Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: Kenya’s President William Ruto sacks most of his cabinet, children of African migrants power Spain to Euro 2024 championship, and putting a price tag on corruption in Nigeria.
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Rwandan Leader Extends 30 Years in Power
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has won a fourth term in office, provisional results show. Kagame reportedly received 99 percent of votes following presidential and parliamentary elections on Monday, with 79 percent of the ballot counted so far. Final results are expected July 27. Kagame ran virtually unchallenged since most of his opponents were barred from running against him.
Kagame first came into office in 1994 after leading the armed wing of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front rebel group to victory over Hutu extremists, ending a genocide that killed more than 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi, in just 100 days. He became vice president shortly after, before being elected as president by parliament in 2000 after the resignation of Pasteur Bizimungu. He has won every election since. He gained 99 percent of the votes in the last 2017 elections, which critics deem implausible in a democratic ballot. Each election is run without any real competition since Kagame’s most vocal critics are nearly always disqualified for various reasons.
Frank Habineza, of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, and Philippe Mpayimana, an independent candidate who is a former journalist, were the two opponents allowed to run—the same ones Kagame faced in 2017. They lack the financial resources and campaign machinery to mount a successful opposition, political analysts say.
Kagame is perceived by Rwandans as both a visionary who ended ethnic divisions in the country and a dictator. Many Rwandans laud the country’s economic transformation under his leadership, including widened access to electricity, paved roads and other vital public services. He has dismissed cabinet members implicated in corruption and held poor performers to account. Rwanda is among Africa’s least corrupt countries thanks to these policies, according to Transparency International.
Analysts argue that citizens have resigned themselves to authoritarianism and are settling for efficiency over instability. There is no free press in Rwanda. Human rights groups and opposition activists accuse Kagame of organizing the assassination of critics abroad. At least five opposition members and four government critics and journalists have died or disappeared since the 2017 presidential election, according to Human Rights Watch. Several opposition figures are in jail.
But despite high donor engagement, the country remains poor, on par with Sahelian countries facing conflict such as Mali and Niger. More than 40 percent of the state budget comes from aid. Critics argue at least some of the aid Rwanda receives from foreign governments is used to export terrorism in neighboring countries. Rwanda accuses the Congolese army of recruiting among former perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. However, DRC President Félix Tshisekedi accused Rwanda of using the argument of hunting down génocidaires in Congo to massacre civilians and exploit blood minerals from the country.
The United States and the U.N. have accused Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo which Kigali denies. “The DRC has all the power to de-escalate the situation if they want to, but until then, Rwanda will continue to defend itself,” government spokesperson Yolande Makolo told reporters last week. Between 3,000 and 4,000 Rwandan forces are fighting alongside M23, according to the latest report released last week from U.N. experts.
This month, newly elected British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he is scrapping a bill to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. After the Rwandan government initially suggested it would be open to refunding the money the United Kingdom had already paid toward the deal, last week Kigali said it was under no obligation to refund the 270 million pounds (about $350 million) in aid it received because it had already spent “significant time and resources” in preparing to receive migrants.
Security experts worry about both a Rwanda-Congo war and what happens in the decades after Kagame. The Rwandan government changed the constitution in 2015 to allow Kagame to run for a fourth and fifth term allowing him to stay in office potentially until 2034. But given the absolute erosion of democratic institutions under him, a post-Kagame era could spur instability.
Wednesday, July 17: The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development High-Level Political Forum, running since July 8, concludes in New York.
Thursday, July 18: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will address the opening of Parliament and outline the priorities of his administration.
Tuesday, July 23: Ghana’s Finance Minister Mohammed Amin Adam presents his midyear budget to Parliament.
Kenya government overhaul. Kenya’s police chief, Inspector-General Japhet Koome, resigned on Friday following criticism of the excessive force used during anti-tax demonstrations in which at least 39 protesters were killed. The announcement came a day after President William Ruto sacked the country’s attorney general and nearly his entire cabinet, with the exception of Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi and Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. Ruto said he would enter into consultations on creating a new broad-based government. Further protests took place yesterday in which one person was killed.
Investors back South Africa’s unity government. Foreign investors have bought the most South African bonds in more than two years, reports Bloomberg, owing to apparent greater confidence of a likely overhaul in state institutions under a broad coalition government that includes the business-friendly Democratic Alliance. South Africa’s currency, the rand, has also strengthened, trading at 17.9 rand against the dollar, following Ramaphosa’s inauguration as the country’s president for a second term last month. But there are fears among experts that former president Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters could still destabilize the fragile coalition.
