Welcome to International Coverage’s Africa Temporary.
The highlights this week: U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to Nigeria spotlight the nation’s inside rifts, Tanzania’s authorities prices protesters with treason, and the African Union sounds the alarm in Mali.
Over the weekend, protests in opposition to U.S. navy intervention popped up within the Nigerian cities of Lagos and Kano following U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest menace to go “guns-a-blazing” into Africa’s most populous nation over false claims of Christian persecution.
Demonstrators chanted “America, go away us alone.” They held placards that learn, “Nigerians united in opposition to U.S. menace of navy invasion” and “America needs to regulate our assets.” The protests could have been modest, however they replicate rising concern amongst Nigerians as their persistence wanes for his or her authorities to reply decisively to Trump’s threats.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s administration has urged the general public to remain calm whereas it pursues diplomacy with Washington. In the meantime, Nigeria’s newly appointed military chief , Lt. Gen. Waidi Shaibu, has vowed to accentuate operations within the nation’s north, which has been beneath assault by Islamists for many years.
Up to now, the federal government’s combined and uncoordinated response to Trump has angered many Nigerians. For example, whereas Senate President Godswill Akpabio has been hesitant to criticize Trump’s actions, his deputy, Barau Jibrin, has been blunter.
“I’m not terrified of Trump,” Jibrin stated final week. “He’s saying lies about our nation, and now we have the precise to dispute it.” Akpabio then informed the Senate clerk to delete Jibrin’s feedback from the official file, arguing that Jibrin had “spoken out of tune.”
U.S.-Nigerian ties have weakened this yr over commerce and immigration disputes. Within the face of an unpredictable Trump administration, Abuja has sought to diversify its economic system, growing exports to China; India; South Africa; and its largest overseas investor, the UK.
“If non-oil income is doing properly, then haven’t any concern of no matter Trump is doing on the opposite facet,” Tinubu stated in September. He has not visited the USA since Trump reentered workplace.
Bilateral relations deteriorated precipitously on Oct. 31, when Trump redesignated Nigeria as a “nation of specific concern”—a label for nations that Washington deems to have severely violated non secular freedoms—and claimed on Fact Social that Christianity was “going through an existential menace in Nigeria.”
The next day, Trump ordered the U.S. Protection Division to arrange for potential navy motion and threatened to chop all assist to Nigeria if its authorities continued to permit “Islamic Terrorists” to “assault our CHERISHED CHRISTIANS.”
Claims of a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria have circulated amongst Republicans and the U.S. evangelical group for years, regardless of restricted information for this. (Washington additionally named Nigeria as a rustic of specific concern throughout Trump’s first time period.) However in latest months, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. evangelical leaders had been ramping up strain on Trump to behave.
Nigeria’s inhabitants of 230 million is roughly break up between Christians and Muslims. Interfaith marriages are frequent; Tinubu is a Muslim, whereas his spouse, former Sen. Oluremi Tinubu, is an ordained pastor. As insecurity has risen within the nation, Nigerians of all faiths have skilled elevated violence.
Over the previous yr, Islamist teams—reminiscent of Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province—have ramped up operations within the northeast, a predominantly Muslim area. In northwest, central, and southeast Nigeria, armed gangs that aren’t ideologically pushed have elevated kidnapping-for-ransom operations and taxed farmers to entry their lands, based on information from ACLED, an unbiased monitoring service.
In the meantime, local weather change and the Islamist insurgency have pushed Fulani herding communities, that are primarily Muslim, into areas which can be primarily Christian, resulting in lethal clashes over land and water entry.
Provided that Nigeria is a fragile state with complicated social divisions, some Nigerians concern that Trump’s newest strikes might worsen home tensions.
“Faith, cash, regional divisions, and risky politics have produced a flamable state of affairs—one that might flip right into a roaring hearth. U.S. motion would add gas to this conflagration, not quench it,” Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún wrote final week in International Coverage.
Tinubu’s administration is feeling the warmth. He’s beneath elevated strain to swiftly appoint an envoy to the USA—after recalling all Nigerian ambassadors worldwide when he took workplace in 2023—and sort out the insecurity that has festered for many years. A number of opposition politicians have even welcomed U.S. assist to deal with insecurity or known as on Tinubu to both finish the violence or resign.
Wednesday, Nov. 12, to Thursday, Nov. 13: The European Union-Zambian Enterprise Discussion board is held in Lusaka, Zambia.
Thursday, Nov. 13: The United Nations Safety Council meets to increase its peacekeeping mission within the Central African Republic, whose mandate is about to run out on Nov. 15.
