Reportedly, the leader of the coup in Burkina Faso was regularly in communication with the military leaders of Mali and Guinea, and twice, Damiba tried to convince Kaboré to use Russian paramilitaries. Kaboré refused, but with Damiba in power, the situation has shifted. 

Examining France and Russia’s current role in the region, counterterrorism and tension between the West and Russia were at the forefront of the conversation—but there is more at play. Some have said that “core political problems” are being ignored while foreign powers use West Africa to compete among themselves. In terms of Burkina Faso, the International Crisis Group surfaced the importance of addressing the social crisis in the north and the development deficit, as well as the pre-existing spread of corruption in the administration judicial system. Not every coup in the region can be solely blamed on violent extremism (although it is certainly a large factor in this situation) because the acceptance of democracy underlies the pattern.

The Need for Nuance

The chairman of ECOWAS and president of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, called the coup in Mali “contagious” during the summit following Burkina Faso’s takeover. This implies that the coups are having a domino effect, or that they are modeled after each other. Notably, however, not every coup in West Africa stemmed from the violent extremists, but rather the interruption or prevention of democratic trajectories. Some, including Vice President of the US Institute of Peace’s Africa Center Joseph Sany, believe that conveying the idea of a coup contagion is problematic because it “absolves the world community” from assisting West African countries in creating democratic institutions. Fully attributing these coups to violent extremism could greatly affect the viability of international response.

On the other hand, Akufo-Addo did address the observed controversy over democracy, and he called for a collective response to the trend of coups in the region. Perhaps “contagious” is a fitting way to describe the pattern in West Africa, not because extremism is the overarching factor, but rather concerns about democracy. Panic generated from violence inevitably leads to critique of the present format and exploration of government systems, but while root causes are important to address, there does seem to be a connecting factor beyond violent extremism. 

Moving forward, those discussing coups in the West African region should be conscious of nuance while noting that there are major similarities. Talking as though each country is struggling for the same reason and attributing all of this to religious extremism interrupts how the international community responds to military takeovers in West Africa, and that way of thinking draws attention away from social issues, government/judicial corruption, poverty, and more. Particularly in terms of strategizing foreign aid, countries need to pay attention to both the situations of individual countries and the region as a whole.

How African Women Navigate Urban Geographies Through Radical Incrementalism

worldbank.org

According to the World Bank, the urban informal sector anchors economic activities across the African continent, accounting for nearly 80% of jobs for African urban dwellers. These are especially pervasive for youth in cities between the ages of 15 and 24, with over 90% of them being women (Guven & Karlen, 2020). The sector itself is difficult to miss among a conventional African urban geography that embodies modernity and thus, urban dynamism. Street merchants and vendors are crucial to ensure food security across the city; craftsmen, manufacturers, and repairers of goods and services, and those who work in the transportation of goods and services keep the world-class city and the economy rapidly moving, among several other tasks that are integral to maintaining urban landscape. In terms of what specifically is meant by the ‘urban informal sector,’ though difficult to define succinctly by several scholars and economists, statistics clearly suggests that it is defined as merely the residual difference between a nation’s total economic activity and the well-recorded economic activity of the formal sector. The informal sector is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government and absorbs the city’s unemployed population. Persons employed by the urban informal sector typically work a variety of ad hoc jobs that vary across cities, resulting in low wages and substandard living conditions (Fukuchi, 1998, pp. 225-56). The urban informal sector cannot be considered without women as they heavily contribute to the trading and transportation of food and clothes across the city (Kanyinjui, 2014, pp. 1-3). Low productivity and earnings are fostered by the urban geographies of rapidly urbanizing or world-class cities in Africa, which champion spaces that operate on higher-value markets, such as markets that are worth more to customers than commodity products like technology, information, tourism, analytics etc. In turn, the informal sector is pushed to the periphery of the city and is financially excluded from the market. This results in the physicality of urban informal settlements or “slums.” Slums typically consist of human-constructed, sub-standard settlements that lack access to basic services like water and electricity (Ranganathan, 2019). 

Workers of the urban informal sector build human capital or useful attributes in the informal sector production process. Human capital is present under social protections as informal sector workers can prevent the sale of productive assets in the event of shocks as well as the promotion of savings to build resilience. But not all urban dwellers are granted social protections; informal sector businesses are excluded from the formal sector and hindered from making reliable business transactions, accessing credit for productive investments, and accumulating savings for unanticipated risks. With no social protections and little to no savings, the unadulterated economic downsides emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic have annihilated many of the livelihoods of African workers in the informal sector. Nonetheless, the role of Africa’s informal sector is only estimated to grow at exponential rates as not only Africa’s population itself increases, but as urbanization persists (Guven & Karlen, 2020). Therefore, African cityscapes are likely to thrive, but most of their residents will not. Perhaps the city will boom as private sector actors like urban planners, who have autonomy over governing the city, rely on the informal sector agents or those who work for the informal sector. Yet private sector actors have no interest in investing in social protections of the millions of informal sector agents living in the cities they construct.

According to Mary Njeri Kinyanjui, a key contributor to the political and social dynamics of the informal economy in Africa, notably on the East African coast, are social networks emerging from friendship and kinship. These close social networks are important in reinforcing the strength of their businesses through emotional support, advice, skill-sharing and training, business start-ups, information, social protection, and rotational credit services. Social networks within the informal economic sector have been documented as especially important among poor women. The informal sector is where intersecting networks of trust, kinship, ethnicity, marital status, among several other facets present themselves and promote the development of social networks.

Evolving from social networks are collective organizations, which are an important aspect of the operations of the African informal economy. Kinyanjui emphasizes that they enable the scaling up necessary to promote the potential for political intervention. This modality would be particularly strategic for the informal sector because it differs from less comprehensive approaches to the sector that are primarily focused on structural and welfare-based interventions (Kanyinjui, 2014, pp. 99-101). Despite the stigmatization and subordination of female urban informal workers, they are crucial to the urban economy and the ecology of the city. Thus, to facilitate their integral roles, female informal workers have collectively self-organized in a multitude of ways across African urban landscapes to permeate their Indigenous market work in the city. 

Chapter 8 of Kinyanjui’s book details the types of social networking among women specific to Nairobi’s informal sector. She indicates that informal workers, namely women, collectively organize themselves in what is referred to as vyama. This is a level of solidarity used for organizing among women in the informal sector. Typically, vyama involves bolstering both economic and social action. Its fundamental principle rests on the notion that urban marketplaces are vicious and patriarchal environments. Thus, social and economic networks and interactions like vyama among women promote their survival in the marketplace (Kanyinjui, 2014, p. 105). In a case study conducted on Taveta Road traders in Nairobi, women are seen joining collective organizations in search of solidarity, to find a sense of identity, and a sense of belonging to a community. The female subjects of the study iterate that the chama, an investment in social capital, is what reinforces their belonging in vyama. The conclusion is that on an individual level without notions of vyama or the chama, there is less incentive for these women to engage in their work in the city due to a lack of economic and social support (Kanyinjui, 2014, p. 102). 

Moreover, the chama cha soko, the street market association, is the first level of social and economic collective organization among female informal sector workers in Nairobi. In essence, it is a bridge between the city council and the informal sector and requires daily contributions from its female members. Contributions include security maintenance, cleanliness of business premises, coordination of trade affairs, dispute resolution, and handling of the opening and closing of business premises. The chama cha soko is reinforced by a tangible constitution in which rules and regulations for traders are enforced. It differs from informal economy associations in Latin America or South Africa, for instance, in that the chama cha soko is less likely to counteract government agendas. 

Rather, the intent of the chama cha soko is to ensure that the interests of informal sector workers are not pushed aside for private sector interests on behalf of actors governing the city. When necessary, the chama cha soko mobilizes its constituents to the means necessary to achieve justice for the informal economy. Further, among its constituents, the chama cha soko promotes a nature of toughness. Those within this level of the collective organization who do not abide by the trading rules are subject to k̃uhandwa, or “being brought to the ground level.” In other words, an individual who breaks or bends trading rules can be subject to expulsion from the market (Kanyinjui, 2014, p. 105). 

In Durban, South Africa, an emerging world-class city known for its influences from colonization and India, navigation of urban informality takes an activism approach. The film, A Place in The City/Trying to Find A Voice, investigates slum residents’ efforts to speak out against agendas that trump private property rights over the livelihoods of urban informal. In recent years, residents of the Foreman Road and Motala Heights slums have been confronted with the war of attrition, which is the prolonging of a war or conflict period in which each actor attempts to defeat the other through small-scale behaviors. City planners have also executed a world-class city in Durban. The implementation of the astronomical Moses Mabhida soccer stadium in 2009 for the 2010 World Cup intended to displace slum dwellers from Foreman Road and Motala Heights. To forward this aim, Durban’s governance agenda has been depriving its periphery and ultimately, slum dwellers, of electricity. Informal settlements also lack other basic sanitation services or accounts in the market despite their presence on state property. According to the film, in Durban, about 40% of working-age adults are unemployed or unaccounted for in the market (Morgan, 2008). 

Amidst this unadulterated inequality, urban informal residents of Foreman Road and Motala Heights have mobilized themselves into an activist group known as the Abahlali, to confront the state’s agenda with hopes for a more just urban informal environment. The residents identify the call-to-action in which they desire from the governance actors of city planning. They identify the following as key needs: housing that actually supports the families in settlements (e.g. houses with more than two bedrooms to accommodate a family) and stagnancy of informal settlements, specifically in Motala Heights, as opposed to relocation to Nazareth. According to female residents, staying in Motala heights would provide them with opportunities to learn trading and entrepreneurship skills necessary for work in the marketplace (Morgan, 2008). 

Abahlali activists are comprised of slum residents in Durban that have evolved from a local development committee. In the film, activists emphasize that though they are fighting for justice and a place in the city, the bedrock of their theory of change is to assert that they are poor. They contend that even when given a house by the government, it should be sold and that they will ultimately return to their shack in the periphery of the city (Morgan, 2008). They do so to push against the stigma of informality, proving that it is not impossible to live in a slum. Within the Abahlali activist group, though including both men and women and spearheaded by a male, S’bu Zikode, women have made courageous strides at exercising the heart of the movement.

Due to their critical role in the informal economy and the interminable burdens they face compared to their male counterparts, they have had to sacrifice things in both physical and economic ways. For instance, Mariet Kikine, an Abahlali activist, describes how despite her nonviolent protesting, she was shot six times by the police (Morgan, 2008). This reveals the intersectionality of police violence against African women in the urban landscape of post-apartheid South Africa. In an interview with several female Abahlali activists in Motala Heights inquiring why they would not prefer to relocate from their current settlements to Nazareth, they explain the opportunities to learn trading and entrepreneurship and the social stability they have in Motala Heights (Morgan, 2008). Several women have raised their children in Motala Heights and thus, have a sense of stability, social networking, and are aware of the procedures of marketplace activities in place.

Moreover, radical incrementalism as a theory of change in an urban context is best understood by South African sociologist, Edgar Pieterse, in his book, City Futures: Confronting the Crisis of Urban Development, as the notion that the drive of urbanity is to promulgate radical change amidst all the idealistic aspects of ‘the city.’ Simultaneously, the necessary austerity and burdens of incremental change stand in contempt of radical change. Thus, it is the only way to intervene in a vicious microcosm of hyper-capitalism and modernity (Pieterse, 2013, p. 134). Through both the social networking and collective organizing of women in Nairobi and the mobilization on the ground in Durban, both radical and incremental theories of changes are invoked to promote justice in urban informal settlements. 

The chama cha soko’s communication with the government to promote social protection for the urban informal sector conveys that this group has organized communication with governance actors, especially their private sector counterparts. It conveys adaptability and acceptance of the urban dynamics in place. However, their by-the-means-necessary approach to resistance against the government especially parallels Pieterse’s notion of radical incrementalism. This is because they have not adopted a more violent approach to seeking justice and protection. If they had, they would have deemed contention a larger part of their agenda. 

The Abahlali activists invoke a radical incrementalism theory of change through community mobilization of nonviolent protesting of both women and men. A notable example of demonstrations by the Abahlali activists, especially the women from Motala Heights, is their rejection of displacement or even a home. In part, they claim that this is from the lasting social networks and familial roots they have established there. Considering their rejection of displacement or houses from the government, they embrace the structure of informal settlements, ultimately pushing back on perceptions that slums are insurmountable. In doing so, they have accepted the capitalist system in place that enables urban informality. Female Abahlali activists also exemplify resilience in their nonviolent activism yet are still targeted by hyper-capitalist forces like the police system. For example, Mariet Kikine, who was shot six times by an officer at a demonstration that became violent due to police action, was overpowered by a capitalist entity at that moment. 

Though calling-to-action different ways to bring about justice in the urban informal sector, women from both the Abahlali and the chama cha soko exhibit a level of solidarity with one another to promulgate their agendas. Both agendas emphasize the importance of social protection over their environments in different ways yet work within a broader system to foster small change. They also push back on conventional perceptions and rhetoric regarding slum resistance as neither of the women in these groups exercised violence on their capitalist counterparts unless it was declared necessary to do so. Unsurprisingly, this is when a capitalist force has intervened in a group’s organizing or demonstration.

Fundamentally, through examining the chama cha soko of Nairobi and the Abahlali activists of Durban, the female urban informal sector workers adopt a radical incrementalist theory of change. The chama cha soko exercises collective organizing to ultimately show hybridized reforms between capitalist entities and the informal economic sector. Moreover, the Abahlali activists in Durban foster community mobilization to form demonstrations in order to communicate with governance actors and capitalist entities, with female activists exhibiting particular resilience against such overpowering actors and entities. 

A conclusion that can be deduced from these radical incrementalism theories of change is the notion that urban informality is not a product of inherent disorder. Instead, it is a product of governance actors’ and capitalist entities’ inability to construct models to fit the schema of disorder. In turn, women subordinated and marginalized by these urban outcomes on the African continent have been challenged with the interminable impacts of informality. Instead of overt radical resistance, they are working within a system that has consistently worked against their favor. Avenues for further research may extrapolate beyond these two cases of the Abahlali activists and the chama cha soko to discover a greater understanding of radical incrementalism among women in the informal sector. Perhaps another theory of change may be invoked when analyzing additional approaches from African women in their promulgation of social protections over their urban informal environments.

References

Fukuchi, T. (1998, September). A Simulation Analysis of the Urban Informal Sector: 

Introduction. In The Developing Economies. (pp. 225-256)

Guven, M., & Karlen, R. (2020, December 3). Supporting Africa's Urban Informal sector: 

Coordinated policies with social protection at the core. Retrieved from 

https://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/supporting-africas-urban-informal-sector-coordinat

Ed-policies-social-protection-core

Kinyanjui, M. N. (2014). Women’s collective organizations and economic informality. In Women 

and the informal economy in urban Africa: From the margins to the centre (pp. 99-117). 

London, UK: Zed Books. 

Morgan, J. (Director & Producer), & Grey Street Films. (2008). A Place in The City/Trying To 

Find A Voice [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NG2v9On4h4

Pieterse, E. A. (2013). City futures: Confronting the crisis of urban development. London, UK: 

Zed Books.

Ranganathan, M. (2019, March). "Liberal" Urban Planning. Lecture presented at Guest Lecture 

in World Politics Course in American University School of International Service, 

Washington, DC.

Tigray Crisis

Ethiopia has long been seen as a source of stability within the Horn of Africa, a region that has been subject to several intra and inter-state conflicts. Especially in recent years, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has received international recognition for his role in reaching out to Eritrea in peace and attempting to usher in a new era of democracy in the country. However, this image was shattered on November 4th, when Prime Minister Ahmed launched a military operation in the northern region of Tigray, thus kickstarting a violent confrontation between the federal government and regional leadership.  By November 28th, federal forces had taken control of Mekele, the regional capital, and declared victory. Despite this declaration, the confrontation between Tigray forces and Ahmed’s military has violently persisted. Despite the fact that this started with the Prime Minister accusing the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the regional ruling party in Tigray, of  attacking a government military base to steal artillery, it has spiraled into all-out conflict. As a result of the conflict, ethnic tensions have been exacerbated and there is an urgent  humanitarian crisis with around 4.5 million people in need of aid and nearly half a million people displaced. But this conflict did not erupt spontaneously; it is the culmination of decades of autocratic and corrupt government rule, repression, inter-state conflict, and ethnic conflict. 

A Build-Up to Conflict 

The TPLF successfully fought the military dictatorship that rose to power in the 1970s and ascended to helm the leadership of Ethiopia in the early 1990s. The group specifically led a ruling coalition known as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. It consisted of four main parties and was split along ethnic lines, backing an approach known as ethnic federalism, with nine regional ethnic states and two federally administered city-states. This system was specifically designed so that ethnic groups could administer their own internal affairs and set up their own political institutions. It advocates for the right to self-determination, which includes the right to secede. It has arguably kept the country from descending into civil war, despite there being government repression, and has demonstrated that, for the most part, power has been fairly distributed from federal to regional governments. Meles Zenawi, a Tigrayan, led the country from the military dictatorship’s fall in 1991 to his death in 2012. By Zenawi’s time of death, the country had gained a reputation of stability within the region and had also experienced economic growth. After three decades of TPLF rule, anti-government protests in 2018 forced the party to step down. As a result, Prime Minister Ahmed was elected. The Prime Minister has received acclaim for his foreign policy, which specificially involved reaching out to Eritrea in a peace deal; this comes after decades of a “frozen” war and seemingly ended a lengthy border dispute. Despite this success, however, Ahmed’s time in office has not been unmarred. When he was elected to office, many Tigrayan politicians were purged from power and some were and some were charged with human rights abuses which immediately led to feelings of tension. The hostility was exacerbated by Prime Minister Ahmed’s attempt to centralize more power within the federal government. The Prime Minister characterized these attempts as a way to create more unity in the country, but Tigrayans have resisted. This contentious situation came to a boiling point in September, when Tigray held regional elections, defying the federal government’s decision not to hold them due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

What are the results of the conflict?

While federal forces were able to capture Tigray’s main towns, fighting has continued and a major humanitarian crisis is looming, with 4.5 million people in need of assistance. However, it is hard to say just how the situation is unfolding, as there has been a communications blackout since the fighting began in November. Most hospitals have been looted and destroyed in the fighting, thus spelling the collapse of health care. Banks have also closed their doors, meaning that people can no longer access money to pay for basic necessities. There have also been severe shortages of food and water. Approximately half a million people have been displaced, with 60,000 officially being labeled as refugees,  fleeing into Sudan. As reported by the United Nations, by November 10th there were more than 14,000 refugees, half of them being children. According to these eyewitness accounts, Ethiopia’s military, Eritrean troops, and local ethnic militias are responsible for ethnic-based violence and large-scale sexual assault. The conflict has resulted in thousands of deaths and it has been characterized by the violence that has fallen along ethnic lines. Ethiopia’s air force bombed military and civilian infrastructure in Tigray, and Tigrayan officials and civilians have accused Eritrean troops of massacres.  Indeed, the presence of massacres has been confirmed by Amnesty International. The United Nations has also corroborated reports of ethnic massacres in West Tigray. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has also reported that Tigrayan miliatiamen killed 600 Amhara civilians who were mostly day laborers. Furthermore, Tigrayans who have fled to Sudanese refugee camps say that Amhara militiamen have attacked many of their kin in West Tigray. 

