![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Africa-test-scores-PISA-2025-by-Gemini-SEP2026-resize.jpg?resize=720%2C964&ssl=1\")
African students have far to climb to reach the academic heights of peers in China and Singapore, yet a few bright spots emerge in results from the latest testing of 15-year-old learners around the globe.
\n\n\n\nThe island nation of Mauritius was by far the top performer of the five African countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing in reading, science and mathematics, along with computational problem solving. Mauritius posted mean scores in the middle of the pack of 91 countries and economies whose students tested. That was good enough to score within a few points of Israel and Iceland in science and to outperform Vietnam in reading and Chile in math.
\n\n\n\nEven so, students in Mauritius performed below the average scores of countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which runs PISA and counts the world’s major economies as members or partners. The same was true for pupils from the other four African countries on the list: Morocco, Kenya, Zambia and Rwanda, which placed last in this truncated world table.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: While the data offers only a snapshot of educational capabilities across Africa, the results spotlight learning improvement as one of Africa’s toughest challenges as a population boom bears down on the continent.
\n\n\n\nIn 2025, China as represented by Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and Singapore were the world’s highest performers across science, math and reading. Estonia and the United Kingdom were the highest-scoring countries in Europe. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada and New Zealand also were among the top 10.
\n\n\n\nWhile the Africa cohort makes up only 10 percent of the countries on the continent, the results held a surprise. In reading and science, students in Zambia edged out their peers in the larger and better funded Kenyan education system. Africa’s most populous countries, Egypt, Ethiopia and Nigeria, didn’t participate in this testing round. Nor did South Africa, Africa’s most advanced economy.
\n\n\n\nThis is the ninth PISA assessment since the global testing began in 2000 to understand what a citizen needs to know and be able to do. More than 760,000 students took part in this assessment, which combines testing with a questionnaire on students’ beliefs, background and learning.
\n\n\n\nGlobally, proficiency in reading is a rising concern. “In reading, PISA saw a decline in the very skills that matter most in the AI age: evaluating information, making connections across multiple sources, and thinking critically about what we read,” the assessment team said. What PISA calls “hasty readers,” students who speed through texts and give quick, wrong answers, almost doubled between the 2018 assessment and the 2025 version.
\n\n\n\nReading and math scores have dropped sharply in OECD countries since the testing effort started, while proficiency in science has declined at a slower rate.
\n\n\n\nKenya claimed one accolade. A quarter of Kenyan students described as “disadvantaged” scored in the top 25 percent of Kenyan students in science. That was the highest share of “academically resilient” students of any country or economy in the testing, and more than double the OECD average.
\n\n\n\nThat gritty achievement may reflect the emphasis that Kenya is putting on building a digital economy that the government says could generate hundreds of thousands of jobs.
\n\n\n\n“When I said all students will be funded, some people asked me where the money will come from,” Kenyan President William Ruto said in July 2026 while honoring university students who excelled at a technology competition in China. “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
\n\n\n\nAction options: With overcrowded classrooms, strained government budgets and demands for a better educated workforce, some African countries are looking to tech options for help. That market may be worth as much as USD 1 billion today, according to the UN Development Program. Another forecast sees the edutech market growing to USD 19 billion in Africa by the mid-2030s, with a focus on delivery via smartphones.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Students in Kenya by Kenya Ministry of Education.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A global assessment shows how far behind African students are compared with peers in Asia. That matters as a population boom pressures education systems across Africa. Yet lessons in making progress are emerging.","protected":false},"author":144169649,"featured_media":2676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443694],"tags":[57443835,57443679,57443825,57443758,57443721,57443765],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-societies","tag-education","tag-kenya","tag-mauritius","tag-morocco","tag-rwanda","tag-zambia","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Kenya-schoolkids-Min-of-Educ-MAR2026.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Kenya-schoolkids-Min-of-Educ-MAR2026.jpg?fit=1280%2C854&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"African students learn the world is far ahead\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
Sudan’s long-running civil war is adopting the deadly battle tactics erupting between Russia and Ukraine, with drones as the weapon of choice and civilians often under attack. United Nations investigators say evidence points to foreign support, from Colombian mercenaries to shipments from the United Arab Emirates.
\n\n\n\nThe report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, issued in early September 2026, looked at the impact of expanded military use of long-range drones and external support in prolonging the conflict. Besides drone strikes, Sudanese civilians are coping with recurring mass killings, abductions of women and girls, and mass rapes, according to a top UN official.
\n\n\n\n“The consequences of this conflict will be long-lasting and should shake us all,” the UN under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, told the 15-nation Security Council at a meeting on Sudan shortly before the report was released.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: As Sudan’s conflict has raged on, evidence has mounted that more countries are getting involved and prolonging the fighting and the suffering of Sudanese civilians. That creates spillover risks for countries around Sudan, threatens Africa’s peacebuilding frameworks, and reverses social and economic progress in one of the continent’s biggest nations.
\n\n\n\nMore than 1,000 civilians died in drone strikes between January and May 2026 in Sudan, according to the UN. Deadly attacks have come from Sudan’s military and the rebels waging war against the government, known as the Rapid Support Forces. The RSF has struck the capital Khartoum, Port Sudan and around El-Fasher, while the Sudanese military has sent combat drones deep into rebel-held Darfur, according to the UN report.
\n\n\n\nIn El-Obeid, a base for Sudanese forces, almost daily drone attacks by the rebels in May and June targeted residential areas, fuel supplies, water and electricity, according to unidentified witnesses cited by the report.
\n\n\n\nDuring a Muslim holiday in March 2026, successive strikes attributed by the UN probe to the Sudanese Armed Forces crippled a teaching hospital in East Darfur that serves an area of 2 million people, killing at least 70 individuals. The attack hit the hospital’s emergency area, pharmacy and blood bank. Other incidents have targeted public markets. An RSF drone strike on a kindergarten in Kalogi, South Kordofan, in December 2025, and a follow-on attack as residents gathered to help, killed 114 people, including about 60 children, according to the UN report.
\n\n\n\nThe UN itself has come under assault. Drone attacks in December 2025 on a UN logistics base killed six Bangladeshi peacekeeping personnel and wounded eight others near the contested oil-producing Abyei area along the border with South Sudan.
\n\n\n\n“It is a counter-revolutionary war waged on Sudan’s people for daring to dream of better than autocratic rule, better than kleptocratic pillage and better than theocratic oppression,” said Dr. Eva Khair, a physician and peacebuilding adviser, in remarks to the UN Security Council in August 2026. “Civilians are trapped between two illegitimate de facto authorities, each pursuing total dominion regardless of whom they crush, which part of Sudan they sell, or which foreign power they submit to.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Sudan-map-by-UN.jpg?resize=720%2C541&ssl=1\")
The UN investigative report describes evidence of supply routes and logistics hubs linked to individuals and entities in the U.A.E. that move weaponry and other goods to the RSF rebels via Chad and Somalia. Former Colombian military personnel were recruited to support RSF drone operations in Sudan and their total number “may approach 2000” individuals, the investigators said, citing “credible independent sources.”
\n\n\n\nThe alleged support from the U.A.E., Colombia, Chad and other countries “sustained Rapid Support Forces’ military operations during a conflict marked by serious violations of international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and the commission of international crimes,” the UN probe concluded.
\n\n\n\nIn response to queries from the UN investigators, the U.A.E. government denied involvement in supporting the rebels, and Chad’s government said it wasn’t aware of shipments through its territory and was strengthening border security to stop fighters or weapons from moving into Sudan. Colombia expressed concern about the mercenaries, and the UN probe found no evidence the government was involved.
\n\n\n\nTwo weeks before President Joe Biden’s term ended, the United States declared that members of the RSF and allied Arab militias had engaged in genocide through ethnically targeted murders of civilians and mass rapes of girls and women on an ethnic basis, and by blocking humanitarian aid. The United States imposed sanctions on RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, known as Hemedti, and accused the RSF of ties to companies in the U.A.E., including one that provided money and weapons.
\n\n\n\nA Sudanese court convicted Hemedti and other RSF officials of war crimes in July 2026 and sentenced him to death in absentia.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Sudan-UNICEF.jpg?resize=720%2C480&ssl=1\")
Vast geography is a factor in the Sudan conflict. A vote by the UN General Assembly supporting maps that more accurately reflect the true scale of Africa will also reveal Sudan’s size and the challenge of securing the country. With an area of almost 1.9 million square kilometers, or 728,000 square miles, the country is Africa’s third largest.
\n\n\n\nRecent advances by the Sudanese military “have put pressure on RSF positions across multiple fronts, pointing to a new phase of the war in which both sides are increasingly relying on air and drone strikes as ground offensives shift to the peripheries,” said Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), an organization that tracks clashes in Sudan.
\n\n\n\nACLED data shows that air and drone strikes have escalated since mid-2025 as Sudanese forces have targeted rebel supply lines for fuel, relying on drones made in Turkey, Iran and Pakistan for attacks.
\n\n\n\nDrones have become an emblem of the grinding war between Russia and Ukraine. More than 80 people have died in Russian drone and missile strikes in and near Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, since the beginning of August. Meanwhile, Ukraine is short of defensive interceptor missiles and is seeking U.S. permission for its drones to use Elon Musk’s Starlink Internet service over Russia to attack ballistic missile launchers, Bloomberg reported.
\n\n\n\nAction options: If your dealings involve Sudan, Chad, the U.A.E. and other countries linked to support for the war in Sudan, check UN and U.S. sanctions actions for officially designated people or businesses. U.S. sanctions are enforced by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control or OFAC. The UN Security Council Consolidated List includes individuals and entities subject to international legal action.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Sudanese refugees in Chad receiving aid, by UNHCR/Caitlin Kelly)
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An escalating drone war between Sudan's military and the rebels fighting for control of the country is beginning to resemble the grinding war between Russia and Ukraine.","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443696,57443694],"tags":[57443829,57443834,57443832,57443817,57443833,57443759,57443690],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-societies","tag-chad","tag-colombia","tag-sudan","tag-turkey","tag-uae","tag-united-nations","tag-war","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Sudan-Darfur-refugees-UNHCR-Caitlin-Kelly.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Sudan-Darfur-refugees-UNHCR-Caitlin-Kelly.jpg?fit=1180%2C765&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Sudan begins to mirror Russia-Ukraine conflict\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
Hakainde Hichilema won a second term as Zambia’s president on August 13, 2026, building on his landslide victory over President Edgar Lungu in 2021 and ensuring his turnaround strategy for Zambia keeps rolling. Yet the drama most Zambians focused on wasn’t at the ballot box.
\n\n\n\nA raid by security forces at the home of Hichilema’s electoral foe, Brian Mundubile, a day after the voting resulted in the shooting death of a former minister under Lungu. A few days later, police detained and questioned Mundubile in connection with allegations of treason linked to murky claims about an insurrection. This post-election episode has unsettled Zambia’s usually peaceful politics and the world beyond.
\n\n\n\nUnited Nations human rights chief Volker Turk expressed concern about arrests of opposition supporters during the raid. “At this critical post-election juncture, it is essential to uphold respect for human rights and ensure that any grievances arising from the election are voiced and addressed peacefully, and in accordance with international human rights law,” Turk said in a statement. Zambia’s proliferating online pundits voiced bewilderment at the targeting of the opposition leader.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: This political cloud may dissipate to reveal something more profound than domestic political clashes. As Afrologi’s forthcoming Zambia Playbook details, the country is beginning to claim a bigger place in the world and is finally catching up to what any map of Africa suggests: mineral-rich Zambia could become a formidable hub, a connector in the heart of Africa.
\n\n\n\nZambia borders one in seven African countries, giving it a chance to show what economic integration looks like to a continent still trying to gain traction on the idea. Railway and trade corridors, one being refurbished to the east (TAZARA), while the other advances toward moving dirt across hundreds of miles in the west (Lobito), could turn location into strategic leverage.
\n\n\n\nLooking across Zambia at facts emerging on the ground, you see this “land-linked” vision, as Zambian officials call it, taking form. Rising across Zambia are new border posts, roads, airports and even a scaled-up port on Lake Tanganyika, which extends north to Burundi. Coming soon, if more than USD 3 billion in financing materializes, is a new freight railway running from Angola into Zambia’s mining epicenter, the crucial segment of the U.S.-backed Lobito supply-chain corridor to the Atlantic Ocean.
\n\n\n\nIn a boost for Lobito, the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a 30-year, USD 1.25 billion agreement with Portuguese builder Mota-Engil in late August 2026 to upgrade, operate and maintain the 625-mile railway segment from Dilolo on the Angola border to Sakania near Zambia’s copper mining region, the core of the DRC’s portion of the transport corridor.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Zambia-infographic-AUG2026.png?resize=720%2C785&ssl=1\")
As the Zambia Playbook notes, this rapid push to connect has much to do with the power of the presidency in Zambia and with HH’s pursuit of “positive neutrality” in international relations. Emerging from a debt crisis, Zambia is rounding up support and money from middle powers, such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, as America shifts strategy while China maintains its position as a top trade partner.
\n\n\n\nWhile the Zambian Constitution describes legislative and judicial checks on the executive, the presidency in practice tends to deflect oversight and sets the country’s agenda much as it wants. Hichilema’s biggest tool is the government budget, yet he has others. For instance, the president oversees the Industrial Development Corporation and its portfolio of state-owned enterprises, from the national railway to a major telecom operator. And Hichilema wants to transform these holdings into a source of long-term wealth for Zambia.
\n\n\n\nThe powerful presidency does not mean that governing Zambia from State House in Lusaka is free of friction. Competing factions inside the ruling party, the business elite, the mining majors and international aid donors all push for advantage, as the playbook describes.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Kazungula-bridge-02-BEKA-Schreder.jpg?resize=720%2C480&ssl=1\")
The 2026 election wasn’t a pure victory for Hichilema. The respected Christian Churches Monitoring Group or CCMG sent monitors to a statistically valid sample of 1,500 polling sites across Zambia. In 30 constituencies, “votes were added, artificially increasing turnout and undermining the integrity of the process,” CCMG said in its post-election statement. However, the group added, “the variances identified do not alter the overall outcome of the presidential election.”
\n\n\n\nCCMG estimates that Hichilema received 56 percent of the vote, plus or minus 1.7 percentage points. Mundubile likely got 42.3 percent, plus or minus 1.7 points. These estimates came after the Electoral Commission of Zambia declared HH the winner, saying he got more than 60 percent of the valid vote.
\n\n\n\nThe opposition didn’t accept that tally and talked about going to court to challenge the official result. Yet a petition never showed up at the Constitutional Court, in part because courts closed across Zambia for unspecified security reasons on the last day you could file.
\n\n\n\nAction options: Look to the national budget, likely to come in late September or October 2026, for clues about the priorities Hichilema will pursue. And look to new members of the Cabinet who will carry out his orders across ministries. HH is riding on a global copper price at close to a five-year high. And, as the playbook notes and Zambian history shows, much depends on the fortunes of the red metal dug for centuries from the country’s soil.
\n\n\n\n(Hichilema at an election rally in August 2026, via Facebook.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Hichilema's re-election will reinforce his strategy to turn Zambia into a hub connecting oceans. Facts on the ground already show how this plan is developing.","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443696,57443694],"tags":[57443788,57443794,57443740,57443732,57443765],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-societies","tag-election","tag-lobito-corridor","tag-mining","tag-trade","tag-zambia","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Zambia-Hichilema-NW-Prov-rally-02-AUG2026.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Zambia-Hichilema-NW-Prov-rally-02-AUG2026.jpg?fit=2048%2C1058&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Zambia election advances HH’s grand plan\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
Some of southern Africa’s richest countries as measured by natural resources are also major producers of poor people. And breaking out of this dilemma is proving tough.
\n\n\n\nIn Angola, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia, most of the population live below the international poverty line, USD 2.15 per day, according to data from a forthcoming report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa or UNECA, based in Addis Ababa. These are southern Africa’s poorest countries, though if you spend time only in their modern capital cities without venturing into the hinterlands you might not guess it.
\n\n\n\nMalawi is in the most dire situation, with three in four of its people falling into the international poverty pile. The landlocked country of 22 million people wraps around Lake Malawi, an inland sea and one of Africa’s most spectacular bodies of tropical water, and has got plenty that could power its economy on land, too.
\n\n\n\nGold, graphite, niobium and uranium are among Malawi’s assets. Yet translating those natural endowments into export growth and reduced poverty has faltered amid sluggish government action, weak regulation and limited investment. To pay for imported fuel, medicine and other necessities, Malawi’s central bank was forced to sell gold from its reserves earlier this year. It’s easier for many entrepreneurs to go elsewhere than battle Malawi’s complications.
\n\n\n\nThe pandemic’s shadow has lingered in these countries, as weakened health and education systems due to COVID-19 create “lasting effects on economic growth and poverty,” according to UNECA.
\n\n\n\nAngola, a major oil exporter with immense agricultural potential, still finds almost 55 percent of its population living in poverty. In neighboring Zambia, one of the world’s biggest producers of much-in-demand copper, six in 10 people live in poverty.
\n\n\n\nAs Afrologi’s Zambia Playbook details, debt has shaped Zambia’s path, especially in the past decade. The crunch came in late 2020, when Zambia failed to make a USD 42.5 million Eurobond payment, setting off alarm among the country’s creditors. After years of negotiating better debt terms to relieve the burden, Zambia is beginning to put the debt crisis behind it with more fiscal discipline.
\n\n\n\nThe Lobito Corridor, examined in the playbook, is a catalyst for the comeback, though the railway, trade and investment initiative to link Zambia to the Atlantic Ocean will be years in the making. A more immediate help is the transfer of cash directly to more than 1.5 million poor households nationwide in a program run by the Zambian Ministry of Community Development and Social Services. Households receive ZMW 800 (around 40 U.S. dollars) every two months and more if a disabled person resides in the household.
\n\n\n\nEven so, Zambia needs “a coherent and enforceable national development plan to ensure that public investment supports pro-poor development outcomes,” UNECA says.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Malawi-workers-Australia-Kanyika-niobium-project-Globe-Metals.jpg?resize=720%2C481&ssl=1\")
Only in Mozambique is a legacy of impoverishment, coupled with recent guerrilla-led violence, smacking into an energy windfall. Natural gas discoveries in northern Mozambique represent a way out of poverty for the country, yet only if the eventual billions of dollars in revenue are managed for positive, inclusive change.
\n\n\n\nThe World Bank is worried that Mozambique’s government isn’t moving at the speed of its population growth to get its house in order. Curbing the government’s wage bill, collecting more taxes and easing up on expensive short-term domestic borrowing are priorities, the bank insists. At risk are schools and health clinics that aren’t getting enough money and staff to handle the growing number of people in the country.
\n\n\n\nAnother angle defines the poverty picture: the gap between rich and poor, measured by the Gini coefficient. Italian sociologist Corrado Gini created this measure in 1912 to look at the degree to which income across a country deviates from a perfectly equal distribution, represented by zero. A score of 100 is an utterly unequal distribution.
\n\n\n\nIn southern Africa, South Africa (63.3), Namibia (59.8) and Zambia (57.3) top the list, according to the forthcoming UNECA report. South Africa’s high jobless rate – unemployment stood at 33.6 percent in the second quarter of 2026 – contributes to its low mark. In a country of 63.5 million people, 8.5 million are without work, according to the government’s data agency, Statistics South Africa.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Rural Zambians in a social cash transfer program for the poor, by Zambian Ministry of Community Development and Social Services.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oil-rich Angola, future gas power Mozambique and copper-producing Zambia, along with Malawi, are loaded with natural resources, yet rank as the poorest countries in southern Africa, new data reveals.","protected":false},"author":144169649,"featured_media":2578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"everybody","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443694],"tags":[57443713,57443824,57443816,57443807,57443739,57443719,57443765],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-societies","tag-angola","tag-critical-minerals","tag-malawi","tag-mozambique","tag-oilandgas","tag-south-africa","tag-zambia","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Zambia-social-cash-transfer-Govt-of-Zambia.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Zambia-social-cash-transfer-Govt-of-Zambia.jpg?fit=2560%2C1128&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Rich country, poor country\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
Ghana is crazy for gold – maybe too much for long-term comfort. Gold from artisanal miners, gold from big mines, gold stashed in the central bank. Almost everywhere Ghana turns, the high-flying precious metal is showing up, enriching the country’s financial position while posing risks for the economy.
\n\n\n\nAs Africa’s largest gold producer – and the world’s sixth biggest, according to the World Gold Council, Ghana has cashed in on the sharp rise in the global price for the metal. In the past five years, gold has climbed from around USD 1,800 to almost USD 4,400 per troy ounce (31 grams) and surged beyond USD 5,000 in the first quarter of 2026 before dropping with the onset of conflict in the Middle East.
\n\n\n\nThe gold windfall has boosted exports – 70 percent of 2026 goods exports are likely literally to be worth their weight in gold – while driving up the value of Ghana’s cedi.
\n\n\n\n“The cedi’s sharp appreciation since 2025, while reflecting strong gold-driven external inflows, risks eroding competitiveness in the non-extractive export sector and complicating efforts to diversify the export base – underscoring the risks of Ghana’s increased reliance on gold,” International Monetary Fund staff said in a report released in August.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Ghana-gold-GoldBod-by-Gold-Coast-Refinery.jpeg?resize=720%2C639&ssl=1\")
What’s at stake: Ghana’s mines produced 187 tons of gold in 2025, outpacing America, the No. 7 producer, by 19 percent. Artisanal and small-scale miners are big players: in 2025 they contributed USD 10.8 billion in foreign exchange earnings. Yet the West African country’s cocoa and crude oil industries, along with broader agriculture and manufacturing, also demand capital and political attention in the export mix. Ghana wants to ride the gold wave while guarding against a gold crash.
