Washington doesn’t need to compete dollar-for-dollar, or troop-for-troop, with Beijing in order to reassert itself in the Horn of Africa. The mere act of standing for basic tenets of U.S. foreign policy, like promoting human rights and democracy, can reverse the destabilizing authoritarian backsliding in the region’s largest, and arguably most important, country: Ethiopia.
The strategy of “infrastructure-led growth” (growth, not economic and social development) seems to be showing its limits in Africa, where China has largely been instrumental in promoting it. This strategy is based on the Keynesian multiplier theory whereby any increase in aggregate demand would result in a more than proportional increase in GDP.
The daring capture of Félicien Kabuga, the hunted Rwandan fugitive, has been in the news for three weeks now. But the untold backstory—of how an American squad of operatives nearly snared him 17 years ago—has remained a secret. Until now… Kabuga’s dramatic seizure summoned memories of another era; one in which accountability mattered, and people paid for their crimes.
How Africa’s population evolves, and how the continent’s economies develop, will affect nearly everything people near and far assume about their lives today.
Authoritarianism – from Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who died last week, to the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos – always goes wrong. The list of failures is long, including China’s Mao Zedong, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. George Orwell’s prescient warnings in Animal Farm are confirmed again and again. The intriguing question is why so many both inside and outside a country suspend their thinking capacity and collude in the despot’s narrative.
The Ogaden War (1977–1978) between Somalia and Ethiopia upended the Cold War geostrategic balance in the Horn of Africa, and bore tragic consequences for the region that linger today. While many observers associate the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve of 1979 with the end of détente, historians now recognize that it was the Soviet intervention in the Ogaden conflict that precipitated the end of this era.
For decades, the United States was better than any other nation in putting forth value propositions that made other countries want to broaden and deepen their ties and associations with it. These were so effective that even when other governments wished to keep America at arm’s length, their people continued to feel an irresistible attraction. That is changing with dizzying speed now.
What happens when long-running autocratic leaders are finally ousted? This is the dilemma currently facing Algeria and Sudan, where protests recently led to the removal of Presidents Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Omar al-Bashir respectively. It is a conundrum that has had to be confronted in the last few years in Zimbabwe and Burkina Faso as well as in the likes of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya before them.
It makes sense that a continent home to 54 countries and 1.2 billion people would also house a mass of contradictory developments. Africa features several of the world’s fastest-growing economies and a burgeoning middle class. But much of the continent remains mired in debt, ravaged by conflict, disease or terrorism, and plagued by elites clinging to power.
Throughout the continent of Africa—like throughout the rest of the world—extremism in all its forms has been on the rise. Unemployment, poverty, deprivation, marginalization can be contributing factors as well as catalysts to an individual’s pathway to extremism, though it is important to note that, based on numerous social science research reports, the journey to extremism is individualized and personal.