The role of Eritrea has also been a major focal point of this developing conflict. While the federal government has denied Eritrea’s role, eyewitnesses have  testified that a large portion of the violence has occured at the hands of Eritrean troops. Many of them have attacked refugee camps and have abducted Eritrean asylum seekers, many of whom were seen as camp leaders. They have specifically targeted aid supplies and set fire to crops. They have also been accused of killing hundreds of civilians across various towns.

This humanitarian crisis is the evident result of a  culmination of ethnic tensions that have been developing across many decades. At the end of August 2020, Genocide Watch issued a warning for Ethiopia. While it is difficult to discern what exactly is occuring due to the media blackout, the international community needs to ensure that this crisis isn’t developing into a genocide. If it has developed to the level of genoicde, international actors must take immediate action to ensure that no further lives are lost in this contentious conflict. 

What can be done?

It’s easy to say that the best solution would be for Prime Minister Ahmed to reach out to Tigray’s forces to discuss ways to end the conflict and usher in peace. While that doesn’t seem imminent, solutions should be focusing on alleviating the humanitarian crisis and making sure people have basic necessities. This would entail lifting the communications blackout and allowing humanitarian agencies to enter the country to administer relief. These agencies would be able to deliver relief with more immediacy while the Prime Minister hypothetically works to bring more long-lasting stability. Additionally, refugees need to be prioritized as they have consistently been targeted. In order to protect this vulnerable population, Eritrean forces need to leave Ethiopia. While i looks like this conflict is far from over, international organizations need to prioritize getting relief to all of the people who have been adversely affected. 

UNAMID: A Retrospective

The United Nations/African Union Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNAMID, for short) is coming to its conclusion, marking the first major UN peacekeeping mission to finish its tasks since the United Nations Missionin Liberia in early 2018. While the mission’s mandate ended with the new year, its actual drawdown will continuethrough the spring into early summer.

UNAMID was a bold, innovative, and controversial mission. This essay will be divided into three separate parts. First, I will examine the creation of UNAMID, then I will examine UNAMID’s effectiveness during its dozen years of service, and I will conclude by examining the present security environment in Darfur.

The Creation

UN Peacekeeping was in a strange position in the mid to late 2000s. The organization was still confronted by the endemic failures that had led to the mass killing of civilians in Rwanda and in Bosnia. Major policy papers, such as the 2000 Brahimi report, had outlined a more aggressive and more robust peacekeeping strategy that the architects of UN Peacekeeping were just starting to fully implement. The UN deployed a whole host of complex peacekeeping missions in 2004, sending forces into Haiti, Timor-Leste, Burundi, and Côte d’Ivoire, adding onto missions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

While the UN was sending troops all over the world, they didn’t deploy to Darfur. The western region of Sudan fell into brutal violence in 2003, when mobile Arab cattle herders known as Janjaweed began raiding the villages of Black Sudanese populations, frequently massacring, looting, and enslaving the population. The Janjaweed had the support of the Sudanese government, who wanted to wipe out Black Sudanese rebel groups in the region.

By 2004, the situation in Darfur had become one of the worst human rights crises in the world. A variety ofhuman rights organizations, civil associations, and celebrities formed the

“Save Darfur” campaign and began lobbying western governments. The United States and European Union both described the crisis as a genocide, and the UN Security Council recommended charges to the ICC. While the Security Council believed UN Peacekeepers were stretched too thin at the time, African Union peacekeepers would deploy in 2004. As part of the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS), thousands of African soldiers would deploy to the region. After several international observers questioned their ability to protect civilians and their willingness to confront the Sudanese government, the UN took over the mission in 2007, “re-hatting” the existing troops from AU green to UN blue, and deploying additional UN forces.

 This marked a new innovation in UN Peacekeeping operations. Prior to UNAMID, cooperation betweenthe UN and other regional bodies was still being developed. While UN Peacekeepers had worked alongside ECOWAS forces in West Africa, and NATO forces in the Balkans, UNAMID marked a new frontier in both inter-institutional cooperation as well as a new model for cooperation going forward. The UN would provide the peacekeeping expertise and the AU would provide committed troop contributors. Furthermore, there was also a key political divide that greatly increased effectiveness: the UN would engage with western partners, with whom they had a strong rapport and the AU would engage with the Sudanase government, who the AU had experience working with.

UNAMID also was a major innovator in Protection of Civilian mandates. While all missions created in the new millennium had a Protection of Civilians mandate, UNAMID was one of the few that was primarily focused on protecting civilians. Authorized under Chapter VII of the UN charter, rather than the traditional Chapter VI,UNAMID was deployed into a situation where there was, at best, limited peace to keep. It was also faced with a deeply uncooperative government in Khartoum. UNAMID was the one of the first UN Peacekeeping missions that deployed ready to, if needed, violently engage with its host state and its paramilitary provies in order to protect civilians.

UNAMID During Operations

UNAMID’s deployment was slow. Two years in, it had only deployed 79 percent of its authorized military personnel and 71 percent of the police contingent. Part of this was caused by many countries being unwilling to deploy peacekeepers to a dangerous environment, while part of this delay was caused by the uncooperative nature of the Sudanese government. In addition, UNAMID deployed five years into a brutal conflict. It’s estimated that about 300,000 civilians had died by late 2008, mostly from starvation and disease. UNAMID was authorized too late, and once authorized, the recruitment of additional forces took too long. This consistent late reaction has been a hallmark of UN peacekeeping missions, and unfortunately UNAMID was no exception. Once deployed, UNAMID was a mixed bag. While successful with the resources that it had, it lacked the resources it needed to adequately implement its mission.

Let’s start with the good. UNAMID was mostly able to protect civilians within its area of operations. UNAMID police forces were able to create a secure environment inside of the dozens of internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout the region, and UN troops deterred combatants from attacking certain civilian population centers near UN bases. Furthermore, UN troops engaged in proactive protection of civilian patrols. The most notable of these were the “firewood patrols” which protected displaced women as they gathered firewood outside of the camps, a previously highly dangerous activity. UNAMID was able to protect humanitarian aid shipments, which helped alleviate someof the deep food and medicine shortages in the region.

Through negotiation and mediation, UNAMID was able to lay down the framework for a long term peace.

But UNAMID had its flaws. The mission was never strong enough to fully accomplish its mission. Darfur is a region with the size of California and the population of Michigan. While UNAMID’s 20,000 soldiers and police officers made it one of the largest peacekeeping missions in the world, it was not large enough to fully protect a region of that size. In 2010, UNAMID would admit that it could only adequately protect half of the region's population, mostly those concentrated in IDP camps and urban areas. UNAMID was plagued with major transportation issues. Protecting civilians is a mostly reactive task, quickly deploying troops to areas where civilians are in imminent danger. To accomplish that rapidreaction capability over such large, sparsely populated areas, a peacekeeping mission requires transport helicopters. UNAMID was never able to scrounge up the helicopters it needed in order to complete its mission, with the ones it were able to requisition beingeither unsuited to the task, insufficient in number, or too short-term to make a difference.

Furthermore, the Sudanese government proved to be a nuisance at best, and a menace at worst. An agreement between the UN and the Sudanese government which allowed UNAMID to deploy with Sudanese consent stipulated that the mission must have a predominantly ‘African character.’ Khartoum would take great advantage of this provision, frequently vetoing the deployment of non-African contingents, leaving UNAMID undermanned and underequipped. As a 2014 Foreign Policy report had succinctly put it, UNAMID had ”been bullied by government security forces and rebels, stymied by American and Western neglect, and left without the weapons necessary to fight in a region where more peacekeepers have been killed than in any other U.N. mission in the world.”

UNAMID was a mixed bag. While it was successful in some respects, it failed in others. It’s failureshighlighted a continuing gap in almost all UN Peacekeeping missions between what is asked of them and the means they are provided with in order to actually accomplish that task.

The End of UNAMID

Several dramatic changes in both the Sudanese and UN situations in the late 2010s would lead to UNAMID’s eventual withdrawal. First, Omar al-Bashir, the President of Sudan since 1989, was overthrown in a 2019 military coup following months of extensive street protests.

Al-Bashir was was the one who funded the Janjaweed, and would the next year be extradited to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face genocide charges. The new government in

Khartoum would be a hodge-podge transitional government of civilians activists and military strongmen, but theyproved to be a much better group of peacemakers than al-Bashir's regime.

The Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), the main opposition rebel group, would reach a peace agreement with the Sudanese government in 2020. The SRF would integrate with the Sudanese Armed Forces and they would get seats in government.

At the same time the UN was faced with a financial problem. Demands for budget cuts to peacekeeping,initially by the Trump administration and then later as a result of COVID, made eliminating one of the UN’s largest and most expensive missions a needed cost saving measure in the eyes of the Security Council. UNAMID began to hand over control of key military installations and protection of civilian missions to the newly integrated Sudanese Armed Forces in late 2020.

There are still reasons to be concerned. Violence is still common in the region, and the situation in Sudan as a whole is deeply unstable and unpredictable. Most of the military leaders who control half of Sudan's new government, and who are now charged with protecting the people of Darfur, were the same military officers who commited war crimes in the region while serving al-Bashir. But even with that in mind, it looks like Darfur has its greatest opening for peace since the war started in 2003.

While UNAMID’s withdrawl constitutes a severe reduction in the UNs presence in Sudan, it does not mark a total withdrawl. A special political mission, the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) will replace UNAMID as a successor mission, with a focus on peacebuilding and engagement with the Sudanese government. It won’t have any troops, and will lack the Protection of Civilians mandate that was present in UNAMID. This transition is emblematic of Secretary-General Guterres’ peacekeeping strategy throughout his term. He has consistently favored smaller, cheaper, and more agilepolitical missions rather than larger, more capable, more expensive multidimensional peace operations.

UNAMID was a strange mission. A UN/AU hybrid, created as a result of a primarily western human rightscampaign rarely seen in peacekeeping history, it was able to accomplish some of its goals with limited support from New York. While it was not a full success, UNAMID taught UN peacekeeping as a whole vital lessons in inter-organizational cooperation, troop deployment, and Protection of Civilian missions that will hopefully be taken to heart going forward.

Police Brutality, Colonialism, and Coronavirus in Kenya

For over eight minutes, police officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck as Floyd told the officers, “I can’t breathe.” As the video of his murder spread beyond Minneapolis where the incident happened, protests erupted around the world. In Nairobi, Kenya, at least seven of these protests took place, but while the trigger was the murder of George Floyd, hundreds of people were drawn to the protests due to Kenya’s own issue with police brutality. Abuse and murders by police officers in Kenya have been a persistent problem since the British colonial period, and since the near beginning of this year, it has gotten worse. In an attempt to shut down the protests and prevent people from going out during the coronavirus lockdowns, the government has revived a colonial law called the Public Order Act. Since then, acts of police violence have increased to the point where many protesters have backed off due to fear. 

The History of Colonial Policing in Kenya

The British Colony of Kenya was established in 1920 and came to an end in the 1960s. The developments during these years set a major precedent for substandard policing. The police received considerable powers of surveillance, as demonstrated through the Stock and Produce Theft Ordinance which allowed for more abilities in stop and search, and they also extended police presence in order to gather information and show their capabilities in seeking out crime. Additionally, a director was added to the Criminal Investigation Department Special Branch to focus on “political” policing. This created a system that was “arbitrary, unaccountable, and often violent,” and during the Mau Mau Revolt, the efforts toward adequate policing declined even more. 

The Mau Mau Revolt was an armed rebellion initiated by the Kikuyu, a native ethnic group in Kenya. The uprising began because land was taken from the Kikuyu during the colonial period, and about 1.5 million Kikuyu people were thought to have “proclaimed their allegiance” to the Mau Mau campaign by 1952. The British declared a state of emergency that year, and their crackdown on the rebels was unrelenting. The police began a series of mass arrests, and they took Kikuyu suspected of Mau Mau involvement to detention camps. The conflict between police, rebels, and suspects continued, and in 1954, Operation Anvil began. Tens of thousands of Kikuyu were taken from Nairobi to detention camps without being told why. The discriminatory, drastic sweeps continued from there, which set a precedent of allowing police officers what is essentially free rein. 

Although Kenya achieved independence 57 years ago, remnants of colonial laws are still intact. Even after the rewrites of the Constitution, the most recent being in 2010, archaic laws which criminalize making noise on the street, allow police to arrest people without warrants, and overall intimidate Kenyans remain. It shows. For instance, the 2017 Human Rights Report by Amnesty International placed Kenya in the top slot for police shootings and killings of civilians. Taking into account police brutality as a whole, 3,200 incidents were recorded in 2019. Incidents of police violence have been prevalent within the nation for many years, and 2020 has been even more brutal. In February, there were eight documented police killings in Kenya, and March was the beginning of a downward spiral.

Two Public Health Issues: Coronavirus and Police Brutality

On March 12 of this year, the first case of coronavirus was reported in Kenya. By that point, there were fourteen countries in Africa with coronavirus cases, and Kenya’s government implemented certain flight restrictions. It soon became apparent that more restrictions were needed to protect Kenyans, and in an effort to halt the spread of coronavirus, the government invoked the Public Order Act — another law that had been on the books since the colonial era. However, this action bred a different type of danger. As with many colonial laws, it gives a significant amount of power to the government in the name of keeping the peace. As Foreign Affairs described, the overall aim of the Public Order Act is to criminalize poverty, and it allows police to “round up pretty much anyone they choose, anywhere they choose.” Many have used it to justify police violence.

While getting people off of the streets is certainly a public health issue, the route which the Kenyan government took in order to achieve that mission created an entirely separate public health issue. As explained by Dr. Maybank, chief health equity officer and director of the Center for Health Equity, “People are dying. That’s our business, whether they are dying through a slow violence, such as structural racism, or COVID-19 or direct violence, like police brutality.” While attempting to stop the spread of one public health issue, the Kenyan government cultivated an environment for another one. A dawn-to-dusk curfew was imposed on March 27, and at least six people died from police violence within the following ten days.

Yassin Hussein Moyo was shot in the stomach while he was standing on his own balcony alongside his siblings, watching the police crackdown from three stories up. Moyo was just a 13-year-old boy, and he bled out while at home with his family. A motorcycle taxi driver named Hamisi Juma Mbega was another person lost to police violence. Mbega was among those who broke curfew, but he only did so in order to take a pregnant woman who was in labor to the hospital. He was beaten by the police and subsequently died from his injuries. The unfortunate irony of this is that Mbega was a former police officer himself. Calvin Omondi was also a motorcycle taxi driver who died from police beatings. He was on his way home at the beginning of curfew, and he lost control of his motorcycle when a group of officers attacked him. Idris Mukolwe was hit by a teargas canister and was laughed at by officers when he tried to stand up. Moments later, he collapsed and died. Yusuf Ramadhan Juma had a mental disability and was found in the hospital after being beaten. Eric Ng’ethe Waithugi decided to lock himself into the pub that he worked at along with a few others because curfew was approaching. Police officers broke down the door and shot teargas into the pub before hitting him and eleven others in the pub with wooden clubs. Waithugi died from being beaten by more than 20 officers.

According to Human Rights Watch, abusive behavior from the police began even before the start of curfew. They broke into shops, took food, and extorted money from civilians. Notably, the police also used tear gas, chased after people and then beat them with batons, and fired live rounds all before dusk. It got so bad that the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, made a statement: “I want to apologize to all Kenyans for some … excesses that were conducted.” Kenya’s health ministry also condemned the police abuses. However, those statements did not create any tangible change. Since President Kenyatta’s apology, police officers have continued to whip, kick, and herd people together — something counterintuitive to the purpose of a coronavirus lockdown. 

Protests Against Police Violence Stomped on by Police Violence

When George Floyd was murdered by police officers back in May, and protests were ignited all around the world, it made sense for Kenyan people to take part. As a resident of Kenya named Lilly Bekele-Piper said, “People came out because they can recognize that violence in their own communities.” Furthermore, many Kenyans recognize that their police forces stem from racism and colonialism, and police brutality is an institutional issue that needs attention. However, it is that very issue that conflicts with the ability of Kenyan people to protest. With the combination of coronavirus restrictions and the aforementioned colonial laws like the Public Order Act heightening police violence, a lot of Kenyans are terrified to be out on the streets. The police chief of Nairobi, Philip Ndolo, explicitly said that protests are not allowed: “It is outlawed, it is not legal, and no permit has been given.” With that statement in mind, it is difficult for people with a strong concern about police brutality to protest against it when large gatherings are remarkable breeding grounds for police brutality. 

Now that violence, and even death, are so conspicuously placed on the table, protests have become increasingly scattered, causing many of the people who are working toward an end to police violence in Kenya to feel alone in the fight. As the problem of police brutality has become worse, the conditions for combating the problem have become worse. Organizations are struggling to gain the momentum necessary in order to have a fighting chance against police violence, and coronavirus brings yet another significant challenge to those who are working to stop police brutality, diminish the dangerous precedents of policing, and get rid of detrimental colonial laws. The stain of colonialism on Kenya’s government, laws, and police force combined with the effects of the international coronavirus pandemic have led to the worsening degree and frequency of police brutality, as well as the silencing of the public. 

Water For All? An Examination of Water Scarcity and Privatization in South Africa

The importance of water cannot be overstated: it allows every form of life to flourish while also fulfilling a role of vital significance within different cultures and religions. In South Africa, it is believed that sacred waters are filled with spirits and mermaids. The Xhosa, a prominent ethnic group in the country, traditionally believe that diviners, or amagqirha, are trained to understand the health of rivers. Yet despite water’s obvious value, whether it be physical or cultural, there are many within the international community who are subjected to water scarcity, a phenomenon that refers to either a physical shortage or the failure of certain institutions to ensure a regular supply of clean water. It should be established that no matter the root cause of a water shortage, the global water supply remains fixed- it is accessibility that mutates throughout time. 

While there are instances of water shortages in specific areas resulting from natural phenomena- such as droughts- human activity has also played a central role in creating and institutionalizing disparities of who can access clean water. These disparities manifest in multiple ways, including along racial lines. South Africa, where diversity of cultural traditions find water to be sacred, is a prime example of the ways in which water access has been racialized. While black South Africans have a tradition of tending to local rivers, this relationship has been severely hindered through the policies of the Apartheid and the post-Apartheid regimes that have made beloved water sources inaccessible. 

The Institutionalization of Water Scarcity 

South Africa is known for having a progressive constitution that goes beyond simply enshrining civil and political rights- for one, it includes a mandate that everyone has the right to sufficient food and water. While outsiders may see this as a unique, or even strange, clause to include in a constitution, it is a product of British colonization and the subsequent Apartheid regime. In 1913, the British implemented the Native Lands Act, which entailed the forcible removal of rural black Africans to designated areas within the interior where the land was less fertile and had a natural scarcity of water. These designated areas were known as reservations and black Africans could not legally step foot outside of them unless they were employed. British riparian law, a subset of property law that relates to the utilization of surface water, specifically stated that only those who owned land adjacent to rivers had legal access to water. This meant that black communities, who were forcibly relocated from these waterways, could no longer legally access water on their own accord. On the other hand, the white settlers, who made up less than 20 percent of the population, had control over virtually all of the waterways. This not only gave them an economic advantage- water is, after all, a boon to agriculture, industry, and trade- but it also gave them the luxury to not have to worry about whether or not they had drinking water.

