Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: Public anger in Kenya grows as President William Ruto calls for police to shoot protesters in the leg, U.S. President Donald Trump looks to strike migrant deals with African nations, and former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari dies at the age of 82.
Calls Grow for Ruto’s Ouster
More than 100 people have been killed in various youth-led protests in Kenya since June 2024 amid rising public resentment over President William Ruto’s government.
The movement began last summer to protest a now-defunct finance bill, which would have raised taxes, and has broadened to include calls for Ruto’s ouster. During his 2022 election campaign, Ruto cast himself as a “hustler” who would support poor Kenyans. But youth unemployment and the cost of living remain high, and police brutality has only further fueled discontent.
A new wave of demonstrations began last month after blogger Albert Ojwang died in police custody. They swelled again on July 7, which marked the 35th anniversary of the Saba Saba march (meaning “7/7” in Swahili) that helped bring an end to single-party rule in Kenya.
Ruto sparked fresh outrage last week when he ordered police to shoot protesters in the leg who were vandalizing businesses. “Anyone who goes to burn other people’s property, someone like that should be shot in the leg and go to the hospital on his way to court,” Ruto said. “They shouldn’t kill the person, but they should hit the legs to break them.”
The United Opposition, an alliance of at least six opposition parties, has threatened to take Ruto to the International Criminal Court (ICC). “If it was not evident before, it is crystal clear that the police have become judge, jury, and executioner; a death squad in uniform,” the United Opposition said in a statement.
Long before he was president, Ruto faced charges of crimes against humanity at the ICC following allegations that he incited and planned ethnic violence after his then-ally, Raila Odinga, lost disputed elections in 2007. The tribunal dropped the case in 2016 due to lack of evidence. That post-election crisis—which included police violence and ethnic-based killings—saw up to 1,500 people killed and 300,000 displaced.
Amid the current police crackdown, the opposition alliance has also started a campaign calling for Kenyans to boycott businesses linked to Ruto’s ruling Kenya Kwanza coalition. Kenya’s National Commission on Human Rights observed criminal gangs with whips, wooden clubs, and machetes operating alongside police officers during the July 7 protests, when an estimated 38 people were killed and 130 injured.
Among the casualties was a 12-year-old girl who was hit by a stray bullet while at home in Kiambu county, just outside Nairobi. Her killing spurred additional protests in the area, according to local media.
Young people in Kenya say they are determined to keep protesting until they see political change. The country’s next elections are scheduled to take place in 2027.
The Week Ahead
Tuesday, July 15, to Saturday, July 19: London Mayor Sadiq Khan is on a three-nation tour of Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa with a U.K. trade delegation.
Thursday, July 17, to Friday, July 18: G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors meet near Durban, South Africa.
Friday, July 18: Nigeria vs. Zambia and Morocco vs. Mali in the soccer quarterfinals of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, hosted by Morocco.
Saturday, July 19: Algeria vs. Ghana and South Africa vs. Senegal at the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
What We’re Watching
Tariffs and deportations. U.S. President Donald Trump’s transactional approach to diplomacy in Africa was on full display at the mini-summit he held last week with the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal.
As last week’s Africa Brief predicted, Trump urged the West and Central African leaders to accept deported nationals of third countries. “They’re not forcing anybody, but they want us to know that this is the concern they have, and they are asking how can we contribute,” Liberian President Joseph Boakai told local media on Friday. At a media briefing, Trump also indicated that the five nations might not be subject to high tariffs.
So far, the Trump administration has already sent eight migrants from the United States to South Sudan, only one of whom was a South Sudanese national. And this week, South Sudanese Foreign Minister Semaya K. Kumba arrived in Washington for high-level talks, which many analysts expect will focus on deportations.
Meanwhile, Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar said on Thursday that his country would not give in to the Trump administration’s “considerable pressure on African countries to accept Venezuelans to be deported from the U.S., some straight out of prison.” Nigeria, which is home to 230 million people, has “enough problems of our own,” he said.
