Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: China seeks de-dollarization in Africa deals, mpox vaccines arrive in Congo, and the U.S. leaves Ethiopia sanctions in place.
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Impending Mass Starvation in Sudan
Sudan’s rival generals have ignored warnings of mass starvation. In more than a year of brutal war, the two military factions have weaponized humanitarian aid.
Sudan’s de facto leader, military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has blocked aid into at least half of the country under the control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti. Meanwhile, the RSF is obstructing trucks into places held by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Local volunteers running soup kitchens have been targeted and killed by the RSF, particularly in Khartoum, Sudanese aid workers told FP.
The conflict has created the world’s largest hunger and internal displacement crises. The fighting has pushed 25 million people, more than half the nation’s population, into acute hunger and forced about 11 million people to flee their homes, including 2.3 million who fled abroad. More than two million Sudanese could die by the end of this year, aid agencies warn.
In areas where there is food available, extortion and attacks on traders at checkpoints have raised prices. Women have recounted having sex with SAF soldiers in exchange for food. Reports of torture, rape, the use of children under 15 in the fighting, and ethnic-based massacres by the RSF and armed militias have surged over the past year.
“People are dying of hunger in the capital,” said Mathilde Vu, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s advocacy advisor in Sudan. “We are looking at the risk of starvation being used as a weapon of war. … This needs to be monitored. The policymakers already have a tool for that. The U.N. Security Council resolution about conflict and hunger, and what they need to put in place is a monitoring of that.”
Both sides in Sudan’s nearly 17-month civil war have committed “harrowing” abuses that may amount to war crimes, a U.N.-mandated mission reported on Friday, calling for a countrywide arms embargo. Sudan’s military government rejected a proposal by U.N. experts to deploy a peacekeeping force to protect civilians.
Compounding the situation, the humanitarian response is critically underfunded. A $2.7 billion U.N. appeal has been just 32 percent funded. Much of that funding has come from the United States. However, aid agencies say local volunteers on the ground need to be better supported since a cease-fire is highly unlikely in the immediate future.
Famine was declared in Zamzam camp housing about 500,000 displaced people near the besieged city of El Fasher, the state capital of North Darfur—areas where the RSF is blocking aid trucks. There’s a realistic chance of famine in 16 other areas, Vu said, but precise figures are hard to confirm. Last month, the SAF agreed to open the Adré border crossing from landlocked Chad into Sudan, for a period of three months. But international aid agencies told FP that the SAF has made things difficult through lengthy authorizations ensuring only a trickle of shipments gets in.
U.S. envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello visited Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey this week in the latest attempt by the Biden administration to expand humanitarian access in Sudan, following failed peace talks in Geneva. The conflict risks turning into a forever war, in which various external actors seize the opportunity to extend their influence. Turkey, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Russia have been accused of arming warring parties.
While such negotiations are essential, U.S. attention and pressure should also focus on other regional powers with a vested interest in the conflict such as Eritrea and Ethiopia. Foreign mercenaries from Chad, Mali, Niger, the Central African Republic, and Libya are believed to be fighting in Sudan.
Pressuring regional powers could engage local armed militias allied to the warring parties in ultimately ensuring access to places like El Fasher. “It will create more of a buffer than two guys signing an agreement in Jeddah” and then breaking it, Vu said. “You cannot bypass the regional powers. … They really are the ones who have the leverage. It’s very important that Western powers engage them so that they have a constructive role in this crisis rather than a harmful one,” she added. Even if Burhan and Hemeti signed a peace deal, many of the local armed groups involved would likely not abide by it.
Both generals have held meetings with several African leaders, while the African Union has been largely absent in peace negotiations. More recently, Burhan held meetings with Eritrea’s president, Isaias Afwerki, and Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, at the China-Africa summit.
The Week Ahead
Wednesday, Sept. 11: The U.N. mission in Libya facilitates talks between rival governments to resolve a central bank leadership crisis.
G-20 agriculture ministers kick off a three-day session in Brazil. South Africa is preparing to assume the presidency of the group in 2025.
Friday, Sept. 13: A court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is expected to rule on a case against 50 men, including U.S. citizens, who took part in an attempted coup in May.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hosts Kenyan President William Ruto.
Sunday, Sept. 15: The deadline for all U.S. troops to withdraw from Niger expires.
What We’re Watching
Algerian elections. Preliminary results show fewer than half of Algeria’s registered voters took part in the ballot on Saturday in which military-backed President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was reelected with 94.7 percent of the vote. Algeria is the largest nation in Africa by area and many of Tebboune’s supporters had urged people to come out and vote so that the president could claim legitimacy and popular support, something he wasn’t able to do in the last election in 2019.