In 1923, the Native Urban Areas Act stipulated that black Africans could work in urban industrial areas but could not live there. Subsequently, black Africans were relocated to townships and forced to live in government housing whose construction and expenses, which included electricity and water, were meant to be paid back in full by its inhabitants. Many people were unable, or unwilling, to pay for these costs. As a reaction to the government’s racist and exploitative practices, many individuals established “informal settlements,” where water usually came from a rudimentary standpipe and its cleanliness could not be guaranteed. When the Apartheid government officially ascended to power in 1948, these discriminatory policies were exacerbated. As Karen Piper asserts in her book, The Price of Thirst, South Africa is one of the most natural water-scarce regions in the world, yet Afrikaaners, the white minority, were able to enjoy green lawns and swimming pools while black Africans were deprived of a basic necessity as a reinforcement mechanism for the country’s white supremacy. 

The People of South Africa versus Water Privatization 

By the time Apartheid finally came to an end, a majority of the population had access to only a small portion of the country’s water. When President Mandela first began to shape a new, inclusive South Africa, he created the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP), whose policy objectives included recognizing water as an “indivisible national asset belonging to all South Africans” and making water and sanitation services community-based. The plan that the government created to achieve these goals was meant to be completed in stages. In the short term, all households would be supplied with twenty to thirty liters per capita per day. Furthermore, an access point could not be located more than 600 feet away from every house. In the medium term, households were promised an on-site supply of water, with a subsidy for the poor. Another crucial element was that city limits would be redrawn to include the black townships that were formally excluded. This would increase the tax base, and services, such as proper access to water and sanitation infrastructure, would be available to all. This plan was purposefully designed as a way to end the racialized hierarchy of water access and begin a new era of racial equity. 

While President Mandela had envisioned water for all, these plans were derailed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, otherwise known as the Bretton-Woods Institutions. When it was clear that the Apartheid regime was not going to last much longer, these institutions saw an opportunity for investment and implementation of neoliberal policy. When President Mandela’s new government began negotiations with the IMF and the World Bank, it became apparent to the South African representatives that the conditions attached to any potential IMF loan were too similar to the economic policies of the Apartheid regime that solely benefited white people. The IMF’s push for water privatization was especially troubling as it directly contradicted the country’s constitution and would perpetuate water inequity. At the same time that negotiations were taking place, the worst drought in living memory was devastating the country. It was considered to be an economic and public health disaster that needed to be immediately dealt with through an IMF loan, thus severely reducing any leverage the South African team could wield at the negotiation table. Although the IMF was willing to grant the necessary funding for disaster relief, there was an important stipulation: the drought relief money would only appear if the African National Congress, the new ruling party, would follow its economic policies. 

These policies included not increasing wages, completely opening up the country to trade, and reducing the government’s debt by cutting public services. This was exactly what President Mandela’s team had been trying to avoid throughout the negotiation process, yet the severity of the drought gave them virtually no choice. In 1996, a new economic plan known as the Growth, Employment, a Redistribution (GEAR) program was implemented. It was problematic from its very conception. It did not mention the country’s economic history of race and Apartheid, prompting the question: How can economic policy rectify horrendous inequality when it doesn’t even recognize its existence?

GEAR’s economic policies perpetuated the inequitable water access system of the Apartheid regime. The public had to pay the full cost of water and sanitation infrastructure; this cost was often levied on poor, black communities. For example, in 2003-2004, these communities faced a 30 percent price increase versus a 10 percent price increase for “high-end” users (i.e. corporations and the wealthiest communities). Suez, the private water company in charge of water distribution, essentially inherited a similar role as the Apartheid government. Since Suez has taken over distribution, the poor have been presented with high bills which they cannot- or even will not- pay. As a result, Suez typically shuts off the water supply. Though not unique to any city, in Johannesburg, water bills are a part of monthly housing payments. When residents did not pay their water bill, they were evicted. According to Piper in The Price of Thirst, by 2007, more than two million people had been evicted from their homes for not paying their water bills. The brutal irony of it all was that residents, who had previously fought for better water access, began to protest having water connections installed as they now saw it as a threat to their livelihood. 

Water Privatization as the New Apartheid? 

Since 1994, black residents perceive that their quality of life has declined, which is astonishing considering the Apartheid government specifically existed to maintain white supremacy, yet black South Africans continue to be denied basic goods. Service delivery protests, which are often attributed to xenophobia, are actually due to a lack of basic services, such as sanitation and clean water, and often manifest in violent ways. The number of protests that had taken place by June of 2019 had already eclipsed the total for 2016 which indicates that the problem is only getting worse, not better.  

Throughout South Africa’s modern history, water has been utilized as a marker for power within a racial hierarchy. Beginning with British colonial rule, white people’s ability to access clean water represented a political, economic, and social power that black natives had been violently deprived of. Furthermore, water was not only used as a way for whites to extract power, but it was also weaponized to protect it. The threat of having a basic necessity taken away is an easy way to ensure compliance; this is something both the Apartheid government and Suez have done, albeit for slightly different reasons. The Apartheid regime shut off the water when they wanted to quell anti-Apartheid protests, while Suez does so in order to elicit payment. It is easier for Suez to maintain superficial innocence as they are not a government explicitly subjecting its citizens to racist and violent policies. However, that veneer of innocence is stripped away as it becomes clear that both are responsible for producing and maintaining racial inequities, particularly when it comes to water. 

President Mandela’s economic plan sought to equalize a country whose foundations were rooted in white supremacy. However, this plan was compromised by the Bretton-Woods institutions whose policies did not address the country’s history. The implementation of water privatization was emblematic of this ignorance: it was neglectful of the needs of black, low-income communities who needed to be empowered the most and instead perpetuated a white hegemony over water. In order to make water truly accessible to all people, it is necessary that policy leaders return to President Mandela’s original vision of water being a public good. Water is a necessity for political, economic, and social prosperity, and its privatization means that specific groups would be disconnected. Although many would argue that privatization is meant to eliminate the inefficiencies of the government, the case of South Africa has made it clear that it has done quite the opposite. By making it a collective good, the government would be honoring its own constitution and would be forced to ensure that everyone has access to clean water. This makes institutions, and its representatives, more accountable and South Africans would have a better say in water policy, thus equalizing one facet of a notoriously unequal society. 

The Gambian Crisis Three Years Later: A Retrospective

In late January 2017, two presidents were inaugurated. Donald Trump took over as the President of the United States on the 20th in front of a decently large crowd on the national mall in Washington. He would take charge of the world's most powerful military and largest economy in a turn of events that sparked fears of a rising autocratic government. One day later, on the other side of the Atlantic, long-standing President of Gambia Yahya Jammeh stepped down and allowed the democratically elected leader Adama Barrow to assume office. In contrast to the situation in Washington, the resolution of the Gambian crisis marked a major success for advocates of democracy, global governance, and peaceful conflict resolution. Using the Gambian Crisis as a blueprint, we can determine how the international community can support a similar democratic transition in the future.    

The Gambia is an incredibly small West African country that is surrounded by Senegal and is only about 10,000 square kilometers large, with roughly 2 million Gambians along the shore of the Gambia River. The Gambia's woes started in the late 17th century, with Britain and France exchanging control over the region until Britain made it a colony in 1856. It was then granted its independence in 1965.  Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara would serve as president from 1970 to 1994, when Jammeh, a military officer, would take power in a coup against the government. Jammeh took over from a corrupt, though incredibly democratic government that had taken some strides towards economic development. Despite only being the 168th largest economy, based around tourism and agriculture, Jammeh was able to suck the country dry over his 22 years in office. He would embezzle nearly $1 billion in public funds and illegal timber revenue during his reign, leaving the country severely underdeveloped. In 1993, just before Jammeh took over, the nation’s GDP per capita stood at $710 per capita. In 2016, the last year of his rule, it stood at $620 per capita.

Jammeh would also prop up his rule with what Human Rights Watch described in 2015 as a “State of Fear,” heavily featuring summary executions, disappearances, arbitrary detention, and torture against “journalists, human rights defenders, student leaders, religious leaders, political opposition members, judiciary officials, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and security force personnel, among others.'' He governed with boastful claims and a cult of personality, once claiming that he could cure AIDS with magical powers as nearly 21,000 Gambians were left without necessary anti-HIV medication. The oppression of the Gambians was mostly ignored. The Gambia was and still is viewed by many nations and international actors as a strategically unimportant backwater, both in political and economic terms. Also, the outbreak of civil wars in nearby Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone drew regional and international attention away from his regime.

Things would come to a head on December 1st, 2016 when Gambians went to the polls for the presidential elections. Jammeh had won the last three elections, though they, according to the UN, featured “widespread rigging and voter intimidation.” Standing for the opposition was Adama Barrow, a former real estate developer who was largely unknown to the Gambian public and was a unity candidate selected by a previously fractured opposition. This unity and general anger at Jammeh lead to an electoral upset, with Barrow earning 45.5% of total votes, while Jammeh received 36.6 percent. As the results shocked the country, Jammeh would shock the country even further by offering his concession and congratulations to Barrow, saying “the Gambian people have spoken and I have no reason to contest the will of the mighty Allah,” promising “guidance on your transition and when selecting a government.” Jammeh would, however, quickly reverse course. On December 9th, Jammeh called for a new election, citing irregularities. Barrow would flee over the border to neighboring Senegal the same day. The stage was set for a confrontation that would determine the future of the country. 

The international community quickly took the side of Barrow. The most notable Barrow ally was the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional block which contains 15 states, most notably Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal. Barrow was signed in as President on January 19th in the Gambian embassy at Dakar. The United Nations Security Council unanimously threw their support behind ECOWAS if Jammeh did not step aside, though emphasized the desire for a political resolution first. Thousands of western tourists evacuated and tens of thousands of Gambians would flee across the Senegalese border in anticipation of violence. Jammeh would, eventually, step aside. He resigned on January 22nd just before the ECOWAS intervention was scheduled to begin. He did not have much choice in the matter. The Gambian army only numbered about 900 soldiers. In contrast, the ECOWAS force significantly outnumbered them as well as assumed complete control of Gambia’s airspace and waterways. To make matters worse for Jammeh, Chief of Defence Staff Ousman Badjie announced that he would surrender against an ECOWAS intervention force. Barrow would take full power over the country on the 26th, and then the crisis was over.

Barrow has had mixed success in his nearly three years in office. The country's human rights record has improved, and Barrow was able to raise nearly 1.7 billion Euros at a May 2018 International Donor Conference. But corruption, poverty, and political gridlock have been roughly the same as they were when Jammeh was in power. While some of the blame lays on Barrow, some of the issues are caused by excess security spending and a high level of debt inherited from Jammeh. Even with the mixed record, the situation in The Gambia can only be described as a success for the international community. The international community was able to swiftly enforce the will of the people in a nonviolent fashion to remove an authoritarian and corrupt leader from office. But how was this model so effective, and could it be applied in future situations?

First, it is important that international consensus in favor of intervention is reached quickly and delivered forcefully. The best way to achieve this international consensus is to shift the focus from large global bodies such as the UN Security Council to smaller regional organizations such as ECOWAS. Since there are fewer states in a regional body consensus is far easier reached there as compared to global bodies with far more stakeholders involved. The case of the Gambia shows that if the regional body is willing to take on the burden of intervention and peacekeeping, global bodies like the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will quickly approve the mission. This is because they don't want to take on the burden of these types of missions, so an opportunity to punt the responsibility will be quickly taken. This holds for areas that are viewed as strategically unimportant by the west, such as The Gambia, where this type of crisis more frequently occurs. Also, this shift would lead to a less hierarchical world order. The era of non-African nations trying to govern Africans from the UNSC would diminish, and the idea of “African Solutions for African Problems” would finally take hold.   

Second, there must be an exit strategy for the dictator. No one will relinquish power if they feel that their life would be threatened if they did. In contrast with most comparable situations, ECOWAS was civil with Jammeh. The former president is in exile in Equatorial Guinea, with most of his ill-gotten wealth. The final agreement guarantees “the dignity, respect, security and rights of former President Jammeh.” Some might question the morality of such a clause. It can be argued that we are letting human rights abusers off the hook for their crimes. But if immunity isn't guaranteed, then the abusers would never peacefully relinquish power. Less death and destruction is always the best outcome, even if justice is not fully served. Most likely it wouldn't have been served either way as most dictators don't let themselves fall into enemy hands alive. Take two case studies in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Tunisia let its old dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, take exile in Saudi Arabia without facing justice. Libya’s dictator, Moammar Gaddafi, got hit with an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. On paper, Libya got the better deal. While Tunisians would never get justice for the crimes committed against them, Libyans would. This is not how things panned out. Tunisia would become one of the only democracies to emerge out of the Arab Spring, in part because it was free from the influence of its old leadership. In contrast, Libya collapsed into an incredibly violent state of anarchy and civil war, with Gaddafi dying at the hands of rebels before he ever faced a courtroom or true justice. Libya's fate was at least partially caused by Gaddafi's unwillingness to surrender in the face of a near-certain life sentence at the Hague.          

Third, the security services are the key. One of the main reasons Jammeh resigned was because his army was unwilling and unable to defend his rule. When the army deserts the dictator, two things become true. First, the intervention is given near-guaranteed success because they face no opposition. Second, the amount of death and destruction in the country will be significantly lower as the transfer of power becomes significantly more peaceful. The question of how to get the army to desert depends on the situation. One of the best ways would be to exploit the political nature of militaries in much of the developing world. Promises of additional power and some measured support to military leaders could make all the difference in the world. Another, as was the case in the Gambia, is the deployment of overwhelming force. Militaries have historically surrendered in the face of overwhelming opposing forces rather than face certain death. This is because the decision to surrender is usually one made out of self-preservation. We saw this in The Gambia, with the Gambian military refusing to fight against the far superior ECOWAS force. Regardless of how it is achieved, flipping the military should be the priority. It is the founding pillar of the state. Take it out and the state cannot stand.

The case study of The Gambia does, however, have its shortcomings. First, Barrow has not fully transitioned the Gambia away from the issues that plagued Jammeh's regime. This cannot be fixed using the model of regional interventionism since the people will have already chosen their leader. The advantage still lies in the comparative. Even if Barrow isn't great, he is far better than Jammeh. Besides, leaders chosen domestically in elections are inherently more sustainable than leaders pick in other ways because they must have had popular support to be elected. Second, this model of regional intervention must require the region to want to intervene. The Gambia was in some ways unique because it was situated in a region that has experienced an upswell in democratic norms and a desire for legitimate governance. Combine that with Jammeh's regional unpopularity and ECOWAS has a strong motive to intervene. The Gambia is also so politically and economically small that there is no chance of major destabilization in the region or world. It is unknown whether the lessons learned in The Gambia can apply to the far more economically and politically important Egypt, for example.     

The successful resolution of The Gambian crisis heralds a potential new method of international governance and stability. A world where each region manages its internal security with global support and consent. A world where an attack on the will of the people in one country is an attack on the will of the people in all countries in the region. A world where the action is quick, peaceful, and decisive. It would certainly be a brave new world, one that will only exist if the nations of the world learn the lessons of the smallest nation in the least developed continent on the globe.  

Fault Lines in the Sahel: Mali’s Patronage Politics and Regional Instability

Under the last two U.S. administrations, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) has expanded beyond the Middle East to focus on fledgling Islamist insurgencies in Africa and Asia. The Sahel region in sub-Saharan Africa stands out amongst multiple hotspots. Home to numerous violent extremist actors, both local and foreign, the Sahel faces multiple conflict stressors, including porous borders, the growth of radical ideological movements, desertification, ethnic tensions and state corruption. These factors were exacerbated by the collapse of the Libyan government in 2011, leading to a flow of arms and fighters across the region. These factors play out differently across Sahelian states, with each country exhibiting its own vulnerabilities. Chad is precariously run by notorious autocrat Idriss Déby, who frequently outmaneuvers rebellions thanks to his loyal armed forces and support from the French military. Niger faces some of the world’s highest rates of poverty, with a per capita income of $420 and 44% of the population living below the poverty line. In 2016, it ranked second to last on the UN’s Human Development Index. Mauritania is witnessing a toxic combination of racial discrimination, government corruption, and revival of Islamist political groups, polarizing an already divided society. Amidst its neighbors, Mali, prior to 2011, might have seemed a beacon of stability. The government in Bamako was democratic, experimenting with positive economic reforms, and enjoyed positive relations with moderate religious leaders around the country. Yet, the region was shocked by the upheaval and violence of 2012 in Mali. The conflict in northern Mali lasted from 2012-2013, and involved a separatist movement, an Islamist insurgency, and a military coup. First, in 2011, long-running northern resentment at the lack of representation in government resurfaced, and Tuareg tribes joined together to form the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). In January 2012, the MNLA launched a series of attacks across northern Mali, in Menaka, Aguelhok, and Tessalit. While the MNLA sought to create a secular ethnostate, it enlisted the support of armed Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Unity and Oneness in Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO). On March 22, members of the armed forces, blaming the success of the insurgents on political corruption, overthrew President Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT). On April 6, the MNLA declared the independent state of Azawad, a victory that ended when the Islamist groups turned on their Tuareg allies, forcing them to retreat to the small border town of Ansogo. The collapse of the Malian state and Islamist conquest of the north necessitated an international response, which came in the form of the UN Security Council legitimizing a regional intervention force, led by the African Union (AU), to reestablish order. While the AU force was preparing to intervene, the Islamists launched a surprise attack southward in early January 2013, taking the buffer town of Konna, putting them within striking distance of Bamako. This triggered French Operation Serval, which deployed 5,000 troops and significant air forces on January 11. Within two weeks, the Islamists were routed from their urban strongholds. While Operation Serval and subsequent French and UN missions maintain stability in the country, the root factors of the conflict remain dormant, risking future instability. Overall, Mali’s supposed resiliencies turned out to be surface deep, revealing a social contract predicated on a confusing network of patronage politics and illicit economies. Ultimately, it was these informal networks, rather than macro-level stressors, that led to the northern Mali conflict. Mali’s supposes strengths failed to prevent state collapse and civil war, and require closer analysis to understand how to support resilience to conflict. Given the informal political roots of the conflict, African and European policy makers should focus on reconfiguring the Malian social contract, emphasizing economic and political reforms over traditional security efforts.