Sudan’s war intensifies. Sudanese, Libyan, and Egyptian officials met in Cairo last Wednesday to discuss cross-border attacks as Sudan’s army clashes with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the third year of the country’s civil war. The RSF recently seized the strategic Sudan-Libya-Egypt border triangle region, which is rich in natural resources.
Sudan’s army chief and de facto leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has accused eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar of supporting the RSF—a claim Haftar denies.
Meanwhile, ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan said on Thursday that the court has “reasonable grounds” to conclude that war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed in Darfur. Khan told the United Nations Security Council that women and girls of specific ethnicities are targets of sexual violence in the region.
BRICS summit outcome. On the sidelines of last week’s BRICS meetings in Brazil, the China Development Bank and Development Bank of Southern Africa signed a $293 million loan agreement.
The deal is the first of its kind between the two banks, which are both members of the BRICS Interbank Cooperation Mechanism. It will fund energy, infrastructure, water, health, and manufacturing projects across Africa.
Nigerian leader dies. Former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari died on Sunday at the age of 82 in London and was buried in his home state of northern Katsina on Tuesday.
Buhari led Nigeria twice—in 1983-85 as a military leader following a coup and again from 2015 to 2023 as a democratically elected president. By the end of his final term, Buhari fell out of popularity with Nigerians, who accused him of presiding over the spread of insecurity, high levels of unemployment, and the killing of unarmed young people in the #EndSARS anti-police brutality protests in 2020.
This Week in Books
PEN prize winner. Sudanese Scottish author Leila Aboulela has won the 2025 PEN Pinter Prize for her fiction that explores themes of faith, migration, displacement, and the lives of Muslim women. Aboulela, who grew up in Khartoum, has lived in Aberdeen, Scotland, since 1990. Her six novels and two short story collections include The Translator, Elsewhere, Home, and, most recently, River Spirit, which was published in 2023.
“For someone like me, a Muslim Sudanese immigrant who writes from a religious perspective probing the limits of secular tolerance, this recognition feels truly significant,” she said. “It brings expansion and depth to the meaning of freedom of expression and whose stories get heard.”
The PEN Pinter Prize is awarded annually to a writer living in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Commonwealth, or former Commonwealth nations whose work, in the words of British playwright Harold Pinter, presents an “unflinching, unswerving” look at the world.
Africa’s publishing industry. Africa’s $7 billion book industry could be worth $18.5 billion per year if governments implement policies to support authors, boost local publishers, and promote readership, according to a new UNESCO report.
Around 90 percent of African countries have not implemented laws that specifically support the book industry; meanwhile, the enforcement of basic copyright and legal deposit regimes remains weak, the report found.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- The State Department Overhaul Is Long Overdue by A. Wess Mitchell
- When the Threat Is Inside the White House by Tim Weiner
- The End of Modernity by Christopher Clark
What We’re Reading
Hospital patients “detained.” A joint investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and Mother Jones alleges that the World Bank’s financing of for-profit hospitals led to patient detentions and “crushing debt” for families in East Africa.
Since 2009, the International Finance Corp. (IFC), the bank’s investment arm, has partnered with private equity firms that invested its funds in Kenyan and Ugandan hospitals. “[P]ressures to improve returns for investors contributed to increased treatment costs and reduced accessibility,” and when patients could not pay their bills, “some of the hospitals unlawfully detained patients up to months at a time,” the report found.
In March 2024, World Bank chief Ajay Banga apologized for the institution’s handling of widespread sexual abuse of children at for-profit Kenyan schools it funded through the IFC.
Preserving women’s soccer. As the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations gets underway in Morocco, Harlem Lamine argues in Africa Is a Country that the continent’s leaders must work to both legitimize women’s soccer on the global stage and preserve female players’ legacies through digital archives.
“Women were always playing, winning, and emerging, but not much was being recorded. Names and stories of Perpetua Nkwocha, Mercy Akide, or Florence Omagbemi are underreported in world football, and yet they are continental icons,” he writes.