East Africa Archive

A crowd of supporters was swelling around Ugandan presidential candidate Bobi Wine during a rally late last month in the eastern Luuka district, when security forces in riot gear began firing tear gas, pepper spray and bullets into the crowd. The popular singer-turned-parliamentarian was bundled into a police van and thrown in jail, accused of violating COVID-19 guidelines. “Be nonviolent,” he shouted as he was arrested. “We want freedom.” Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, is running against Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who is seeking a sixth term in next month’s elections. At 38, Wine is half his opponent’s […]

Editor’s Note: Africa Watch will be off for the holidays the next two weeks. It will return Jan. 8. More than 340 Nigerian schoolboys, abducted by armed men in a nighttime raid last week, were freed Thursday and are being reunited with their families. Boko Haram claimed responsibility for kidnapping the boys from their boarding school in northwestern Katsina state, and the celebration of their release was tempered by concerns that the jihadist group may now be expanding beyond its traditional base in the country’s northeast. Government critics are also questioning whether President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is equipped to contain […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s uneasy ruling coalition collapsed last Sunday, when President Felix Tshisekedi said in a televised address that his party would end its alliance with former President Joseph Kabila’s grouping. The announcement sparked violent clashes in Parliament this week between members of the two factions, raising fears of a prolonged power struggle in the conflict-wracked country. Tshisekedi moved quickly to take the upper hand, as […]

In a nod to his campaign promise to end U.S. participation in conflicts abroad, outgoing President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of American troops from Somalia last week. The announcement came a week after Trump’s acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, capped a whirlwind Middle East tour on Nov. 27 with a three-hour stop in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital. Under the Pentagon’s new reduction plan, nearly all of the 700 special operations forces currently deployed in Somalia are expected to leave on Jan. 15—just five days before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration—with many of them redeploying to Kenya. The withdrawal complicates Somalia’s efforts […]

NAIROBI, Kenya—Federal elections that were supposed to be held in Somalia starting this month are behind schedule due to a dispute between the president and his political rivals. According to the electoral plan, legislative elections were to be held throughout December, followed by a vote in the Federal Parliament in February to elect the country’s next president. But opposition candidates are protesting the membership of two committees charged with overseeing the balloting, claiming they are packed with President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed’s allies, allegedly giving him an unfair advantage as he seeks reelection. The president, widely known in Somalia by his […]

MEKELLE, Ethiopia—During the past two years, whenever Haileselassie, a wood trader in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, placed an order for supplies from the capital, Addis Ababa, he would lie awake at night, restless with worry. “I don’t sleep,” he told me in late October, sitting at the back of his shop in the central market of Mekelle, Tigray’s capital. “I don’t believe it will arrive safely.” By then, insecurity and lawlessness had spread in different parts of Ethiopia, and tensions between Tigray and Amhara, a larger region that neighbors Tigray to the south, had decidedly worsened. The roads, […]

COVID-19 is a global menace, but its impact falls heaviest on the most vulnerable. In the world’s poorest states, the pandemic-induced recession threatens to throw decades of development into reverse and place hundreds of millions in desperate circumstances. Last week, the United Nations released its Global Humanitarian Overview, outlining the additional devastation in store if the multilateral system fails to close the yawning gap between urgent humanitarian needs and funds available to meet them. In other words, the list of global challenges the incoming Biden administration will face just got longer. For the world’s poorest nations, the main threat is […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared victory last weekend in the government’s month-long military operation in the northern Tigray region, after federal troops captured Mekelle, the Tigrayan capital. Despite Abiy’s proclamation, aid workers have confirmed fighting around Mekelle is ongoing, with heavily armed Tigrayan forces appearing to have dug into the surrounding mountains. Experts are now warning the conflict could transform into a drawn-out guerrilla war. Tigray has […]