Studies of rebellion often emphasize the effect of formal, pre-war political and economic institutions on the strategies of violence employed. In the case of northern Mali, this is best done by looking at informal networks, which allowed the state to remain influential without investing in public goods. These networks had a significant impact on the type of violence that occurred from 2012-2013, namely due to the material and political resources exchanged. While Mali lacks ‘lootable’ resources, such as oil or diamonds, it lies at the intersection of major transshipment economies. These economic systems are predicated on kinship ties, which make illicit economies ‘licit’ in the eyes of most northerners. In addition, illicit economies are crucial to economic sustenance. Prior to the conflict, 9 million northern Malians lived on less than US$1 a day and 1.6 million faced food insecurity. The decline of licit industries like pastoralism and tourism increased the importance of illicit networks. The 2012-2013 conflicts compounded this, destroying what was left of the tourism industry, disrupting basic public services, contracting growth and increasing consumer prices. In this context, criminal networks faced no shortage of local labor by offering monthly salaries of US$250-400.  While the socioeconomic benefits of illicit economies explain their durability at the local level, their political benefits create linkages between local networks and national elites. Prior to the conflict, major traffickers used their wealth to improve their standing, either running in or financing local elections, which allowed traffickers to then co opt local governments. Traffickers further consolidated their power and enhanced their legitimacy by using their profits to distribute patronage, building dams, wells, and mosques. The political nature of illicit economies created violent power dynamics, as new elites disrupted existing hierarchies and weakened the power of established elites. Traditionally dominant networks, like the Ifoghas Tuareg and Kounta Arabs, faced threats to their status from increasingly wealthy Tilemsi and Lamhar Arabs and Imghad Tuaregs. From Bamako, ATT saw these shifts as a way to consolidate his control over rebellious northern elites, and established economic and military ties to the new trafficking class through the strategy of “remote control.” With his blessing, pro-government ethnic militias emerged, led by figures like Col. Abderamane Ould Meydou, security services with deep informal ties to northern trafficking networks. While these militias were established using donor aid meant for counterterrorism purposes, they served the interests of ATT and his new northern allies, who needed a low-cost means of ensuring control without having to invest in public goods or representative armed forces. This policy increased instability in several important ways. First, it fueled intercommunal violence, as local elites engaged in kidnappings and attacks against one another. Local elections became increasingly violent, as opposing networks backed different candidates and used force to manipulate voters and polling officials. Second, ATT’s patronage approach to ruling the north created an unsustainable political economy. His support for certain networks built expectations of patronage, a form of rent. This not only made his support in the north already prone to collapse, but also generated mechanisms that would allow armed groups like the MNLA and AQIM to supplant the state by entering these networks of exchange. In fact, as certain “noble” tribes moved to support the MNLA in response to state support for their local rivals, the “vassal” tribes responded by mobilizing around AQIM and other Islamist groups. With all three Islamist groups enjoying greater economic ties to local networks, support tilted away from the MNLA, explaining its rapid defeat. Despite this initial uniform support, the Islamist groups operated with vastly different illicit networks throughout the remainder of the conflict, whose unique configurations created variations in the strategies of rebellion that they employed.

The most powerful Islamist group during the conflict was AQIM, as it had the most well-trained and equipped fighting force, which numbered around 1,000 combatants in 2013. AQIM emerged at the end of the Algerian Civil war (1992-1998) as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), an offshoot of the brutal Armed Islamic Group (GIA). From 1998-2003, it experienced considerable turmoil, as its membership defected to the Algerian government’s amnesty program or was killed by security forces. In 2004, newly established National Emir Abdelmalek Droukdel led the group south into the Sahel. With his subcommanders Abou Zeid and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, Droukdel built an enclave for the GSPC in remote northern Mali around Léré, from which the group launched attacks into neighboring Algeria and Mauritania. In order to ensure survival in an inhospitable terrain, the GSPC forged ties with the local Tuareg and Berabiche communities, using intermarriage and distributing SIM cards and medicine to build trust. These ties gave the GSPC access to existing networks of smuggling and trafficking. These networks extended beyond the local level, with Droukdel respecting an informal code in which kidnappings took place outside of Mali; in return, Bamako turned a blind eye to insurgent activities in the north. These strong social ties helped the GSPC rebuild, to the point where it attracted the attention of Al Qaeda central. In 2006, Droukdel pledged formal allegiance to bin Laden and renamed his organization AQIM. In terms of involvement in illicit economies, AQIM depended primarily on kidnapping for ransom. The importance of kidnapping is highlighted by internal communications, which stated that “Kidnappings are at the top of military action in the Sahara region…We don’t know of a single case that the Emirate [name for the collective of AQIM rulers] did not oversee.” Between 2003 and 2012, AQIM kidnapped around 60 individuals, a combination of Western tourists, aid workers, and diplomats, for a total profit of US$90-175 million. While the revenue was key to AQIM’s expansion, it was also relatively limited in its importance to the local economy. Prior to 2003, kidnapping was infrequent and carried out by small criminal gangs with little to no standing. As a result, AQIM generated little political capital from its vertical integration across an industry with limited social network involvement. During the conflict, AQIM settled in the region of Timbuktu, where Abou Zeid administered the regional capital. Within Timbuktu, Zeid sought to ensure continued local support by creating recruitment quotas to include local ethnic groups. His fighters distributed their cell phone numbers as hotlines to report criminal activity. Additional revenue was spent on distributing goods and paying medical staff to operate the local hospital. Expenses from AQIM account books recovered in Timbuktu show payments for services such as US$4 for medicine for a sick child, and US$100 for a local wedding. While these initial actions generated significant support from AQIM, its ideological approach to governance eroded this support base. Initially, Droukdel established a clear line about governance and Islamic law in his letters to his sub commanders. He called for them to avoid imposing all of their laws at once, although they must immediately ban places of “immorality” where drugs and alcohol were consumed. He instead emphasized a focus on providing public goods such as healthcare, water and electricity. According to Droukdel, “the aim of building these bridges it to make it clear that our Mujahideen are no longer isolated in society, and to integrate with the different factions, including the big tribes and the main rebel movement [the MNLA] and tribal chiefs.” Further support can be found in his recommendation to AQIM commanders in Timbuktu written in 2012; “You should limit the circle of confrontation and of your enemies to the maximum... You are walking in a minefield full of tribalism, conspiracy, and revenge, corruption and arrogance.” Despite these warnings, Zeid implemented an Islamic Police force that used beatings to enforce a strict code of Islamic law. These tactics generated strong resistance, as women’s groups launched non-violent protests. Droukdel would later criticize his sub commanders for the rapid pace with which they implemented their interpretation of Islamic law, which triggered a strong backlash by the local population. Among other factors, AQIM’s limited dependence on patrimonial networks explains how local commanders misfired in their provision of public goods. Absent dependence on local networks, Zeid faced lower costs from implementing unpopular forms of governance to pursue his personal ideological goals. While AQIM nonetheless invested in basic administrative services, it enjoyed low levels of public support.

This outcome differs from MUJAO’s approach towards governance. MUJAO emerged as an offshoot from AQIM, due to internal disagreements over the distribution of ransom money and the racist treatment of non-Arab fighters by the Algerian leadership. As a result, when Hamada Ould Mohamed Kheirou founded the group in late 2011, his leadership included a diverse membership with commanders originating from Western Sahara, Mauritania, Mali, and Niger. MUJAO quickly emerged as a key player in the regional drug trade, at a time when West Africa’s role in global trafficking routes was growing. Starting in the early 2000s, increased interdiction along traditional routes and growing European demand shifted trafficking for Latin American cocaine and Moroccan cannabis to the Gulf of Guinea and the Sahel. As of 2012, the market was worth US$1.8 billion. MUJAO’s involvement was strictly indirect, as it never touched the actual drug shipments, but rather taxed local trafficking elites in return for providing protection for them against rival criminal networks. In the Gao region, where MUJAO was active, Kheirou built strong ties with Lamhar and Tilemsi Arab trafficking elites, who, in return for protection, provided donations and recruits. This alliance emerged in part due to mutual enemies, as Lamhar and Tilemsi Arab traffickers were competing with Ifoghas and Idnan Tuareg traffickers who were mobilizing to support the MNLA. This bottom-up competition eventually led to clashes between MUJAO and the MNLA, as their local support bases fiercely competed for control over Gao’s transshipment routes. In terms of governance, MUJAO provided significant levels of economic and political goods. It invested in public transit, establishing a bus network called ‘Mohamed Transports’ to circulate the region. More importantly, it created two political structures that allowed for local political participation. The Executive Council was staffed by MUJAO commanders elected by locals, and carried out tasks including law enforcement, religious education, public health, managing relations with foreign aid organizations, and transmitting directives to the population. MUJAO’s highest ranking commander in the city of Gao, Abdel Hakim, also commissioned the creation of the Cercles des notables, a body staffed by local elites with strong ties to trafficking networks and the Malian government. This form of public goods provision stands in stark contrast to AQIM in Timbuktu, in that it demonstrates how insurgent dependence on strong local networks forces the provision of more inclusive public goods. One outcome of this was the administration of ideological forms of governance, in that Gao witnessed relatively less human rights abuses at the hands of the Islamic Police than Timbuktu. Another was strong support, as MUJAO, the youngest, poorest, and smallest of the three Islamist groups was able to outcompete the much larger MNLA thanks to significant support by powerful trafficking elites.

In order to respond to future conflicts, the Malian government and its partners should critically analyze informal power networks. The strategy of remote policy pursued by ATT is by no means unique, it was equally critical to the dominance (and later collapse) of the Qadaffi and Saleh governments in Libya and Yemen, respectively. These cases reveal three important lessons for policymakers. First, institution building is critical, as it reduces grievances and creates safeguards for national leaders that extend their time horizons. ATT’s corruption and lack of influence in northern Mali forced him to rely on a fragile patronage system which ultimately led to his government’s collapse. These systems of power are dependent on continued transfer of wealth and power from the center, which requires a degree of economic growth and stability rarely present in resource-rich, developing economies. Policymakers should continue to prioritize the growth of accountable governance at the national and local level as a means to prevent conflict. The second lesson is “ungoverned spaces” are a myth and a poor analytical tool for predicting conflict. Groups like AQIM and MUJAO emerged in northern Mali not because of a lack of formal institutions but rather the existence of informal institutions willing to support their goals. These complex networks not only provide resources for insurgents to operate, but their unique configurations explain variations in insurgent strategies towards governance. Policymakers seeking to understand conflict in periphery areas ranging from dense megacities to rural border zones should understand informal networks of power that exist prior to conflict. The third lesson is that illicit economies are highly complex markets that can’t be solved through interdiction alone. A combination of state neglect and complicity led to the emergence of drug trafficking and kidnapping in the Sahel, and efforts to disrupt criminal networks will fail insofar as local populations lack alternative livelihoods to turn towards. Regional governments and their partners must use the lessons from the 2012-2013 Mali conflict to design a strategy that avoids neglecting genuine economic development and institution building at the local level in the north.

American Swords, Somali Shields

Part I: A Tragedy in Somalia

Around five in the morning of August 25th, 2017, gunfire broke out near the small town of Bariire in Southern Somalia. The Somali National Army, aided by United States (US) special forces, was sweeping through the area, conducting a counterterrorism raid against the Somali jihadist group al-Shabaab. Yet when the smoke had cleared, it was not terrorists, but civilians who were left dead. The incident provoked a furious backlash in Somalia, as well as from the international community.

In the face of public scrutiny, United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), the military apparatus in charge of US operations in Somalia, was quick to release a statement saying American troops had only been present “in a supporting role.” Indeed, AFRICOM often claims that American soldiers do not take part in the conflicts they oversee, but rather follow behind local allies, providing advice during missions but never directly engaging the enemy. In the case of the Bariire raid, however, this claim was disputed, and an investigation by the Daily Beast found American bullet casings were present, in chilling quantity, at the scene. According to the same investigation, eyewitnesses further testified that American soldiers had lead the way, not followed.

The tragedy in Bariire exemplifies the confusing state of US counterterrorism strategy in Africa, where the line between combatant and advisor is often blurred, and information about military operations is withheld from the public wherever possible. This article will look at the reasons why US soldiers are playing a “supporting role” in the Somali bush, analyze the military footprint involved in such operations, and evaluate the risks and benefits of an “advise and assist” approach to the global War on Terror.

Part II - How US special forces ended up in Somalia

The doctrine that guides US military strategy in Africa is encapsulated in the phrase “by, with, through,” which refers to the relationship between US troops and their local counterparts, called partner forces. According to this doctrine, military operations should either be done by partner forces, with partner forces, or through partner forces. These options are preferred because they keep US soldiers out of harm’s way, leading to a policy known as indirect engagement. In theory, this “by, with, through” approach should mean providing training, equipment, military-to-military communication, and drone strikes. Yet US soldiers do not always watch from the sidelines, as was demonstrated in the Bariire raid.

When US troops join partner forces on the ground, the concept of “by, with, through” falls into question. AFRICOM calls these joint operations “advise and assist” missions, a mundane term for an important, and controversial, part of US counterterrorism policy. Soldiers on advise and assist missions are supposed to accompany and direct a partner force during an operation, while staying out of the line of fire and avoiding a direct engagement with the enemy. But if the enemy ambushes US soldiers, surprises them, or simply advances on their position, they are allowed to fight back. These exceptions create problems when it becomes unclear which side fired first, or whether American troops ever intended to stay on the back line. Adding to this confusion, advise and assist missions are extremely secretive because US soldiers are rarely injured or killedー which is often how the public learns of special forces operations. The result is cases like Bariire, where the exact role American soldiers played is uncertain, making it difficult to attribute blame when civilians are killed.

Part III -  Partner Forces

The forces that accompany US soldiers on advise and assist missions are deceptively called “partners,” despite the fact that they have often been organized, trained, and deployed by the US. In many cases, the loyalty of these forces to their own government is called into question. They are housed in secretive US bases, flown to operation sites by US helicopters, and accompanied by American special forces on their missions, which may have been ordered by the US without their own government’s approval. Hence, the idea of US soldiers serving as advisors to an independent ally is misleading, because the material, command, and logistic backbone of advise and assist missions is often the same as those led by US forces, but with partner forces providing the final manpower of the operations.

Yet while these partner forces may operate alongside, or at the direction of, the United States’ military, they are not subject to the same oversight as their American counterparts. Partner forces have been accused of torturing prisoners, including at bases where US special forces were present. Moreover, the US has trained partner forces in countries where the national army is subject to accusations of human rights abuse, such as in Cameroon, where Amnesty International alleges mass extrajudicial arrests, torture, and killings. Working by, with, or through partner forces linked to such abuse undermines America’s credibility in pushing for human rights in these countries, and risks souring relations with the population at large. Another concern with partner forces’ reliability is the risk of providing them weaponry they may not be able to secure. In Libya, the US military provided the country’s special forces with training and large amounts of equipment, only to see the special forces’ base overrun by militants, giving them possession of its arsenal.

Part IV - Evaluating “Advise and Assist”    

The argument in favor of advise and assist missions is a pragmatic one. First, they require a minimal US presence on the ground, because partner forces will augment even a small number of troops’ capabilities, and provide the manpower for dangerous operations. Second, advise and assist missions avoid putting American lives on the line as much as possible, reducing their human cost. Finally, while the “by, with, through” doctrine is limited in its goals when compared to direct military engagement, it can still enable progress in the fight against terrorism. As AFRICOM commander Thomas Waldhauser stated, “these strikes are not going to defeat al Shabaab, but they are going to provide the opportunity for the Federal Government and the Somali National Army to grow and assume the security of that country.”

Conversely, the argument against a “by, with, through” approach to counterterrorism in Africa centers on the role it plays in expanding America’s shadowy security apparatus, one that sent US special forces to 20 African countries in 2016. Advise and assist missions are approved liberally, on the grounds that deploying soldiers in a supporting role is a lesser commitment than sending them to engage the enemy directly. Yet this distinction is difficult to enforce in the field, where soldiers can set their own mandates in deciding whether to fight on the frontlines or remain behind their partners. These missions are also not without risk,  as sending US soldiers to the field is inherently dangerous, and examples such as the catastrophe in Niger show that the public may not be willing to expend American lives in foreign places. Moreover, US soldiers being killed creates the risk of escalation, potentially drawing Washington into unnecessary conflicts. Another source of uncertainty is the partner forces that are required for such operations work. These forces are not always reliable and may act in ways that run counter to US interests or values, or even cross the line into atrocities. Finally, advise and assist missions have allowed the military to expand without asking congress, or the public, for approval, and the true scope of these operations in Africa is unknown, creating a dangerous lack of accountability. In the end, while the “by, with, through” doctrine may be an effective, restrained approach to fighting the global War on Terror, it places control dangerously far from civilian oversight, and fails to guarantee that tragedies like those in Somalia and Niger will not happen again.

Closing the Energy Access Gap: Sustainably Addressing Energy Poverty

Whether the worst impacts of global climate change can be avoided and rapidly growing developing nations have an opportunity to expand their economies hinges on how the international community chooses to address the urgent crisis of energy poverty.

Ending energy poverty is one of the 17 ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) approved by the United Nations at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in 2015.  The SDGs are intended to guide the international development agenda through 2030. Sustainable Development Goal No. 7 aims to end energy poverty across the globe by 2030, with a mission to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.”

The International Energy Agency defines energy poverty as “a lack of access to modern energy services. These services are defined as household access to electricity and clean cooking facilities (e.g. fuels and stoves that do not cause air pollution in houses).”

The need to address energy poverty is clear. There are 1.1 billion people across the world who lack access to reliable electricity. Three billion people lack access to clean cooking technologies. Approximately four million people die each year from indoor air pollution coming from dirty cooking fuels.

The scale of the energy access problem is not the only reason that it is so important to address; the opportunities from ending energy poverty are notable, too. Energy is foundational to economic development. In the process of development, developing countries often pass through an industrial phase on the path to becoming a fully developed country with a strong and diverse economy. Making the transition to an industrial state is energy-intensive because large-scale economic enterprises require lots of energy.

If policymakers choose to neglect energy poverty, developing countries may grow increasingly unstable. The United States government classifies lack of energy access as a “threat multiplier.” Nigeria is an example of a country that may grow even more unstable if energy access is not expanded. Nigeria will have a larger population than the United States by 2045, but it currently has less than one percent of the US’ electricity production levels. If there is not enough energy to power economic development and create sufficient numbers of jobs for the growing Nigerian population, then restlessness and desperation may spark a degree of instability that opens the door to security threats.

Eighty percent of the electricity access gap is concentrated in 20 countries primarily located in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Of those in energy poverty, 84 percent are in rural areas that are difficult to reach with central grid technology.

There are many reasons that energy poverty persists, including insufficient financing. Closing the energy access financing gap is an area where the developed world can be of assistance. According to Rachel Kyte, the CEO of Sustainable Energy for All, energy poverty finance commitments averaged $19.4 billion between 2013 and 2014. Kyte noted in congressional testimony that this figure is much less than the $52 billion that the International Energy Agency estimated will be needed annually through 2030.

Energy poverty is supposed to be fully addressed by 2030, if the international community maintains its commitment and timeline to achieve universal energy access. However, whether fossil fuels or clean energy sources are chosen to address energy poverty will directly impact the global community’s effectiveness at addressing another key priority: limiting the impacts of climate change.

While SDG No. 7 aims to end energy poverty across the globe by 2030, SDG No. 13 is “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.” In addition to SDG No. 13, the Paris Agreement calls for bold international climate action, committing signatories to a shared goal of limiting global average temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The need to balance these two goals - achieving universal energy access and avoiding the worst impacts of climate change - leads to the following question: What are the most effective actions that American policymakers can take to assist the developing world escape energy poverty while acknowledging the need for rapid decarbonization and adherence to the Sustainable Development Goals? This essay focuses on exploring this question.

In order to answer this overarching question, three other sub-questions must be posed:

1.) Is multilateral or bilateral finance most effective in addressing climate and energy access development needs?

2.) What energy sources and technologies should U.S. foreign assistance for energy poverty support?

3) Should financing be prioritized for projects that provide energy access to rural populations or to projects that support industrialization?

Is Multilateral or Bilateral Aid More Effective?

To address the first question regarding the effectiveness of multilateral and bilateral aid towards addressing energy access and climate change, it is helpful to first explore how multilateral aid and bilateral aid are perceived in scholarly discussion.

