Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: Africans express outrage over the Trump administration’s deportation of migrants to Eswatini, the European Union imposes a fourth round of sanctions on officials and companies linked to Sudan’s civil war, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels pledge to sign a peace deal.
Trump Deports Migrants to Eswatini
U.S. President Donald Trump’s deportation of migrants to African nations is sparking anger across the continent. Last week, Washington sent five deportees from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen to the tiny nation of Eswatini, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court approved the deportation of eight men to South Sudan, only one of whom was South Sudanese.
Critics say the Trump administration is leveraging foreign aid, visa bans, security cooperation, and tariffs to pressure African nations to accept U.S. deportees.
“This situation sets a dangerous precedent whereby powerful nations may use smaller, economically weaker states as dumping grounds for unwanted individuals,” the Multi Stakeholder Forum, a coalition of Eswatini’s civil society groups, said in a statement.
All five migrants deported to Eswatini were convicted of crimes; Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, claimed on social media that the men are “so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.” Eswatini has said that the men are being held in solitary confinement at a maximum-security prison.
Although Eswatini said that it plans to liaise with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to repatriate the migrants, it is unclear how it will convince their countries of origin to accept them. The IOM, meanwhile, said that it has not been involved in the process or been asked to help with repatriation efforts.
The details of the United States’ deals with Eswatini and South Sudan remain classified, but in March, the Trump administration agreed to pay $6 million to El Salvador for mass deportations.
Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, is governed by an absolute monarch, and dissent in the country is violently crushed. More than half of its population of 1.2 million people live on less than $4 a day.
Although Eswatini’s trade with the United States makes up just 1.7 percent of its total trade, the country’s trade with neighboring South Africa—which faces 30 percent U.S. tariffs starting Aug. 1—comprises almost 70 percent. Eswatini’s Central Bank has warned that an economically weaker South Africa would affect Eswatini’s exports.
Analysts expect more African nations to accept third-country deportees in return for favorable U.S. policies. At a White House lunch earlier this month, Trump urged the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal to accept deported nationals of third countries. Rwanda said in May that it was in talks with the United States on a possible migrant deal.
The Trump administration has also identified Angola, Benin, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, and Moldova as potential recipient countries, according to internal government documents obtained by CBS News.
Nigeria, meanwhile, has been a notable holdout. Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar said earlier this month that his country will resist U.S. pressure to accept deportees, despite Washington’s new restrictions on visas issued to Nigerian nationals.
The Week Ahead
Thursday, July 24: Ghana releases its mid-year budget.
Friday, July 25, to Saturday, July 26: The EurAfrican Forum is held in Cascais, Portugal.
Saturday, July 26: The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations final is held in Rabat, Morocco.
Tuesday, July 29: The United Nations Security Council is set to renew sanctions against the Central African Republic.
What We’re Watching
EU sanctions Sudan. On Friday, the European Union imposed a fourth round of sanctions on two Sudanese officials and two companies linked to fighting in the country’s ongoing civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The EU targeted RSF commander Hussein Barsham and SAF commander Abu Aqla Mohamed Kaikal, respectively, for leading operations that resulted in mass atrocities and targeting a historically marginalized group. It also sanctioned Alkhaleej Bank, which is largely owned by companies connected to family members of RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, and Red Rock Mining, which provides funds and weapons to the SAF.
In recent weeks, the RSF has been battling to gain full control of North Kordofan state, where more than 450 civilians were killed the weekend of July 12. Meanwhile, the SAF has launched an offensive in West Kordofan, which has killed dozens of civilians.
Trump reignites dam dispute. Trump said last week that his administration was “working on” resolving Egypt and Ethiopia’s dispute over a mega-dam on the Nile. Egypt has long claimed that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), constructed between 2011 and 2023, threatens its water supply from the Nile.
“If I am Egypt, I want to have water in the Nile,” said Trump, who falsely claimed the dam was “stupidly” funded by the United States. (Ethiopia maintains the dam was entirely domestically funded, but it was financed in part through loans from the Export-Import Bank of China.)
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, an ally of Trump, praised Washington’s stance, while Trump’s foray into the dispute has angered Ethiopian officials. During his first term, Trump failed to negotiate a deal to ease tensions over the GERD. At the time, Trump said he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for having deescalated the dispute.
“Trump held grudges against Ethiopia for not adhering to his self-styled mediation efforts between Ethiopia and Egypt eight years ago,” Fekahmed Negash, a former Ethiopian GERD negotiator, recently told Ethiopian newspaper the Reporter.
M23 peace deal. On Saturday, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels signed a declaration of principles to end fighting in Qatar-brokered talks. The declaration laid out a plan for a permanent cease-fire. Massad Boulos, Trump’s Africa advisor, who played a key role in brokering the Congo-Rwanda deal in June, was present at the signing.
However, details of the deal still need to be hashed out, and doubts remain in Congo over the prospect of lasting peace. While a Congolese government spokesperson has said that the agreement included the rebels’ “non-negotiable withdrawal” from territories it has seized in eastern Congo, M23 leaders have suggested otherwise.
Pretoria’s corruption inquiry. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced last week that he was suspending Police Minister Senzo Mchunu and opening a corruption inquiry into allegations that Mchunu had colluded with crime syndicates.
Lt. Gen. Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, the police chief in KwaZulu-Natal province, claimed in a press conference earlier this month that Mchunu received payments from a corruption suspect and had shut down a unit that investigated politically motivated killings in order to shield politicians, prosecutors, police officials, and members of the judiciary with ties to criminal gangs. Mchunu has denied the allegations.
Ramaphosa has been under fire lately for failing to discipline current and former members of his African National Congress party for alleged corruption.
This Week in Critical Minerals
KoBold Metals, a U.S. mining start-up backed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, announced on Friday that it signed an agreement with Congo to acquire the contested Manono lithium project in northern Congo, a few weeks after the Trump administration secured a minerals-for-security deal with the country.
Since 2023, Australian-based AVZ Minerals has been in a legal battle with the Congolese government and China’s state-backed Zijin Mining over the rights to Manono, which is one of the world’s largest untapped lithium deposits.
Congo revoked AVZ’s mining permit in 2023 and later awarded the rights to a subsidiary of Zijin, leading AVZ to bring the case to the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Court of Arbitration and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
In March, AVZ won a legal victory over Congo, with the International Court of Arbitration ordering Congo’s state-owned Cominière to pay around $42.5 million for failing to comply with previous rulings. Two months later, AVZ agreed on a framework for KoBold to acquire its interests in Manono. But that has not yet happened, and on Monday, AVZ said that the new Congo-KoBold deal violates an interim arbitration order by the ICSID.
For now, KoBold plans to invest more than $1 billion in the project and has to apply for exploration permits before July 31.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- Biden’s Team Lied About Gaza. It’s Time to Hold Them Accountable. by Matthew Duss
- When the Threat Is Inside the White House by Tim Weiner
- Why Rubio’s Asia Visit Was a Total Bust by Derek Grossman
What We’re Reading
Destruction of contraceptives. In the Guardian, Carter Sherman reports that the U.S. government plans to destroy $9.7 million worth of contraceptives that were “almost certainly” intended for women across Africa as part of its dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
A State Department spokesperson said that it would cost millions of dollars to rebrand and sell the contraceptives, but a congressional aide told the Guardian that two-thirds of the stock did not feature USAID labels.
“This action would be a waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars as well as an abdication of U.S. global leadership in preventing unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths,” Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski wrote in a letter on June 30 to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.