In his election campaigns for the African Union’s (AU) top job, new AU Commission Chairperson Mahamoud Ali Youssouf said he would advocate for significant reforms to AU crisis responses. These reforms ...

Africa’s artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector has development potential. At their peak in 2017 these mines in Niger employed as many as 600 000 people and created opportunities for local ...

For much of the past decade, Ansaru has largely been an outlier on the terrorism threat landscape. But the group is making a comeback in Nigeria – and is more dangerous than ever. Ansaru claims to ...

Sexual violence is a tactic of war, used to humiliate, dominate and instil fear. It is also increasingly being used as a tactic of terrorism. While the focus has largely been on women and girls as ...

About 30 million more Africans fell into extreme poverty (living on less than US$1.90 a day) when COVID-19 broke out in 2020. Before the pandemic struck, over 445 million people – equivalent to 34% of ...

The African Union (AU) will be limiting its peace efforts in the Western Sahara in order to support the United Nations’ (UN) process in the region. The Western Sahara is a disputed area claimed by ...

Conflict erupted in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province just a few years after some of Africa’s biggest gas reserves were discovered in the Rovuma Basin off the coast. Mozambicans see this as ...

Recent reports indicate the presence of the Russian Wagner Group in Africa, particularly in the Central African Republic (CAR), and its alleged imminent arrival in Mali. This raises questions about ...

Since the 2018 power transfer in the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (the former ruling party) and the two-year war between the federal government and Tigrayan forces, Ethiopia has ...

The official diplomatic line on South Africa-United States (US) relations often points to ‘cordial’ ties – a position supported by the balance of trade between the two countries. But despite the ...

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the world’s leading cobalt producer, contributing around 70% to global production. However, complex levels of organised crime occur along the supply chain ...

Although ethnic-based conflicts are not new, their scale and intensity in a short space of time has been alarming. Violent ethnic conflicts have rocked Ethiopia since 2018. A major reason for the ...