Arguments supportive of multilateral aid suggest that it is more effective than bilateral aid because it is allocated based on development needs instead of strategic considerations. Bilateral aid is oftentimes delivered with the self-interest of the donor country in mind. Donor countries may choose to place self-serving conditions on the aid that it delivers, which may diminish the cost-effectiveness of the aid for the recipient country. Additionally, multilateral organizations often have accountability mechanisms that enhance the transparency of their practices. For example, the World Bank Group has an Inspection Panel and Independent Evaluation Group. These accountability bodies will investigate the practices and programs of the Bank and report on operational deficiencies and unintentional harm that the Bank may be causing through its actions. Multilateral bodies also tend to have greater specialization and expertise in development issues affecting their recipient countries than bilateral aid entities.

Arguments supportive of bilateral aid suggest that it is more effective because it attracts more funding due to the compelling strategic reasons that donor countries find to provide aid. These strategic motivations include winning and maintaining allies for military and economic cooperation, preventing rebels or adversaries from taking power away from allied governments, and increasing the standards of living among destitute populaces to prevent transnational threats from emerging. While those who prefer multilateral aid may argue that self-interested strategic considerations diminish the cost-effectiveness of aid, those who prefer bilateral aid would argue that such strategic considerations give donor countries an incentive to provide a larger volume of aid. Similarly, historical ties between donor and recipient countries often make contributing to the recipient more compelling for the donor country. Proponents of bilateral aid also argue that recipients are more likely to use their contributions cost-effectively because they are directly accountable to donor countries.

Though there are strong arguments to be made in favor of both multilateral and bilateral aid delivery channels, an analysis of 45 studies on aid effectiveness found “no empirical consensus on the relative effectiveness of bilateral vs multilateral aid in any particular outcome areas.” However, the study also noted that an examination of specific targeted outcomes from sector-specific aid may lead to different conclusions.

Recognizing that there is no consensus on the most effective development aid channel, it now becomes useful to examine specific aid mechanisms for energy access and climate financing to better understand the likely effectiveness of each financing mechanism or institution in this specific area of development.

Where Does Public Sector Energy Access Financing Come From?

As government officials consider where to allocate public financing to address energy poverty, it is important to first evaluate the current state of public sector energy access financing.

Public sector energy access financing comes from a variety of sources, including multilateral and bilateral development finance institutions (DFIs), national public banks, export promotion agencies, and domestic and international governmental institutions.

Public financing for electricity access has not increased substantially in recent years. According to Sustainable Energy for All’s report Energizing Finance: Understanding the Landscape 2018, “Within the public sector, international financing [for electricity access] from various institutions in absolute terms remained broadly the same over 2013-14 and 2015-16, changing only in the overall percentage of electricity finance, given the increased private financing.” The report concludes that multilateral DFIs were the largest public finance provider in 2015-16 (13 percent), followed by bilateral DFIs (8 percent) and export promotion agencies (6 percent).

In terms of financing for clean cooking in 2015-16, “Multilateral development financial institutions provided the majority of clean cooking finance (45%), followed by bilateral governmental agencies and aid providers (22%).” This represented a large increase from 2013-14 in the share of financing coming from multilateral DFIs. With this said, however, “The significant increase in contributions from multilateral development financial institutions is due to a single financial commitment of USD 23 million made in 2015.” Overall financing for clean cooking dropped five percent between the 2013-14 and 2015-16 periods.

Multilateral Energy Access and Climate Aid

Mechanisms like the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and institutions like multilateral development banks provide energy access and climate financing, but each have shortcomings either in the effectiveness of their governance structures or in the extent of their commitments to addressing energy access.

The GCF is a recent creation established to assist the developing world with climate mitigation and adaptation. During the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) in Copenhagen, the developed world pledged to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 to support climate mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. The Green Climate Fund was officially established in 2010 at COP 16 in Cancun to help mobilize this financing. The Paris Agreement in 2015 emphasized the need to mobilize $100 billion per year in climate financing for the developing world and it prioritized the GCF as a key mechanism to achieving this mobilization.

Many of the fund’s mitigation projects focus on energy access. So far, $4.6 billion has been committed to the GCF, $1.8 billion is under implementation, and the fund has 93 projects that are anticipated to avoid an estimated 1.6 billion tons of CO2 equivalent and help 272 million people increase their climate resilience.

While this is all positive, the GCF faces several major challenges. First, while the $4.6 billion of committed funding to the GCF is helpful, it is nowhere close to the volume of money needed to reach the internationally-agreed upon goal of mobilizing $100 billion each year by 2020 from the developed world to support developing countries in the fight against climate change. While the developed world has pledged through the Copenhagen Accord and Paris Agreement to leverage $100 billion annually by 2020, only $10.3 billion has been pledged to the GCF so far.

Second, the GCF has an ineffective governance structure that is in need of reform. At its July 2018 board meeting, the GCF did not approve any projects despite $1 billion being in the queue. A lack of confidence in GCF governance may decrease the likelihood of future contributions.

Multilateral development banks have allocated funding to energy access efforts, but they have still been subjected to criticism for failing to prioritize energy poverty in their overall energy portfolios. In a 2016 Sierra Club/Oil Change International report entitled Still Failing to Solve Energy Poverty: International Public Finance for Distributed Clean Energy Access Gets Another “F”, authors graded four multilateral development banks: the World Bank Group, the Inter-American Development Bank, the African Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank. The report assigned them all “F”s for their energy access efforts and assigned each bank a poor score for the share of their energy portfolio dedicated to energy access.

The Trump Administration and current Congress have not been friendly to multilateral efforts to combat climate change and build clean energy systems in the developing world. For multilateral environmental funds in FY18, Congress appropriated $139.5 million for the Global Environment Facility and $31 million for the Montreal Protocol Multilateral Fund. Though this funding is important for environmental causes, neither of these initiatives are specifically designed to address climate change or energy poverty.

The 115th Congress and Trump Administration have decided not to fund other international climate initiatives like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These institutions are crucial to fostering climate diplomacy and providing policymakers with high-quality climate science assessments. Expressing little dedication to its success, the federal government has also chosen not to fund the Green Climate Fund.

For multilateral development banks in FY18, Congress appropriated $1.097 billion to the World Bank Group, $32.4 million to the African Development Bank, $171.3 million to the African Development Fund, $47.4 million to the Asian Development Fund, and $30 million to the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Though this funding is beneficial to international development, energy access is only a small portion of what many multilateral development banks support.

Bilateral Energy Access and Climate Aid

Though the Trump Administration is no friend to climate financing and foreign aid, the federal government has still pursued bilateral policies to combat energy access and fight climate change.

Perhaps the most notable bilateral effort the United States takes to combat energy poverty is the Power Africa initiative. This initiative brings together government agencies and the private sector with the aim of confronting energy poverty in Africa and adding “more than 30,000 megawatts (MW) of cleaner, more efficient electricity generation capacity and 60 million new home and business connections.” Since 2014, it has spurred $18 billion of financing, mostly from private capital. It has created over 9,500 MW and 12.5 million new electrical connections with 57 million individual beneficiaries.

Most U.S. climate finance is delivered through bilateral funds. Most is channeled through the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a self-sustaining government agency that helps American businesses make investments in the developing world, provides the largest volume of U.S. climate financing at an average level of $1 billion per year for renewable energy projects. OPIC provides support through direct loans and guarantees, political risk insurance, and investment funds. The agency claims that more than half of its new project commitments each year involve a small business. OPIC takes part in the federal government’s Power Africa project.

What Energy Sources and Technologies Should the U.S. Support?

In addition to a determination about the effectiveness of multilateral and bilateral financing, American policymakers interested in addressing energy poverty must also ask themselves: what energy sources and technologies should U.S. foreign assistance for energy poverty support?

This question can only be answered by exploring whether energy access financing should be allocated for fossil fuels or renewables and whether it should be allocated for centralized or decentralized solutions.

Those who believe that energy access financing should be used to promote the use of fossil fuels argue that fossil energy sources are cheaper than clean energy sources and therefore can lift more people out of poverty. An argument for this theory can be found in the Center for Global Development’s 2014 paper Maximizing Access to Energy: Estimates of Access and Generation for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation’s Portfolio, in which authors “conservatively estimate that more than 60 million additional people in poor nations could gain access to electricity if the Overseas Private Investment Corporation were allowed to invest in natural gas projects, not just renewables.”

Those who believe that energy access financing should be used to promote renewable energy argue that energy poverty can be addressed more quickly and sustainably with decentralized renewable energy solutions. As Rachel Kyte argued in congressional testimony, an understanding of both Sustainable Development Goal No. 7 and the Paris Agreement show that the world must combat energy poverty sustainably. She argues that this path will be driven by decentralization, digitalization, and decarbonization. Proponents of renewables argue that clean energy can be easily deployed in the decentralized forms that are needed to reach the 84 percent of energy poor living in hard-to-reach rural areas.

Proponents of investing in decentralized energy sources argue that though centralized grid extension appears to be the current de facto solution to energy poverty, the grid has failed to reach rural areas, is unreliable in many areas, and is unaffordable for many poor households. They point to the 84 percent of energy poor residents who live in rural areas where grid extension is expensive. To reach SDG No. 7 by 2030, they argue, decentralized clean energy solutions must be utilized. The International Energy Agency has reported that achieving universal energy access by 2030 will require new investment for energy solutions according to the following proportions: mini-grid (40 percent), grid extension (36 percent), and off-grid (24 percent). Totaling the funding percentages needed for mini-grid and off-grid solutions shows that 64 percent of additional investment needs to go to decentralized solutions.

Proponents of centralized grid investments believe that small-scale, off-grid and decentralized energy technologies cannot meet the needs of high energy consumption associated with rising standards of living. They argue that energy consumption rather than energy access is associated with high human development outcomes. They suggest that decentralized solutions can exist where they supplement grid extension or otherwise support industrial economic enterprises or promote agricultural productivity. However, they insist that decentralized energy sources cannot replace energy and infrastructure needed for industrial-scale enterprises. To end energy poverty, this line of thinking goes, energy access financing must prioritize central grid development for large-scale enterprises.

Should Development Finance Prioritize Rural Populations or Industrialization?

With limited resources, policymakers must consider whether to prioritize energy projects for industrialization or for rural populations. Industrial-scale projects require much more energy than projects for rural households.

Those who support development finance for industrial-scale projects argue that industrialization is the main hope for developing countries to grow their economies. They point to rapid urbanization and the large numbers of developing country residents that have descended upon cities and left rural areas behind. Though rural populations suffer from energy poverty disproportionately, supporters of industrial-scale projects suggest that urbanization is necessary to achieve universal energy access. They suggest that industrial-scale investments will pay long-term dividends that will create more economic opportunity and material wealth.

Supporters of energy access investments in rural areas note that 84 percent of those in energy poverty live in rural areas. While cities have access to at least some energy supply, rural populations often have very little or none. Those who prioritize rural energy access suggest that urbanization is not necessary for universal energy access. They suggest that rural populations are being neglected as a disproportionate percentage of energy access financing is allocated to centralized grid technologies that primarily benefit urban areas. Energy access is foundational to economic opportunity and social mobility, and supporters of rural energy projects believe that rural residents deserve opportunity and mobility just as urban populations do.

Recommendations for U.S. Policymakers

As American policymakers consider how to respond to the challenge of energy poverty, they should prioritize investment in decentralized renewable energy sources for rural areas through bilateral channels.

Certainly, the U.S. should continue to support multilateral institutions and mechanisms like the Green Climate Fund and help to facilitate centralized grid extensions and connections where it makes the most sense. However, making bilateral investments in decentralized renewable energy solutions is likely the optimal way to proceed for American policymakers concerned about energy poverty.

Multilateral initiatives and institutions like the Green Climate Fund and multilateral development banks are addressing energy poverty, but sustainably addressing energy poverty is not the driving mission of many of these organizations. The GCF must address its governance challenges before the U.S. should see it as a stable mechanism to address energy poverty with low-carbon sources. Multilateral development banks must increase their contributions to energy poverty projects and the share of their energy portfolios dedicated specifically to energy access. If multilateral institutions can demonstrate greater stability and attentiveness to energy poverty, then American policymakers concerned about energy poverty can allocate more money to them with the understanding that they will be effective partners in the fight against energy poverty. In the meantime, however, American policymakers would be better off scaling up and replicating the model of Power Africa. Such bilateral initiatives also have the benefit of giving the U.S. direct control over how to spend its own money.

U.S. policymakers should primarily allocate financing to decentralized renewable solutions. Decentralized renewable energy is the best hope to effectively address energy poverty and climate change at the same time. As population and energy consumption increase in the developing world, it will become more important to identify opportunities for the developing world to avoid the fossil fuels that powered the economic rise of countries like the United States. If the developing world cannot develop sustainably, then global average temperature increase will likely surpass the internationally recognized limit of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Though they will not all support large-scale industrial and economic enterprises, decentralized renewable solutions can deliver energy access to those most in need at a far faster rate than the centralized grid can. The energy access problem primarily lies in rural areas, with 84 percent of those in energy poverty residing in rural regions. Granting rural residents access to distributed renewable energy solutions supports better health, education, and economic outcomes. Such opportunities may not come along for many years if rural communities are forced to wait for expensive and logistically-challenging grid extensions and connections. While the amount of energy provided to rural households may be insufficient to transform the economic outlook of a country in the short term, providing even minimal energy access to rural areas can provide the foundation for these communities to begin a path towards greater economic growth and innovation.

As the IEA reported, 64 percent of energy access must come from off-grid and mini-grid solutions in order to achieve universal energy access by 2030. With its limited development finance resources, the U.S. should help grow the proportion of energy access financing dedicated to distributed solutions to a level proportionate with the needed share of such investment.

Conclusion

Energy poverty and climate change are two of the greatest challenges currently facing the international community. By deploying distributed renewable energy solutions across the most energy-poor countries in the world, both issues can be confronted at the same time. Bilateral initiatives like Power Africa should be prioritized as the main method to deliver energy access financing because many multilateral institutions and funds are either facing governance challenges or failing to prioritize energy access. While providing bilateral climate and energy access financing, the U.S. should also support governance reform of the Green Climate Fund and encourage multilateral development banks to pay greater attention to energy poverty. The U.S. should prioritize rural distributed renewable energy projects in its energy access financing. Investments in these technologies will address the energy access problem sustainably and in the rural regions where most of the world’s energy poor reside. By providing bilateral aid for rural distributed renewable energy, the U.S. can do its part to sustainably solve energy poverty.

Replacing Foreign Intervention for Regional Intervention: The African Union’s Critical Role in Mediating the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon

Cameroon’s Anglophone community, which makes up 20% of the population has felt marginalized and excluded from the national government’s agenda since the country’s independence from France in 1961. These fundamental grievances have only grown during the past 50 years due to the blatant disregard of the Anglophone problem by President Paul Biya, the six-month internet shutdown in English-speaking regions back in 2017, and human rights violations by national security forces. These separate events have all contributed to the current surge of protests and sporadic violence. While the government attempted to appease the Anglophone minority, efforts proved inadequate and failed to radically dismantle the systematic inequalities and prejudice faced by the Anglophone population. Consequently, a secessionist group emerged in January 2017, under the name The Republic of Ambazonia, with goals to mobilize the Anglophone population in support of a separate ethnostate.  Cameroon’s key foreign partners, the U.S., France, and China, overlook the violence and hostilities in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions due to their ties with the national government and the protection of their interests by Biya in exchange for support. Thus, it is vital that a regional body such as the African Union (AU) intervene immediately in order to deter the possibility of armed conflict and the subsequent destabilization of West and Central Africa.

More importantly, Cameroon’s stability and security is of critical importance to the AU as Cameroon’s military is actively fighting Boko Haram in the far North of Cameroon and militias from the Central African Republic (CAR) in the East of Cameroon. Thus, from a strategic point of view, the AU has high incentives to implement peacekeeping measures in Cameroon in order to guarantee its stability. The AU can play a key role in assisting the Cameroonian government enact sustainable and inclusive reforms that benefit the whole country. Proactive series of actions include establishing an AU mediation intervention that facilitates dialogue between the Anglophone regions and the ruling regime; deploying an extensive peacekeeping operation in Cameroon to closely observe the situation and maintain peace; and urging the Cameroonian government to make immediate social and political reforms that include the voices of Cameroonians from English-speaking regions.

Historical Background & Context

The Anglophone problem dates back to the colonial era when the German colony Kamerun was passed down to Britain and France under a joint administration. Through the 1919 Simon-Milner agreement, both colonial powers unevenly divided the territory along the Picot Provisional Partition Line, with the French having a greater sphere of influence. This resulted in the regions developing separately with “legal, educational, monetary and political agreements being significantly different”. For instance, while the British territory was administered from Nigeria, with a fair amount of autonomy due to Britain’s indirect rule policy, the French applied a centralized form of governance. Once French Cameroun received its independence in 1960, the people of British Southern Cameroon chose to join the already independent Republic of Cameroun without the consent of British Northern Cameroonians who wanted to join independent Nigeria. Eventually, a constitution was drafted and implemented in 1961 for a federal state of Cameroon which united two regions with completely different political cultures. The dissolution of the federal state in 1972 by President Ahmadou Ahidjo into a unitary centralized state was the advent of a gradual effort to belittle Anglophones’ cultural history, customs and socio-political systems by the francophone majority in power. The Anglophone problem has four different dimensions, including:  the 1972 referendum which eliminated the principal idea of federalism from the 1961 constitution; the deliberate and systematic erosion of the Anglophone cultural identity from the union; the dissolution of prevalent Anglophone political parties and imprisonment of their leaders; and the continuous repression of all actions designed to improve the status of Anglophone Cameroonians in the Union. Most importantly, “the lack of proper management seems to be what has aggravated the problem” as noted by the Roman Catholic Bishops of Cameroon in their 2017 memorandum to President Biya. Thus, one can argue that the contemporary conflicts that divide Cameroonians are the result of an inimical relationship between competing European colonial powers (France and Britain), which has had far-reaching consequences due to the two different forms of colonial administration.

The Anglophone Problem: What is the Current Situation Today?

Today Anglophones in Cameroon face various cases of abject marginalization including: under representation in strategic government positions and complete exclusion from others. For instance, out of the 33 appointed ministries, only three Anglophones occupy high-level cabinet positions. In the judicial system, out of the 1,542 active magistrates, 1,265 are francophone and 277 are Anglophone. As for judicial officers, there are 514 in total, 499 Francophone and 15 Anglophones. Anglophone student unions have repeatedly complained about the institutional nepotism and the exclusion of qualified Anglophones in admissions into state professional schools, particularly schools of administration, medicine, and higher teacher training---even in the Anglophone regions. In the educational sector, there are various instances of discrimination where the francophone-majority government disproportionately appoints francophone trained teachers to Anglophone educational institutions. This is problematic because Anglophone teachers are further robbed of employment opportunities within their own native regions. Additionally, francophone teachers don’t bother to follow the English Educational Subsystem (which reflects British educational models) depriving students of a full English education that they pay for.

Another glaring inequality is the unequal disbursement of funds in the country and quality of infrastructural development in Anglophone regions versus Francophone regions. Due to the lack of an influential voice in political spaces, it is harder for Anglophone Cameroonians to advocate against the neglect of infrastructure development in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon. It is also harder for them to advocate for the relocation of top business plants to their regions that contribute to local economies. The consequence of this is Anglophone regions are under-resourced and struggle to meet annual development goals because of inadequate attention.