\n\n\n\nAt Ghana’s central bank, gold fever is cooling off. The Bank of Ghana has reduced the share of gold in its international reserves to less than one-fifth from about one-third at the end of 2025, according to the IMF.
\n\n\n\nOn August 3, 2026, the government’s Ghana Gold Board, known by the James Bond-ish shorthand “GoldBod” stepped into action. It raised USD 75 million from commercial banks in Ghana, bypassing the central bank, to buy gold from domestic producers. This marked a big shift: GoldBod previously acting as a buying agent for the Bank of Ghana, the central bank, with money the institution provided.
\n\n\n\nGoldBod CEO Sammy Gyamfi described this transaction as both a test of self-funding and proof of the entity’s autonomy from the central bank, in a statement from his team. The IMF has expressed concern that the central bank was too involved in gold trading and losing money: an array of fees, charges and forex trading costs added up to about 15 percent of gross gold purchases. GoldBod, founded in 2025, should cut those costs to 5 percent.
\n\n\n\nGoldBod now purchases 30 percent of unrefined doré gold – with silver and other metals mixed in – from large-scale miners at a discount of 0.55 percent, refines it in Ghana and delivers the metal to the Bank of Ghana for its reserves.
\n\n\n\nGhana’s President John Mahama told Ghanaians in his state of the nation address in February 2026 that the country needs to pounce on the expected three years of historically lofty gold prices. Ghana should “build an economic war chest to withstand any global economic shocks, to secure our macroeconomic stability and improve the standards of living of our citizens,” along with conditions for long-term prosperity, he said.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Ghana-Mahama.png?resize=720%2C510&ssl=1\")
Ghana seeks to buy domestic gold to boost import cover to at least 15 months in 2028 from four months in 2025. Import cover means the amount of foreign exchange on hand to pay for imported goods and services.
\n\n\n\nThe day after Mahama spoke to the nation, the United States and Israel attacked Iran, and gold fell from its USD 5,000 perch in the weeks that followed. The IMF is basing its Ghana economic forecasts on a gold price as high as USD 4,500 in 2026 and 2027. Yet it has also stress-tested a “gold-price shock” in which the metal tumbles 30 percent. That would trim Ghana’s economic growth and the value of the cedi.
\n\n\n\nIn March 2026, Ghana’s lawmakers passed changes to minerals payouts, introducing sliding-scale royalties of 5 percent to 12 percent on lithium and large-scale gold mining and a flat 2 percent royalty on small-scale gold mining. Lithium is a so-called “critical mineral” used in batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energy.
\n\n\n\nThe government plans to send Parliament a draft Extractive Industry Fiscal Regime Act by December 2026. The measure would consolidate key fiscal laws for mining and petroleum production, “while limiting the scope for case-by-case variation of fiscal terms and competitive negotiations,” according to a July 7, 2026, letter of intent from Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson to the IMF.
\n\n\n\nAction options: Ghana’s gold windfall is keeping “imported inflation” at bay, which makes business planning more reliable. Manufacturing of electronics, vehicles and other goods, along with agro-processing, are growing segments of the economy. With support from the World Bank, the government debuted the “AgriConnect Compact” in June 2026, a national effort to boost food security, reduce imports and attract investment across agricultural value chains. Rice, maize, poultry, fisheries and the forest economy are priorities.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Ghana Gold Board chief Gyamfi.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ghana is riding the global gold price surge to near-term riches, yet the reliance on the precious metal risks eroding competitiveness in other promising export sectors.","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443694],"tags":[57443688,57443802,57443823,57443741,57443740,57443732,57443812],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-societies","tag-agribusiness","tag-ghana","tag-gold","tag-imf","tag-mining","tag-trade","tag-west-africa","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Ghana-Gold-Board-edited.jpeg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Ghana-Gold-Board-edited.jpeg?fit=979%2C520&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Ghana gold fever raises risks\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
Sometimes a fictional story from Africa can tell you more about a place and culture than any travel guide. These novels take you that way. We rounded up a superb collection from around Africa that you’ll be happy to drop into your book bag as you head to the beach, mountains or savanna for a well-deserved holiday.
\n\n\n\nNamwali Serpell’s The Old Drift is more than an engrossing and fabulous tale of families – Italian and Zambian – across generations. The sprawling story also sweeps across Zambia’s recent history, from colonial days along the Zambezi River to African liberation – political and cultural. Whimsical and strange at times, the novel goes one step further and takes you into the Zambian future. A quirky discovery lurks on every page.
\n\n\n\nThe Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr is a most enthralling read. The Senegalese author won the 2021 Prix Goncourt, a fancy French literary prize, for this story of a writer in Paris (also from Senegal) and his quest to uncover the life of an elusive author of a 1930s novel. If you like stories that span generations and continents and explore the legacy of colonialism and the meaning of creativity, this is your journey. Senegal’s dance with France, its former colonial ruler, reveals much about both countries.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Abdulrazak-Gurnah-in-2025-by-Hreinn-Gudlaugsson.jpg?resize=720%2C480&ssl=1\")
If present-day Nigeria isn’t exciting enough for you, fast forward to the 2060s in British Nigerian writer Tade Thompson’s mind-bending sci-fi saga Rosewood (the first volume of the Wormwood Trilogy.) Prepare for an alien mothership biodome that’s become a mecca for healing, government agents flitting through dimensions of time and space, and chaotic urban energy that seems awfully familiar. Thompson, who grew up in Nigeria, draws on his background in psychiatry and anthropology to deliver a head-spinning panorama of memorable characters.
\n\n\n\nItaly’s occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s gripped the world and remains an epic of romance and daring for Ethiopians. The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste puts Ethiopian women at the center of the story, from servant girl Hirut to military wife Aster. The Italians in the story aren’t reduced to props. An Italian military photographer sent to create propaganda images faces a moral dilemma as atrocities unfold. Mengiste moved to Rome and learned Italian to research the source material for the war. Ethiopian culture takes a starring role.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Maaza-Mengiste-in-2019-by-Slowking4-CC.jpg?resize=720%2C540&ssl=1\")
Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Tanzania-born Nobel laureate for literature, is a keen observer of human displacement. He knows of what he writes: Gurnah fled from Zanzibar during political upheavals in the 1960s and settled in England, where he became a professor. In By the Sea, a Zanzibari shopkeeper bearing treasured incense seeks asylum at Gatwick Airport and ends up in a seaside English town where he encounters a figure from his past – and their secrets. In Desertion, a love affair between an Englishman and a beautiful woman of East Africa resonates across the years. Gurnah reached the pinnacle of world literature “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents,” the Nobel committee said.
\n\n\n\nOur list would be incomplete without a choice from South Africa. Damon Galgut’s The Promise, winner of the 2021 Booker Prize, ventures into the transition out of apartheid, the strict racial separation that suffocated South Africa. The novel zeroes in on a white farming family fading out across decades, as an unfulfilled promise to a Black housekeeper shadows their decline.
\n\n\n\nKenya’s great writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o passed away in 2025 far from East Africa, in a hospital outside Atlanta. That hints at the tension in his writing: driven into exile because for some, he revealed too much. (He worked as a literature professor in America.) A Grain of Wheat reads like a playbook on how Kenya does its politics and treats its history, told from the savvy observations and painful experiences of villagers. The story takes place in the four days leading up to Kenya’s independence in December 1963 yet is rooted in the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. In the mix: a respected hero of the resistance who carries a troubling secret, a former prisoner whose life is upended upon his return home, and a man who makes the fateful choice to side with the British.
\n\n\n\nThings Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe stands alone, for good reason. There are classics and then there are classics that define an entire era of writing. Achebe is to modern African literature what William Faulkner was to American writers in the past century: a pathbreaker who digs deep into the sociology and psychology of a world on the edge of forever change. Told through the story of the fictional Igbo warrior Okonkwo, Achebe conveys the rich traditions and cultural abundance of Okonkwo’s world – and the rapid disintegration of all he values as the British arrive with disruption.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Characters from The Shadow King, A Grain of Wheat and Rosewood as imagined by AI.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From a generational saga of fantastical change in Zambia to women at war in Ethiopia to the wild, mesmerizing world of Nigeria in the 2060s, here are immersive stories of Africa.","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443694],"tags":[57443708,57443679,57443722,57443738,57443719,57443765],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-societies","tag-ethiopia","tag-kenya","tag-nigeria","tag-senegal","tag-south-africa","tag-zambia","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Africa-novels-composite-image-Gemini-AUG2026.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Africa-novels-composite-image-Gemini-AUG2026.jpg?fit=2752%2C1536&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Book a great African beach read\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
In a market economy, trust plays a fundamental role in economic efficiency. The protection of property rights, the predictability of judicial decisions and the capacity of the state to make informed and fair decisions determine the level of trust among economic agents. That, in turn, influences their willingness to invest in business relationships.
\n\n\n\nIn African countries, most perception surveys indicate a minimal level of trust among both domestic and international actors about the rules and practices governing business relations. To attract capital and boost both foreign and domestic investment, countries on the continent will need to make major efforts to upgrade their trust capital.
\n\n\n\nBasic economics and finance textbooks highlight two major determinants of investment: the profitability and security of a proposed venture. While profitability refers to the expected return on investment, security relates instead to the level of trust in the quality of the institutions governing business in a country. What matters is the predictability of these institutions and the credibility of those responsible for arbitrating the inevitable conflicts arising from business relationships.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Senegal-civil-society-leaders-at-natl-dialogue-in-2025-by-Senegal-Presidency-edit.jpg?resize=720%2C480&ssl=1\")
Trust may be withering in Africa, yet profits are flourishing. Profitability rates of private investment are among the highest in the world. The average rate of return on foreign direct investment is as high as 14 percent in Africa, at least 5 points higher than in Asia and Latin America.
\n\n\n\nBy contrast, Africa records the lowest level of private investment in the world, reflecting a poor-quality business environment and doubt about the prospects for success of any private venture.
\n\n\n\nAfrica received 4.3 percent of foreign direct investment worldwide in 2025, down from 6 percent in 2024, according to United Nations data, while holding considerable assets: a dominant share of global natural resources, dynamic demographics, a steadily growing middle class and still rising demand for a vast range of goods and services. Africa’s share of global public debt remains marginal at less than 7 percent.
\n\n\n\nWhile money is undeniably scarcer in Africa than in the rest of the world, it is, conversely, far more expensive. In a now famous report on the cost of the subjective perception of African risk, the United Nations Development Program estimated that USD 28 billion in excess interest payments could be attributed to the subjective component of international credit ratings, and that almost USD 46 billion in potential savings eluded African countries due to poor ratings.
\n\n\n\nThe continent’s financial marginalization in the global economy is only the visible tip of the iceberg when it comes to the devastating impact of the trust deficit on African financial indicators. Credit-to-GDP ratios (a measure of financial depth) are among the lowest in the world and the cost of credit to the private sector in Africa is among the highest in the world – sometimes triple what borrowers in Europe or North America pay. Loans to the domestic private sector, which peaked at 160 percent of GDP in Asia, struggle to exceed 25 percent in Africa.
\n\n\n\nSenegal is far from an exception to this general trend. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, an indicator of public trust in elites across the world, stood at 46 percent among Senegalese in 2025. (On a 100-point scale in which 100 is most corrupt.) Although the 2025 Afrobarometer survey results are more favorable, indicating that 68 percent of the population is satisfied with government efforts to fight corruption in the public administration, 58 percent of citizens still feel they are not treated equally under the law.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Tax-official-in-West-Africa-edit-1024x738.jpeg?resize=720%2C519&ssl=1\")
World Bank enterprise surveys indicate that a third of respondents consider tax administration a moderate to severe obstacle to business. Only 35 percent of respondents report high trust in the justice system. Businesses point to the uncertainty and unpredictability of court decisions, the difficulty of enforcing contracts and the slowness of commercial procedures as the main judicial obstacles.
\n\n\n\nReligion- and kinship-based networks are prevalent in Senegal, with the Mouride brotherhood network being by far the most studied. That attests to the high level of distrust that large segments of the population hold toward formal institutions.
\n\n\n\nFindings from our surveys of formal and informal businesses in Francophone African countries confirm this situation. For instance, 48 percent of surveyed formal businesses and 88 percent of informal businesses indicate relying on extended family as their primary hiring source, reflecting the higher level of trust inspired by relatives.
\n\n\n\nThe lack of trust among economic agents in African economies manifests in several ways. While opinion polls, such as Afrobarometer, show deeply worrying results regarding African populations’ low level of trust in their institutions and leaders, surveys on the development of the African private sector place greater emphasis on the impact of the trust deficit.
\n\n\n\nWeak contract enforcement and poor protection of property rights – particularly for land – are cited as the most significant obstacles to business development in Africa.
\n\n\n\nBank financing is one of the areas where the lack of trust is felt most acutely. Non-performing loans (doubtful debts or those unpaid 90 days after the due date) account for 11 percent of total bank loans in Africa, almost double the global average.
\n\n\n\nAnother sign of public distrust in formal institutions is the relatively low proportion of the adult population with a bank account, which tops out at 55 percent, more than 20 points lower than the global average. An abundant body of literature in institutional economics and across other social sciences establishes a very strong correlation between a lack of trust in formal institutions and reliance on alternatives, such as religious and family networks.
\n\n\n\nThese informal channels, which capture the bulk of productive activity in Africa, establish codes of conduct and contract enforcement mechanisms that replace dysfunctional formal ones. Built on relationships of trust among members, they facilitate internal information sharing and financial flows in the form of loans unmatched within formal institutional frameworks. For example, the widespread use of tontines (rotating savings associations) in various forms across Africa is a textbook case.
\n\n\n\nThe formation of business communities that turn inward, develop group-specific rules and maintain minimal interaction with the rest of society is a well-known reality in Africa. Proliferation of these networks confines our economies to obsolete modes of production incompatible with the complexity and financial scale characteristic of modern business.
\n\n\n\nTrust levels are closely tied to public perception of institutional quality. Well-protected property rights, especially for land, more predictable judicial decisions, more stable legal rules over time and greater judicial expertise in commercial matters could significantly boost public trust in formal institutions and offer greater reassurance to investors. It’s time to build trust, so we can build a stronger Africa.
\n\n\n\nAhmadou Aly Mbaye is professor of economics and public policy and former president of Senegal’s leading university, Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. He is president of the African Institute for Sustainable Development.
\n\n\n\n(Feature photo: Nigeria protest by Dokun Ayano / Pexels)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To attract capital and boost both foreign and domestic investment, countries in Africa need to make major efforts to upgrade their trust capital. That means reaching out to a public wary of institutions that don't serve their needs, as Senegal shows.","protected":false},"author":144169650,"featured_media":2473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443694],"tags":[57443831,57443830,57443809,57443767,57443780,57443812],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-societies","tag-corruption","tag-courts","tag-east-africa","tag-finance","tag-investment","tag-west-africa","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Nigeria-protest-by-Dokun-Ayano-edit.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Nigeria-protest-by-Dokun-Ayano-edit.jpg?fit=1280%2C787&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Africa’s worrying deficit is public trust\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
At first glance, the news out of Yaoundé, Cameroon, looked insignificant for integrated trade and investment across Africa, involving about 70 million people, or less than 5 percent of the continent’s population.
\n\n\n\nYet on closer inspection, the decision in early July 2026 by the Bank of Central African States to join the emerging Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, a long name for a shorter route, could be an intriguing catalyst for global investors, logistics operators and strategic planners.
\n\n\n\nKnown by its French initials, BEAC is one of Africa’s two regional central banks, issuing the Central African CFA franc across Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Oil production is a common denominator for five of these six countries – only CAR lacks crude. And only Equatorial Guinea escaped colonial French rule and speaks Spanish, imprinting “Banco de Los Estados de Africa Central” on the CFA banknote.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: In one move, the pan-African clearing network, commonly called PAPSS, grew its base of African markets by almost 30 percent, to 28 countries. Yvon Sana Bangui, governor of BEAC, said “the active involvement of the financial sector” is what gives PAPSS its clout and will enable faster and cheaper cross-border payments in central Africa. Transactions can settle in real time in local currencies without a non-African currency in the middle.
\n\n\n\nTo understand the weight of this development, look at how intra-African trade historically functioned. If a business in Douala, a coastal city in Cameroon, wanted to import cosmetics from Nigeria, the transaction probably couldn’t happen directly. The importer had to convert CFA francs into U.S. dollars or euros, send the funds through correspondent banks in New York or perhaps Paris, and convert those dollars or euros into Nigerian naira.
\n\n\n\nThis dollar detour across continents introduces fees, settlement delays, frustration and a strange dependence on offshore banks. A simple transaction across a shared border in Africa turns into a global financial expedition. Of course, there are workarounds, from smuggling goods to using gold to transacting in digital currencies.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAPSS-Mike-Ogbalu.jpg?resize=590%2C393&ssl=1\")
If your deal needs to travel a well-trod route, however, you might end up in America. One of those New York-based correspondent banks used for decades, Citibank, has argued that payment systems alone won’t boost trade flows if compatible financial rules and efficient payment infrastructure aren’t in place. Bad data moving slowly remains a risk.
\n\n\n\n“At the heart of the issue is the so-called last mile, the final stretch of a cross-border payment that too often bottlenecks due to incompatible financial systems, basic errors in payment data that go unchecked, or regulatory divergence between countries that delay or block transactions outright,” Citi said in a 2025 paper on cross-border African payments.
\n\n\n\nEswatini Finance Minister Neal Rijkenberg, who chairs an African Union committee on finance and economic integration, recently said balancing “core principles” with national needs and ensuring payments integration works for people and business, not just institutions, are top challenges. “These are not abstract questions,” he told a meeting of central bankers and regulators in April 2026. “They will determine whether a trader in Eswatini can pay a supplier in Ghana.”
\n\n\n\nAfrican banks and other financial institutions with settlement accounts at a central bank are known as “direct participants” of PAPSS. They agree to a pre-funding arrangement to ensure money is available before the split-second crediting and debiting of accounts, according to PAPSS. An advanced messaging system offers visibility into the transaction path, while net settlement across all participating central banks occurs daily at 11:00 universal time.
\n\n\n\nMike Ogbalu, former CEO of Nigerian payment card Verve, has run PAPSS since 2021 after its creation by Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank, better known as Afreximbank. For an emblem, PAPSS adopted a stylized rendering of a cowrie shell – Africa’s ancient and widely accepted trade currency.
\n\n\n\nAction options: Pushing PAPSS into the heart of Africa may have broader impact. While Republic of Congo, CAR and Chad aren’t booming economies, these countries and others in the monetary union linked to BEAC cover an enormous geography. They act as a land bridge between east and west.
\n\n\n\nAn even bigger step would be adding the other CFA-issuing central bank, covering eight countries in West Africa, including Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal. An official of Dakar-based Central Bank of West African States said the institution plans to test PAPSS with more than 80 banks in its region, according to the Ecofin news agency.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Douala, Cameroon, by Xavier Messina / Pexels)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The decision by the monetary authority for central Africa to join an emerging cross-border payments system may be a catalyst for investors and planners looking for broader trade within Africa.","protected":false},"author":144169649,"featured_media":2432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443693],"tags":[57443827,57443829,57443828,57443732],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-tech","tag-cameroon","tag-chad","tag-congo","tag-trade","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/douala-by-messina-pexels.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/douala-by-messina-pexels.jpg?fit=1280%2C960&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Dollar detour derails in heart of Africa\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
So far from mainland Africa that an airliner takes four hours to find this emerald speck in the Indian Ocean, Mauritius is tangled up in geopolitical disputes far beyond its control.
\n\n\n\nThe war in Iran and the Persian Gulf is already hurting – annual economic growth in Mauritius, one of Africa’s richest countries, is likely to slip below 3 percent for the first time since the pandemic – and could cause more pain. In a prolonged Middle East conflict, the economy “would be impacted significantly,” says a just-released International Monetary Fund staff analysis.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: Mauritius is more than a destination for sunseekers. It is fast becoming a key financial gateway to Africa, especially from Asia. Major trade agreements with China and India have anchored its status as an entryway to the continent-wide free trade area. Ebene Cybercity draws companies focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain. And an international finance center enables investors and wealth managers to take advantage of streamlined corporate and tax frameworks.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Mauritius-Ebene-Cybercity-by-Landscope.jpg?resize=720%2C364&ssl=1\")
The latest arrival in Mauritius is the African Union-backed Africa Credit Rating Agency, meant to overcome what its champions see as an annoying and costly international bias in assessing African risks. The startup is setting up from an HQ in Mauritius. The AU said Mauritius was chosen because of its “strong governance standards, robust financial sector and commitment to regional integration and economic good governance.”
\n\n\n\nAfter hopes for peace blossomed in June 2026, Iran and the United States are trading fire once more around the Strait of Hormuz, the vital chokepoint for global energy supplies. Crude oil retreated below USD 100 a barrel to around USD 72 in early July yet is climbing again – orbiting USD 85 in mid-July. Iran’s July 18 attack on Jordan, which killed U.S. military personnel defending against drone and ballistic missile strikes, may rekindle global economic anxiety.
\n\n\n\nReduced tourism, higher oil prices and rising inflation would slash economic growth in the downside scenario envisioned by IMF staff due to a prolonged Iran war. The country’s public debt would balloon past 90 percent of GDP, considered a growth-crimping danger zone. That prediction is based on oil at USD 124 a barrel, close to the highest price crude reached during the most intense fighting in April 2026. Authorities in Mauritius “are considering multiple war‑related scenarios,” according to the IMF report, released in mid-July.
