One hundred days into his term, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu—who won a disputed presidential contest in February—has mostly lived up to expectations, with few surprises. That might be because, amid a struggling economy and pervasive insecurity, not many Nigerians had high hopes for his presidency to begin with.
Depictions of Niger, Sudan and other African states as mere backdrops to geopolitical conflicts between distant outsiders neglect the role played by regional institutions, neighboring states and nonstate actors, while distracting from wider regional trends that will ultimately have a global impact of their own.