The issue that is really at the core of the Anglophone crisis and recent protests is public belief in the systematic erosion and disrespect of the Anglophone identity. Specific examples include national entrance exams into professional schools only being in French and state institutions only producing documents and public notes in French. While tensions have always existed between Anglophones and Francophones, they have never been as acute as they are now. The vast majority of Anglophones are frustrated with the systematic targeting of their culture and continuous attempts to absorb them into the francophone language, education and governance system.  Such grievances are what led to the most recent October 2016 peaceful protests by Anglophone lawyers followed by major teacher unions’ strikes. The government responded through repressive measures with the arrests and murders of prominent Anglophone elites suspected of fueling the resistance. While war crimes are being committed on both sides, it is important to note that the movement was originally peaceful. However, it has fallen into the hands of Anglophone extremists and separatists who responded with violence after the Cameroonian military directed attacks towards civilians.  

Since the crisis escalated in 2017, the humanitarian situation has spiraled. According to reports from International Crisis Group, at least 500 civilians have been killed during clashes between armed secessionist groups (Red Dragons, Tigers and Ambazonia Defense Forces) and national military forces. Based on a Human Rights Watch report, an estimated 32,600 Cameroonians have taken refuge in Nigeria’s Cross River state, with 244,000 civilians displaced in the Far North and 437,500 in the Anglophone North West and South West regions. Students in Anglophone (North West and South West) have been the most affected by this crisis. This is because they have been deprived of an education with schools shutting down for security concerns. According to UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), an estimated 42,500 children were still out of school as of May 2018 and most schools did not open in 2018.

What Can Be Done by the African Union?

The African Union has the potential to serve as a credible and vital mediator in mitigating the Anglophone crisis. The AU’s  mission is to help create an “integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in a global arena”. While the organization strives to resolve and establish peace in several conflicts throughout the continent, the emphasis on post-conflict resolution rather than the implementation of peacekeeping and preventive measures has left room for several countries to slip into armed conflicts. A similar situation prevails with the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon. Failure to act quickly by engaging with key Anglophone leaders and the current government to mediate inclusive, safe, and open dialogue could lead to an armed conflict which would destabilize Cameroon and ultimately undermine the AU’s security goals in the region. Aside from the prominence and influence that the organization carries in Africa, the AU has more familiarity and common ground with the Cameroonian government due to the shared African context than international organizations such as the United Nations. Thus, instead of solely relying on international assistance, as a respected continental organization, the AU should be able to approach this delicate situation with more depth and understanding of cultural context. This could increase receptivity from the local Cameroonian government and Anglophone populations.

The sporadic violence in Anglophone regions has left the vast majority of Anglophone Cameroonians mistrustful of their government, making the idea of secession even more attractive. A special envoy needs to be appointed by the Chairperson of the AU Commission, Hon.Moussa Faki, and deployed to Cameroon. A group of representatives and mediators need to be strategically positioned in the Northwest and Southwest regions as well as in the capital city (Yaoundé) to engage in both high-level and local mediation or conflict-prevention. In order to deter the possibility of armed conflict, this special envoy would have to ground their actions in the principles of confidence-building mediation. This means that their prime responsibility would be to transform the political and psychological dynamics of the parties involved.  Anglophone Cameroonians would be willing to dialogue in the presence of an honest broker that creates a calm and safe place for them to articulate their concerns to the central government.

As a trusted third party, the AU would play a critical role in stabilizing the current crisis in Cameron and ensuring that a constructive roadmap exists between the government and Anglophone minority. While sending a special envoy to Cameroon to mediate dialogue between the affected parties is important, that would only address a facet of this complex issue. In addition to the institutional measures taken by the AU, Hon. Moussa Faki should urge the Peace and Security Council (PSC) to authorize a peace support mission. This would help to bring an end to human rights abuses by military officials and secessionist groups. This peacekeeping mission could be between 2,000 and 3,000 civilian police and technical personnel to promote greater respect for human rights and serve as a buffer between the two opposing parties.

In response to grievances and political demands made by the Anglophone population, Biya’s regime has implemented quick bandage solutions that have not targeted the root causes of Anglophone frustrations. Reforms have not only been deemed inadequate but have been criticized among Anglophone leaders as being “a little too late. The AU should strongly urge the Cameroonian government to cease the continuous denial of the Anglophone problem. Instead, by recognizing that there is an issue and implementing viable solutions could go a long way in de-escalating the current crisis. An equal percentage of Anglophones and Francophones not only need to be appointed to high levels of government in order to reflect the diverse nature of the Cameroonian society, but Anglophones need to be politically empowered. This means providing equal access and real opportunities to resolve the socioeconomic and political inequalities faced by the Anglophone population in the country.

The vast majority Anglophones have lost hope in the current social contract because it curtails their freedoms and fails to hold the government accountable. The most obvious recommendation that could be made to the Biya regime by the AU would be to decentralize the government. While this is enshrined in the 1996 Constitution of Cameroon, it was never implemented.  The promotion of local governance would empower Anglophone communities in the North and Southwest regions. Returning to a federal system where Anglophones and Francophones can practice self-determination would allow different provinces to implement comprehensive policies, create impactful changes in the lives of their constituents and foster sustainable economic development. Furthermore, the devolution of power would enhance accountability and transparency in the management of state affairs, while lessening the rampant corruption in government. The prolonged crisis will further divide the country along linguistic and geographic lines. Thus, the support of these recommendations by the AU would provide viable solutions to instilling greater national cohesion amongst Cameroonians and ensuring the security and stability of the country.

Limitations & Alternatives

When considering possible gridlocks to implementing these recommendations, there are high chances that Biya’s regime will not only resist the AU mediation and conflict prevention intervention, but will also dismiss the recommended reforms. While questions of sovereignty and intervening in affairs within the domestic jurisdiction of Cameroon arise, the AU has a duty to fight crimes against humanity and the responsibility to protect (R2P) innocent African lives. The AU cannot and must not sit back and watch as the Cameroonian government marginalizes and violates the human rights of its citizens. The Cameroonian government should not be given a free pass to repress the fundamental rights of its citizens. The AU’s Peace and Security Council could also argue that compared to other African countries where the AU is involved, the situation in Cameroon has not reached a level where it deserves an intervention. This mindset is the fundamental problem with the AU:  the organization is so actively involved in post conflict reconstruction and fails to take the necessary precautionary measures for conflict prevention and peacekeeping in several African countries that are on the brink of war.

Failure to dedicate attention to Cameroon now when the situation is still semi-manageable could escalate the crisis to a point of no return. The destabilization of Cameroon would only make the AU’s job harder, as containing transnational crime and terrorists’ organizations without the help of the Cameroonian army would pose a greater challenge. In the event that the proposed measures fail, Honorable. Moussa Faki should urge the Assembly of the AU to impose targeted sanctions on the Cameroonian government and those undermining the stability of the country. Targeted economic sanctions backed by the U.S, France, China and the ECCAS regional community should be swiftly implemented. Since Cameroon has already been stripped of the right to host the African Cup of Nations, the threat of shocking Biya into action that Julius Amin proposes is currently powerless. Thus, economic sanctions will hopefully push the Cameroonian government to be more responsive to the needs of its citizens.

Three targeted solutions that would tackle the Anglophone crisis holistically include: the AU engaging with key Anglophone leaders and the current government to mediate inclusive and open dialogues amongst both parties; the AU preserving human rights through the deployment of a peace mission to Cameroon; and the AU demanding that the current Biya regime make reforms that lead to the gradual decentralization of government and the devolution of power. The potential impediments to implementing these recommendations include the resistance by the Cameroonian government to AU intervention or to implement proposed changes and the refusal of the Peace and Security Council to authorize a peace operation to Cameroon. However, the AU must play its role in promoting African security and step up to the challenge. Instead of continuously relying on foreign intervention and waiting for the U.S., France, or China to meddle in regional affairs, the AU should seek support from African countries such as Chad, Nigeria, Niger, and Ghana in order to ensure the stability of Cameroon. Cameroon, is a vital security partner in the fight against terrorism in the West and Central Africa. Thus, ensuring its stability should be one of the African Union’s primary concerns in order to deter the possibilities of a violent armed conflict, that would have serious consequences for the entire region.

We have seen this Movie Before! Perspectives on the South Sudanese Peace Process

South Sudan’s painful history tells us that this summer’s installment is a movie that we have seen before and one that ends badly. The June peace agreement between President Salva Kiir and his rival and former vice president, Riek Machar, is not sufficiently different from the previous one to have an alternate ending. That these two villains of the story failed to even shake hands at the signing ceremony is an ominous preview.

War is the history of South Sudan. War is what led to independence in 2011 after more than six decades of conflict with the government of what is now South Sudan’s northern neighbor, Sudan. The current conflict started just two years after the independence of South Sudan, while the population was only beginning to build the new nation after so many years of violence and deprivation. The new fighting displaced more than 2 million people beyond South Sudan’s borders and about half of the remaining population has needed food aid just to survive. Horrific abuses and violence against ordinary civilians is what most characterized this conflict which has pitted communities against one another along ethnic lines, thereby only deepening the wounds and grievances which now threaten to destroy the social fabric of the world’s youngest country.

The recent agreement has silenced the guns for now, but few differences exist between the most recent peace agreement and past agreements that quickly failed. It is described as a power-sharing accord but looks more like a distribution of spoils. President Kiir will remain in power and his supporters will obtain 20 of 35 ministerial posts, and 338 of the 550 seats in an enlarged parliament. Meanwhile Dr. Machar will again become the first Vice-President of the five Vice-Presidents, and his supporters will have nine ministerial posts, and 128 of the remaining parliamentary seats. The remaining posts and seats will be distributed to smaller groups that have also become embroiled in the conflict. The peace deal even fails to specify how collective decision-making is supposed to work.

This type of transitional government is too large (and costly) and does not address the critical structural issues such as the distribution of resources from the central government to the local governments, to meet the needs of people where they live. South Sudan has yet to determine the number of administrative units (states) that will constitute the country, or even what system of governance will work best.

The agreement, moreover, does not address the crimes against humanity and war crimes that were committed during the last five years by the government and the opposition fighters. The impunity that this peace agreement actually bestows on the warring parties is mind-boggling.

South Sudan as a Nation faces complete collapse if the warring parties don’t put their nation first before any political interest. The competing political interests of the groups who control South Sudan’s future unfortunately impedes South Sudan from realizing its full potential. South Sudan as nation has an amazing potential for success, with over 73 percent of its population under 25 years old. This constitutes one of the youngest population in the world, and this population is empowered with South Sudan’s enormous natural resources from oil, diamond, gold, and Zinc etc. The unique characteristics of South Sudan itself are also imperiled by the inability of political leaders to reach a lasting agreement. The nation has the White Nile cutting the country into East and West and the biggest swamp the Sudd in Africa and an amazing animal resources with one of the biggest wildlife migration in the world. It has one of the most fertile land states in the world for agriculture and food production, yet unfortunately 50 percent of the population is in need of food aid.

The reality on the ground is that South Sudanese politics is run by old men and military generals who operate exclusively by the power of the guns. Women and young people are not allowed the space to contribute in a society where they make up the overwhelming majority of the population. South Sudan needs an inclusive environment for all its people, it is a diverse country with over 65 ethnicities and over 200 language dialects. That is an environment where everyone should and needs to have the space to voice their options and their ideas because of its diversity. The oppression and the suppression of ideological diversity leads to the quagmire we are in now as a nation.

An environment that is not only open but also empowering to its women and youth could enable South Sudan to finally reach its full potential. An environment that is peaceful means the reconstruction of schools, hospitals, and the development of institutional infrastructure of the country can occur. Such institutional infrastructure could support a functioning government with with checks and balance in place on the National Legislature, Supreme Court and executive branch so they do not have a blank check to destroys the lives of ordinary South Sudanese without consequences.  

The Civil War in South Sudan caused the death of 400,000 people in a expand of a five-year period, it has a higher death rate per a year than Syria which is also in term oil, that tells all you everything you need to know about the brutality of the war in South Sudan. It has completely destroy the social fabric, political atmosphere, and the lives of countless millions of innocent South Sudanese which we can never put a prices on, it is something that is truly gone. This why this peace agreement must succeed not just because of the dead but because of the misery millions are suffering under the current status quo in the country. This must change and it need to change to save the country from totally collapse, you have an economy that is nonexistent and a population that sadly does not see a future in their own country.  

While the fighting has stopped, South Sudanese politicians must try to build a better deal. A new peace deal should create a Special Court to bring to justice those who have committed crimes against civilians and, simultaneously, a truth and reconciliation commission to begin the hard work of publicly addressing this recent horribly violent history in a manner that permits South Sudanese to live in peace together. This is critical because of the strong revenge culture that has evolved in South Sudan due to the absence of justice. Truth, forgiveness, and reconciliation is the only way to reverse the negative cultural attitudes that exist.  

The youth and women of South Sudan are the most marginalized populations in the country, yet they are not included in the peace process even though they are the most affected by the war. Their lives torn apart, and they often have no sense of hope because opportunities are hard to find. This is because competition among the political elites neither allows for space for the youth and women to have a say in their own affairs nor does it allow for investment in the development of opportunities for youth and women.  

In order for this for this peace process to succeed this time around, women and youth must be included so that it reflects the demographics of the population of the country. It's in the best interest of the political leaders to invest in women and youth so that this peace process is not seen as the divide up of the riches between the political elites but instead a process that will transforms the country from war into a peaceful society where ordinary citizens can go about their daily lives without disruptive violence. The future of the country hang in balance unless true changes are made in regard to the inclusion of youth and women in the political process. Women and youth can make or break this peace agreement if they do not see a way forward for their lives for the better.

The South Sudan conflict must be addressed at more than the surface level and this requires new mediators to work with South Sudanese on the systemic issues at the heart of the conflict in South Sudan – representation and the distribution of national resources. The IGAD (The Intergovernmental Authority on Development) is a regional organization of east African countries. IGAD member countries have immediate, deep and often conflicting interests in South Sudan including unrealistic expectations regarding economic gains. A better mediator would be the African Union with the support of the international community, especially those countries – like the United States – who helped South Sudan gain its independence in the first place.

The African Union should be able to see the longer-term imperative of a lasting peace in the broader interest of not only South Sudan and it’s east African neighbors but of the continent as a whole whose urgent agenda of economic development absolutely requires an end to all regional conflicts. Through the assistance of neighbors and the adequate inclusion of women and youth populations in a new political space established by a revised South Sudanese peace agreement, the nation could realize its immense potential for success in the future.

Warding Off the Resource Curse: How Ghana’s Political Institutions Help Manage Oil Wealth

As global energy prices begin to recover from a four year slump, oil majors are shifting their focus towards oil and gas deposits in sub Saharan Africa. The African continent is rich in energy resources, and extractive industries play a prominent role in several African economies. At the same time, however, major energy producers including Nigeria and Angola suffer from underdevelopment, conflict, and varying degrees of corrupt governance. This is likely due to the resource curse, which describes how resource wealth undermines political, economic, and social growth. With strong empirical and real-world evidence to support the existence of the resource curse, observers may be worried about the growing oil industry in Ghana, a country often lauded for its healthy democracy. Yet Ghana continues to sidestep this expectation of instability, and its experience with oil highlights how strong political institutions can channel resource wealth into development funds, turning a curse into a blessing.

The Resource Curse: Too much of a good thing

Existing literature identifies several paths through which resource wealth undermines economic growth. When commodities account for a significant portion of exports, global commodity prices drive currency value, undermining other export bases. Fluctuating global prices also reduce the potential for long-term macroeconomic planning, as constantly shifting revenue bases undermine budgeting. Finally, resource rich states face much weaker incentives to raise productivity, reducing investment in education. Tellingly, Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, continues to struggle with development and poverty reduction even as oil exports reached $34 billion in 2017.

Moreover, resource wealth appears to undermine good governance. Leaders in oil rich states often depend on patronage networks for support, weakening representative rule. These governments break the social contract; without the need to secure public support, and with it, tax revenue, they forego spending on public goods. Since Chad developed its domestic gas market with international funding in the early 2000s, notorious autocrat Idris Debby has bolstered spending on those security services which are personally loyal to him, while reducing his dependence on popular support for continued power.

Despite the strong body of evidence supporting the resource curse, countries like Botswana, Chile, Malaysia, and Norway stand apart from Nigeria, Venezuela, and Algeria. While both groupings hold significant resource wealth, the former have used their wealth to substantially reduce poverty and increase output as a direct result; the latter grouping struggles with corruption, poverty, and political violence. This disconnect points towards a new academic discussion regarding the role of political institutions in mediating economic outcomes, popularized by Acemoglu and Robinson’s Why Nations Fail. Acemoglu and Robinson argue that political and economic institutions exert feedback on one another, and are either extractive, in that they benefit the ruling elite at the expense of the public, or inclusive, in that they have low barriers to participation and provide collective benefits. Even within democratic and inclusive governments, specific types of political formation affect the management of resource wealth. Political institutions which promote political cooperation, distribute revenue to the local level, and maintain accountable institutions can ward off the resource curse, as seen in the case of Ghana.

Ghanaian Petropolitics

In 2007, the Ghanaian government announced the discovery of the Jubilee oil field in the Gulf of Guinea. With an estimated capacity of two to five billions barrels of oil, oil exports will generate approximately one billion USD in annual revenue for the Ghanaian government until 2032. The initial discovery resulted in tempered enthusiasm. Politicians expounded the benefits of oil, promising high rates of growth and increased government spending. Members of civil society, such as communal groups, community-based organisations (CBOs), national CSOs, and networks and coalitions, warned of the potential risks for corruption and environmental degradation. Given the literature on the resource curse, Ghana stands to lose significantly if governmental institutions fail to effectively manage resource wealth, with potential implications for economic and political stability.

As a model of post colonial political and economic success, Ghana is a stable democracy with competitive elections and a vibrant civil society. The two main parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) hold similar levels of support, and the electoral process is bolstered by strong norms of accountability, as ineffective politicians are often voted out. The military is civilian controlled and independent media is prominent. To match its healthy political profile, Ghana also benefits from a robust economy, despite its dependence on commodity exports and agriculture for revenue. Ghana’s profile makes it a darling of the international business community, with FDI experiencing strong growth over the last three decades.

Ghana rapidly developed a complex legal framework to govern oil wealth in response to the 2007 Jubilee field discovery. Civil society groups, with the case of neighboring Nigeria in mind, put heavy pressure on both parties to develop a transparent governing body to oversee the management of oil export revenue, resulting in the creation of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA). Under the PRMA, 70% of oil export revenue is allocated to the annual budget, where it is distributed into categorical grants across the four “pillars” of development identified by the PRMA: amortization of existing loans, infrastructure, agricultural modernization, and capacity building. The remaining 30% of funds are distributed between two sovereign wealth funds, the Ghana Stabilization Fund (GSF), which receives 21%, and services debts and hedges against price fluctuations, and the Ghana Heritage Fund (GHF), which uses the remaining 9% of funds to invest in economic diversification and maintain good credit standing. However, as Ifediora points out, the existence of sovereign wealth funds alone does not guarantee accountable resource wealth management. Instead, countries must avoid volatile political party competition, decentralize governance, and ensure strong mechanisms of accountability within and outside of government.