\n\n\n\nSince the May visit of an IMF team to confer with officials in Mauritius and size up the country’s situation, the IMF has trimmed its 2026 economic growth forecast for the island nation to 2.8 percent from 3.4 percent predicted in April.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Mauritius-Anahita-area-by-Sarah-Vingta-wikimedia.jpg?resize=720%2C290&ssl=1\")
Softening the blow from the Middle East are proposed British payments for 99 years to Mauritius for use of the strategic air base at Diego Garcia, part of the Chagos Islands that Britain has agreed to turn over to Mauritius. Yet that flow of funds is in limbo due to U.S. objections. For six decades the archipelago has belonged to British Indian Ocean Territory while being open to use by U.S. long-range bombers from a runway on Diego Garcia. This island-as-base is within striking distance of Iran and Yemen.
\n\n\n\nThe payments in today’s money to Mauritius would add up to about GBP 3.4 billion, or roughly USD 4.5 billion, according to a U.K. parliamentary report. Under the treaty with Mauritius, Britain agreed to pay GBP 165 million (about USD 220 million) in each of the first three years of the arrangement, GBP 120 million (USD 160 million) annually for the next 10 years, and the same sum, adjusted for inflation, for the remaining years.
\n\n\n\nBritain also consented to pay GBP 40 million to capitalize a trust fund for Chagos islands residents and GBP 45 million a year for 25 years to Mauritius for economic development investments.
\n\n\n\n“On the upside, the ratification of the Chagos agreement would deliver a revenue windfall and allow for faster debt reduction,” the IMF staff said, “while an easing of geopolitical tensions could support a recovery in tourism and help lower inflation.”
\n\n\n\nAction options: With GDP per capita approaching USD 14,000, a jobless rate at 6 percent and low inflation, Mauritius has economic strength that most African policy makers crave. That adds up to resilience and still makes the island nation an appealing launch pad for ambitions on the African mainland. A visit to Mauritius can help assess incentives on offer and how to use them.
\n\n\n\nJust be prepared for geopolitical shifts in distant capitals. The U.S. State Department expressed support for Britain’s Chagos deal on February 17, 2026, before scheduled talks with officials in Mauritius. Yet on his social media feed the next day, President Donald Trump called the deal a “big mistake,” and reversed U.S. policy.
\n\n\n\nThat has scuttled the British handover for now amid fears that China may seize a foothold on these oceanic dots of territory. The United States has refused to amend a 1966 treaty with Britain that covers the islands, forcing U.K. officials to suspend action on enabling legislation for the Chagos accord, according to The Guardian newspaper.
\n\n\n\nRebeccah Heinrichs, an expert on strategic military deterrence at the Hudson Institute think tank, wrote earlier this year that “leasing the base while handing over sovereignty to a Chinese partner is courting trouble.” Heinrichs pointed to China’s loans to Mauritius and possible Chinese high-tech surveillance of the islands, including Diego Garcia.
\n\n\n\nAfter the shelving of the plan, Dhananjay Ramful, the Mauritian foreign minister, insisted that his government remained committed to the handover. “We will spare no effort to seize any diplomatic or legal avenue to complete the decolonization process,” he said, in comments at a conference in Mauritius reported by British newspapers. “This is a matter of justice.”
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: An iconic view of Mauritius rising from the Indian Ocean about 1,200 miles from mainland Africa, by Dominik Ruhl / Pexels)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Africa's financial gateway in the distant Indian Ocean, and a tourism paradise, is facing economic trouble from the faraway conflict between Iran and the United States and its Gulf allies.","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443696],"tags":[57443706,57443777,57443825,57443671,57443702,57443826,57443684],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-geopolitics","tag-china","tag-fintech","tag-mauritius","tag-top","tag-tourism","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Mauritius-Pexels-by-Dominik-Ruhl.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Mauritius-Pexels-by-Dominik-Ruhl.jpg?fit=1920%2C1250&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"War clouds Africa’s sunny money gateway\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
An East African country eager to escape fallout from deadly political unrest and embrace a pivotal role in critical minerals and Indian Ocean trade has unlocked a timely boost from the largest African development lender. It may signal that some governments are ready to do business again with Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan even as her government confronts possible far-reaching U.S. sanctions.
\n\n\n\nIn a five-year strategy for Tanzania quietly released on July 6, 2026, as the world was distracted by the World Cup and a NATO summit in Turkey, the African Development Bank proposed financial support including loans to Tanzania worth USD 1.9 billion between now and 2028 for transport and water and sanitation projects and to boost job creation in agribusiness and energy. An estimated USD 1.4 billion in co-financing from development partners will supplement the bank’s support.
\n\n\n\nTanzania has faced a global backlash for suppressing the country’s opposition and deploying security forces against protesting Tanzanians during and after elections in 2025 in which Hassan was declared the victor. An investigative commission said in April 2026 that at least 518 people were killed in election-related clashes yet refrained from assigning blame. Amnesty International has demanded the release of the panel’s report.
\n\n\n\nAs part of a petition in 2025 to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open a case, a South African NGO, the Madrid Bar Association, World Jurist Association and unidentified Tanzanian civil society activists accused the government of killing as many as 3,000 people, according to the South African newspaper Daily Maverick.
\n\n\n\nYet while offering its lending plan, the bank flagged the political risks of the moment and – unusual for its financing deals – intends to help strengthen civil society organizations and “deepen policy dialogue on governance reforms.”
\n\n\n\nWhile Tanzania is among Africa’s fastest growing economies, expanding about 6 percent a year with energy supplies, minerals to tap, and emerging trade and transport links into central Africa, the 2025 political shock threatens to do even more damage.
\n\n\n\nThe U.S. Senate is considering a bill that would require a comprehensive review of relations, including ties with China that put America at a disadvantage and, of more immediate peril to Hassan, the naming of senior government and ruling party officials linked to a range of abuses. The bill cites abductions and harassment of political foes, journalists and activists; religious repression; censorship and extrajudicial killings, all meant to keep Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Party of the Revolution) firmly in power.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: The proposed U.S. review could lead to visa revocations, aid cuts and a prohibition on asset transactions in the United States or involving U.S. persons under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Given the weight of the United States in the global financial system, such penalties could have much broader implications for Tanzania.
\n\n\n\nIntroduced by Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and prominent Republican Ted Cruz of Texas, the bill describes the October 29, 2025, election as “fraudulent and illegitimate” and accuses Tanzanian security forces of killing hundreds of protesters. Moreover, the bill states, their actions “endangered the lives of United States citizens and tourists visiting the country.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Ted-Cruz.jpg?resize=720%2C813&ssl=1\")
On June 17, the Foreign Relations Committee advanced the bill with bipartisan support to the full Senate for consideration. The bill asserts that “it is in the national security interests of the United States to help counter democratic backsliding of key partner nations where the United States has supplied billions of dollars worth of investment, development, humanitarian assistance, and security partnerships.”
\n\n\n\nIn the weeks after the election, deployments of security personnel increased in urban areas in Tanzania, along with “warnings issued to businesses, restrictions imposed on fuel sales and surveillance of digital communications,” the UN Human Rights Commission has said, cautioning that these measures “risk inflaming public tension and significantly undermine the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and participation in public affairs.”
\n\n\n\nICC Deputy Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang met with Tanzania’s foreign minister along with other African officials at the African Union summit in February 2026, according to an ICC statement. Without naming any countries or incidents, Niang said a “sense of impunity” around the world is fueling “atrocity crimes.”
\n\n\n\nIn May 2026, the U.S. State Department barred Tanzanian Police Force Senior Assistant Commissioner Faustine Jackson Mafwele from entering the United States based on what the State Department described as “credible information” he was involved in the detention, torture and sexual assault of Ugandan Agather Atuhaire and Kenyan Boniface Mwangi by police officials. The activists had traveled to Dar es Salaam to observe a court hearing linked to treason charges against opposition leader Tundu Lissu.
\n\n\n\nTanzania’s precarious situation is wrapped in a climate of fear at home and sensitivity outside the country. An executive with deep knowledge about Tanzania’s economy declined to comment out of concern those views might antagonize the government. The Senate measure would require the singling out of government officials implicated in “the use of transnational repression tactics that target foreign nationals, Tanzanian citizens, and diaspora members regionally and internationally.”
\n\n\n\nPolitical risks aren’t all that troubles Tanzania’s trajectory. “Tanzania’s overarching development challenge is limited competitiveness and slow structural transformation, reflected in low productivity, persistent poverty, inequality, and high youth unemployment,” the African Development Bank said in its strategy.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Tanzania-Kamala-Harris-edit-1024x780.jpg?resize=720%2C548&ssl=1\")
The United States has pointed to Tanzania’s mineral wealth as a driver of the African nation’s future prosperity and important to the supply chain for America and its allies. Gold, copper, iron ore, nickel, cobalt and silver are among Tanzania’s horde of valuable minerals. Graphite, important for electric vehicle batteries and renewable-energy storage, and niobium, used in superconducting magnets, are attracting investment.
\n\n\n\n“The transition to a low-carbon economy is creating unprecedented demand for critical minerals,” the president of the Institution of Engineers Tanzania, Asa Mwaipopo, told a meeting in June 2026 at the University of Dar es Salaam, according to the university. “Tanzania is well-positioned to benefit, but success will depend on how effectively we transform these resources into broader economic opportunities” and expand mineral prospecting.
\n\n\n\nThe Tanzanian government has shifted attention toward economic good news. Rished Bade, acting deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Finance, told a UN forum on development financing in April 2026 that Tanzania was creatively shaping “bankable projects pipelines” to meet local priorities, examining tax reforms and boosting international views of its potential. “Recent credit ratings reflect growing confidence in Tanzania’s economic trajectory,” Bade said.
\n\n\n\nAction options: If the U.S. sanctions legislation becomes law, President Donald Trump could impose penalties within seven months, meaning that 2027 may become a consequential year in relations with Tanzania – and for the country’s economic prospects.
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On a sun-streaked recent morning, Angola’s cavernous new international airport terminal outside the capital Luanda dozed. The footfalls of passengers echoed across Terminal B, about two football fields long and unadorned save for a few eateries and elegant kiosks loaded with artisanal baskets, leather goods, booze and carvings of a national symbol, the giant sable antelope. Waiting.
\n\n\n\nFrom time to time an Airbus A220, the 137-seat workhorse of refurbished TAAG Angola Airlines, pulled into a gate at Dr. António Agostinho Neto International Airport, named after the poet and revolutionary hero who served as Angola’s first president. The ambition represented by this USD 3 billion investment, built by a Chinese contractor and operated by Portugal’s Mota-Engil and a Luxembourg company, seemed clear: to create an air hub in southwestern Africa for tourists and investors somewhere over the horizon.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: From tourism to agriculture to the promise of the Lobito Corridor linking an Angolan port to central Africa, Angola is trying to build a future beyond oil, its most prized – and still lucrative – asset. The crowds have yet to show up. Angolan leaders are hunting for a boom across their country’s vast, enticing yet barely plowed arable land. Boosting the energy supply for industrial investment is also high on the agenda.
\n\n\n\n“We have resolutely decided to reduce our dependence on the oil sector and build an economy based on sectors with a strong multiplier effect,” including tourism, Angolan President João Lourenço told an investment forum in Luanda in mid-June 2026, according to Ver Angola, a news service.
\n\n\n\nLarger than Ethiopia and almost twice the size of Texas, oil-exporting Angola is land and water rich yet imported rice and other food worth USD 2 billion in 2023. Nutritious eating is in such short supply across Angola that four in 10 children under 5 years old suffer from malnutrition, according to the World Bank.
\n\n\n\nThose are jarring metrics for a country that pumps 1 million barrels of crude a day, mostly from offshore fields, and just received a brief windfall from a faraway war. The world oil price doubled, shooting up as high as USD 126 a barrel in April 2026 after Israel and the United States attacked Iran in February. (A shaky agreement between the United States and Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, gateway to the world for Persian Gulf oil and gas, knocked prices down to around USD 72.) In 2025, oil accounted for 80 percent of Angola’s exports by value (natural gas contributed 10 percent and diamonds 5 percent) and 62 percent of government tax revenue.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Angolan-Finance-Min-2026-edit-1024x739.jpg?resize=720%2C520&ssl=1\")
In recent months, investors jumped at the chance to buy Angola’s debt. The country raised USD 2.5 billion in a March 2026 Eurobond offering and 1.5 billion in May, with orders for both more than double the sum on offer. After the May bond sale, which bought out two existing Eurobonds, the Finance Ministry said investors had shown “confidence in the country’s macroeconomic trajectory and the consistency of its financial policy.”
\n\n\n\nMoney owed to Chinese banks has fallen, to USD 10 billion in 2025 – one-fifth of external debt – from almost USD 17 billion in 2020, and debt owed to the Chinese government has halved to USD 2 billion, according to a filing with the London Stock Exchange. Overall, Angola’s debt payments as a percentage of revenue declined to 71 percent in 2025 from 83 percent in 2024.
\n\n\n\nThe corruption cloud that has hovered over Angola for years has lifted somewhat under Lourenço. A government investigation uncovered billions of dollars in financial and real assets that high-level officials allegedly grabbed under a prior government, often stashing wealth abroad. Less spectacular graft persists. One in five Angolan businesses in a 2024 World Bank survey said they had received at least one request to pay a bribe.
\n\n\n\nTheft of oil revenue, capture of state-run enterprises and other abuses are targets of probes into officials and executives linked to long-time President José Eduardo dos Santos, who died in 2022. In 2024, Angola committed to work with the Financial Action Task Force, a global watchdog, to crack down on money laundering.
\n\n\n\nSince Lourenço took office in 2017, Angola’s score in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index has improved to 32 from 19 on scale where 100 is squeaky clean and zero is abysmal. In national rankings, Angola sat two-thirds down the list (top is best) at 120th position in 2025, tied with El Salvador, the Philippines and Togo.
\n\n\n\nExerting more control over Angola’s destiny is on the agenda in Luanda under Lourenço, whose second term ends in 2027. On January 1, 2024, Angola left the Saudi Arabia-dominated Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, after a decision to reduce Angola’s production quota by 200,000 barrels a day, a 15 percent cut.
\n\n\n\nDepleting oil fields and limited investment in exploration has led to long-term decline in crude output. A decade ago, Angola produced as much as 1.8 million barrels a day, U.S. Energy Department data shows. A World Bank calculation forecasts a further drop of two-thirds in crude output by 2040. China buys most of Angola’s oil, prized as “sweet” for its low sulfur content.
\n\n\n\nInland, farming potential is finally getting attention. Besides vast arable land, Angola can draw on “favorable rainfall across large parts of the country, major river systems that can support irrigation, diverse agro-ecological zones, improving infrastructure and a relatively young farming population,” says Menghestab Haile, a former World Food Program director in southern Africa who is advising Angola’s minister of agriculture on a farming transformation.
\n\n\n\nThe AgroCorredores initiative wants to take advantage of the Lobito Corrido’s transport and logistics scale-up to connect productive agriculture areas to national and global markets and pump up rural economic growth, Haile says. Cutting post-harvest losses, improving the quality of crops, bringing more finance, energy and expertise to smallholder farmers and ultimately improving the food and feed available to Angolans are goals of the strategy.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Angola-lake-from-air-APR2026.jpg?resize=720%2C405&ssl=1\")
AgroCorredores is engaging across the agribusiness system. It assigns farmer training and mobilizing cooperatives to the Institute for Agrarian Development, while putting the National Cereals Institute in charge of market readiness: post-harvest handling, modernizing warehouses, quality certification and aggregating crops for commercial buyers. Other entities focus on livestock, data analysis and financing.
\n\n\n\nAngola’s farmland, 59 million hectares or 145 million acres, is equivalent to the farmed area of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Texas, among America’s biggest agricultural states. Any harvested surplus could be shipped to the United States, South America or Europe from the port of Lobito that also serves as a future gateway for copper, cobalt and other minerals dug from central Africa. Lobito is intended to establish a U.S.- and European-backed minerals supply chain outside China’s control.
\n\n\n\nIn 2024, the Export-Import Bank of the United States approved a USD 1.6 billion loan for a project by Miami-based Sun Africa to build 65 solar mini-grids and energy storage in southern Angola that will also power water collection and cleaning.
\n\n\n\nThrough five decades of independence after rule by Portugal, geopolitics has shaped and shattered the country. A civil war that ran from 1975 to 2002 became a proxy battleground for the United States and Soviet Union, along with Cuba and South Africa. After the Cold War, a rising China entered the picture.
\n\n\n\nAs the Eurobond offering was going on sale in March, Finance Minister Vera Daves de Sousa was in China meeting with development banks and top Hong Kong officials about entry into its financial market, according to the Angolan Finance Ministry. In a buoyant meeting with former Brazilian leader and New Development Bank President Dilma Rousseff in Shanghai, Daves de Sousa explored Angola’s possible membership in the multinational lender, an offshoot of the BRICS group led by China, India and Russia.
\n\n\n\nIn December 2025, Angola diversified its funding by raising its first money in the Japanese market – a 40 billion yen Samurai bond worth about USD 250 million.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Angola-airport-cafe-APR2026.jpg?resize=720%2C517&ssl=1\")
While Angola’s oil and natural gas wealth invites investment, the U.S. Government cautioned last year that investing can be troublesome. “Companies face persistent bureaucracy, lack of transparency in procurement and licensing, and inconsistent regulatory enforcement,” the International Trade Administration wrote in a note on Angola. “Access to foreign exchange is limited, and restrictions on dividend repatriation continue to deter foreign investment.”
\n\n\n\nA World Bank survey in 2024 found that getting a construction-related permit took 51 days, almost double the sub-Saharan Africa wait, while on average a government payment on a contract took 151 days, almost three months longer.
\n\n\n\nTo deal with some of these risks, Angola is adopting a public-private partnership approach designed to speed up project approvals. Recent Angolan laws and decrees have created a legal structure and project preparation pipeline for PPPs, enabled tax incentives and security in repatriating profits, and opened renewable energy and transmission line projects to private investors, according to André Duarte Figueira, Angola lead in the Lisbon office of the international law firm DLA Piper. A World Bank-funded program run by the Angolan government, Diversifica Mais, is supporting the PPP scale-up.
\n\n\n\nFigueira thinks the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo’s model of choosing project partners mainly on financial strength could be adopted in Angola and attract institutional investors, investment funds, pension funds and family-wealth offices.
\n\n\n\nAction options: Lourenço touted his country’s allure at the international tourism investment summit, eager to put Angola on the map in a region of fierce competition from nearby Zambia, Namibia and South Africa. From 1,000 miles of coastline to rugged terrain and waterfalls inland, with a vast range of flora and fauna, Angola could appeal to beach lovers, hikers and wildlife enthusiasts alike. The European Union sees eco-tourism potential in Cameia National Park, a wilderness in eastern Angola.
\n\n\n\nJune also was a busy month for Angola Airlines. The airline named Jaime Miguel Ferreira Carneiro as CEO, started weekly service to Guangzhou, China, and said it received European Union approval to fly the widebody Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” into European airspace. Within Africa, flights to Nairobi and Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire started in the past year, extending Angola’s reach.
\n\n\n\nThe long shadow that war and isolation cast over Angola is fading as a younger generation steps up to take on the country’s entrenched poverty amid riches. The emerging narrative is built on connections, in the air and across borders by railway as Lobito Corridor unfolds. Whether these pathways can take Angolans toward an era of broader opportunity and prosperity depends on a journey of renewal that’s just getting started.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: A fully stocked kiosk called On the Way Home awaits future travelers at Angola’s new international airport outside Luanda. Afrologi photo by Edward DeMarco.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From tourism to agriculture to the promise of the Lobito Corridor linking an Angolan port to central Africa, Angola is trying to build a future beyond oil, its most prized – and still lucrative – asset. ","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443694],"tags":[57443688,57443713,57443706,57443739,57443671,57443765],"series":[57443673],"class_list":["post-2256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-societies","tag-agribusiness","tag-angola","tag-china","tag-oilandgas","tag-top","tag-zambia","series-afrologi","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Angola-airport-shop-APR2026-rotated.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Angola-airport-shop-APR2026-rotated.jpg?fit=4080%2C3060&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Angola plots a future beyond oil\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
You may view massive cuts in U.S. development and humanitarian aid to Africa as the end of America’s influence, yet Africa’s ties with the global superpower are far broader – and often little known.
\n\n\n\nMost people probably wouldn’t guess there are countries in Africa that do a billion dollars of trade in a month with the United States. Or that the United States is the second-largest shareholder, after Nigeria, in the continent’s largest development finance institution, the African Development Bank based in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
\n\n\n\nIn 2025, as our infographic shows, the 15 largest U.S. trade partners in Africa were a geographic mix that included North Africa, Nigeria and smaller, dynamic economies in West Africa and central African resource heavyweights Angola (oil) and Democratic Republic of Congo (copper, cobalt and more). Africa’s largest island nation, Madagascar, also made the top 15. Anchoring the trade picture as America’s top trade partner was South Africa, which sold USD 10.1 billion more in goods to the United States than it bought from America. The trade surge came as the Trump White House pressured the South African government with tariffs and accusations of fomenting racial strife.