Ethiopian de-dollarization and a Sudanese defense deal. At the China-Africa summit held last week in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged over $50 billion in African investment through credit lines and Chinese business investments over three years. This is a 27.5 percent increase from the last 2021 forum but below the peak $60 billion of 2015 and 2018.
A few highlights from the forum: In a push for non-dollar dominance, finance offered to African nations will come in the form of Chinese yuan. New member Ethiopia is part of the BRICS grouping’s broader ambition to reduce global south dependence on the U.S. dollar. At the summit, Addis Ababa and Beijing agreed to bilateral trade using their respective currencies, the birr and yuan. Beijing provided Addis Ababa with 400 million yuan (about $56 million) in financial assistance.
China signed a memorandum of understanding with Zambia and Tanzania on upgrading the Tazara line—a rival railway against the U.S.-backed Lobito Corridor to transport critical minerals. After ghosting U.S.-led peace talks in Geneva last month, Sudan’s Burhan attended the forum with a large delegation that included his trade and energy ministers. The visit aimed to position Burhan as the legitimate Sudanese ruler over his rival, Hemeti.
Burhan called on African leaders to designate the RSF a terrorist organization. Burhan signed agreements with Chinese arms company Poly Technologies, a revised deal on building Sudan’s nuclear energy, and, as expected, contracts on Chinese electric vehicles.
U.S. sanctions. Abiy’s hopes of reinstating duty-free access to the U.S. market became harder on Friday after President Joe Biden extended a set of sanctions set to expire on Sept. 17. In May 2021, the U.S. put visa restrictions and economic sanctions on some officials from Eritrea and Ethiopia in response to the conflict in Tigray and imposed further sanctions later that year. Biden said activities in northern Ethiopia continue “to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
Washington also imposed visa restrictions on an unspecified number of South Sudanese government officials accused of obstructing humanitarian aid by taxing shipments since a 2018 peace agreement.
DRC mpox jabs. About 200,000 doses of mpox vaccines have arrived in Kinshasa, donated by the European Union. A further 50,000 arrived from the United States on Tuesday. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the outbreak, centered in Congo, is spreading rapidly. Co-circulation of two variants was reported for the first time in Kinshasa, 900 miles from the epicenter in eastern Congo.
This Week in Culture
More than 200 Sudanese academics have written to South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, asking for artifacts looted by the RSF in Sudan and taken across the border to be returned. Satellite imagery showed trucks loaded with relics heading toward the border with South Sudan, according to national broadcaster SBC. Earlier this year, looted Sudanese artifacts appeared online. A Jibbeh tunic dating back to the 1800s was posted on eBay for $200.
Chart of the Week
Beijing has pledged military training and equipment to Mali’s junta and tariff-free access to China’s agriculture market for 33 unspecified low-income African countries—a request made by many African nations, particularly Kenya.
What We’re Reading
Foreign intervention in Mali. In Foreign Policy, John A. Lechner, Sergey Eledinov, and Adam Sandor chronicle how foreign intervention—from French troops to the Wagner Group—has destabilized Mali and made peace less likely. “Just as the war on terror prevented France and the West from correctly ascertaining the root causes of jihadism in the Sahel, the rise of great-power competition narratives threatens to perpetuate misdiagnoses of Mali’s crises,” they write.
Egypt’s double game in Libya. In Middle East Eye, Ahmed Abdeen reports that Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel could be undermining Libya’s Tripoli-based government of interim Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah. Egypt, the UAE, and Russia support the eastern-based military strongman Khalifa Haftar, while Turkey backs Tripoli. Last Wednesday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had a historic meeting with his Turkish counterpart in Ankara. Sisi said the pair had agreed to work on forming a unified democratic Libyan government “with the exit of illegal foreign forces and mercenaries from the country.”
Profiteering politicians in Ghana. In the Fourth Estate, Seth J. Bokpe and Edmund Agyemang Boateng investigate Ghanaian government ministers, who are tasked with protecting the environment, and also own multiple companies that have been awarded logging and mining concessions in the country.
Read More
To End Sudan’s War, Pressure the UAE
Abu Dhabi is prolonging the war by arming the brutal rebels of the Rapid Support Forces. The international community must stop giving it a pass.
Sudanese Militias Are Committing Genocide in Darfur—Again
The United States has the power to halt ongoing atrocities in El Fasher.
Sudan Is Not a Lost Cause
A year into the conflict, fatalistic rhetoric continues to limit the world’s attention—and actions—toward Sudan.