Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: Tanzania detains and deports foreign activists amid an opposition crackdown, the United Kingdom recognizes Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara, and the African Development Bank gets a new leader.
Alleged Torture in Tanzania
Two activists from Uganda and Kenya said on Monday that they were sexually assaulted by Tanzanian security forces while detained in the country last month. The two traveled to the country in May to attend the trial of opposition leader Tundu Lissu in the capital, Dar es Salaam. The allegations come as Tanzania cracks down on dissent ahead of an October general election, in which Lissu hopes to run. He is being tried on several charges, including treason.
Agather Atuhaire of Uganda and Boniface Mwangi of Kenya were arrested at their hotel on May 19 before being driven to an unknown location, where they say they were tortured and “subjected to unimaginable cruelty” until May 23, according to Amnesty International. Following their detention, the activists said that officials dumped them near their countries’ borders with the country.
Atuhaire said that she was stripped, raped, and smeared with excrement. The entire ordeal was filmed—“to humiliate, instill fear, but also [to] silence you,” she told AFP. “[But] I am not that victim … I am not the one who should be ashamed.” Back home, Atuhaire has also campaigned against the nearly 40-year rule of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Atuhaire’s and Mwangi’s cases were not isolated events. Former Kenyan Justice Minister Martha Karua was detained at the Dar es Salaam airport on May 19 and subsequently deported from Tanzania; she also sought to attend Lissu’s trial. Karua accused Tanzania’s government of “subverting the law to lock up the main contenders so that they can sail through unopposed” in the election.
“[L]et them not come here to meddle. Let’s not give them a chance,” Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan said at a May 19 event, speaking about activists from other East African countries seeking to visit Tanzania. “I have seen clips circulating on social media criticizing my approach,” she added, “but it is my responsibility to uphold and protect the constitution.”
Lissu leads Tanzania’s main opposition party, Chadema. He was arrested in April after calling for Tanzanians to boycott the October vote; he argued that the elections could not be free or fair as long as Samia directly appoints members of Tanzania’s National Electoral Commission. Lissu has also demanded electoral reforms.
Chadema was subsequently banned from participating in the contest, and Lissu was charged with treason and sedition. The Electoral Commission said that Chadema was barred because it had failed to sign an electoral code of conduct.
Influential Christian faith leaders have faced similar crackdowns for joining calls for electoral reforms. “Arresting people and detaining them does not silence the people’s grievances; it only deepens the divisions and drives people further apart,” Jacob Mameo Ole Paul, an Evangelical Lutheran bishop, said last month.
On Monday, armed police shut down a church in Dar es Salaam after its leader criticized a recent spate of politically motivated abductions. Chadema activist Mdude Nyagali was abducted on May 2 by unidentified assailants; his whereabouts remain unknown. And Lissu survived an assassination attempt in 2017 and then spent several years in exile before returning to Tanzania in 2020.
Samia took office in March 2021 as a transitional leader to finish the term of President John Magufuli, whom many believe died from COVID-19. She earned praise from international rights groups in her first term for her pandemic response and expansion of political freedoms. But critics say that Samia has adopted Magufuli’s authoritarian tactics to ensure her reelection.
Tanzania restricted social media access in May after hackers targeted government accounts on X. Last year, Samia’s administration temporarily suspended online licensing for three major newspapers after they published a cartoon that criticized her over rising forced disappearances in the country. Samia’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi party has governed Tanzania for more than five decades.
Lissu appeared in court on Monday, chanting Chadema’s slogan, “No reforms, No election.” His lawyers have asked the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention for help ensuring his release, but the group’s advisory opinions cannot be legally enforced.
The Week Ahead
Wednesday, June 4: The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds a hearing on China’s influence in Africa.
Thursday, June 5: Burundi holds parliamentary elections.
Museveni delivers a state of the nation address.
What We’re Watching
Western Sahara’s status. The United Kingdom this week joined the United States, France, and Spain in recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. During a visit to Morocco on Sunday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that he considered the country’s 2007 autonomy proposal “the most credible, viable, and pragmatic basis” for resolving a decades-old dispute over the territory.
The Western Sahara conflict dates back nearly 50 years, to when Spain relinquished territory that it occupied in what was known as Spanish Sahara. Both Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front lay claim to the region, with the latter group seeking independence.
Until recently, most countries abided by a U.N.-backed cease-fire that would see the territory’s fate determined by a future referendum. The French, Spanish, and U.K. announcements have come as Morocco builds a $1.2 billion port in Western Sahara; the statements seemed designed to boost economic ties with Rabat.