\n\n\n\nAs America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its declaration of independence from the British Empire in 1776, which fueled seven more years of war, the map of connections to Africa is changing. Investment is getting a bigger spotlight. Lobito Corridor, a railway, trade and investment route from central Africa to the Atlantic Ocean – first championed by President Joe Biden – is high on the agenda.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/America-in-Africa-infographic-FINAL-25JUN2026.jpg?resize=720%2C892&ssl=1\")
And development assistance hasn’t totally dried up. The two-decade, approximately USD 100 billion effort aimed at stopping the spread of HIV and helping Africans live with AIDS, known as PEPFAR, is transitioning into the America First Global Health program, which also addresses challenges such as maternal and child health and scaling up the public health workforce. (PEPFAR said it has saved more than 25 million lives in Africa.) To date, 22 countries in Africa have negotiated America First deals that include co-financing. Some of the MOUs have drawn a backlash due to demands for long-term health data and implied linkages to mineral resources.
\n\n\n\nMillennium Challenge, a U.S. initiative to finance roads and other infrastructure through country-led efforts, has scaled back yet is still active from Mozambique to West Africa. In Zambia, the USD 491 million Millennium program, known as a compact, is being reshaped to support Lobito. Road segments in North-Western and Copperbelt provinces, where the corridor will emerge, are being prioritized for upgrading.
\n\n\n\nWhile southern Africa gets increasing attention, Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, is gaining a major diplomatic investment from America. An embassy-sized, USD 537 million consulate general is rising in the Eko Atlantic district of Lagos, one of the few major African cities that isn’t also a national capital. In Nigeria, that’s Abuja, about 500 miles away.
\n\n\n\nThomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the new nation, displayed an 1802 map of Africa in his famed Virginia home, Monticello. Much of the interior of Africa was conjecture, as the taking of Africans by the millions for enslavement on New World plantations – or on rich estates including Jefferson’s – imprinted coastal geography on the American mind.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Monticello_reflected-by-Matt-Kozlowski-CC-2.5.jpg?resize=720%2C496&ssl=1\")
Fast forward two centuries and the maps of Africa and America are intertwined. Africa’s global emissary, Ethiopian Airlines, got its start in the 1940s with help from America’s TWA and American pilots. Africa’s largest airline now flies to New York, Washington, Chicago and Atlanta, with Ethiopian pilots and flight attendants – backed by African managers and technicians.
\n\n\n\nU.S. airlines are slowly expanding direct air service – Delta Air Lines has started flying to Marrakech, Morocco, from Atlanta, the airline’s largest hub. That’s a fitting destination, given that Morocco was the first country – not only in Africa but in the world – to welcome arriving ships flying the American flag as vessels from a new nation.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: A rendering of the new U.S. consulate general under construction in Lagos, by New York-based Ennead Architects.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As America celebrates the 250th birthday of its declared independence from Britain, the map of connections to Africa is changing. Massive aid cuts are reshaping ties around investment, travel and collaboration with major Africa-led initiatives.","protected":false},"author":144169649,"featured_media":2205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443696,57443694],"tags":[57443708,57443722,57443719,57443671,57443732,57443684,57443765],"series":[57443673],"class_list":["post-2201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-societies","tag-ethiopia","tag-nigeria","tag-south-africa","tag-top","tag-trade","tag-united-states","tag-zambia","series-afrologi","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Nigeria-Lagos-consulate-closeup-Ennead.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Nigeria-Lagos-consulate-closeup-Ennead.jpg?fit=1920%2C1081&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"America in Africa at 250\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
So far from mainland Africa that an airliner takes four hours to find this emerald speck in the Indian Ocean, Mauritius is tangled up in geopolitical disputes far beyond its control.
\n\n\n\nThe war in Iran and the Persian Gulf is already hurting – annual economic growth in Mauritius, one of Africa’s richest countries, is likely to slip below 3 percent for the first time since the pandemic – and could cause more pain. In a prolonged Middle East conflict, the economy “would be impacted significantly,” says a just-released International Monetary Fund staff analysis.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: Mauritius is more than a destination for sunseekers. It is fast becoming a key financial gateway to Africa, especially from Asia. Major trade agreements with China and India have anchored its status as an entryway to the continent-wide free trade area. Ebene Cybercity draws companies focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain. And an international finance center enables investors and wealth managers to take advantage of streamlined corporate and tax frameworks.
\n\n\n\nThe latest arrival in Mauritius is the African Union-backed Africa Credit Rating Agency, meant to overcome what its champions see as an annoying and costly international bias in assessing African risks. The startup is setting up from an HQ in Mauritius. The AU said Mauritius was chosen because of its “strong governance standards, robust financial sector and commitment to regional integration and economic good governance.”
\n\n\n\nAfter hopes for peace blossomed in June 2026, Iran and the United States are trading fire once more around the Strait of Hormuz, the vital chokepoint for global energy supplies. Crude oil retreated below USD 100 a barrel to around USD 72 in early July yet is climbing again – orbiting USD 85 in mid-July. Iran’s July 18 attack on Jordan, which killed U.S. military personnel defending against drone and ballistic missile strikes, may rekindle global economic anxiety.
\n\n\n\nReduced tourism, higher oil prices and rising inflation would slash economic growth in the downside scenario envisioned by IMF staff due to a prolonged Iran war. The country’s public debt would balloon past 90 percent of GDP, considered a growth-crimping danger zone. That prediction is based on oil at USD 124 a barrel, close to the highest price crude reached during the most intense fighting in April 2026. Authorities in Mauritius “are considering multiple war‑related scenarios,” according to the IMF report, released in mid-July.
\n\n\n\nSince the May visit of an IMF team to confer with officials in Mauritius and size up the country’s situation, the IMF has trimmed its 2026 economic growth forecast for the island nation to 2.8 percent from 3.4 percent predicted in April.
\n\n\n\nSoftening the blow from the Middle East are proposed British payments for 99 years to Mauritius for use of the strategic air base at Diego Garcia, part of the Chagos Islands that Britain has agreed to turn over to Mauritius. Yet that flow of funds is in limbo due to U.S. objections. For six decades the archipelago has belonged to British Indian Ocean Territory while being open to use by U.S. long-range bombers from a runway on Diego Garcia. This island-as-base is within striking distance of Iran and Yemen.
\n\n\n\nThe payments in today’s money to Mauritius would add up to about GBP 3.4 billion, or roughly USD 4.5 billion, according to a U.K. parliamentary report. Under the treaty with Mauritius, Britain agreed to pay GBP 165 million (about USD 220 million) in each of the first three years of the arrangement, GBP 120 million (USD 160 million) annually for the next 10 years, and the same sum, adjusted for inflation, for the remaining years.
\n\n\n\nBritain also consented to pay GBP 40 million to capitalize a trust fund for Chagos islands residents and GBP 45 million a year for 25 years to Mauritius for economic development investments.
\n\n\n\n“On the upside, the ratification of the Chagos agreement would deliver a revenue windfall and allow for faster debt reduction,” the IMF staff said, “while an easing of geopolitical tensions could support a recovery in tourism and help lower inflation.”
\n\n\n\nAction options: With GDP per capita approaching USD 14,000, a jobless rate at 6 percent and low inflation, Mauritius has economic strength that most African policy makers crave. That adds up to resilience and still makes the island nation an appealing launch pad for ambitions on the African mainland. A visit to Mauritius can help assess incentives on offer and how to use them.
\n\n\n\nJust be prepared for geopolitical shifts in distant capitals. The U.S. State Department expressed support for Britain’s Chagos deal on February 17, 2026, before scheduled talks with officials in Mauritius. Yet on his social media feed the next day, President Donald Trump called the deal a “big mistake,” and reversed U.S. policy.
\n\n\n\nThat has scuttled the British handover for now amid fears that China may seize a foothold on these oceanic dots of territory. The United States has refused to amend a 1966 treaty with Britain that covers the islands, forcing U.K. officials to suspend action on enabling legislation for the Chagos accord, according to The Guardian newspaper.
\n\n\n\nRebeccah Heinrichs, an expert on strategic military deterrence at the Hudson Institute think tank, wrote earlier this year that “leasing the base while handing over sovereignty to a Chinese partner is courting trouble.” Heinrichs pointed to China’s loans to Mauritius and possible Chinese high-tech surveillance of the islands, including Diego Garcia.
\n\n\n\nAfter the shelving of the plan, Dhananjay Ramful, the Mauritian foreign minister, insisted that his government remained committed to the handover. “We will spare no effort to seize any diplomatic or legal avenue to complete the decolonization process,” he said, in comments at a conference in Mauritius reported by British newspapers. “This is a matter of justice.”
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: An iconic view of Mauritius rising from the Indian Ocean about 1,200 miles from mainland Africa, by Dominik Ruhl / Pexels)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Africa's financial gateway in the distant Indian Ocean, and a tourism paradise, is facing economic trouble from the faraway conflict between Iran and the United States and its Gulf allies.","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443696],"tags":[57443706,57443777,57443825,57443671,57443702,57443826,57443684],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-geopolitics","tag-china","tag-fintech","tag-mauritius","tag-top","tag-tourism","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Mauritius-Pexels-by-Dominik-Ruhl.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Mauritius-Pexels-by-Dominik-Ruhl.jpg?fit=1920%2C1250&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"War clouds Africa’s sunny money gateway\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
On a sun-streaked recent morning, Angola’s cavernous new international airport terminal outside the capital Luanda dozed. The footfalls of passengers echoed across Terminal B, about two football fields long and unadorned save for a few eateries and elegant kiosks loaded with artisanal baskets, leather goods, booze and carvings of a national symbol, the giant sable antelope. Waiting.
\n\n\n\nFrom time to time an Airbus A220, the 137-seat workhorse of refurbished TAAG Angola Airlines, pulled into a gate at Dr. António Agostinho Neto International Airport, named after the poet and revolutionary hero who served as Angola’s first president. The ambition represented by this USD 3 billion investment, built by a Chinese contractor and operated by Portugal’s Mota-Engil and a Luxembourg company, seemed clear: to create an air hub in southwestern Africa for tourists and investors somewhere over the horizon.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: From tourism to agriculture to the promise of the Lobito Corridor linking an Angolan port to central Africa, Angola is trying to build a future beyond oil, its most prized – and still lucrative – asset. The crowds have yet to show up. Angolan leaders are hunting for a boom across their country’s vast, enticing yet barely plowed arable land. Boosting the energy supply for industrial investment is also high on the agenda.
\n\n\n\n“We have resolutely decided to reduce our dependence on the oil sector and build an economy based on sectors with a strong multiplier effect,” including tourism, Angolan President João Lourenço told an investment forum in Luanda in mid-June 2026, according to Ver Angola, a news service.
\n\n\n\nLarger than Ethiopia and almost twice the size of Texas, oil-exporting Angola is land and water rich yet imported rice and other food worth USD 2 billion in 2023. Nutritious eating is in such short supply across Angola that four in 10 children under 5 years old suffer from malnutrition, according to the World Bank.
\n\n\n\nThose are jarring metrics for a country that pumps 1 million barrels of crude a day, mostly from offshore fields, and just received a brief windfall from a faraway war. The world oil price doubled, shooting up as high as USD 126 a barrel in April 2026 after Israel and the United States attacked Iran in February. (A shaky agreement between the United States and Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, gateway to the world for Persian Gulf oil and gas, knocked prices down to around USD 72.) In 2025, oil accounted for 80 percent of Angola’s exports by value (natural gas contributed 10 percent and diamonds 5 percent) and 62 percent of government tax revenue.
\n\n\n\nIn recent months, investors jumped at the chance to buy Angola’s debt. The country raised USD 2.5 billion in a March 2026 Eurobond offering and 1.5 billion in May, with orders for both more than double the sum on offer. After the May bond sale, which bought out two existing Eurobonds, the Finance Ministry said investors had shown “confidence in the country’s macroeconomic trajectory and the consistency of its financial policy.”
\n\n\n\nMoney owed to Chinese banks has fallen, to USD 10 billion in 2025 – one-fifth of external debt – from almost USD 17 billion in 2020, and debt owed to the Chinese government has halved to USD 2 billion, according to a filing with the London Stock Exchange. Overall, Angola’s debt payments as a percentage of revenue declined to 71 percent in 2025 from 83 percent in 2024.
\n\n\n\nThe corruption cloud that has hovered over Angola for years has lifted somewhat under Lourenço. A government investigation uncovered billions of dollars in financial and real assets that high-level officials allegedly grabbed under a prior government, often stashing wealth abroad. Less spectacular graft persists. One in five Angolan businesses in a 2024 World Bank survey said they had received at least one request to pay a bribe.
\n\n\n\nTheft of oil revenue, capture of state-run enterprises and other abuses are targets of probes into officials and executives linked to long-time President José Eduardo dos Santos, who died in 2022. In 2024, Angola committed to work with the Financial Action Task Force, a global watchdog, to crack down on money laundering.
\n\n\n\nSince Lourenço took office in 2017, Angola’s score in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index has improved to 32 from 19 on scale where 100 is squeaky clean and zero is abysmal. In national rankings, Angola sat two-thirds down the list (top is best) at 120th position in 2025, tied with El Salvador, the Philippines and Togo.
\n\n\n\nExerting more control over Angola’s destiny is on the agenda in Luanda under Lourenço, whose second term ends in 2027. On January 1, 2024, Angola left the Saudi Arabia-dominated Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, after a decision to reduce Angola’s production quota by 200,000 barrels a day, a 15 percent cut.
\n\n\n\nDepleting oil fields and limited investment in exploration has led to long-term decline in crude output. A decade ago, Angola produced as much as 1.8 million barrels a day, U.S. Energy Department data shows. A World Bank calculation forecasts a further drop of two-thirds in crude output by 2040. China buys most of Angola’s oil, prized as “sweet” for its low sulfur content.
\n\n\n\nInland, farming potential is finally getting attention. Besides vast arable land, Angola can draw on “favorable rainfall across large parts of the country, major river systems that can support irrigation, diverse agro-ecological zones, improving infrastructure and a relatively young farming population,” says Menghestab Haile, a former World Food Program director in southern Africa who is advising Angola’s minister of agriculture on a farming transformation.
\n\n\n\nThe AgroCorredores initiative wants to take advantage of the Lobito Corrido’s transport and logistics scale-up to connect productive agriculture areas to national and global markets and pump up rural economic growth, Haile says. Cutting post-harvest losses, improving the quality of crops, bringing more finance, energy and expertise to smallholder farmers and ultimately improving the food and feed available to Angolans are goals of the strategy.
\n\n\n\nAgroCorredores is engaging across the agribusiness system. It assigns farmer training and mobilizing cooperatives to the Institute for Agrarian Development, while putting the National Cereals Institute in charge of market readiness: post-harvest handling, modernizing warehouses, quality certification and aggregating crops for commercial buyers. Other entities focus on livestock, data analysis and financing.
\n\n\n\nAngola’s farmland, 59 million hectares or 145 million acres, is equivalent to the farmed area of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Texas, among America’s biggest agricultural states. Any harvested surplus could be shipped to the United States, South America or Europe from the port of Lobito that also serves as a future gateway for copper, cobalt and other minerals dug from central Africa. Lobito is intended to establish a U.S.- and European-backed minerals supply chain outside China’s control.
\n\n\n\nIn 2024, the Export-Import Bank of the United States approved a USD 1.6 billion loan for a project by Miami-based Sun Africa to build 65 solar mini-grids and energy storage in southern Angola that will also power water collection and cleaning.
\n\n\n\nThrough five decades of independence after rule by Portugal, geopolitics has shaped and shattered the country. A civil war that ran from 1975 to 2002 became a proxy battleground for the United States and Soviet Union, along with Cuba and South Africa. After the Cold War, a rising China entered the picture.
\n\n\n\nAs the Eurobond offering was going on sale in March, Finance Minister Vera Daves de Sousa was in China meeting with development banks and top Hong Kong officials about entry into its financial market, according to the Angolan Finance Ministry. In a buoyant meeting with former Brazilian leader and New Development Bank President Dilma Rousseff in Shanghai, Daves de Sousa explored Angola’s possible membership in the multinational lender, an offshoot of the BRICS group led by China, India and Russia.
\n\n\n\nIn December 2025, Angola diversified its funding by raising its first money in the Japanese market – a 40 billion yen Samurai bond worth about USD 250 million.
\n\n\n\nWhile Angola’s oil and natural gas wealth invites investment, the U.S. Government cautioned last year that investing can be troublesome. “Companies face persistent bureaucracy, lack of transparency in procurement and licensing, and inconsistent regulatory enforcement,” the International Trade Administration wrote in a note on Angola. “Access to foreign exchange is limited, and restrictions on dividend repatriation continue to deter foreign investment.”
\n\n\n\nA World Bank survey in 2024 found that getting a construction-related permit took 51 days, almost double the sub-Saharan Africa wait, while on average a government payment on a contract took 151 days, almost three months longer.
\n\n\n\nTo deal with some of these risks, Angola is adopting a public-private partnership approach designed to speed up project approvals. Recent Angolan laws and decrees have created a legal structure and project preparation pipeline for PPPs, enabled tax incentives and security in repatriating profits, and opened renewable energy and transmission line projects to private investors, according to André Duarte Figueira, Angola lead in the Lisbon office of the international law firm DLA Piper. A World Bank-funded program run by the Angolan government, Diversifica Mais, is supporting the PPP scale-up.
\n\n\n\nFigueira thinks the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo’s model of choosing project partners mainly on financial strength could be adopted in Angola and attract institutional investors, investment funds, pension funds and family-wealth offices.
\n\n\n\nAction options: Lourenço touted his country’s allure at the international tourism investment summit, eager to put Angola on the map in a region of fierce competition from nearby Zambia, Namibia and South Africa. From 1,000 miles of coastline to rugged terrain and waterfalls inland, with a vast range of flora and fauna, Angola could appeal to beach lovers, hikers and wildlife enthusiasts alike. The European Union sees eco-tourism potential in Cameia National Park, a wilderness in eastern Angola.
\n\n\n\nJune also was a busy month for Angola Airlines. The airline named Jaime Miguel Ferreira Carneiro as CEO, started weekly service to Guangzhou, China, and said it received European Union approval to fly the widebody Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” into European airspace. Within Africa, flights to Nairobi and Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire started in the past year, extending Angola’s reach.
\n\n\n\nThe long shadow that war and isolation cast over Angola is fading as a younger generation steps up to take on the country’s entrenched poverty amid riches. The emerging narrative is built on connections, in the air and across borders by railway as Lobito Corridor unfolds. Whether these pathways can take Angolans toward an era of broader opportunity and prosperity depends on a journey of renewal that’s just getting started.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: A fully stocked kiosk called On the Way Home awaits future travelers at Angola’s new international airport outside Luanda. Afrologi photo by Edward DeMarco.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From tourism to agriculture to the promise of the Lobito Corridor linking an Angolan port to central Africa, Angola is trying to build a future beyond oil, its most prized – and still lucrative – asset. ","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443694],"tags":[57443688,57443713,57443706,57443739,57443671,57443765],"series":[57443673],"class_list":["post-2256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-societies","tag-agribusiness","tag-angola","tag-china","tag-oilandgas","tag-top","tag-zambia","series-afrologi","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Angola-airport-shop-APR2026-rotated.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Angola-airport-shop-APR2026-rotated.jpg?fit=4080%2C3060&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Angola plots a future beyond oil\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
You may view massive cuts in U.S. development and humanitarian aid to Africa as the end of America’s influence, yet Africa’s ties with the global superpower are far broader – and often little known.
\n\n\n\nMost people probably wouldn’t guess there are countries in Africa that do a billion dollars of trade in a month with the United States. Or that the United States is the second-largest shareholder, after Nigeria, in the continent’s largest development finance institution, the African Development Bank based in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
\n\n\n\nIn 2025, as our infographic shows, the 15 largest U.S. trade partners in Africa were a geographic mix that included North Africa, Nigeria and smaller, dynamic economies in West Africa and central African resource heavyweights Angola (oil) and Democratic Republic of Congo (copper, cobalt and more). Africa’s largest island nation, Madagascar, also made the top 15. Anchoring the trade picture as America’s top trade partner was South Africa, which sold USD 10.1 billion more in goods to the United States than it bought from America. The trade surge came as the Trump White House pressured the South African government with tariffs and accusations of fomenting racial strife.
\n\n\n\nAs America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its declaration of independence from the British Empire in 1776, which fueled seven more years of war, the map of connections to Africa is changing. Investment is getting a bigger spotlight. Lobito Corridor, a railway, trade and investment route from central Africa to the Atlantic Ocean – first championed by President Joe Biden – is high on the agenda.
\n\n\n\nAnd development assistance hasn’t totally dried up. The two-decade, approximately USD 100 billion effort aimed at stopping the spread of HIV and helping Africans live with AIDS, known as PEPFAR, is transitioning into the America First Global Health program, which also addresses challenges such as maternal and child health and scaling up the public health workforce. (PEPFAR said it has saved more than 25 million lives in Africa.) To date, 22 countries in Africa have negotiated America First deals that include co-financing. Some of the MOUs have drawn a backlash due to demands for long-term health data and implied linkages to mineral resources.
\n\n\n\nMillennium Challenge, a U.S. initiative to finance roads and other infrastructure through country-led efforts, has scaled back yet is still active from Mozambique to West Africa. In Zambia, the USD 491 million Millennium program, known as a compact, is being reshaped to support Lobito. Road segments in North-Western and Copperbelt provinces, where the corridor will emerge, are being prioritized for upgrading.
\n\n\n\nWhile southern Africa gets increasing attention, Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, is gaining a major diplomatic investment from America. An embassy-sized, USD 537 million consulate general is rising in the Eko Atlantic district of Lagos, one of the few major African cities that isn’t also a national capital. In Nigeria, that’s Abuja, about 500 miles away.
\n\n\n\nThomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the new nation, displayed an 1802 map of Africa in his famed Virginia home, Monticello. Much of the interior of Africa was conjecture, as the taking of Africans by the millions for enslavement on New World plantations – or on rich estates including Jefferson’s – imprinted coastal geography on the American mind.