The first factor, party competition, determines the degree to which politicians in resource-rich states prioritize funding on long-term development versus partisan goals. In countries where fierce political competition , parties focus on delivering short term benefits to core constituents, undermining much-needed investments in infrastructure and modernization. Mohan and Asante characterize Ghana’s two-party system as a “competitive clientelist state,” as free and fair elections contrast with parties’ use of political office to dispense patronage. Moreover, the Ghanaian constitution concentrates power within the incumbent party, which turns elections into winner-take-all affairs. This system may exacerbate the risk of the resource curse. Given the current state of politics, it’s likely that the NPP and NDC would use oil revenue to spend on influential voting blocs, notably public servants, without making the investments needed to sustain development. While the PRMA should keep politician’s hands out of the money purse, both parties have raided special funds for mineral wealth in the past. In addition, the winner-take-all system undermines macroeconomic planning. When a new party comes into power, key civil service positions experience high turnover. With opposing ideological views of the management of oil wealth, the NDC and NPP will likely politicize key government organs involved in the process, undermining economic planning.

Another area of risk lies in the lack of decentralization of political power in Ghana. Government centralization determines the ability for resource wealth to be effectively distributed to sub-national units. Fiscal federalism is designed to channel wealth to local institutions, which are often more effective than the central government at spurring local development. Ghana’s unitary political structure is designed to centralize governance and weaken Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), as MMDA’s are given little discretionary authority and are often controlled by nominees appointed by the ruling party in Accra. Oil wealth risks further centralizing political authority. As a small number of actors in a political system gain access to increased revenue, the risk of corruption increases, and the incentives for the government to pursue decentralization decrease. In the case of Nigeria, politicians in Lagos derailed early efforts at widespread fiscal decentralization in order to secure control over oil wealth. In the long term, even if Ghanaian politicians pursue development with their newfound funds, programs will likely be top-down and centrally driven, instead of the locally tailored development initiatives proven to be the most effective way to achieve poverty reduction.

The third and final area of focus is accountability. While volatile political party competition and centralized government increase the risk of a resource curse, a strong civil society can use accountability mechanisms to mitigate the worst outcomes. When oil was discovered in 2007, Ghanaian civil society responded with several demands. In March 2010, political and environmental activists established the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas to educate voters about their rights and expectations with an oil-exporting government, and to create linkages between politicians, oil companies, and communities affected by oil extraction. The Platform rallied the necessary political support to pass the PRMA and create the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), which is a thirteen-member independent body which audits government oil-wealth expenditure. In response to attempts by political parties to secure control over the PIAC during the drafting process, the Platform used social media and rallies to ensure PIAC’s integrity. As a result, 90% of all Platform suggestions were incorporated into the final versions of the PRMA and PIAC. Yet, in terms of their operational capacity, the PIAC remains underfunded and the PRMA is occasionally flouted. The strength of these institutions doesn’t come from their formal capacity, which is weakened by top-down pressure, but from their bottom-up linkages to civil society, which can engage in activism on behalf of these bodies when political parties mismanage oil wealth.

A case for limited optimism

In summary, Ghana will experience nominal benefits from oil wealth. Due to the presence of sovereign wealth funds and civil society pressure, the worst effects of the resource curse on Ghana’s political economy will be avoided. On the economic front, Ghana will successfully avoid revenue instability and investment crowd out. Its diversified commodity exports and GSF serve as cushions, dampening the negative effects of price volatility. Investment crowdout is a low risk, since the GHF is committed to reinvesting into the agricultural sector, which is typically the first victim of currency valuation in oil-exporting nations. Ghana should invest more heavily into commodities with inelastic prices to bolster existing efforts within the GHF to keep the cedi’s value stable. On the other hand, the emergence of oil will require careful management of debt. The PRMA allows the government to use oil revenue as collateral for international loans, despite the best efforts of the Platform to get the provision removed. Given parties’ propensity to spend heavily before elections, and the ever shifting price of oil, the NDC and NPP risk raising the debt level. Since the discovery of oil, external debt has ballooned by 200% to $14.8 billion. On the political front, Ghana will see more volatile electoral politics, although the worst risks of corruption will be avoided thanks to the efforts of civil society groups. Incumbent’s access to oil revenue will make patronage more convenient and favor short-term spending. As elections become more polarized, independent institutions like the military and judiciary will be subjected to increased political pressures, already a growing issue in the status-quo. Centralized decision making reduces the chance that oil wealth will reduce poverty at the local level. If Ghana does move towards decentralization, the state should work with local civil society to create accountable institutions at the subnational level to ensure that it doesn’t end up exporting corruption to local governments.

Ghana represents an effective application of good governance to resource management.  Despite the volatile structure of politics at Ghana’s core, the worst effects of the resource curse will be avoided, thanks to a combination of strong civil society and a few highly effective institutions. While a wholesale accountable government is the best possible scenario for a resource-rich state, it is not the only way to achieve accountable resource management. World Bank research highlights how the creation of just a few highly-effective institutions, or “pockets of effectiveness” can mimic these effects on a smaller scale. These islands of good governance can channel the positive effects of inclusive political systems without requiring serious governmental reform. In Ghana’s case, these institutions include the independent agencies set up by the PRMA, supported by civil society. Ghana therefore supports the growing body of economic literature which highlights the important role of institutions in managing sustainable growth. Policymakers should use Ghana as an example of how to implement effective reform to staunch the risk of a resource curse by supporting civil society and few strong institutions. While Ghana’s party system and unitary politics entail small risks, realistic development programs should focus on high-impact support to a few effective institutions instead of seeking wholesale reform of a political economy.

Putin and the Central African Republic: Implications of Russian Involvement for Future Peace Prospects

Moscow’s involvement in Sub-Saharan Africa is growing in a manner not seen since the Cold War. Since 2016, Russia weapons, advisors and mining contracts have been quietly trickling into the Central African Republic (CAR), in a new twist to the ongoing conflict. CAR is still recovering from the destabilizing effects of the 2013 civil war and the ensuing intercommunal violence. Despite the presence of a UN peacekeeping force with strong European backing, the Central African state only controls 20% of the country, and one quarter of the population remains displaced. Even prior to the recent violence, CAR ranked at the bottom of most development indicators, the result of a negligent colonial past and external backing for post-colonial autocrats. Today’s violence stems from these unresolved historical legacies and the state’s structural failings. The subtle presence of Russian weaponry and military expertise, a model tested and perfected in Ukraine and Syria, risks worsening ongoing violence and weakening democratic growth. External support for a peaceful resolution to the conflict requires engaging with local communities to renegotiate the social contract, rebuilding inter-communal trust, and ensuring the primacy of CAR’s nascent democratic institutions. Such policies require careful coordination between Addis Ababa, Washington, Paris, Brussels, and now, Moscow.

In 2013, coalition of armed groups known as the Séléka and largely composed of Muslim Central Africans marched on the capital, Bangui, in a bid to remove long-time President François Bozize. In response, a mostly Christian armed movement called the anti-Balaka formed, and thousands died in the ensuing sectarian violence. While the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) deters armed groups from marching on Bangui, it lacks the capacity to restore state presence in the rest of the country or to reduce communal tensions. MINUSCA’s attempt to disarm militias in Muslim districts of Bangui generated backlash from community members who fear reprisal attacks absent the presence of informal security actors. Outside of the capital, clashes continue between community self-defense groups, factions from the former Séléka movement, the anti-Balaka, and various transnational armed groups, including the Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The ongoing African Union (AU) peace process attempts to bring together these disparate groups to mediate with the state, with participation from various civil society organizations. This inclusive process has buy-in from most armed groups, who see visible-EU support for the reformed Central African Armed Forces (FACA) as reducing their power to contest the state in the long term, increasing their incentives to negotiate in the short term. Central Africans fear the FACA due to its past involvement in sectarian violence and atrocities. The EU is currently on track to train and equip six battalions, creating a powerful military force that, theoretically, adheres to human rights standards. However, Russia’s involvement in CAR risks sidelining the AU peace process and the EU’s efforts to reform the FACA, while dampening ongoing democratic consolidation in CAR.

Russian engagement in CAR includes economic involvement, military aid, and attempts to build ties with the various armed groups active across the country. Following Moscow’s initial overture on security assistance in mid-2017, the two governments signed bilateral agreements on natural resource extraction. When Presidents Putin and Touadera met in Sochi in October, they discussed opportunities to cooperate on rebuilding CAR’s economy, with a focus on resource extraction, trade and infrastructure development. Russian trucks are now a common sight in northern CAR, carrying equipment to build medical facilities in several small towns. This development-investment strategy has borne fruit, as Bangui and Moscow signed multiple bilateral economic agreements over the last year. The opaque nature of these agreements hints at the involvement of Russian economic elites with close ties to Putin. They likely contain a subtle quid pro quo, in which Moscow provides Bangui with military support in return for Putin’s allies receiving discounted access to CAR’s vast resource wealth, which includes oil, minerals, and rare earths metals.

Moscow’s primary engagement with CAR occurs on the security front. The first joint meeting between the two governments resulted in an agreement for Moscow to provide CAR with security assistance. Moscow followed up by successfully lobbying the UN Security Council (UNSC) for an exemption from the arms embargo facing CAR. Throughout 2018, Russian armaments, ammunition, and civilian and military trainers began arriving into the country. The equipment provided includes 900 Makarov pistols, 5,200 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 140 sniper rifles, 840 Kalashnikov PK 7.62-millimeter machine guns, 270 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 20 man-portable anti-air defense systems, hand grenades, mortars and millions of rounds of ammunition. As the world’s second largest arms exporter (after the United States), Russia enjoys an advantage in supplying industrializing nations, as its equipment is inexpensive. Building off its role in the Cold War, Russia maintains its status as the largest arms supplier for Africa, accounting for 35% of arms imports in the continent. This explains the recent creation of Russian military across Africa, hinting at Moscow’s long-term strategic interests in the region. Amidst a growing appetite for military spending among African governments, increasing arms sales to African states allows Moscow to increase its influence while benefiting the influential Russia military industrial complex.

In addition to security sector assistance, Moscow has an active footprint in CAR in the form of Russian personal, serving in both official and unofficial capacities. There are about 1,400 Russian forces in CAR, most of whom are employed by private military contractors such as Wagner and Sewa Security Services. Russian citizen Valeri Zakarov is one of Touadera’s advisors, and the Central African Presidential Guard employs 400 former Russian special forces. The use of private military contractors (PMC) with unofficial ties to the Kremlin is an emerging component of Russian foreign policy, as demonstrated by events on the battlefields of Syria and Ukraine. Russian personnel in CAR are bolstering state capacity while also forging ties with various armed non-state actors, including the former Séléka fighters. Russian officials met with former Séléka leader Michael Djotodia and current Muslim rebel leaders Nourredine Adam and Abdoulaye Hissene. While a recent joint Russian-Sudanese attempt to mediate between the rebels and Bangui was largely rebuffed by the Touadera administration, which remains committed to the African Peace Process Initiative, Moscow’s growing involvement in the conflict is unavoidable due its economic investments and strategic interests. Entering in negotiations with rebel groups hedges the risk of clashes between rebels and Russians, and grants Russia access to rebel-held territory, which contains several resource rich sites. Moreover, expanding Russian influence with the government and armed factions is a cheap and effective way to undercut Western influence in the region. This intervention may intentionally coincide with growing American isolationism and fraying transatlantic ties, providing a new space for external powers to intervene in Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, Touadera originally agreed to meet with Putin due to his frustration with the under-resources UN mission in the country, and his anxiety over a potential loss of Western interest in the conflict. The Kremlin is bolstering its investments and arms supplies to CAR with the presence of Russian personnel, in order to secure access to natural resources and undercut US influence.

Moscow’s invigorated economic and security engagement in CAR generated surprise in foreign capitals. The EU and U.S. openly welcome Russian support for the Central African state, yet reports indicate that senior western policymakers are deeply unsettled by this unfolding dynamic. The EU continues to focus on training the FACA and Western support for MINUSCA and the AU Peace Process Initiative remains strong. The French, who hold relatively healthy ties with Russia compared to other western states, continue to resist unwelcome foreign involvement in their former colony. Under the policy of Françafrique, Paris holds a vested interest in remaining the so-called gatekeeper for external interventions in Francophone Africa. Even non-western powers are wary of Russia’s engagement, including China. Highly visible Chinese engagement with African states easily outpaced regional initiatives by the United States and Russia. Beijing is aims to hold premium diplomatic access to African capitals, a position it is loath to lose. In response to Moscow’s newfound interest in CAR, Beijing is stepping up its own involvement. In 2018, China absolved the government of CAR of $17 billion of debt, created a training program for Central African government officials and donated military equipment to the FACA. Previously, Chinese firms were present in oil drilling in the northeast, although they shuttered operations during the civil war, after the Séléka-aligned Rebirth of Central Africa (FPRC) criticized the close nature of Beijing-Bangui ties. While Moscow and Beijing push for deeper, potentially competitive, engagement in CAR, Washington and Paris risk being crowded out.

Russia is Washington’s current bogeyman. Moscow’s attempts to support its client states often end up on the opposing end of U.S. foreign policy interests. While Americans may exaggerate the extent to which Russia is a consistently destabilizing force, current Russian involvement in CAR risks exacerbating violence, undercutting the democratic gains and weakening the AU peace process.

First, Russian security involvement will further proliferate small arms in CAR, increasing the lethality of the conflict. The FACA participated in atrocities during the outbreak of the conflict, siding with the anti-Balaka and targeting Muslim civilians for reprisal attacks. Russian efforts to train FACA battalions separate from the EU risks creating a splintered state security service, with one branch lacking human rights training and civilian oversight. Moreover, even if Russian support to the FACA overlaps with current EU efforts, the risk of arms spillage is high, as the FACA is plagued by corruption and theft. Past research highlights how increased small arms flows prolong conflicts and increase civilian casualty rates.

Second, Russian involvement is working against the delicate peace process. The AU Peace Process Initiative relies on momentum from the recent Bangui forum to engage with all armed factions, civil society, and the government. This process is broadly inclusive and encourages groups to compile lists of grievances, which can serve as a starting point for future negotiations. Reconciliation at this stage is critical, and Russian attempts to start a new peace process without consulting Bangui represent a dangerous trend. Forum shopping occurs when international actors fail to collaborate in a domestic context, leading different domestic factions to selectively engage with deals that suit them. This race to the bottom fosters distrust and empowers spoilers. In the case of CAR, the presence of a separate peace deal could provide rebel factions with additional leverage over the Touadera administration, or splinter rebel groups and prolong the conflict regardless of the outcome of the AU Peace Process Initiative.

Third, Russian security support for the government combined with investments in the extractive resources sector weakens CAR’s democratic institutions. President Touadera enjoys international support and a reputation as a reformer committed to democratic norms. Yet Central African political institutions remain weak, in terms of capacity and popular support. Historically, external involvement played a crucial role in African elites’ incentives to engage in political reform. External security assistance and access to natural resource rents increase the costs of reform for elites. Powerful backers provide crucial support for elites who rule over hollow states with little legitimacy, as was the case with the French-backed Central African autocrats who dominated most of the postcolonial era. Resource rents provide revenue to elites independent of taxation, eroding bottom-up accountability and the state’s provision of public goods. While these outcomes are far from likely in the short term, the pressures of external military support and increased resource exploitation for CAR, which has a history of unaccountable autocrats, does not bode well. Democratic consolidation enables conflict resolution by providing non-violent means through which communities can resolve contentious issues. In CAR, representation in government and equal distribution of public goods could go a long way to resolving the root grievances at the heart of the conflict.

While the current nature of Russian involvement will further destabilize CAR, careful cooperation between Moscow, Washington, Paris and relevant multilateral institutions could turn Moscow’s new African engagement into a catalyst for peace. On the security front, Russia should work with the United Nations and European Union to provide secure weapons storages and serial numbers to decrease the risks of arms spillage. With that, Russian support for the FACA would promote stability. It would bolster the current trend in which armed groups see their power relative to the state decreasing in the long run. Negotiating from a position from strength while being aware of future time horizons encourages actors to compromise. Moreover, a strong FACA is a crucial step in ensuring state presence across CAR. In terms of the peace process, Russian ties with rebel groups could open up new avenues for back channeling in support of the AU peace process, in which certain armed groups see mainstream external actors as pro-government. Moreover, the limited presence of Russia could spur more productive engagement by other great powers. On one hand, it would limit French dominance over CAR’s domestic affairs. Moreover, it can spur greater US attention to CAR. Finally, Russian investment in CAR’s natural resource industry, coupled with strong western support for democratic reform and local participation, could spur economic growth. The government needs additional revenue to invest in infrastructure and provide public goods. This would support the peace process at the local level, by spurring cross-community trade and restoring state legitimacy. If Russia’s economic interests in CAR win out over its desire to weaken American influence, Moscow can engage collaboratively with other great powers to assist Central Africans in creating sustainable peace.

Security Bazaars and Hybrid States in Somalia

Somalia suffers from instability dating back to the outbreak of its civil war in 1986, due to violence sustained by clan militias, warlords, jihadists, and international armed forces. The Somali Federal Government (SFG) struggles to project power outside of the capital of Mogadishu. State security services are fragmented, and often operate under the influence of local elites. As a result, Al Shabab is making territorial gains in rural south- and central-Somalia, occasionally carrying out deadly attacks in urban centers. Although certain regions of Somalia have become unstable due to the lack of state presence, others have flourished as a result. After state capacity collapsed in the 1990s, many local governments joined forces with communal authorities and private businesses to supply public goods such as power, water, and waste collection. In addition to public goods, informal governance also provides security, and nowhere is this more noticeable than in Somaliland and Puntland. Despite their lack of international recognition and limited external support, they have emerged as the most stable and prosperous regions of Somalia. Although they both share similar state institutions and face the same security threats, Puntland suffers far more violence than Somaliland. The security institutions of these de facto states highlight important lessons about the potential for informal governance to thrive in the face of weak central states. Comparing them reveals how security in hybrid states is mediated by both international and local forces, and provides important lessons for Western actors in Somalia.

Somaliland and Puntland are products of the ongoing Somali civil war (1986-present), which resulted in the collapse of Siad Barre’s Cold War-era regime. During the war, the regime targeted the Isaaq clan, which makes up 80% of Somaliland’s population. Approximately 100,000 Isaaq civilians died and most northern cities were destroyed. In response, the Somali National Movement (SNM) was created, and managed to drive out the Somali army by 1990. In 1991, SNM leaders and politicians met in Boroma to declare the creation of the Republic of Somaliland. Since then, Somaliland has developed an effective system of governance. Democratic elections are held consistently, and civil society is active. Somaliland rarely experiences violence, and is considered one the safest corners of the Horn of Africa.

Unlike Somaliland, Puntland considers itself a unit of Somalia, albeit a highly independent one. It emerged as an autonomous state at a clan conference in 1998, which established a power sharing agreement between Harti sub-clans, the Majeerteen, Dhulbahante and Warsangeeli. Puntland’s formal security and state institutions closely mirror Somaliland’s. However, Puntland has yet to hold competitive, direct elections. The Majeerteen dominate the civil service, and most politicians use political office for patronage and personal enrichment. The police are corrupt, and are distrusted by the public. Other security institutions, formal and informal, compete on behalf of clan elites and foreign backers. This crowded security arena is unable to effectively combat terrorism, and inter-elite violence is common.