Tuesday, Nov. 18: The U.N. Safety Council holds an open briefing on peace consolidation in West Africa.
Tanzanian protest aftermath. Tanzania has charged greater than 100 folks with treason following protests sparked by the nation’s Oct. 29 presidential election. Incumbent President Samia Suluhu Hassan claims that she gained with practically 98 p.c of the vote in what political observers have described as a “staged” and “violent” election.
Hassan’s ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi social gathering and its predecessor have maintained an iron grip on energy since independence in 1961. She successfully ran unopposed, as her two most important opponents had been struck off the poll. Predominant opposition social gathering Chadema and rights activists have stated that at the least 1,000 protesters had been shot lifeless in the course of the demonstrations—a determine disputed by the federal government.
In a joint assertion, the overseas ministers of Canada, Norway, and the UK cited “credible studies of a lot of fatalities and vital accidents.” A number of movies have emerged on-line exhibiting safety forces firing dwell rounds at unarmed civilians. For now, the state’s use of lethal power has silenced opposition within the nation.
AU sounds alarm in Mali. The African Union on Sunday known as for pressing worldwide intervention in Mali over an ongoing gas blockade within the capital of Bamako by al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). The blockade has led to the momentary closure of faculties and companies, in addition to shortages of important provides.
In an announcement, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, the chairperson of the African Union Fee, known as for “enhanced cooperation, intelligence sharing, and sustained help” throughout Sahel nations affected by insurgency.
JNIM emerged in 2017 as a coalition of a number of jihadi teams that the French navy had pushed again in northern Mali in 2012. Lately, its assaults throughout the Sahel have surged. On Monday, Malian authorities stated that suspected jihadis had executed a pro-army TikTok influencer in entrance of a crowd in northern Timbuktu.
Uganda’s $4 billion refinery. The Ugandan authorities has stated it’s heading in the right direction to open a $4 billion oil refinery inside 5 years. The power, which is partly financed by the Dubai-based Alpha MBM Investments, shall be designed for a 60,000-barrel-per-day capability and is predicted to produce refined oil to Uganda’s neighbors.
Lately, a number of African nations, together with Nigeria, have confronted gas shortages because of the price of importing refined oil, regardless of being resource-rich in crude oil.
Now, extra African nations need to develop their very own refineries, together with Ethiopia and Niger, that are partnering with Chinese language and Canadian companies, respectively. Nigeria’s $20 billion Dangote Refinery, which opened in 2023, has already lower the nation’s gas imports by half.
The UK just lately chosen British-Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr.’s semi-autobiographical directorial debut, My Father’s Shadow, as its Oscar submission for greatest worldwide function movie on the 2026 Academy Awards.
The movie is about in Lagos and Ibadan throughout Nigeria’s 1993 coup, when the navy annulled the outcomes of the presidential election and Gen. Sani Abacha seized energy. It was the primary Nigerian film within the official number of the Cannes Movie Competition, the place it gained a Caméra d’Or particular point out within the “un sure regard” class in Could.
As a Nigerian and British co-production, it was eligible for Oscar submission by both nation. (The Nigerian Official Choice Committee declined to submit a movie this yr.)
It’s unclear whether or not the academy will approve the submission. The Nigerian movie business, referred to as Nollywood, is underrepresented in overseas movie award classes with language necessities as a result of, as a former British colony, its official language is English.
In 2019, Nigeria’s first-ever Oscar submission, Lionheart, was disqualified as a result of it didn’t have “predominantly non-English dialogue.” My Father’s Shadow options a mixture of spoken Nigerian pidgin and Yoruba, however a lot of the dialogue can be in English.
No matter whether or not the movie is accepted, its choice by the UK speaks to the nation’s shut relationship with Nigeria, as each nations proceed to affect one another culturally many years after the top of colonialism.
Why the AU lacks tooth. In International Coverage, columnist Howard French argues that the African Union has been lacking in motion on the subject of the continent’s most essential points, together with Sudan’s civil battle, the battle in jap Congo, quite a few disputed elections, and the U.S. menace of navy motion in Nigeria.
“As a substitute of defending African pursuits on the world stage … the AU as an alternative grew to become a back-scratching membership of heads of state,” he writes.
Africa’s largest investor. For the primary time since 2012, the USA was Africa’s largest overseas direct investor in 2023, based on the newest annual information, Egon Cossou studies for the BBC.
The US invested $7.8 billion in Africa that yr, in contrast with China’s $4 billion, based on the China Africa Analysis Initiative of Johns Hopkins College. The highest beneficiaries in 2023 had been Egypt, South Africa, and Nigeria.