\n\n\n\nFast forward two centuries and the maps of Africa and America are intertwined. Africa’s global emissary, Ethiopian Airlines, got its start in the 1940s with help from America’s TWA and American pilots. Africa’s largest airline now flies to New York, Washington, Chicago and Atlanta, with Ethiopian pilots and flight attendants – backed by African managers and technicians.
\n\n\n\nU.S. airlines are slowly expanding direct air service – Delta Air Lines has started flying to Marrakech, Morocco, from Atlanta, the airline’s largest hub. That’s a fitting destination, given that Morocco was the first country – not only in Africa but in the world – to welcome arriving ships flying the American flag as vessels from a new nation.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: A rendering of the new U.S. consulate general under construction in Lagos, by New York-based Ennead Architects.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As America celebrates the 250th birthday of its declared independence from Britain, the map of connections to Africa is changing. Massive aid cuts are reshaping ties around investment, travel and collaboration with major Africa-led initiatives.","protected":false},"author":144169649,"featured_media":2205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443696,57443694],"tags":[57443708,57443722,57443719,57443671,57443732,57443684,57443765],"series":[57443673],"class_list":["post-2201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-societies","tag-ethiopia","tag-nigeria","tag-south-africa","tag-top","tag-trade","tag-united-states","tag-zambia","series-afrologi","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Nigeria-Lagos-consulate-closeup-Ennead.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Nigeria-Lagos-consulate-closeup-Ennead.jpg?fit=1920%2C1081&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"America in Africa at 250\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
While the world focused on the Strait of Hormuz in early June 2026 as on-again, off-again talks between Iran and the United States struggled to reach a peace deal, Iran’s neighbor Turkey fixed its gaze in an entirely different direction.
\n\n\n\nNiger’s President Abdourahamane Tchiani arrived in Ankara for an official visit, welcomed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a 21-gun salute. Only three years ago, Niger hosted the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state, who praised the country’s fragile democracy, defense cooperation and work to socialize former combatants. A thousand U.S. military personnel operated a drone base to monitor an extremist Islamist insurgency in the Sahel.
\n\n\n\nThen came an August 2023 coup led by Tchiani that toppled the elected government and triggered the (orderly) American pullout from Niger after U.S. officials raised concerns about possible warming toward Iran and Russia. French forces exited, too. Tchiani chose Turkey for his first official, non-African visit, after a Turkish delegation landed in Niamey in 2024 to discuss deeper ties. Niger, a major producer of uranium, is trying to assert its authority over mining of the nuclear power fuel after decades of French-led operations.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: Erdogan’s two-decade campaign to expand Turkish influence in Africa, a success story for Turkey’s global ambitions, has also helped Africa advance aspirations for connectivity and integration. Turkish Airlines began touching down across Africa. A Turkish contractor, Yapi Merkezi, dislodged a Chinese competitor to win a USD 3 billion contract to build Uganda’s modern rail link toward the Indian Ocean via Kenya. That same company is busy extending rail lines in Tanzania. Another Turkish company developed the financial center in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
\n\n\n\nErdogan said at a press conference with his Nigerien guest that “win-win principles” guide Africa policy. “We see these relations as long-term cooperations in a wide range of areas such as security, education, culture and transportation, not just trade and economy.”
\n\n\n\nDuring the visit, Niger and Turkey (or Türkiye, the Turkish version favored by the government) inked agreements spanning higher education, healthcare and joint management of a “friendship” hospital in Niger. That ticked the soft power box. Tchiani and his delegation also toured facilities of Roketsan, a rocket and missile maker that’s majority owned by the Turkish Armed Forces Foundation. And Erdogan pledged military training and intelligence cooperation.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Turkey-Niger-prez-Ankara-04JUN2026.jpg?resize=720%2C510&ssl=1\")
The United States has felt the loss of its outpost in Niger. U.S. Africa Command leader General Dagvin Anderson told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee in mid-May 2026 that a diminished presence in Niger and elsewhere in Africa has led to an “intelligence black hole” for American military planners and allies. “In a crisis, we can always surge assets,” the general said, “but you cannot surge trust.”
\n\n\n\nOn January 30, 2026, the U.S. State Department ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government employees and their family members in Niger due to the threat of terrorist violence and kidnappings. American personnel must travel in armored vehicles and cannot visit restaurants or open-air markets.
\n\n\n\nHowever, there are signs that the United States may boost its involvement in Niger once more. The U.S. Embassy has posted procurement notices for high-speed Internet and cafeteria services for “200+ employees who will be potential patrons” in the embassy eatery.
\n\n\n\nThe Niger delegation’s visit came as Turkey prepares for the fourth edition of an Africa “partnership summit,” the first in five years, to be held in Libya. With its 44 embassies (from 12 in 2002) hustling for business and influence across the continent, Turkey aims to push bilateral trade toward $50 billion a year, building on a foundation of drone exports, infrastructure, food products, consumer appliances and educational investments that appeal to African governments eager to diversify relations as great power agendas shift.
\n\n\n\nLibya functions “as a northern gateway to the African continent” for Turkey, according to Kaan Devecioglu of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Ankara. “The sphere of influence centered on Tripoli constitutes the starting point of a broader geopolitical corridor extending through Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt toward the Sahel” and embraces trade and logistics networks, along with diplomatic and security interests, Devecioglu said in an analysis published in June.
\n\n\n\nUnder the Ottoman Empire, Turks forged their own colonial saga in Africa yet today have brushed off that reputation and become one of China’s competitors on the continent – and a fresh face across France’s former colonial terrain. And in Britain’s old sphere, too: Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu made a state visit to Turkey in January.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Turkish-Airbus-A320-over-Bosphorus.jpg?resize=720%2C380&ssl=1\")
The public focus on Africa contrasts with Turkey’s low-key posture regarding the Iran war. Since the conflict pitting America and Israel against Iran erupted in late February, Turkey has operated on the margins of the crisis – at least visibly. State collapse in Iran could spill across Turkey’s borders in the form of refugees, unrest and diminished trade.
\n\n\n\nIn June, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan publicly urged the United States and Iran to halt a renewed wave of clashes and forge ahead with Pakistani-brokered peace negotiations. Turkey talks to both Washington and Tehran. Fidan and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the Iran conflict on May 22 during a NATO ministers meeting.
\n\n\n\nDisruptions in the oil-producing Persian Gulf have sharply increased fuel prices for airlines worldwide and may have contributed to a recent curbing of Turkish reach in Africa. Turkish Airlines has suspended service to several African destinations, including the Lusaka extension on a Dar es Salaam route, a planned twice weekly Monrovia, Liberia, stop on a flight to Accra and the Istanbul-Kinshasa-Luanda circular route, according to AeroRoutes. The changes were made quietly in updates to global flight schedules.
\n\n\n\nAction options: While Turkish trade with Africa remains a fraction of China’s trade flow, Turkish capabilities from tech to large-scale engineering to consumer goods make Turkey a viable alternative for deals and partnerships. A significant diplomatic and cultural footprint across Africa deepens connections.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid the conflict involving its neighbor Iran, Turkey is reaching out to Africa in a corridor from Libya to the Sahel, competing with China for trade, customers and influence.","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443696],"tags":[57443819,57443820,57443806,57443818,57443671,57443732,57443817],"series":[57443673],"class_list":["post-2086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-geopolitics","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-libya","tag-niger","tag-top","tag-trade","tag-turkey","series-afrologi","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Turkey-Niger-leaders-Ankara-04JUN2026.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Turkey-Niger-leaders-Ankara-04JUN2026.jpg?fit=857%2C550&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Turkey shifts gaze toward Africa\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
It will be years before trains roll across the Angola border bound for the Atlantic Ocean port of Lobito after whistling through Zambian mining hubs from Copperbelt to neighboring North-Western Province. Yet the wheels are turning on one of Africa’s most-watched projects as action shifts from maps and conference chatter to engineering, land acquisition – and financing.
\n\n\n\nThe financial scale and human impact are starting to emerge for the 340-mile stretch of the Lobito Corridor in Zambia, the heart of the initiative. Development and construction of the rail line and purchase of rolling stock will cost USD 3 billion to 5 billion, a range that will narrow once engineering and procurement progresses, says the Nigeria-based developer, Africa Finance Corporation. Plans call for construction to wrap up in 2030.
\n\n\n\nAn environmental and social impact assessment filed with the Zambian Government by Africa Finance also reveals that Lobito could uproot almost 3,000 households, or roughly 14,000 people who live in the path of the rail and trade corridor.
\n\n\n\n“Overall, the project is more likely to proceed than not,” says Stephen Nduvi, a Kenyan public policy analyst focused on regional integration. “The key question is no longer whether the corridor has strategic relevance, but whether stakeholders can mobilize the capital and institutional coordination needed to translate political ambition into physical infrastructure.”
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: Lobito is a geopolitical, economic and social transformation project rolled into one. It’s also a major attempt at African integration often touted in speeches yet prolonged in practice. The United States, European Union and Italy have publicly committed to turn the Lobito concept into reality, chiefly to create an Atlantic-facing mineral supply chain outside China’s control while diversifying the regional economy.
\n\n\n\nMeanwhile, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia have agreed to create a master plan and joint investment platform to stir up moneyed interest.
\n\n\n\n“This platform will support transport and logistics infrastructure that directly links the corridor to industrial yards, production zones and processing hubs, while also crowding in investment in agribusiness, energy, urban development and small and medium-sized enterprises,” Zambia’s Ministry of Finance and National Planning said following a recent coordination meeting in Angola.
\n\n\n\nAt a Luanda forum in May 2026, the EU helped match investors with bankable projects in agribusiness and transport logistics within the Angolan section of the Lobito Corridor.
\n\n\n\nAfrica Finance aims to lock down financing by the end of 2027, according to Reuters. In a push toward that goal, the U.S. Government’s development finance arm is loaning Lobito Atlantic Railway USD 553 million while the Development Bank of Southern Africa adds about USD 200 million, for upgrades to the crucial rail operation to and from the Lobito port visited by President Joe Biden in 2024.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Lobito-Biden-with-Angola-Zam-DRC-leaders-DEC2024-by-Cameron-Smith-WH.jpg?resize=720%2C500&ssl=1\")
Of special interest to leaders in Angola, Zambia and the DRC, whose copper and cobalt mining region forms part of the corridor, is whether Lobito becomes more than a minerals and transport play and stimulates agriculture, renewable energy and exports. Zambian officials promote this “land-linked” approach as the way to unlock Lobito’s true value. Angola is stepping up efforts to increase farm output across its vast, arable land. The DRC is working on better mineral trade logistics.
\n\n\n\nMuch has changed in the past 18 months. A late 2024 journey across the entire Zambian route, from Chingola, a city in the epicenter of copper mining, to sleepy Mwinilunga District in the northwestern corner of the country, where a trickle of water in a forest births the Zambezi River, revealed widespread ignorance about Lobito.
\n\n\n\nMayors and planning teams recounted hearing about Lobito from the news and visits by officials from the capital Lusaka yet couldn’t say what they would contribute or how the corridor might reshape their communities. Along the Angola border, however, work was under way on a Lobito crossing point into a Zambian chiefdom. And early investors were snapping up parcels of farmland.
\n\n\n\nDisplacing residents is always a fraught issue, and Lobito’s brain trust is still working out how resettlement would be carried out across a geography spanning hundreds of miles. The project has budgeted USD 7 million for relocation and resettlement compensation, or about USD 2,400 per household, and USD 1.5 million for “livelihood restoration activities.” The social impact assessment pledges to follow international guidelines and set up a way for residents to file and resolve complaints.
\n\n\n\nIn recent months, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema and his top ministers have talked up Lobito, whose hype could influence domestic politics. The president is up for re-election in August 2026, with voters sizing up the country’s economy after severe drought, an energy crunch and a debt crisis. International Monetary Fund forecasters say Zambia’s economy will grow more than 4 percent in 2026 for the first time since 2023.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Zambia-HH-at-Kaoma-road-groundbreaking-OCT2025.jpg?resize=720%2C480&ssl=1\")
Lobito responds to the need for infrastructure that Zambians cited in a 2024 Afrobarometer survey when asked to list government priorities. Another Zambian wish: better health care, a source of international friction.
\n\n\n\nLobito is building speed just as relations between Zambia and the United States seem to be derailing. In a scathing departure speech on April 30, 2026, U.S. Ambassador Michael Gonzales accused Zambian government officials of tolerating widespread corruption, allowing billions of dollars of “dirty money” to flow to East Asia untaxed, and covering up the long-term health toll for Zambians from the collapse of a tailings dam at a Chinese copper mine. Gonzales said that accident spilled “carcinogenic heavy metals” into the Kafue River ecosystem, according to the text of his remarks.
\n\n\n\nThe Zambian government called the envoy’s assertions “deeply regrettable” and said stalled talks over a “critical minerals” agreement relate to “the insistence of preferential treatment of U.S. companies” over access to Zambia’s mineral wealth and making health aid conditional on a minerals deal. Gonzales grumbled that his team couldn’t get Zambian officials to pick up the phone.
\n\n\n\nU.S. diplomats have hammered out agreements with 20 other African countries for public health aid conditional on benchmarks for improved care, access to long-term health data and investments by those countries. The sharing of data has sparked a backlash in some countries, and Zambia said data demands are another sticking point.
\n\n\n\nGonzales accused Zambian governments of failing to invest USD 7 billion in American aid since 2000 to create durable health service delivery. “When we paused funding to review our assistance programs last year, so much of Zambia’s health system began to crumble almost overnight,” he said, blaming Zambian leaders for looking away while “officials diverted government funds to their own pockets.”
\n\n\n\nAs America spars with Zambia, artificial intelligence has entered the Lobito picture. Jacob Helberg, the U.S. undersecretary of state for economic affairs, told a congressional hearing that his office is reviewing how America’s Pax Silica partners, including Japan, South Korea, Britain and Israel, could bring “new technologies” into Lobito and other trade corridors, “delivering speed, scale and certainty” to global suppliers.
\n\n\n\nPax Silica is a U.S.-led initiative to build “the AI ecosystem of tomorrow” encompassing advanced manufacturing and “minerals that feed” the AI industry, according to the State Department.
\n\n\n\nA study released in May 2026 by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an Oslo-based watchdog that counts Zambia as a member, cautioned that many factors must align to achieve the Lobito vision. “The Corridor could support local content, supplier development and downstream processing, but outcomes will depend on governance and policy decisions,” along with electricity, financing, infrastructure and industrial capacity, EITI said.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Angola-Lobito-DEC2024.jpg?resize=720%2C480&ssl=1\")
In 2023, the Angolan arm of Portugal’s Mota-Engil Group won a 30-year concession to operate Lobito Atlantic Railway from Angola to the DRC. The greenfield Lobito rail line planned for Zambia will extend into Angola to connect to this line at Luacano.
\n\n\n\nA key issue is how much cargo these trains will carry. Estimates included in the Africa Finance assessment show that by 2041, about 859,000 tons of Zambian copper would travel on the route, less than a third of the country’s target output by the early 2030s. Zambian grain exports and petroleum imports are among other major volumes projected for Lobito.
\n\n\n\nBesides commercially viable freight volumes, Nduvi says, “coordination among the participating countries on customs procedures, regulations and railway operations will be critical to ensuring that the corridor functions as an integrated transport system.”
\n\n\n\nLobito faces competition from Namibia to the south. A road-and-rail route is being upgraded from Kolwezi in the DRC through Kalumbila District in Zambia, the hub of westward expansion of gold, copper and nickel mining, and onward to the Namibian port at Walvis Bay. That could cut transit times from mines to port from almost two weeks to five days. The Lobito rail option to Lobito from Kolwezi takes seven days.
\n\n\n\nTo revitalize the Namibia route, a USD 326 million partnership among the Zambian Government and companies including copper miner First Quantum Minerals is building a 230-mile toll road in western Zambia, from Mutanda in Kalumbila to Kaoma in Western Province. The Barotse Highway Limited Toll Concession seeks to improve a route that jolts drivers with potholes and stretches of rugged, hard-packed earth. An upgrade promises to smooth the region’s prospects.
\n\n\n\n“I could see what this would mean to our economy – growth and more growth” and jobs for young people, business opportunities, government revenue and even a less perilous journey for pregnant women racing to a clinic, President Hichilema said at the construction groundbreaking.
\n\n\n\nAction options: Investors interested in the Lobito Corridor should seek out Zambia’s district and provincial social and economic development plans (often posted online) to size up sectoral needs and government priorities along the route. Traditional leaders, or chiefs, influence land use and broader development in the region that Lobito will traverse. The chiefs’ affairs office in the North-Western Province administrative hub in Solwezi, Zambia, can help set up meetings with chiefdoms.
\n\n\n\n(Featured image: Barrick’s expanding Lumwana copper mine in Zambia’s North-Western Province.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lobito Corridor, Africa's closely watched, cross-border minerals-trade and investment effort outside China's orbit, is moving toward reality at a cost of as much as USD 5 billion in Zambia - and could displace thousands of people in its 340-mile path.","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":1964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443696],"tags":[57443713,57443712,57443794,57443740,57443671,57443684,57443765],"series":[57443673],"class_list":["post-1942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-geopolitics","tag-angola","tag-drc","tag-lobito-corridor","tag-mining","tag-top","tag-united-states","tag-zambia","series-afrologi","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Zambia-Lumwana-mine-edit.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Zambia-Lumwana-mine-edit.jpg?fit=1600%2C900&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Lobito chugs toward reality\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
Trevor Hublin was Benin country director for the U.S. Agency for International Development as field operations ended around the world last year. Romuald Wadagni, elected as president in April, will assume office on May 24, 2026. Ahead of his inauguration, the International Monetary Fund praised Benin’s “strong reform drive” and highlighted the “need to manage socio-political and security challenges” in the Ohio-sized nation of 15 million people.
\n\n\n\nWhat should we expect from Benin’s new leader Romuald Wadagni, educated at Harvard with years of experience at the international accounting and consulting firm Deloitte, including in France, America and the Democratic Republic of Congo?
\n\n\n\nA lot of continuity with the outgoing government of President Patrice Talon. After all, Wadagni was Talon’s economy minister for his entire presidency, from 2016 to this year, and was the architect for Benin’s impressive economic reforms and economic growth, which is one of the highest in Africa, having achieved 7.5 percent GDP growth in 2025.
\n\n\n\nWhether we’re talking private or institutional investors, Benin has a very good track record in attracting foreign direct investment. And Wadagni knows how to do that through good macroeconomic management, through good fiscal restraint, ease of business policies. We should expect him to continue to have a heavy hand in steering the economy. Benin remains a poor country, ranked 173rd out of 193 countries and self-governing areas in the United Nations Human Development Index.
\n\n\n\nHe’s got work to do with poverty levels still at 36 percent. He needs to increase broad-based economic opportunity for Beninese citizens. I suspect that he will work hard to increase the productivity of the agricultural sector.
\n\n\n\nOn top of economic management and the focus on continued growth, he’s going to try to get on top of insecurity in the north of Benin, where he likely will have his biggest challenge. Because when we talk about insecurity at the hand of violent extremist groups coming from the Sahel region, Benin needs cooperation with the neighboring countries: Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Niger, yet only has the ability to coordinate effectively with Nigeria and has no communication, has broken off relations with its key neighbor Niger.
\n\n\n\nNevertheless, with the reinforced army presence up north, we should see more concerted action on his part to get on top of the high levels of violence at the community level – again, furthered by violent extremist groups – and stabilize the countryside as much as possible behind advances by the security forces, focusing on development needs.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Benin-with-US-special-forces-2023-edit-1024x598.jpg?resize=720%2C420&ssl=1\")
Finally, will Wadagni loosen current severe restrictions on civil liberties on the political opposition and media in Benin? Over the past 12 years, the country has descended the ranks of democratic states and has become much more authoritarian, one party effectively leading the country and with civil liberties curtailed and key opposition politicians arrested by Talon. If Benin’s democratic environment remains closed, it could herald instability with the public in the future.
\n\n\n\nWadagni clearly thinks in terms bigger than Benin. Do you see him trying to scale up Benin’s ambitions or building regional economic connections?
\n\n\n\nYes. I expect him to come into the presidency with a bullish economic and investment agenda. What he is going to try to do and he has promised – you heard this on the campaign trail – is to maintain economic growth at 7 percent levels in the coming years. That would be an incredible achievement, putting Benin at the forefront of economic growth anywhere in Africa.
\n\n\n\nHe knows exactly what he’s going to need to do: Continue to build investor confidence, continue to raise, through foreign direct investment and through investor-friendly policies, investment in growth areas in the agriculture sector, in light industry, in tourism.
\n\n\n\nBenin is a small country. It’s only a $25 billion gross economy. So, he will need to continue to attract investment as well as favorable lending. And positively there, Benin’s got a great reputation through its sound macroeconomic management, including a budget deficit estimated at less than 3 percent of GDP in 2025. Fitch just gave Benin a B-plus credit rating and raised its outlook from stable to positive, which for lenders means Benin will be a good place to continue to lend to, and that will boost Wadagni’s forthcoming country development program.
\n\n\n\nThat program is going to focus heavily on infrastructure development, electrification, water and sanitation system development, port development, logistics – really trying to strengthen Benin’s reputation as a logistics hub for coastal West Africa. Benin actually has better macroeconomic financials than neighboring Côte d’Ivoire, which has a much bigger economy.
\n\n\n\nHe’s going to try to focus on things like workforce development and to integrate young Beninese workers into new economic sectors that he hopes to stimulate, such as the digital sector, agroeconomic value chain and light industry.
