The crisis that first unfolded in Burundi in April when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his bid for a third term entered a new phase last week, as an unidentified armed group clashed with the army in the north of the country near the Rwandan border. Amid rumors of Rwanda supporting the rebels, regional tensions mounted. At the same time, a new, self-declared National Council established by Burundian exiles and opponents of Nkurunziza emerged as a new form of political resistance to his efforts to hold onto power despite international condemnation and widespread protests at home. Yet while Nkurunziza’s opponents organized, [...]
With water scarcity increasing political tension and threatening economic instability in countries across the world, transboundary water disputes often become highly charged and bitterly divisive. A prominent example has been the Nile basin in northeast Africa, where the nations sharing the Nile’s waters have for years sparred over their usage allotments amid concerns that upstream countries may interfere with water flow into downstream countries. Most recently, the region’s flashpoint for transboundary water conflict has been Ethiopia’s construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam, which within several years will stretch across the Blue Nile at the Ethiopian-Sudanese border. The controversial project has [...]
At the African Union’s biannual summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, on June 13-15, the principal task was to consolidate the “Africa rising” narrative—the belief that the continent has moved onto a new and more positive political and economic trajectory over the past decade. Two of the principal themes of that narrative are good governance and democratization. While the AU’s formal declarations in this area are encouraging, several developments suggest the gap between AU theory and practice will once again be persistent. Moreover, the very structure of the organization may stand in the way of progress. The summit was overshadowed by [...]