Somaliland and Puntland share several characteristics in their approach to state (and security) building. Both are de facto states; they lack international recognition, despite their functioning formal institutions, such as civil service, tax collection, and security forces. Absent access to most formal markets, these states depend on remittances and customs for revenue. As a result, de facto states rely closely on informal institutions to function. Somaliland’s upper legislature, the guurti, draws on clan elders to represent local interests. Police in both Somaliland and Puntland enforce xeer (traditional clan law) in addition to their regular policing duties. This hybrid governance is crucial for providing public goods and building trust in post-conflict states.

In addition to their similar approach to governance, Somaliland and Puntland face the same security threats. The ongoing Yemeni civil war across the Gulf of Aden has significantly increased the circulation of arms and non-state armed groups in the region, and jihadists groups based in central Somalia are looking to expand northward. Al Shabab and the splinter Islamic State in Somalia (ISS) have launched attacks into Puntland, a new and worrying trend. While Somaliland has so far foiled terrorist attacks on its territory, the region is becoming more dangerous. As a result of this fragile security environment and their violent past, Somaliland and Puntland have formidable security structures. More than half of state revenue goes to defense and security.

While Somaliland and Puntland are both de facto states with similar security concerns, security actors in both states face different incentives. One key difference is the role of local elites. Somaliland was created on a framework of consensus - the state is populated by the same sub-clan, which experiences relatively little internal competition. The police effectively cooperate with informal clan actors without appearing impartial, given the close level of cooperation between traditional and formal institutions. Moreover, clan interests overlap with those of the business class and civil society. Security services are supported by informal and formal elites, providing them with legitimacy. Elite buy-in in hybrid states ensures that formal and informal security services cooperate, providing much needed stability in post conflict zones. Puntland’s power structure is much more fractured. The Majerteen sub-clan dominates politics and controls most formal security services. As a result, other clans hold little trust in the state, and instead rely on informal security services, including clan militias and Al Shabab, to provide security. High levels of competition and inequality within formal sectors of de facto  states create rifts and competition between formal and informal security services, generating instability.

Another difference between Somaliland and Puntland is the degree to which external actors are present. Interactions between foreign states and domestic security services functions like a bazaar. Since foreign states pursue their own interests, they tend to select one security actor who can best help them achieve their goals. In the case of Somaliland, the state’s independence from Somalia has isolated it from most external sources of funding. As a result, what little assistance does come in is usually in the form of salaries for police rather than equipment. These funds are small enough to have little influence on the incentives facing domestic security institutions. Puntland, on the other hand, is a perfect example of a crowded and highly competitive security bazaar. Since Puntland is formally attached to the Somali state, several foreign states are present. These external backers have different mandates and interests, and due to the already fractured nature of Puntland, empower different institutions to compete for funding. The United State’s focus on counterterrorism has made it a natural partner for the Puntland Intelligence Agency (PIA) which receives significant backing from the CIA. China invests in coastal bases for the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) who protect Chinese commercial interests from piracy. While these external sources of funding may not appear mutually exclusive on the surface, when combined with the hybrid-nature of Puntland’s state, they generate instability. On one hand, external funding changes the incentives of the big men who head security services. If revenue comes from external sources, they have little reason to be accountable to the population. In addition, external funding risks creating a security dilemma. For the Dhulbahante and Warsangeeli sub-clans, external support tips the balance in favor of the Majerteen who control the state. As a result, other clans turn to informal groups for security, such as clan militias and Al Shabab.

This security dynamic can be seen in police forces in both states. Puntland and Somaliland draw on colonial administrations and the Barre regime as models for their centralized system of policing. In Somaliland, police are mostly concentrated in major cities, and rely on trusted informal security actors to maintain peace and dispense justice in rural areas. They are subordinate to clan elders, and implement xeer in an impartial manner. The only major donor active is the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which pays salaries for the police. Combined with the annual $11.5 million domestic spending on a police force of 6,800, incentives for corruption is low. Somaliland enjoys an effective and accountable policing system thanks its complementary approach to informal institutions, elite-level agreement, and the non-disruptive nature of international assistance. Puntland’s police do occasionally engage with xeer, but most clans choose to use daraawiish (clan militias) for policing due to inter-clan competition. External support for security institutions has come the expense of the police. While state spending on the well-equipped sectors like the PIA and PMPF has gone up, the police have had their salaries cut. As a result, they often turn to bribes and extortion, and enjoy little trust or support. Puntland’s police services lack of accountability stems from their substitution by informal actors at the local level, inter-elite competition that politicizes government institutions, and competing international interests.

U.S. foreign policy could learn important lessons from security institutions in Somalia’s de facto states. Under the Trump administration, U.S. assistance to Somalia is securitized, and drones and special forces are operating with increasing frequency. Traditional U.S. security assistance has approached security sector reform with a state-centric view. This involves creating centralized formal security institutions, which hold a monopoly over force. In Somaliland, effective security institutions developed thanks to their partnership with decentralized and informal security groups. U.S. policy should be more willing to engage with informal security actors, given their high levels of local legitimacy. Moreover, any sort of foreign assistance must always be contextualized - if security institutions are dominated by one group, then external assistance could increase the divide between formal and informal sectors. The case of the PIA shows how state-centric U.S. security assistance can backfire in hybrid states. The PIA’s counterterrorism mandate has turned it into a lethal force thanks to CIA backing. However, it often acts with impunity, killing suspects without any evidence. These tactics have eroded public support for Puntland, further increasing elite’s reliance on coercive security institutions to maintain power. Meanwhile, the police have less funding and the divide between the state and non-Majerteen clans is growing. If Washington is to effectively counter al Shabab and promote accountable governance in Somalia, it must develop ties with informal security actors.

Building Walls in the Sand: The Dangers of Securitizing Borders in the Sahel

In October of 2017, an armed group ambushed and killed four American Green Berets near Tongo Tongo, Niger. The news of their deaths revealed the quiet expansion of the American Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) into sub-Saharan Africa. Along with France, the United States is increasing its posture in the Sahel, building military bases, flying surveillance drones, and deploying special forces. Since the near-collapse of the federal government in Mali in 2013, Western security circles have adopted the language of “ungoverned spaces” to describe the threat in the Sahel. According to this analysis, Sahelian states and their security forces are too weak to patrol their territory, inviting the presence of a web of human traffickers, drug dealers, and terrorists who risk spreading instability into Europe. Washington and Paris are now pushing for Sahelian states to expand their coercive power and secure their borders with the assistance of Western special forces and intelligence. In doing so, they pose threats to long-term stability in the region; blurring lines between armed groups and civilians, alienating local communities, and ignoring the root causes of conflict in the region.

The G5-Sahel Joint Force

The G5 Sahel Joint Force (FC-G5S) is a 5,000 strong force made up of troops from five Sahelian states – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. With the help of French President Emmanuel Macron, the newly created force has the backing of both the African Union and the UN Security Council. With some reluctance, the United States pledged $60 million in support. An additional $165 million will come from the EU and Saudi Arabia. The Joint Force’s mandate will include counterterrorism, law-enforcement, and enforcing state authority. 

The FC-G5S will have to coexist with other security interests in the region. Since 9/11, AFRICOM’s presence on the continent has expanded. It now has a functioning drone base in Agadez, Niger, from which special forces train Sahelian soldiers in advanced counterterrorism tactics. France has 3,000 troops, based in N’Djamena, Chad, as part of a lengthy counter insurgency campaign. The UN peacekeeping mission MINUSMA is based in Bamako, Mali, and seeks to stabilize the country after the 2013 rebellion. It is frequently targeted by insurgent groups and lacks sufficient funding. As a result, MINUSMA holds the title of the world’s most dangerous peacekeeping mission, having lost 150 blue helmets so far. 

Frames of Conflict in the Sahel

The threat that these security organizations seek to contain doesn’t emanate from one organization, but an array of destabilizing factors and autonomous groups. Under French colonialism and after independence, power  shifted from powerful trading communities in the north, including the Tuareg, to southern populations . Political power and the rent that accompanies it are overwhelmingly concentrated in the south. Moreover, the emphasis of the state in the current international system ensures that most developmental assistance and security programs are distributed through Bamako, and therefore favor southern populations. Tuareg separatists have called for greater autonomy and statehood, resulting in frequent rebellions. 

Jihadi groups like Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its affiliates have been active across the region since 2004, and pose a serious threat to MINUSMA operations and state forces. The region’s unofficial trade routes, which connect communities divided by postcolonial borders, are used by traffickers of arms, drugs and migrants. This creates a rich source of revenue, worth $3.8 billion annually, in an otherwise resource-poor area, and many local elites and civil servants engage in rent-seeking behaviors. Sahelian states are unable or unwilling to invest significant resources into the development of periphery areas, where alternative and traditional sources of governance regulate order. 

Borders and Space in the Sahel

Cross-border movement remains a way of life, despite the spread of the western state system. Unlike European states, who had to consolidate control over their territory and develop standing armies to control scarce territory, African states have always enjoyed abundant land. This not only made for less interstate warfare, but also weakened the relationship between the core (the state) and the periphery. Instead of exchanging security for taxation and labor, pre-colonial African states offered a greater degree of autonomy to nebulously defined borderlands. In Baz Lecoq’s analysis of space in the Sahel throughout history, he focuses on the Tuareg concept of ihenzuzagh to describe to fluid and expansive surface which allowed for the free passage of goods and people, sustaining otherwise isolated communities, without the direct control of any specific empire or state. Beginning under French rule and continuing with the creation of post-colonial states, this undefined space was divided into administrative units, and once abundant resources shrank or became inaccessible. Today, Sahelian space is contested – between the governments, regional and western, who seek to expand state power and demarcate borders – and between the assorted communities and social groups who make their lives through cross border trade and movement.  

The FC-G5S would address the old problem of borders and state power with a new regional focus. With international funding, Western material and intelligence, Sahelian states will focus their new security strategy on cementing existing borders. 

A Sandstorm of Troubles

With more than twenty active armed groups operating in the Sahel, it is unclear how the FC-G5S will shape its mandate. Armed groups include AQIM and its jihadi affiliates, criminal organizations, Tuareg separatists (some of whom are in active peace talks with their governments), militia groups, and mercenaries, some of whom are soldiers of Sahelian governments. These groups have gained significant power since the fall of the Qaddafi regime, which saw the widespread proliferation of small and large arms across Western Africa. The FC-G5S will be unlikely to deal with these different factions in the same way. Since the French intervention, most jihadi groups have fled urban areas and now operate out of border towns and rural areas. For these isolated areas, they provide protection to communities abandoned by the government, and launch effective attacks on state targets and UN peacekeepers. They will be difficult to intercept due to their fluid nature, and defeating them will require the goodwill of rural communities. Criminal networks in the region are also unlikely to be affected by the FC-G5S’s activities. Most of them are tied to patronage networks based in state capitals, and some are directly related to influential national leaders. Therefore, the most powerful transnational networks will be largely unaffected. However, Tuareg separatist organizations are likely to be targeted by the FC-G5S. Their often hostile relations to the state and cross-border ties make them easily associated with the task force’s counterterrorism mandate. On November 7, 2017, Task Force soldiers arrested dignitaries of the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), an umbrella groups of Tuareg organizations already in peace talks with the Malian government. Exacerbating tensions with already marginalized Tuareg communities will undermine regional stability.

The greatest risk however, comes from the securitization of the communities who rely on porous borders for their livelihoods, and who have been mostly ignored by the federal government. Given the lack of development in the periphery of most Sahelian states, local communities depend on both licit and illicit trade for income. Heavy government interdiction will result in greater poverty and further marginalization of groups already distanced from the government. Despite the focus by western security circles on ungoverned spaces, the reason for the rise in non-state armed groups in the Sahel stems from their ability to merge with local power structures.. AQIM’s success was based in part on how successfully fighters married into local families, in turn gaining accessing the kinship based trading routes. By merging with local structures, AQIM gained the popularity it needed to eventually establish control over the region. This highlights the power that the local plays in determining power in the Sahel. By cutting off key economic ties, and therefore targeting social institutions, the FC-G5S will further damage the trust of those living in border regions, and ultimately undermine its own goals.

The Way Out

Rather than investing completely in the military capacity of states, the FC-G5S should adopt community-based policing practices and regional development. The Sahel is experiencing a demographic transition, in which high fertility rates continue while mortality rates drop. Creeping desertification is making once abundant land sparser, and a new generation will have to deal with poverty and low government investment in education. 

In this context, security policy in the Sahel should be oriented around providing opportunities and mediate conflict through non-militarized means. Frequent conflict between pastoralists and farmers will continue to grow, and the violence generated, often conflated with insurgent violence, will require mediation from locally respected sources. For criminal networks and terrorist groups to lose the support of local communities, Sahelian states should use western funds to invest in infrastructure, education and climate change adaptation, These approaches should not only focus on top-down policies. Local governments can and should provide context-specific development solutions using local expertise. Politics (and political violence) in the Sahel remains local, and so should the priorities of the G5 Sahel.

Export Processing Zones and Industrial Linkages under the AGOA

In the last issue of The World Mind, I explored the fate of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) under the Trump administration, the implications of its potential termination, and recommendations to policymakers to avoid the undoing of this trade deal that is not reciprocal, but still vital to U.S. interests in Africa.  I made the blanket statement that AGOA has inspired the development of “Export Processing Zones” (EPZ) that build-up infant industries. In this analysis, I will examine my own assumption—do EPZs necessarily bolster infant industries in all cases? What have industry analysts said about EPZs, and if they are not effective, why do they persist?

Export Processing Zones (EPZs)

While “Export Processing Zone” sounds technical, many Americans are familiar with the general concept. In 1934, Congress passed the “Foreign-Trade Zones Act” to manage the negative effects of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act within the U.S. In fact, the United States boasts 277 Foreign-Trade Zones (FTZ) and 500 special purpose subzones, as of 2012. The purpose of these zones is to encourage international business and economic development by having geographical locations across from U.S. ports of entry that allow products from abroad to be used in manufacturing without tariffs.

EPZs and FTZs are both types of “special economic zones,” or geographic areas where business and trade laws are different than the rest of the country.  EPZs are established in the same spirit of encouraging investment, but there are important differences between EPZs and FTZs. The World Bank contends that the main difference lies in the overall development objective. For Free Trade Zones, the objective is to “support trade” in a general sense. Export Processing Zones, as the name indicates, are established to encourage exports, namely in the manufacturing sector. For this reason, EPZs are most prevalent in developing countries because they “attract export-oriented foreign direct investment” meant to build up “infant industries.” The concept of infant industries stems from Alexander Hamilton in 1791 when he argued for government protection of certain potentially competitive U.S. industries from British competition. There is a wide literature on infant industries and the assumptions of the economic system within which they operate. For my purpose of examining export processing zones, I will highlight two applicable parameters of this theory.

Diversion from the Infant Industry Argument  

First, the infant industry argument operates under the assumption that the industry being protected will eventually be competitive in the long-run after its initial period of protection.  For this to be achieved, the industry must rise to a certain scale of production to compete in the global market. In the case of AGOA, exports to the U.S. are able to enter without paying tariffs, like other foreign products.  Therefore, the scale these products must achieve is less (since the marginal cost for these products can be higher) than a country without AGOA. However, since AGOA allows for tariff-free entry into the United States, in some instances already fully scaled multinational corporations (MNCs) invest in Export Processing Zones in Africa by establishing new branches so the products they export from those branches can enter the U.S. market tariff-free. While there’s nothing overtly wrong with this business strategy, it undermines the infant industry framework.

In these scenarios, wealth is being created for the local economy with new foreign direct investment, but the economic surplus that results from research and design, innovation, education, and other spillovers that should characterize booming industries under an infant industry framework, is captured outside AGOA countries. In these cases, even if the industry becomes relatively competitive in the AGOA beneficiary country, the investments being made are not for the long-term.

A 2012 study by Lorenzo Rotunno, Pierre-Louis Vezina, and Zheng Wang argues that “African success” in increasing exports from the continent is attributed to “quota-hopping Chinese firms”. They also found, as theory predicts, that African countries “imported quasi-finished products with little assembly work left to do.” This trend is especially harmful in textiles, a sector that many labor-abundant African countries could benefit from. The expiration of the Multi-Fibre Agreement in 2005, which imposed quotas on the volume of textiles permitted from developing countries to developed, further encouraged multinational firms to re-route through Africa. However redirecting trade through Africa to gain tariff-free U.S. entry can occur in any sector; regulations by African governments and international partners can incite more local investment by these companies.

The infant industry argument also suggests that governments should protect industries that inadvertently bolster other sectors beyond the one being protected. However investments are often made in industries that do not necessarily have linkages to other parts of the domestic economy. For example, by investing in the clothing sector, investments are also being made in the industries that collect raw materials, transport them to the production location, and design new technologies or strategies of increasing productivity.  However, if these linkages are located outside the country, the protection the government is undertaking through the establishment of EPZs (including tax breaks for companies, low labor standards, subsidies, and other incentives) may not result in higher levels of economic development. Howard Stein writes about the regional differences between export processing zones in Asia versus Africa, arguing, “Most zones in Africa have remained rather small, with few linkages to the local economy and small foreign-exchange earnings.” Not only are African countries missing an opportunity for growth, but the incentives aforementioned are costly to local governments. This funding could be channeled elsewhere to ensure linkages, especially if the surplus from transactions in EPZs is not being captured in the local economy.

Beyond these two possible violations of the infant industry argument’s assumptions, the nature of EPZs themselves should be considered to determine how they will affect a country’s long-term economic development and growth.

Criticisms of EPZs in AGOA Beneficiaries

EPZs have drawn many criticisms, the most prominent of which come from  labor rights and deregulation advocates. In a comparative study between EPZs in Asia and Africa, Stein found that “[m]onthly wages for an unskilled textile industry machine operator were less than one third the equivalent wage in Mauritius, half of that in China, and 60 percent of the average wage in India.” In the event of unfair wages, workers in EPZs may be less likely to organize themselves. Unemployment in many AGOA-benefitting countries is high, so workers who organize are able to easily be replaced.  In some countries, such as Togo, hiring and firing laws are different in EPZs. Some multinational companies also strategically ensure that workers are from different countries and regions, so that there is no commonly spoken language between them. This method “divide and rule,” is described in the account of Ramatex, a Malaysian company operating in Namibia.

EPZs are also criticized because of the deregulation that invites foreign investment into the AGOA benefitting country. The “race to the bottom” has become a widely-used scholarly term, as it describes the competition between lesser-developed countries for foreign direct investment conducted through deregulation. As the name would predict, sometimes the country worsens certain measures of its economic development by allowing higher levels of environmental degradation, tax breaks and credits for industries, donation of government facilities for production, and other incentives.

EPZs as a Growth Mechanism

EPZs, especially within AGOA-benefitting countries, have the potential to bolster economic development and truly build up infant industries. While my initial assertion in the last World Mind issue that EPZs build up infant industries in AGOA beneficiary countries was not necessarily wrong, it was generalized. In economic development—especially within an African framework and the diverse political economy of the continent—we should strive towards specificity, not generality, especially when making policy recommendations.

EPZs have great potential to encourage economic growth.  When companies invest in local people, EPZs can encourage growth in the education sector. Local governments can also find alternative ways to encourage long-term growth in emerging sectors, even while allowing for incentives such as lower taxes. Establishing EPZs that help develop linkages to the local economy, respect local laws, and encourage long-term investment is difficult, but the benefits of well-governed EPZs can help AGOA-benefitting countries become even more competitive in U.S. markets in the long term.