\n\n\n\nBenin is Africa’s biggest cotton producer. What’s the impact of that on its economic choices and how the country’s politics work?
\n\n\n\nIn 2025, Benin did move up in terms of rankings in Africa to first place on total output in the cotton sector with a yield exceeding 630,000 tons. So that placed Benin ahead of its major competitor, which has been Mali. Benin’s magic in terms of cotton production has been to invest in the fundamentals of sustained growth year in, year out.
\n\n\n\nWhen we look at where Benin was a decade ago, the country produced about 150,000 tons a year of cotton. It has steadily increased yields through those years, which has been underpinned by several things: investment in mechanization, investment in seed quality, the governance of the sector, particularly in properly managing the territory and the farmable land for cotton.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Benin-cotton-by-Cotton-Benin.jpg?resize=720%2C480&ssl=1\")
What’s also making Benin special in cotton is that they are moving deliberately away from just production and farming into value addition and processing. In terms of metrics, in Benin over 12 percent of the total national output in cotton in the past year was being processed in textile facilities in Benin, particularly with the majority located in the country’s Glo-Djigbé Industrial Zone, where cotton spinning and textile garment manufacturing happens.
\n\n\n\nNigeria showed off a big brother relationship with Benin by repelling a coup attempt last year. Did that action have bigger implications in terms of helping the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, restore policing of regional stability after the string of overthrows in the Sahel?
\n\n\n\nOn December 7, 2025, Benin was hit by a coup attempt. And at the time, there was a lot of fear that Benin would become another statistic, drawing on the coups that had happened in the Sahel region – Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali – and elsewhere in the region over the past decade. And that didn’t happen. Benin activated ECOWAS’s response mechanisms and was able to get immediate military support from Nigeria in terms of decisive action in helping to thwart the coup attempt via aerial bombardments and air strikes. They got help from Nigeria, but they also got help from Côte d’Ivoire, another major regional power.
\n\n\n\nIt did show that ECOWAS was capable of standing up for its own member states in thwarting coup attempts and maintaining security. Again, this was not all as a result of Benin’s intervention. France was active during this crisis in terms of mobilizing support, particularly from Nigeria. But the thwarting of the coup has served to buttress a better degree of confidence in ECOWAS.
\n\n\n\nBenin’s military has suffered losses from the spillover of insurgent violence in the Sahel. Are the coastal states in West Africa still vulnerable or are we seeing any hopeful signs?
\n\n\n\n2025 marked the worst year in terms of violent attacks and civilian casualties in Benin. It is very linked to patterns of regional violence sponsored, fomented by violent Islamist extremist groups that have their bases primarily in Burkina Faso but also Nigeria and Niger. The main terrorist group that threatens Benin is al-Qaeda and its regional affiliate known as JNIM. For this terrorist group, Benin has really since 2019 been regarded as a point of transit for the flow of weapons and resources, sustaining their insurgency and terrorist activities in the wider region.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Benin-Pendjari-national-park-edit-1.jpg?resize=720%2C451&ssl=1\")
Benin forms the link between Nigeria in the east and Burkina Faso in the west. When we talk about illegal commerce – fuel smuggling, the smuggling of cattle or other black market economic sustainment methods – Benin occupies a very strategic place geographically and economically for al-Qaeda. That is why the two most northern departments, Alibori and Atakora, which abut two major national parks, find themselves in a tough position. For several years, that has served as a base area for insurgent groups to permit them to control the region between the Sahel and the northern parts of coastal West Africa.
\n\n\n\nAl-Qaeda has not recruited heavily from within Benin compared to other countries. They draw the majority of their fighters from Sahelian countries. They haven’t established a firm anchor in the communities yet, which gives the Beninese government opportunities to reestablish governance, control and state legitimacy.
\n\n\n\nWith France in retreat in West Africa, where does a country like Benin turn for support for economic guidance and capital for its development?
\n\n\n\nBenin is one of France’s closest allies anywhere in Africa, particularly in French-speaking West Africa. And that will continue during the presidency of Wadagni. He has long personal connections to France, he was educated in France, so he’s not going to change that relationship with France for support. Rather, what we’re going to see is continued work to diversify support for Benin. For example, Benin has courted investment and good relations with countries in the Middle East and the Islamic world.
\n\n\n\nAs well, we will see Benin continue to try to build relationships with the United States, other countries in Europe, and certainly among its neighbors such as Ghana, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire.
\n\n\n\nBased on your time in Benin, how would you advise investors to approach the country?
\n\n\n\nThis is a great country to invest in because of its sound macroeconomic fundamentals and its business-friendly environment. Your first stop as an investor is to contact the Beninese investment promotion agency, Agence de Promotion des Investissements et des Exportations (APIEX), which serves as a primary gateway for foreign investors. In Benin, to register a business really takes about one day now. Permitting is relatively easy. Approvals for licenses happen quickly.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Benin-GDIZ-park.jpg?resize=720%2C514&ssl=1\")
The other thing that you should expect, especially for investors in agro-business sectors, is to become aware quickly of the country’s premier industrial free-trade zone, the Glo-Djigbé Industrial Zone. Since 2022, and under the leadership of Wadagni, Benin has set up a 1,600-hectare special economic zone to transform raw agricultural materials – particularly cotton, cashews and fruit – into value-added, refined and processed materials ready for export. The firm that manages the zone is known as Arise, and they have received high marks.
\n\n\n\nTourism is a big interest of the government, particularly in southern Benin, historical tourism along the coast. Benin now has many festivals celebrating its unique cultural heritage. New hotel resorts, including the first international five-star hotel chain with Sofitel hotels, have now opened in the capital city Cotonou. Business law is supported, and you have commercial courts in operation that facilitate adjudicating disputes. You’re going to have a very investor-friendly environment to take advantage of out there.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Wadagni by Presidency of Benin.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Romuald Wadagni, the new president of Africa's biggest cotton grower, will pursue a bold plan to diversify a surging economy, says an expert on Benin.","protected":false},"author":144169649,"featured_media":1798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443694],"tags":[57443688,57443810,57443742,57443722,57443811,57443671,57443812],"series":[57443673],"class_list":["post-1787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-societies","tag-agribusiness","tag-benin","tag-france","tag-nigeria","tag-ports","tag-top","tag-west-africa","series-afrologi","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Benin-Wadagni-2024-by-Benin-Presidency-edit.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Benin-Wadagni-2024-by-Benin-Presidency-edit.jpg?fit=765%2C478&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Benin readies a ‘bullish’ agenda\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
Great reads can enrich your learning about economic and political change and investments and inform your travels across Africa. This curated list of essential nonfiction books on Africa will help you gain a deeper understanding of African societies and economies, crucial history and key heroes and villains. You’ll find best sellers possibly already on your shelf, yet also lesser known gems that deserve a bigger audience. Tell us about your favorites and other books that top your reading list and perhaps should sneak onto ours.
\n\n\n\nDark Star Safari: Overland From Cairo to Cape Town, by Paul Theroux (Houghton Mifflin, 2003). This is the ultimate road trip for the celebrated American travel writer, as he ventures across some of Africa’s most challenging terrain (including remote and rugged parts of Ethiopia I’ve traversed), navigates baffling cultures and bumps into fond memories from his youthful days as a teacher in Uganda. Follow it up with Theroux’s sequel sojourn from Cape Town, South Africa, to Luanda, Angola: The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Sharp, funny and full of insights, even for those of us who have spent years slogging across Africa.
\n\n\n\nThe Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor, by Martin Meredith (Public Affairs, 2014). For thousands of years, outsiders have coveted Africa’s natural treasures, starting with gold, ivory and copper. Grain from North Africa fed the Romans. Humans, too, became a prize. Enslaved Africans by the millions crossed the Atlantic to produce sugar and cotton, building the economies of the New World while enriching Europeans. Meredith, a British journalist with long experience in Africa, offers an essential survey of its wealth and pursuers. This is a tale of adventurers, despots and thieves with themes alive in our time. (Pair this with Meredith’s The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence (Public Affairs, 2005). The first half-century of Africa’s independence era is such a rollicking, scandalous and often mind-blowing saga of power-mongering outrages that you’ll think these tales must be fiction.)
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Great stories that will greatly inform your business and travel.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Mandela-at-ILC-in-1990-by-ILO-edit.jpg?resize=720%2C478&ssl=1\")
Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela (Little Brown, 1994). A trip to South Africa’s Robben Island in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Town on Mandela’s 93rd birthday delivered an emotional high point in my early Africa travels. The island prison is where the activist-lawyer and other foes of apartheid, the system of racial separation imposed by white nationalists, spent years toiling in the blinding rays of a bleached-white quarry. Robben Island also became an informal political academy where South Africa’s multiracial, democratic future took shape. Mandela, freed in 1990 (I heard him speak in Atlanta a few months later, electrifying a packed stadium), became president in 1994 in South Africa’s first democratic election. This is the story of his journey from a fugitive to prisoner to inspiration of the world.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Understanding modern Africa’s transformative leader gives you talking points anywhere, especially in the “rainbow nation,” South Africa.
\n\n\n\nMonsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, by Robert Kaplan (Random House, 2010). If Kaplan is right, the 21st century will play out around the ocean that the past century mostly ignored. And it is very much an African ocean. From the East African coast to Oman, across to Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and down into Indonesia, the Indian Ocean, in Kaplan’s telling, is the arena of every hope and danger. Africa is reconnecting to the Indian Ocean realm, reflected in the increasing political and economic interest of India and Indonesia in the growing markets of sub-Saharan Africa. Turn to Kaplan’s keen eye and immersive writing to understand how Africa fits into this epic shift.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Kaplan exposes crucial cultural connections to help you glimpse the future of Africa.
\n\n\n\nThe Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past, by Meave Leakey, with Samira Leakey (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020). Africa birthed humanity, and the area around Lake Turkana in arid northern Kenya is where the evolutionary drama of our ancestors unfolded across a billion days. Few people know this terrain better than legendary paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey, who spent decades with husband Richard and Kenyan colleagues making landmark fossil discoveries. Starting from her arrival in 1965 as a young researcher, Leakey brings this enthralling quest to life in crisp and often deeply personal prose.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Sediments is a thrilling, informative journey into Africa’s role in human origins.
\n\n\n\nThe Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa’s Wealth, by Tom Burgis (Public Affairs, 2015). A new era is dawning for Africa’s mining powers such as Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo as global demand surges for green-energy mineral wealth, ranging from copper, cobalt and nickel to “rare earth” terbium and niobium, all destined for electric vehicles, wind turbines and even artificial intelligence. With skill, luck and responsible political will, the story could play out far better than Africa’s savage extractive exploits in the past century. Burgis, writing as a Financial Times correspondent in Africa, uncovers how transnational elites from mining companies to lawyers to African power brokers plundered impoverished countries suffering from the “resource curse” of abundant oil, gold and industrial minerals. (Also consider Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, by Siddharth Kara (St. Martin’s Press, 2023) on the human suffering required to extract an essential metal for electric-vehicle batteries and other technologies.)
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Exposes what has gone on behind the curtain – and what needs to change.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Barrick-HH-expansion.jpg?resize=720%2C405&ssl=1\")
Unbowed: A Memoir, by Wangari Maathai (Turtleback Books, 2007). This Kenyan crusader was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2004. Maathai started an up-from-the-dirt campaign in 1977 called the Green Belt Movement to reverse deforestation and encourage rural women to plant trees and think about their lives and communities in ecological terms. Maathai, who died in 2011, saw tree planting as an expression of democracy, the rights of women and international solidarity. As the Nobel Committee put it: “She thinks globally and acts locally.”
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Maathai reveals the power of African women to shape social change.
\n\n\n\nAfrica Since 1940: The Past of the Present, by Frederick Cooper (Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2019). You need a benchmark modern history of Africa, and Cooper delivers. The American historian based at Columbia University chooses the Second World War as a more meaningful starting point for understanding contemporary Africa than the independence era two decades later. That makes sense, because the war stirred embers of change that ignited in the 1950s, when African political liberation gained ground. As battered colonial overlords Britain and France faltered, the U.S. began to grasp the reach of its postwar superpowers.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Enjoy an informed perspective on the years when American influence blossomed.
\n\n\n\nInside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter, by Zohra Drif (Just World Books, 2017). When France granted independence to almost all its African colonies in 1960, President Charles de Gaulle was still locked in a brutal war to keep Algeria. First published in French in 2013, this is the account of the young Algerians who fought the French, told from the perspective of Drif and her female comrades. Their resistance was portrayed in Gillo Pontecorvo’s iconic 1966 film, The Battle of Algiers. France’s defeat in Vietnam and the independence struggles of Tunisia, Morocco and Madagascar showed Drif and her politically aware friends in the 1950s that “France was not invincible.”
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Understand French colonialism in Africa through the eyes of Muslim women.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Battle-of-Algiers-Djamila-Bouazza-22-ans.jpg?resize=698%2C720&ssl=1\")
White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa, by Susan Williams (Public Affairs, 2021). The British academic sleuth reveals how U.S. covert action during the Cold War reconstituted colonial-style influence over nations including Congo after Britain, France and Belgium relinquished direct rule. White Malice is a sequel of sorts to Who Killed Hammarskjold?: The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa (Hurst and Co., 2011), Williams’ ground-breaking investigation into the weird and shocking death of United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammerskjold in a 1961 plane crash a few miles short of the airport in today’s Ndola, Zambia, then British-ruled Northern Rhodesia. The crash, which reeks of foul play, came during a diplomatic mission at the height of a Cold War standoff in mineral-rich, neighboring Congo and remains officially unsolved.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: While America promoted itself as a champion of African liberation and democracy, Cold Warriors had different ideas.
\n\n\n\nKing Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild (Houghton Mifflin, 1998). This best seller has become the go-to account of colonial atrocities against Africans, focused on the devious plundering of Belgium’s King Leopold II. While the monarch portrayed himself as a benefactor of impoverished Africans, courageous European crusaders led by Edmund Morel, an English shipping-line employee of “nearly superhuman energy,” uncovered the truth: Leopold was enslaving the Congolese to steal rubber and ivory and killing millions in the quest. From 1885 to 1908, Leopold’s “Congo Free State” was an epicenter of horrors that, once exposed, galvanized a global response, including from celebrities of the day such as the American writer Mark Twain. Hochschild recovers this epic story for our time and conscience.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Hochschild humanizes a shocking and essential story with indelible portraits of the heroes and villains.
\n\n\n\nBorn in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War by Howard French (Liveright, 2021). The former New York Times correspondent recasts Africa from sideshow to the main stage of history during the past five centuries as the “Atlantic world” emerged. Among the fascinating accounts within is how the tiny island of Sao Tomé off the west-central African mainland near present-day Nigeria and Gabon served as Portugal’s testing ground for what would become the most consequential, lucrative and brutal economic model of that era: the enslavement of Africans to toil on sugar plantations in the Americas.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: French connects the historical dots and illuminates the path to today’s Africa.
\n\n\n\nThe Sex Lives of African Women: Self-Discovery, Freedom, and Healing, by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah (Astra House, 2022). The self-described pan-African feminist author from Ghana introduces women seeking a joyful approach to sexual liberation while navigating a world of cultural traps. “African women grapple with the trauma of sexual abuse, and resist religious and patriarchal edicts in order to assert their sexual power and agency,” Sekyiamah writes. “They do this by questioning and resisting societal norms while creating new norms and narratives that allow them to be who they truly are.” Based on conversations with women from 31 countries and infused with the spirit of her blog, “Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women,” here is modern Africa pulled from the shadows.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: A revealing look at a profound social topic often treated as taboo.
\n\n\n\nDo Not Disturb, by Mikaela Wrong (Public Affairs, 2021). Post-genocide Rwanda has earned deserved acclaim for its push toward innovation and higher living standards. From drones ferrying blood supplies, to a satellite in space that monitors water and farming, and the African campus of a famed American engineering university, Carnegie Mellon, Rwanda impresses as a can-do nation. Less known is how the government led by Paul Kagame treats political foes and former colleagues deemed disloyal. Wrong, a journalist who has exposed corruption in Kenya and the last days of a kleptocratic dictator in Zaire (Congo), dissects the murder in South Africa of Rwanda’s exiled former spy chief. Along the way, Wrong endures a cyberattack and hides her laptop in a laundry basket out of fear for the long arm of Rwanda. (To understand Kagame’s vision for his country, see A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It, by Stephen Kinzer (Trade Paper Press, 2008), a former New York Times correspondent.)
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Offers an unflinching view of the flip side of Rwanda’s much-hyped transformation.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Kenya-stamp-1963-Jomo-Kenyatta.jpeg?resize=582%2C490&ssl=1\")
Facing Mount Kenya, by Jomo Kenyatta (Vintage Books, 1965). Before he was Kenya’s independence leader and first president, Jomo Kenyatta studied anthropology in London under Bronislaw Malinowski, a giant in the field. This is Kenyatta’s classic account of his people, the Gikuyu (Kikuyu) who live around their spiritual totem, Kere-Nyaga, what today we call Mount Kenya, Africa’s second-tallest peak. Kenyatta, whose son Uhuru (Freedom) served as Kenya’s fourth president, offers one of the most readable and revealing portraits of an indigenous African culture before the arrival of Europeans. First published in 1938, this intimate guide explains how the Gikuyu managed land and governed themselves, conducted business and educated their children in knowledge of the world and social customs of the community, from family ties to the sex life of young people.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Absorb yourself in the rich heritage of Kenya’s most influential people.
\n\n\n\nWhat Britain Did to Nigeria: A Short History of Conquest and Rule, by Max Siollun (Hurst, 2021). That “Nigeria” was a name suggested in 1897 by Flora Shaw, a famous colonial-affairs newspaper editor in London, tells you something about the unnatural journey of this amalgam of a country, Africa’s most populous. (Shaw later married colonial administrator Frederick Lugard, who did much to assemble Nigeria’s uneasy cultural hodgepodge.) The British Empire’s violent rule and manipulation of African peoples is coming into focus thanks to deeply researched reappraisals of benign colonial portrayals. Siollun, an historian, adds to this fresh scholarship with an acclaimed look at the economic exploitation, indigenous resistance, and influence of missionaries in the 60 years or so that Britain lorded over this land. (You’ll also want to grab the excellent Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics (Oxford University Press, 2018), a deep dive into history, power, ecology, social conflict and corruption.)
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: This nuanced Nigerian perspective gives you more to ponder than the society dramas pumped out by Nollywood.
\n\n\n\nDictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa, by Paul Kenyon (Head of Zeus, 2018). A BBC documentary filmmaker captures bizarre tales of Africa’s post-colonial leaders in this lively account that the Financial Times called a “grimly fascinating” narrative. “Suddenly indigenous rulers were in control of the precious resources that had previously been in the hands of London, Madrid, Lisbon and Paris,” Kenyon writes. “Most were unprepared for governance.” The treasure was gold, diamonds, oil, copper and even cocoa, the key ingredient of chocolate. For each, Kenyon delves vividly into the situation “before the dictators,” then zeroes in on the countries implicated: for oil, he looks at Nigeria, Libya and Equatorial Guinea, a tiny, Spanish-speaking nation ruled by a single family, where the UN says 70 percent of people live in poverty.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: These stories from Africa’s era of official thievery surpass fiction.
\n\n\n\nThomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa, by Brian J. Peterson (Indiana University Press, 2021). Among the most fascinating leaders that Africa has produced in the past 50 years is Sankara, who came to power in 1983 in Upper Volta, a former French colony he renamed Burkina Faso, meaning “Land of Honest People.” Sankara pursued a radical, pro-poor agenda that supported the rights of women, replenished forests and demanded that officials reveal their finances. Peterson’s definitive account draws on diplomatic cables and interviews with more than 100 of Sankara’s friends, family members and comrades. Alas, Sankara met a fate that visited many African leaders in that period: violent overthrow – and death at age 37 at the hands of his friend Blaise Campaoré, who ruled for 27 years.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: A standout biography of an African leader still revered across the continent.
\n\n\n\nBlack Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, by Mark Bowden (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999). America’s harsh encounter with post-Cold War Africa begins in Somalia with the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. After victory over Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in Kuwait in 1991, America’s military descended into the madness of urban warfare with Somali warlords, amid an international peacekeeping operation meant to rescue Somalia from famine. The fierce clash killed 18 soldiers and more than 500 Somalis and made America skittish about committing forces elsewhere on the continent. Bowden’s intense account became an action movie in 2002 and won two Academy Awards.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: A classic look at the limits of American power in unfamiliar places.
\n\n\n\nThe Oxford Handbook of the African Sahel, edited by Leonardo A. Villalon (Oxford University Press, 2021). Have you heard of the Sahel, yet aren’t quite sure what or where it is? Villalon, a University of Florida scholar of African studies, marshals a team of experts to tell you more than you ever dreamed about this semiarid, seductive and coup-prone region between the Sahara Desert and the tropical savannas to the south. Futurists see this area as full of potential in renewable energy, to name just one dream. Weighing in at 832 pages and 3.5 pounds (1.5 kilograms), with a triple-digit price to match, this feast of essays spans politics, climate-change impacts, governance challenges and social and cultural changes across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. Don’t set foot deep in the Sahel without it.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Heft this volume for insights into an opaque yet increasingly important region.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IMG_1414.jpg?resize=720%2C540&ssl=1\")
Namib: The Archeology of an African Desert, by John Kinahan (University of Namibia Press, 2020). While not a conventional travel guide, this exceptional book is one you’ll want to tote around on trips to southwestern Africa or simply enjoy from your comfy chair. Kinahan deftly mixes science with scenery, painting a vivid picture of a million years of human endurance and connection in this desert domain. In this sense, Kinahan tells a universal story of resilience – one he knows well from decades of field research across this vast terrain. With stunning drawings of ancient rock art that complement his graceful though never confounding narrative, Kinahan has created a classic account of deep-time Africa.