Mali lifts political ban. Mali’s ruling military junta has lifted its three-month ban on political party activities, after completing a “national dialogue” that concluded military rulers should be given another two to five years extension in power, before organizing an election. No political parties were involved in the dialogue which also ruled that coup leader Assimi Goïta can run in future democratic elections. The junta had banned political party activities in April at the start of the national dialogue.
Tunisia elections. Rights groups have warned of an increased crackdown on opponents of Tunisia’s autocratic President Kais Saied as the country heads to presidential elections on Oct. 6.
Presidential candidate and secretary-general of the Labour and Achievement Party, Abdellatif Mekki, was banned from traveling and giving media interviews on Friday by a court in Tunis. Days after Mekki announced his candidacy this month, he was charged in the death of businessman Jilani Dabboussi, nearly a decade ago. Dabboussi died hours after being released from pre-trial detention in 2014. He had been incarcerated for two and a half years on charges of embezzlement and government favoritism. His family say his rights were violated and his death has been blamed on the government in office at the time.
Mekki was head of the Islamist-inspired Ennahda, the largest party in parliament after the 2019 election, until Saied dissolved the government in July 2021. Ennahda chief Rached Ghannouchi has been in jail since April 2023 on charges related to “terrorism.” On Saturday, Ajami Lourimi, secretary-general of Ennahda and two other members were detained without reason, the party said in a statement on Facebook.
Saied has maintained a one-man rule on populist rhetoric that he is sweeping out corrupt politicians. In July 2022, he limited parliamentary powers through a referendum largely boycotted by voters. As of May, at least 40 political opponents, lawyers, journalists, and activists are in jail, according to Human Rights Watch.
Spain won the European Championship on Sunday for a record fourth time on Sunday—thanks in part to members of the African diaspora. Nico Williams, the 22-year-old who scored Spain’s first goal against England, was born to Ghanaian parents who had entered Spain by climbing the border fence into the Spanish enclave of Melilla, after being abandoned by traffickers. Melilla, which borders Morocco, has been a deadly route for irregular migration in which at least 37 people were crushed to death in anti-migrant crackdowns in 2022.
Meanwhile, 17-year-old breakout star Lamine Yamal’s performance could boost soccer investments in Equatorial Guinea, the country’s football federation says. Yamal’s mother is from the West African nation Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, and his father is from Morocco.
Equatorial Guinea is to invest in football academies to “continue searching for natural talent from Equatorial Guinea, but particularly in the country itself,” Venancio Tómas Ndong Micha, the country’s football federation president, told BBC Sport Africa. Both countries had attempted to sign Yamal to play for their national teams but the teenager chose his birth country, Spain. “We conveyed our project to him and his family, but Lamine was already convinced about going to Spain,” Royal Moroccan Football Federation President Fouzi Lekjaa said in March.
Despite this, Yamal displays the flags of both African nations on his football boots alongside that of Spain. In contrast to the far-right, anti-migrant movement sweeping across Europe—and despite the presence of Spain’s own far-right Vox party in congress—in April, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government began drafting an amnesty bill for undocumented migrants.
Chart of the Week: Nigeria’s State Graft
Nigerian officials took $1.3 billion (721 billion naira) in cash bribes from citizens last year to deliver basic services, according to a new survey on graft conducted by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. The total amount paid by Nigerians surveyed was equivalent to 0.35 percent of GDP, the bureau said. The survey was based on 33,035 interviews conducted across Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital in collaboration with the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
Police officers, nurses and doctors more often demanded bribes, but the largest amount of cash was pocketed by judges (about $19 paid on average per person), and customs and immigration officers (about $11). Half (53 percent) of Nigerians surveyed paid a bribe to obtain their passport, 40 percent to obtain business licenses and 31 percent for driver’s licenses on top of normal fees. The survey’s release is particularly poignant following successful mass mobilization of Kenyans against state corruption and increased taxation.
DRC minerals pillaging. Swiss metals trader Christoph Huber, wanted by authorities in Switzerland over alleged illegal profiteering in Congo, is currently living in South Africa, according to an investigation by South African non-profit Open Secrets published in The Continent. Swiss authorities opened an investigation into Huber in 2019 following a criminal complaint filed by Trial International which alleges Huber illegally smuggled minerals out of eastern Congo, between 1998 to 2003, during the Second Congo War, through links with Rwandan associates.
At a time when Pretoria has sent troops to eastern Congo to help stem conflict fueled by mineral exploitation, South Africa’s government has yet to take action against Huber.
Collapse of Zimbabwe’s healthcare system. Zimbabweans have been crossing into neighboring Zambia to buy cheaper prescription medication amid soaring inflation that has led to unaffordable healthcare, reports Calvin Manika in Al Jazeera. Zimbabwe has been struggling with hyperinflation for more than a decade. The ZiG introduced in May is the country’s sixth attempt to launch a new currency since 2008.
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