The future of Africom. Last week, the United States and Kenya co-hosted a Nairobi meeting of the annual African Chiefs of Defense Conference, which was attended by senior military officials from 37 African countries.
Speaking to reporters in Kenya, U.S. Africa Command (Africom) head Gen. Michael Langley said that networks affiliated with the Islamic State and al Qaeda in the junta-led nations of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali were attempting to gain access to coastal countries such as Ghana and Ivory Coast.
“This puts not just African nations at risk, but also increases the chance of threats reaching the U.S. shores,” Langley said.
Under President Donald Trump, the United States is considering merging Africom with its European counterpart to cut bureaucracy, but Langley did not comment specifically on the proposed merger.
Langley has warned that China is “trying to replicate” programs in Africa that were administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development. “They’re trying to match what we do. So that’s what we’re seeing as we start to fold in the capabilities of USAID under [the] State Department,” he said to the U.S. Senate in April. “Those capabilities are needed for the U.S. to maintain a strategic advantage over the Chinese Communist Party.”
Arrest in Kenya. Kenyans have denounced the arrest on Friday of Rose Njeri, a software developer who built an app for Kenyans to share views opposing a controversial finance bill that was recently proposed by the government.
Njeri’s site, known as Civic Email, allowed users to directly send their objections to the bill to government departments. Njeri was charged on Tuesday under the controversial 2018 Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act and then released on bail.
The Kenyan government says that the finance bill will increase state revenue by amending various tax laws, including in real estate and digital services. But opponents say the measure will raise the cost of living and erase privacy rights by limiting citizens’ data protections.
Last year, a previous iteration of the bill led to monthlong protests, forcing President William Ruto to withdraw the legislation before its reintroduction this year.
Nigeria’s floods. As of Sunday, flooding caused by heavy rainfall in the central Nigerian town of Mokwa in Niger State had killed more than 200 people and displaced more than 3,000 from their homes. Officials warned that the actual death toll is likely to be higher. Torrential rains started last Wednesday and continued into Thursday.
Nigeria is prone to flooding, in part due to poor drainage infrastructure. The country’s rainy season lasts about six months and began this year in April. Scientists have warned that Nigeria is vulnerable to extreme weather from climate change, including prolonged drought followed by heavy rains.
This Week in Money
Former Mauritanian Finance Minister Sidi Ould Tah was elected on Thursday to head the African Development Bank (ADB). He will take office at a critical time for the continent’s main infrastructure lender.
The United States is the bank’s third-largest shareholder, after Nigeria and Egypt. But Trump has proposed cutting $555 million in support for the ADB, arguing that the bank was “not currently aligned” with his administration’s priorities.
Ould Tah beat four other candidates competing for the job, gaining 76 percent of votes in the third round of the leadership selection contest. He previously served as president of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa for a decade, from 2015 to 2025. His predecessor at the ADB, Nigeria’s Akinwumi Adesina, said that the bank’s capital stands at $318 billion.
At its annual meeting last week, the bank also announced that it would launch an Africa Carbon Support Facility to help governments regulate carbon trading and to boost the supply and demand of carbon credits. The carbon credits would allow foreign companies to offset their emissions in their own countries by planting trees or putting up wind farms in Africa.
Carbon credits are not without controversy, however: Rights groups allege that the industry has furthered land grabs and the displacement of Indigenous populations across Africa. Scientists also say that carbon credits do not reduce emissions and often harm biodiversity.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- Russia Has Started Losing the War in Ukraine by Michael Kimmage
- Actually, Trump Has a Coherent Vision by Thomas Carothers
- Spheres of Influence Are Not the Answer by Sarang Shidore
What We’re Reading
Trump rewrites history. Ghanaian President John Mahama argued in the Guardian last week that Trump’s unfounded claim of white genocide in South Africa “was an insult to all Africans.” Trump is employing historical revisionism to undermine and erase the violence of apartheid, Mahama wrote.
“It is not enough to be affronted by these claims, or to casually dismiss them as untruths. These statements are a clear example of how language can be leveraged to extend the effects of previous injustices,” Mahama wrote. “And it cannot simply be met with silence—not any more.”
Libyan power grab. Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh’s heads one of the country’s two rival governments, the U.N.-backed administration in Tripoli. But Dbeibeh’s recent moves to strengthen his government’s position against rival militias culminated in heavy gunfire in the capital last month.
In New Lines Magazine, Emadeddin Badi and Wolfram Lacher argue that by “mobilizing against what they portray as a … power grab, the government’s adversaries are inadvertently shoring up” Dbeibeh’s “faltering support in his hometown.”