\n\n\n\nWhy Buy: Humans are incredible and here’s why.
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I would add The Bright Continent by Dayo Olopade (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014). Olopade calls for a shift in our thinking about Africa, challenging us all to recognize that Africans have the best understanding of how to solve their own problems & create opportunity.
\n"},"link":"https://cms.afrologi.com/2025/08/09/africa-best-books/comment-page-1/#comment-17","type":"comment","author_avatar_urls":{"24":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c6727731749d09874f8e8c381238f50598cd7232098d2653f6490d5869c93977?s=24&d=identicon&r=g","48":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c6727731749d09874f8e8c381238f50598cd7232098d2653f6490d5869c93977?s=48&d=identicon&r=g","96":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c6727731749d09874f8e8c381238f50598cd7232098d2653f6490d5869c93977?s=96&d=identicon&r=g"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"post_type":"post","href":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/66"}]}}]],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"id":389,"date":"2025-08-06T21:25:13","slug":"please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-5","type":"attachment","link":"https://cms.afrologi.com/2025/08/09/africa-best-books/please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-5/","title":{"rendered":"please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african"},"author":144169648,"featured_media":0,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https://wp.me/afpPOl-6h","caption":{"rendered":"excerpt"},"alt_text":"","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/png","media_details":{"width":1024,"height":768,"file":"2025/08/please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4.png","filesize":1325031,"sizes":{"medium":{"file":"please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4-300x225.png","width":300,"height":225,"virtual":true,"mime_type":"image/png","source_url":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4.png?fit=300%2C225&ssl=1"},"thumbnail":{"file":"please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4-150x150.png","width":150,"height":150,"virtual":true,"mime_type":"image/png","source_url":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1"},"medium_large":{"file":"please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4-768x576.png","width":768,"height":576,"virtual":true,"mime_type":"image/png","source_url":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4.png?fit=720%2C540&ssl=1"},"newspack-article-block-portrait-large":{"file":"please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4-900x768.png","width":900,"height":768,"virtual":true,"mime_type":"image/png","source_url":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4.png?resize=900%2C768&ssl=1"},"newspack-article-block-landscape-medium":{"file":"please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4-800x600.png","width":800,"height":600,"virtual":true,"mime_type":"image/png","source_url":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4.png?resize=800%2C600&ssl=1"},"newspack-article-block-portrait-medium":{"file":"please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4-600x768.png","width":600,"height":768,"virtual":true,"mime_type":"image/png","source_url":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4.png?resize=600%2C768&ssl=1"},"newspack-article-block-square-medium":{"file":"please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4-800x768.png","width":800,"height":768,"virtual":true,"mime_type":"image/png","source_url":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4.png?resize=800%2C768&ssl=1"},"newspack-article-block-landscape-intermediate":{"file":"please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4-600x450.png","width":600,"height":450,"virtual":true,"mime_type":"image/png","source_url":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4.png?resize=600%2C450&ssl=1"},"newspack-article-block-portrait-intermediate":{"file":"please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4-450x600.png","width":450,"height":600,"virtual":true,"mime_type":"image/png","source_url":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/please-generate-a-wildly-whimsical-storybook-image-using-iconic-african-4.png?resize=450%2C600&ssl=1"},"newspack-article-block-square-intermediate":{"file"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students have far to climb to reach the academic heights of peers in China and Singapore, yet a few bright spots emerge in results from the latest testing of 15-year-old learners around the globe.
\n\n\n\nThe island nation of Mauritius was by far the top performer of the five African countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing in reading, science and mathematics, along with computational problem solving. Mauritius posted mean scores in the middle of the pack of 91 countries and economies whose students tested. That was good enough to score within a few points of Israel and Iceland in science and to outperform Vietnam in reading and Chile in math.
\n\n\n\nEven so, students in Mauritius performed below the average scores of countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which runs PISA and counts the world’s major economies as members or partners. The same was true for pupils from the other four African countries on the list: Morocco, Kenya, Zambia and Rwanda, which placed last in this truncated world table.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: While the data offers only a snapshot of educational capabilities across Africa, the results spotlight learning improvement as one of Africa’s toughest challenges as a population boom bears down on the continent.
\n\n\n\nIn 2025, China as represented by Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and Singapore were the world’s highest performers across science, math and reading. Estonia and the United Kingdom were the highest-scoring countries in Europe. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada and New Zealand also were among the top 10.
\n\n\n\nWhile the Africa cohort makes up only 10 percent of the countries on the continent, the results held a surprise. In reading and science, students in Zambia edged out their peers in the larger and better funded Kenyan education system. Africa’s most populous countries, Egypt, Ethiopia and Nigeria, didn’t participate in this testing round. Nor did South Africa, Africa’s most advanced economy.
\n\n\n\nThis is the ninth PISA assessment since the global testing began in 2000 to understand what a citizen needs to know and be able to do. More than 760,000 students took part in this assessment, which combines testing with a questionnaire on students’ beliefs, background and learning.
\n\n\n\nGlobally, proficiency in reading is a rising concern. “In reading, PISA saw a decline in the very skills that matter most in the AI age: evaluating information, making connections across multiple sources, and thinking critically about what we read,” the assessment team said. What PISA calls “hasty readers,” students who speed through texts and give quick, wrong answers, almost doubled between the 2018 assessment and the 2025 version.
\n\n\n\nReading and math scores have dropped sharply in OECD countries since the testing effort started, while proficiency in science has declined at a slower rate.
\n\n\n\nKenya claimed one accolade. A quarter of Kenyan students described as “disadvantaged” scored in the top 25 percent of Kenyan students in science. That was the highest share of “academically resilient” students of any country or economy in the testing, and more than double the OECD average.
\n\n\n\nThat gritty achievement may reflect the emphasis that Kenya is putting on building a digital economy that the government says could generate hundreds of thousands of jobs.
\n\n\n\n“When I said all students will be funded, some people asked me where the money will come from,” Kenyan President William Ruto said in July 2026 while honoring university students who excelled at a technology competition in China. “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
\n\n\n\nAction options: With overcrowded classrooms, strained government budgets and demands for a better educated workforce, some African countries are looking to tech options for help. That market may be worth as much as USD 1 billion today, according to the UN Development Program. Another forecast sees the edutech market growing to USD 19 billion in Africa by the mid-2030s, with a focus on delivery via smartphones.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Students in Kenya by Kenya Ministry of Education.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A global assessment shows how far behind African students are compared with peers in Asia. That matters as a population boom pressures education systems across Africa. Yet lessons in making progress are emerging.","protected":false},"author":144169649,"featured_media":2676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443694],"tags":[57443835,57443679,57443825,57443758,57443721,57443765],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-societies","tag-education","tag-kenya","tag-mauritius","tag-morocco","tag-rwanda","tag-zambia","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Kenya-schoolkids-Min-of-Educ-MAR2026.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Kenya-schoolkids-Min-of-Educ-MAR2026.jpg?fit=1280%2C854&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"African students learn the world is far ahead\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
Sudan’s long-running civil war is adopting the deadly battle tactics erupting between Russia and Ukraine, with drones as the weapon of choice and civilians often under attack. United Nations investigators say evidence points to foreign support, from Colombian mercenaries to shipments from the United Arab Emirates.
\n\n\n\nThe report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, issued in early September 2026, looked at the impact of expanded military use of long-range drones and external support in prolonging the conflict. Besides drone strikes, Sudanese civilians are coping with recurring mass killings, abductions of women and girls, and mass rapes, according to a top UN official.
\n\n\n\n“The consequences of this conflict will be long-lasting and should shake us all,” the UN under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, told the 15-nation Security Council at a meeting on Sudan shortly before the report was released.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: As Sudan’s conflict has raged on, evidence has mounted that more countries are getting involved and prolonging the fighting and the suffering of Sudanese civilians. That creates spillover risks for countries around Sudan, threatens Africa’s peacebuilding frameworks, and reverses social and economic progress in one of the continent’s biggest nations.
\n\n\n\nMore than 1,000 civilians died in drone strikes between January and May 2026 in Sudan, according to the UN. Deadly attacks have come from Sudan’s military and the rebels waging war against the government, known as the Rapid Support Forces. The RSF has struck the capital Khartoum, Port Sudan and around El-Fasher, while the Sudanese military has sent combat drones deep into rebel-held Darfur, according to the UN report.
\n\n\n\nIn El-Obeid, a base for Sudanese forces, almost daily drone attacks by the rebels in May and June targeted residential areas, fuel supplies, water and electricity, according to unidentified witnesses cited by the report.
\n\n\n\nDuring a Muslim holiday in March 2026, successive strikes attributed by the UN probe to the Sudanese Armed Forces crippled a teaching hospital in East Darfur that serves an area of 2 million people, killing at least 70 individuals. The attack hit the hospital’s emergency area, pharmacy and blood bank. Other incidents have targeted public markets. An RSF drone strike on a kindergarten in Kalogi, South Kordofan, in December 2025, and a follow-on attack as residents gathered to help, killed 114 people, including about 60 children, according to the UN report.
\n\n\n\nThe UN itself has come under assault. Drone attacks in December 2025 on a UN logistics base killed six Bangladeshi peacekeeping personnel and wounded eight others near the contested oil-producing Abyei area along the border with South Sudan.
\n\n\n\n“It is a counter-revolutionary war waged on Sudan’s people for daring to dream of better than autocratic rule, better than kleptocratic pillage and better than theocratic oppression,” said Dr. Eva Khair, a physician and peacebuilding adviser, in remarks to the UN Security Council in August 2026. “Civilians are trapped between two illegitimate de facto authorities, each pursuing total dominion regardless of whom they crush, which part of Sudan they sell, or which foreign power they submit to.”
\n\n\n\nThe UN investigative report describes evidence of supply routes and logistics hubs linked to individuals and entities in the U.A.E. that move weaponry and other goods to the RSF rebels via Chad and Somalia. Former Colombian military personnel were recruited to support RSF drone operations in Sudan and their total number “may approach 2000” individuals, the investigators said, citing “credible independent sources.”
\n\n\n\nThe alleged support from the U.A.E., Colombia, Chad and other countries “sustained Rapid Support Forces’ military operations during a conflict marked by serious violations of international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and the commission of international crimes,” the UN probe concluded.
\n\n\n\nIn response to queries from the UN investigators, the U.A.E. government denied involvement in supporting the rebels, and Chad’s government said it wasn’t aware of shipments through its territory and was strengthening border security to stop fighters or weapons from moving into Sudan. Colombia expressed concern about the mercenaries, and the UN probe found no evidence the government was involved.
\n\n\n\nTwo weeks before President Joe Biden’s term ended, the United States declared that members of the RSF and allied Arab militias had engaged in genocide through ethnically targeted murders of civilians and mass rapes of girls and women on an ethnic basis, and by blocking humanitarian aid. The United States imposed sanctions on RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, known as Hemedti, and accused the RSF of ties to companies in the U.A.E., including one that provided money and weapons.
\n\n\n\nA Sudanese court convicted Hemedti and other RSF officials of war crimes in July 2026 and sentenced him to death in absentia.
\n\n\n\nVast geography is a factor in the Sudan conflict. A vote by the UN General Assembly supporting maps that more accurately reflect the true scale of Africa will also reveal Sudan’s size and the challenge of securing the country. With an area of almost 1.9 million square kilometers, or 728,000 square miles, the country is Africa’s third largest.
\n\n\n\nRecent advances by the Sudanese military “have put pressure on RSF positions across multiple fronts, pointing to a new phase of the war in which both sides are increasingly relying on air and drone strikes as ground offensives shift to the peripheries,” said Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), an organization that tracks clashes in Sudan.
\n\n\n\nACLED data shows that air and drone strikes have escalated since mid-2025 as Sudanese forces have targeted rebel supply lines for fuel, relying on drones made in Turkey, Iran and Pakistan for attacks.
\n\n\n\nDrones have become an emblem of the grinding war between Russia and Ukraine. More than 80 people have died in Russian drone and missile strikes in and near Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, since the beginning of August. Meanwhile, Ukraine is short of defensive interceptor missiles and is seeking U.S. permission for its drones to use Elon Musk’s Starlink Internet service over Russia to attack ballistic missile launchers, Bloomberg reported.
\n\n\n\nAction options: If your dealings involve Sudan, Chad, the U.A.E. and other countries linked to support for the war in Sudan, check UN and U.S. sanctions actions for officially designated people or businesses. U.S. sanctions are enforced by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control or OFAC. The UN Security Council Consolidated List includes individuals and entities subject to international legal action.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Sudanese refugees in Chad receiving aid, by UNHCR/Caitlin Kelly)
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An escalating drone war between Sudan's military and the rebels fighting for control of the country is beginning to resemble the grinding war between Russia and Ukraine.","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443696,57443694],"tags":[57443829,57443834,57443832,57443817,57443833,57443759,57443690],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-societies","tag-chad","tag-colombia","tag-sudan","tag-turkey","tag-uae","tag-united-nations","tag-war","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Sudan-Darfur-refugees-UNHCR-Caitlin-Kelly.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Sudan-Darfur-refugees-UNHCR-Caitlin-Kelly.jpg?fit=1180%2C765&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Sudan begins to mirror Russia-Ukraine conflict\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
Hakainde Hichilema won a second term as Zambia’s president on August 13, 2026, building on his landslide victory over President Edgar Lungu in 2021 and ensuring his turnaround strategy for Zambia keeps rolling. Yet the drama most Zambians focused on wasn’t at the ballot box.
\n\n\n\nA raid by security forces at the home of Hichilema’s electoral foe, Brian Mundubile, a day after the voting resulted in the shooting death of a former minister under Lungu. A few days later, police detained and questioned Mundubile in connection with allegations of treason linked to murky claims about an insurrection. This post-election episode has unsettled Zambia’s usually peaceful politics and the world beyond.
\n\n\n\nUnited Nations human rights chief Volker Turk expressed concern about arrests of opposition supporters during the raid. “At this critical post-election juncture, it is essential to uphold respect for human rights and ensure that any grievances arising from the election are voiced and addressed peacefully, and in accordance with international human rights law,” Turk said in a statement. Zambia’s proliferating online pundits voiced bewilderment at the targeting of the opposition leader.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: This political cloud may dissipate to reveal something more profound than domestic political clashes. As Afrologi’s forthcoming Zambia Playbook details, the country is beginning to claim a bigger place in the world and is finally catching up to what any map of Africa suggests: mineral-rich Zambia could become a formidable hub, a connector in the heart of Africa.
\n\n\n\nZambia borders one in seven African countries, giving it a chance to show what economic integration looks like to a continent still trying to gain traction on the idea. Railway and trade corridors, one being refurbished to the east (TAZARA), while the other advances toward moving dirt across hundreds of miles in the west (Lobito), could turn location into strategic leverage.
\n\n\n\nLooking across Zambia at facts emerging on the ground, you see this “land-linked” vision, as Zambian officials call it, taking form. Rising across Zambia are new border posts, roads, airports and even a scaled-up port on Lake Tanganyika, which extends north to Burundi. Coming soon, if more than USD 3 billion in financing materializes, is a new freight railway running from Angola into Zambia’s mining epicenter, the crucial segment of the U.S.-backed Lobito supply-chain corridor to the Atlantic Ocean.
\n\n\n\nIn a boost for Lobito, the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a 30-year, USD 1.25 billion agreement with Portuguese builder Mota-Engil in late August 2026 to upgrade, operate and maintain the 625-mile railway segment from Dilolo on the Angola border to Sakania near Zambia’s copper mining region, the core of the DRC’s portion of the transport corridor.
\n\n\n\nAs the Zambia Playbook notes, this rapid push to connect has much to do with the power of the presidency in Zambia and with HH’s pursuit of “positive neutrality” in international relations. Emerging from a debt crisis, Zambia is rounding up support and money from middle powers, such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, as America shifts strategy while China maintains its position as a top trade partner.
\n\n\n\nWhile the Zambian Constitution describes legislative and judicial checks on the executive, the presidency in practice tends to deflect oversight and sets the country’s agenda much as it wants. Hichilema’s biggest tool is the government budget, yet he has others. For instance, the president oversees the Industrial Development Corporation and its portfolio of state-owned enterprises, from the national railway to a major telecom operator. And Hichilema wants to transform these holdings into a source of long-term wealth for Zambia.
\n\n\n\nThe powerful presidency does not mean that governing Zambia from State House in Lusaka is free of friction. Competing factions inside the ruling party, the business elite, the mining majors and international aid donors all push for advantage, as the playbook describes.
\n\n\n\nThe 2026 election wasn’t a pure victory for Hichilema. The respected Christian Churches Monitoring Group or CCMG sent monitors to a statistically valid sample of 1,500 polling sites across Zambia. In 30 constituencies, “votes were added, artificially increasing turnout and undermining the integrity of the process,” CCMG said in its post-election statement. However, the group added, “the variances identified do not alter the overall outcome of the presidential election.”
\n\n\n\nCCMG estimates that Hichilema received 56 percent of the vote, plus or minus 1.7 percentage points. Mundubile likely got 42.3 percent, plus or minus 1.7 points. These estimates came after the Electoral Commission of Zambia declared HH the winner, saying he got more than 60 percent of the valid vote.
\n\n\n\nThe opposition didn’t accept that tally and talked about going to court to challenge the official result. Yet a petition never showed up at the Constitutional Court, in part because courts closed across Zambia for unspecified security reasons on the last day you could file.
\n\n\n\nAction options: Look to the national budget, likely to come in late September or October 2026, for clues about the priorities Hichilema will pursue. And look to new members of the Cabinet who will carry out his orders across ministries. HH is riding on a global copper price at close to a five-year high. And, as the playbook notes and Zambian history shows, much depends on the fortunes of the red metal dug for centuries from the country’s soil.
\n\n\n\n(Hichilema at an election rally in August 2026, via Facebook.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Hichilema's re-election will reinforce his strategy to turn Zambia into a hub connecting oceans. Facts on the ground already show how this plan is developing.","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443696,57443694],"tags":[57443788,57443794,57443740,57443732,57443765],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-societies","tag-election","tag-lobito-corridor","tag-mining","tag-trade","tag-zambia","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Zambia-Hichilema-NW-Prov-rally-02-AUG2026.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Zambia-Hichilema-NW-Prov-rally-02-AUG2026.jpg?fit=2048%2C1058&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Zambia election advances HH’s grand plan\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
Some of southern Africa’s richest countries as measured by natural resources are also major producers of poor people. And breaking out of this dilemma is proving tough.
\n\n\n\nIn Angola, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia, most of the population live below the international poverty line, USD 2.15 per day, according to data from a forthcoming report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa or UNECA, based in Addis Ababa. These are southern Africa’s poorest countries, though if you spend time only in their modern capital cities without venturing into the hinterlands you might not guess it.
\n\n\n\nMalawi is in the most dire situation, with three in four of its people falling into the international poverty pile. The landlocked country of 22 million people wraps around Lake Malawi, an inland sea and one of Africa’s most spectacular bodies of tropical water, and has got plenty that could power its economy on land, too.
\n\n\n\nGold, graphite, niobium and uranium are among Malawi’s assets. Yet translating those natural endowments into export growth and reduced poverty has faltered amid sluggish government action, weak regulation and limited investment. To pay for imported fuel, medicine and other necessities, Malawi’s central bank was forced to sell gold from its reserves earlier this year. It’s easier for many entrepreneurs to go elsewhere than battle Malawi’s complications.
\n\n\n\nThe pandemic’s shadow has lingered in these countries, as weakened health and education systems due to COVID-19 create “lasting effects on economic growth and poverty,” according to UNECA.
\n\n\n\nAngola, a major oil exporter with immense agricultural potential, still finds almost 55 percent of its population living in poverty. In neighboring Zambia, one of the world’s biggest producers of much-in-demand copper, six in 10 people live in poverty.
\n\n\n\nAs Afrologi’s Zambia Playbook details, debt has shaped Zambia’s path, especially in the past decade. The crunch came in late 2020, when Zambia failed to make a USD 42.5 million Eurobond payment, setting off alarm among the country’s creditors. After years of negotiating better debt terms to relieve the burden, Zambia is beginning to put the debt crisis behind it with more fiscal discipline.
\n\n\n\nThe Lobito Corridor, examined in the playbook, is a catalyst for the comeback, though the railway, trade and investment initiative to link Zambia to the Atlantic Ocean will be years in the making. A more immediate help is the transfer of cash directly to more than 1.5 million poor households nationwide in a program run by the Zambian Ministry of Community Development and Social Services. Households receive ZMW 800 (around 40 U.S. dollars) every two months and more if a disabled person resides in the household.
\n\n\n\nEven so, Zambia needs “a coherent and enforceable national development plan to ensure that public investment supports pro-poor development outcomes,” UNECA says.
\n\n\n\nOnly in Mozambique is a legacy of impoverishment, coupled with recent guerrilla-led violence, smacking into an energy windfall. Natural gas discoveries in northern Mozambique represent a way out of poverty for the country, yet only if the eventual billions of dollars in revenue are managed for positive, inclusive change.
\n\n\n\nThe World Bank is worried that Mozambique’s government isn’t moving at the speed of its population growth to get its house in order. Curbing the government’s wage bill, collecting more taxes and easing up on expensive short-term domestic borrowing are priorities, the bank insists. At risk are schools and health clinics that aren’t getting enough money and staff to handle the growing number of people in the country.
\n\n\n\nAnother angle defines the poverty picture: the gap between rich and poor, measured by the Gini coefficient. Italian sociologist Corrado Gini created this measure in 1912 to look at the degree to which income across a country deviates from a perfectly equal distribution, represented by zero. A score of 100 is an utterly unequal distribution.
\n\n\n\nIn southern Africa, South Africa (63.3), Namibia (59.8) and Zambia (57.3) top the list, according to the forthcoming UNECA report. South Africa’s high jobless rate – unemployment stood at 33.6 percent in the second quarter of 2026 – contributes to its low mark. In a country of 63.5 million people, 8.5 million are without work, according to the government’s data agency, Statistics South Africa.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Rural Zambians in a social cash transfer program for the poor, by Zambian Ministry of Community Development and Social Services.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oil-rich Angola, future gas power Mozambique and copper-producing Zambia, along with Malawi, are loaded with natural resources, yet rank as the poorest countries in southern Africa, new data reveals.","protected":false},"author":144169649,"featured_media":2578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"everybody","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443694],"tags":[57443713,57443824,57443816,57443807,57443739,57443719,57443765],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-societies","tag-angola","tag-critical-minerals","tag-malawi","tag-mozambique","tag-oilandgas","tag-south-africa","tag-zambia","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Zambia-social-cash-transfer-Govt-of-Zambia.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Zambia-social-cash-transfer-Govt-of-Zambia.jpg?fit=2560%2C1128&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Rich country, poor country\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
Ghana is crazy for gold – maybe too much for long-term comfort. Gold from artisanal miners, gold from big mines, gold stashed in the central bank. Almost everywhere Ghana turns, the high-flying precious metal is showing up, enriching the country’s financial position while posing risks for the economy.
\n\n\n\nAs Africa’s largest gold producer – and the world’s sixth biggest, according to the World Gold Council, Ghana has cashed in on the sharp rise in the global price for the metal. In the past five years, gold has climbed from around USD 1,800 to almost USD 4,400 per troy ounce (31 grams) and surged beyond USD 5,000 in the first quarter of 2026 before dropping with the onset of conflict in the Middle East.
\n\n\n\nThe gold windfall has boosted exports – 70 percent of 2026 goods exports are likely literally to be worth their weight in gold – while driving up the value of Ghana’s cedi.
\n\n\n\n“The cedi’s sharp appreciation since 2025, while reflecting strong gold-driven external inflows, risks eroding competitiveness in the non-extractive export sector and complicating efforts to diversify the export base – underscoring the risks of Ghana’s increased reliance on gold,” International Monetary Fund staff said in a report released in August.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: Ghana’s mines produced 187 tons of gold in 2025, outpacing America, the No. 7 producer, by 19 percent. Artisanal and small-scale miners are big players: in 2025 they contributed USD 10.8 billion in foreign exchange earnings. Yet the West African country’s cocoa and crude oil industries, along with broader agriculture and manufacturing, also demand capital and political attention in the export mix. Ghana wants to ride the gold wave while guarding against a gold crash.
\n\n\n\nAt Ghana’s central bank, gold fever is cooling off. The Bank of Ghana has reduced the share of gold in its international reserves to less than one-fifth from about one-third at the end of 2025, according to the IMF.
\n\n\n\nOn August 3, 2026, the government’s Ghana Gold Board, known by the James Bond-ish shorthand “GoldBod” stepped into action. It raised USD 75 million from commercial banks in Ghana, bypassing the central bank, to buy gold from domestic producers. This marked a big shift: GoldBod previously acting as a buying agent for the Bank of Ghana, the central bank, with money the institution provided.
\n\n\n\nGoldBod CEO Sammy Gyamfi described this transaction as both a test of self-funding and proof of the entity’s autonomy from the central bank, in a statement from his team. The IMF has expressed concern that the central bank was too involved in gold trading and losing money: an array of fees, charges and forex trading costs added up to about 15 percent of gross gold purchases. GoldBod, founded in 2025, should cut those costs to 5 percent.
\n\n\n\nGoldBod now purchases 30 percent of unrefined doré gold – with silver and other metals mixed in – from large-scale miners at a discount of 0.55 percent, refines it in Ghana and delivers the metal to the Bank of Ghana for its reserves.
\n\n\n\nGhana’s President John Mahama told Ghanaians in his state of the nation address in February 2026 that the country needs to pounce on the expected three years of historically lofty gold prices. Ghana should “build an economic war chest to withstand any global economic shocks, to secure our macroeconomic stability and improve the standards of living of our citizens,” along with conditions for long-term prosperity, he said.
\n\n\n\nGhana seeks to buy domestic gold to boost import cover to at least 15 months in 2028 from four months in 2025. Import cover means the amount of foreign exchange on hand to pay for imported goods and services.
\n\n\n\nThe day after Mahama spoke to the nation, the United States and Israel attacked Iran, and gold fell from its USD 5,000 perch in the weeks that followed. The IMF is basing its Ghana economic forecasts on a gold price as high as USD 4,500 in 2026 and 2027. Yet it has also stress-tested a “gold-price shock” in which the metal tumbles 30 percent. That would trim Ghana’s economic growth and the value of the cedi.
\n\n\n\nIn March 2026, Ghana’s lawmakers passed changes to minerals payouts, introducing sliding-scale royalties of 5 percent to 12 percent on lithium and large-scale gold mining and a flat 2 percent royalty on small-scale gold mining. Lithium is a so-called “critical mineral” used in batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energy.
\n\n\n\nThe government plans to send Parliament a draft Extractive Industry Fiscal Regime Act by December 2026. The measure would consolidate key fiscal laws for mining and petroleum production, “while limiting the scope for case-by-case variation of fiscal terms and competitive negotiations,” according to a July 7, 2026, letter of intent from Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson to the IMF.
\n\n\n\nAction options: Ghana’s gold windfall is keeping “imported inflation” at bay, which makes business planning more reliable. Manufacturing of electronics, vehicles and other goods, along with agro-processing, are growing segments of the economy. With support from the World Bank, the government debuted the “AgriConnect Compact” in June 2026, a national effort to boost food security, reduce imports and attract investment across agricultural value chains. Rice, maize, poultry, fisheries and the forest economy are priorities.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Ghana Gold Board chief Gyamfi.)
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Sometimes a fictional story from Africa can tell you more about a place and culture than any travel guide. These novels take you that way. We rounded up a superb collection from around Africa that you’ll be happy to drop into your book bag as you head to the beach, mountains or savanna for a well-deserved holiday.
\n\n\n\nNamwali Serpell’s The Old Drift is more than an engrossing and fabulous tale of families – Italian and Zambian – across generations. The sprawling story also sweeps across Zambia’s recent history, from colonial days along the Zambezi River to African liberation – political and cultural. Whimsical and strange at times, the novel goes one step further and takes you into the Zambian future. A quirky discovery lurks on every page.
\n\n\n\nThe Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr is a most enthralling read. The Senegalese author won the 2021 Prix Goncourt, a fancy French literary prize, for this story of a writer in Paris (also from Senegal) and his quest to uncover the life of an elusive author of a 1930s novel. If you like stories that span generations and continents and explore the legacy of colonialism and the meaning of creativity, this is your journey. Senegal’s dance with France, its former colonial ruler, reveals much about both countries.
\n\n\n\nIf present-day Nigeria isn’t exciting enough for you, fast forward to the 2060s in British Nigerian writer Tade Thompson’s mind-bending sci-fi saga Rosewood (the first volume of the Wormwood Trilogy.) Prepare for an alien mothership biodome that’s become a mecca for healing, government agents flitting through dimensions of time and space, and chaotic urban energy that seems awfully familiar. Thompson, who grew up in Nigeria, draws on his background in psychiatry and anthropology to deliver a head-spinning panorama of memorable characters.
\n\n\n\nItaly’s occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s gripped the world and remains an epic of romance and daring for Ethiopians. The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste puts Ethiopian women at the center of the story, from servant girl Hirut to military wife Aster. The Italians in the story aren’t reduced to props. An Italian military photographer sent to create propaganda images faces a moral dilemma as atrocities unfold. Mengiste moved to Rome and learned Italian to research the source material for the war. Ethiopian culture takes a starring role.
\n\n\n\nAbdulrazak Gurnah, the Tanzania-born Nobel laureate for literature, is a keen observer of human displacement. He knows of what he writes: Gurnah fled from Zanzibar during political upheavals in the 1960s and settled in England, where he became a professor. In By the Sea, a Zanzibari shopkeeper bearing treasured incense seeks asylum at Gatwick Airport and ends up in a seaside English town where he encounters a figure from his past – and their secrets. In Desertion, a love affair between an Englishman and a beautiful woman of East Africa resonates across the years. Gurnah reached the pinnacle of world literature “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents,” the Nobel committee said.
\n\n\n\nOur list would be incomplete without a choice from South Africa. Damon Galgut’s The Promise, winner of the 2021 Booker Prize, ventures into the transition out of apartheid, the strict racial separation that suffocated South Africa. The novel zeroes in on a white farming family fading out across decades, as an unfulfilled promise to a Black housekeeper shadows their decline.
\n\n\n\nKenya’s great writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o passed away in 2025 far from East Africa, in a hospital outside Atlanta. That hints at the tension in his writing: driven into exile because for some, he revealed too much. (He worked as a literature professor in America.) A Grain of Wheat reads like a playbook on how Kenya does its politics and treats its history, told from the savvy observations and painful experiences of villagers. The story takes place in the four days leading up to Kenya’s independence in December 1963 yet is rooted in the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. In the mix: a respected hero of the resistance who carries a troubling secret, a former prisoner whose life is upended upon his return home, and a man who makes the fateful choice to side with the British.
\n\n\n\nThings Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe stands alone, for good reason. There are classics and then there are classics that define an entire era of writing. Achebe is to modern African literature what William Faulkner was to American writers in the past century: a pathbreaker who digs deep into the sociology and psychology of a world on the edge of forever change. Told through the story of the fictional Igbo warrior Okonkwo, Achebe conveys the rich traditions and cultural abundance of Okonkwo’s world – and the rapid disintegration of all he values as the British arrive with disruption.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Characters from The Shadow King, A Grain of Wheat and Rosewood as imagined by AI.)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From a generational saga of fantastical change in Zambia to women at war in Ethiopia to the wild, mesmerizing world of Nigeria in the 2060s, here are immersive stories of Africa.","protected":false},"author":144169648,"featured_media":2507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443694],"tags":[57443708,57443679,57443722,57443738,57443719,57443765],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-societies","tag-ethiopia","tag-kenya","tag-nigeria","tag-senegal","tag-south-africa","tag-zambia","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Africa-novels-composite-image-Gemini-AUG2026.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Africa-novels-composite-image-Gemini-AUG2026.jpg?fit=2752%2C1536&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Book a great African beach read\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
In a market economy, trust plays a fundamental role in economic efficiency. The protection of property rights, the predictability of judicial decisions and the capacity of the state to make informed and fair decisions determine the level of trust among economic agents. That, in turn, influences their willingness to invest in business relationships.
\n\n\n\nIn African countries, most perception surveys indicate a minimal level of trust among both domestic and international actors about the rules and practices governing business relations. To attract capital and boost both foreign and domestic investment, countries on the continent will need to make major efforts to upgrade their trust capital.
\n\n\n\nBasic economics and finance textbooks highlight two major determinants of investment: the profitability and security of a proposed venture. While profitability refers to the expected return on investment, security relates instead to the level of trust in the quality of the institutions governing business in a country. What matters is the predictability of these institutions and the credibility of those responsible for arbitrating the inevitable conflicts arising from business relationships.
\n\n\n\nTrust may be withering in Africa, yet profits are flourishing. Profitability rates of private investment are among the highest in the world. The average rate of return on foreign direct investment is as high as 14 percent in Africa, at least 5 points higher than in Asia and Latin America.
\n\n\n\nBy contrast, Africa records the lowest level of private investment in the world, reflecting a poor-quality business environment and doubt about the prospects for success of any private venture.
\n\n\n\nAfrica received 4.3 percent of foreign direct investment worldwide in 2025, down from 6 percent in 2024, according to United Nations data, while holding considerable assets: a dominant share of global natural resources, dynamic demographics, a steadily growing middle class and still rising demand for a vast range of goods and services. Africa’s share of global public debt remains marginal at less than 7 percent.
\n\n\n\nWhile money is undeniably scarcer in Africa than in the rest of the world, it is, conversely, far more expensive. In a now famous report on the cost of the subjective perception of African risk, the United Nations Development Program estimated that USD 28 billion in excess interest payments could be attributed to the subjective component of international credit ratings, and that almost USD 46 billion in potential savings eluded African countries due to poor ratings.
\n\n\n\nThe continent’s financial marginalization in the global economy is only the visible tip of the iceberg when it comes to the devastating impact of the trust deficit on African financial indicators. Credit-to-GDP ratios (a measure of financial depth) are among the lowest in the world and the cost of credit to the private sector in Africa is among the highest in the world – sometimes triple what borrowers in Europe or North America pay. Loans to the domestic private sector, which peaked at 160 percent of GDP in Asia, struggle to exceed 25 percent in Africa.
\n\n\n\nSenegal is far from an exception to this general trend. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, an indicator of public trust in elites across the world, stood at 46 percent among Senegalese in 2025. (On a 100-point scale in which 100 is most corrupt.) Although the 2025 Afrobarometer survey results are more favorable, indicating that 68 percent of the population is satisfied with government efforts to fight corruption in the public administration, 58 percent of citizens still feel they are not treated equally under the law.
\n\n\n\nWorld Bank enterprise surveys indicate that a third of respondents consider tax administration a moderate to severe obstacle to business. Only 35 percent of respondents report high trust in the justice system. Businesses point to the uncertainty and unpredictability of court decisions, the difficulty of enforcing contracts and the slowness of commercial procedures as the main judicial obstacles.
\n\n\n\nReligion- and kinship-based networks are prevalent in Senegal, with the Mouride brotherhood network being by far the most studied. That attests to the high level of distrust that large segments of the population hold toward formal institutions.
\n\n\n\nFindings from our surveys of formal and informal businesses in Francophone African countries confirm this situation. For instance, 48 percent of surveyed formal businesses and 88 percent of informal businesses indicate relying on extended family as their primary hiring source, reflecting the higher level of trust inspired by relatives.
\n\n\n\nThe lack of trust among economic agents in African economies manifests in several ways. While opinion polls, such as Afrobarometer, show deeply worrying results regarding African populations’ low level of trust in their institutions and leaders, surveys on the development of the African private sector place greater emphasis on the impact of the trust deficit.
\n\n\n\nWeak contract enforcement and poor protection of property rights – particularly for land – are cited as the most significant obstacles to business development in Africa.
\n\n\n\nBank financing is one of the areas where the lack of trust is felt most acutely. Non-performing loans (doubtful debts or those unpaid 90 days after the due date) account for 11 percent of total bank loans in Africa, almost double the global average.
\n\n\n\nAnother sign of public distrust in formal institutions is the relatively low proportion of the adult population with a bank account, which tops out at 55 percent, more than 20 points lower than the global average. An abundant body of literature in institutional economics and across other social sciences establishes a very strong correlation between a lack of trust in formal institutions and reliance on alternatives, such as religious and family networks.
\n\n\n\nThese informal channels, which capture the bulk of productive activity in Africa, establish codes of conduct and contract enforcement mechanisms that replace dysfunctional formal ones. Built on relationships of trust among members, they facilitate internal information sharing and financial flows in the form of loans unmatched within formal institutional frameworks. For example, the widespread use of tontines (rotating savings associations) in various forms across Africa is a textbook case.
\n\n\n\nThe formation of business communities that turn inward, develop group-specific rules and maintain minimal interaction with the rest of society is a well-known reality in Africa. Proliferation of these networks confines our economies to obsolete modes of production incompatible with the complexity and financial scale characteristic of modern business.
\n\n\n\nTrust levels are closely tied to public perception of institutional quality. Well-protected property rights, especially for land, more predictable judicial decisions, more stable legal rules over time and greater judicial expertise in commercial matters could significantly boost public trust in formal institutions and offer greater reassurance to investors. It’s time to build trust, so we can build a stronger Africa.
\n\n\n\nAhmadou Aly Mbaye is professor of economics and public policy and former president of Senegal’s leading university, Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. He is president of the African Institute for Sustainable Development.
\n\n\n\n(Feature photo: Nigeria protest by Dokun Ayano / Pexels)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To attract capital and boost both foreign and domestic investment, countries in Africa need to make major efforts to upgrade their trust capital. That means reaching out to a public wary of institutions that don't serve their needs, as Senegal shows.","protected":false},"author":144169650,"featured_media":2473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443694],"tags":[57443831,57443830,57443809,57443767,57443780,57443812],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-societies","tag-corruption","tag-courts","tag-east-africa","tag-finance","tag-investment","tag-west-africa","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Nigeria-protest-by-Dokun-Ayano-edit.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Nigeria-protest-by-Dokun-Ayano-edit.jpg?fit=1280%2C787&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Africa’s worrying deficit is public trust\n"},"yoast_head":"\n
At first glance, the news out of Yaoundé, Cameroon, looked insignificant for integrated trade and investment across Africa, involving about 70 million people, or less than 5 percent of the continent’s population.
\n\n\n\nYet on closer inspection, the decision in early July 2026 by the Bank of Central African States to join the emerging Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, a long name for a shorter route, could be an intriguing catalyst for global investors, logistics operators and strategic planners.
\n\n\n\nKnown by its French initials, BEAC is one of Africa’s two regional central banks, issuing the Central African CFA franc across Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Oil production is a common denominator for five of these six countries – only CAR lacks crude. And only Equatorial Guinea escaped colonial French rule and speaks Spanish, imprinting “Banco de Los Estados de Africa Central” on the CFA banknote.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s at stake: In one move, the pan-African clearing network, commonly called PAPSS, grew its base of African markets by almost 30 percent, to 28 countries. Yvon Sana Bangui, governor of BEAC, said “the active involvement of the financial sector” is what gives PAPSS its clout and will enable faster and cheaper cross-border payments in central Africa. Transactions can settle in real time in local currencies without a non-African currency in the middle.
\n\n\n\nTo understand the weight of this development, look at how intra-African trade historically functioned. If a business in Douala, a coastal city in Cameroon, wanted to import cosmetics from Nigeria, the transaction probably couldn’t happen directly. The importer had to convert CFA francs into U.S. dollars or euros, send the funds through correspondent banks in New York or perhaps Paris, and convert those dollars or euros into Nigerian naira.
\n\n\n\nThis dollar detour across continents introduces fees, settlement delays, frustration and a strange dependence on offshore banks. A simple transaction across a shared border in Africa turns into a global financial expedition. Of course, there are workarounds, from smuggling goods to using gold to transacting in digital currencies.
\n\n\n\nIf your deal needs to travel a well-trod route, however, you might end up in America. One of those New York-based correspondent banks used for decades, Citibank, has argued that payment systems alone won’t boost trade flows if compatible financial rules and efficient payment infrastructure aren’t in place. Bad data moving slowly remains a risk.
\n\n\n\n“At the heart of the issue is the so-called last mile, the final stretch of a cross-border payment that too often bottlenecks due to incompatible financial systems, basic errors in payment data that go unchecked, or regulatory divergence between countries that delay or block transactions outright,” Citi said in a 2025 paper on cross-border African payments.
\n\n\n\nEswatini Finance Minister Neal Rijkenberg, who chairs an African Union committee on finance and economic integration, recently said balancing “core principles” with national needs and ensuring payments integration works for people and business, not just institutions, are top challenges. “These are not abstract questions,” he told a meeting of central bankers and regulators in April 2026. “They will determine whether a trader in Eswatini can pay a supplier in Ghana.”
\n\n\n\nAfrican banks and other financial institutions with settlement accounts at a central bank are known as “direct participants” of PAPSS. They agree to a pre-funding arrangement to ensure money is available before the split-second crediting and debiting of accounts, according to PAPSS. An advanced messaging system offers visibility into the transaction path, while net settlement across all participating central banks occurs daily at 11:00 universal time.
\n\n\n\nMike Ogbalu, former CEO of Nigerian payment card Verve, has run PAPSS since 2021 after its creation by Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank, better known as Afreximbank. For an emblem, PAPSS adopted a stylized rendering of a cowrie shell – Africa’s ancient and widely accepted trade currency.
\n\n\n\nAction options: Pushing PAPSS into the heart of Africa may have broader impact. While Republic of Congo, CAR and Chad aren’t booming economies, these countries and others in the monetary union linked to BEAC cover an enormous geography. They act as a land bridge between east and west.
\n\n\n\nAn even bigger step would be adding the other CFA-issuing central bank, covering eight countries in West Africa, including Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal. An official of Dakar-based Central Bank of West African States said the institution plans to test PAPSS with more than 80 banks in its region, according to the Ecofin news agency.
\n\n\n\n(Feature image: Douala, Cameroon, by Xavier Messina / Pexels)
\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The decision by the monetary authority for central Africa to join an emerging cross-border payments system may be a catalyst for investors and planners looking for broader trade within Africa.","protected":false},"author":144169649,"featured_media":2432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57443692,57443693],"tags":[57443827,57443829,57443828,57443732],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economies","category-tech","tag-cameroon","tag-chad","tag-congo","tag-trade","fallback-thumbnail"],"episode_featured_image":"https://cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/douala-by-messina-pexels.jpg","episode_player_image":"https://i0.wp.com/cms.afrologi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/douala-by-messina-pexels.jpg?fit=1280%2C960&ssl=1","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https://cms.afrologi.com/feed/podcast/afrologi","embedCode":"Dollar detour derails in heart of Africa\n"},"yoast_head":"\n