Welcome to International Coverage’s Africa Transient.
The highlights this week: U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to Nigeria spotlight the nation’s inside rifts, Tanzania’s authorities fees protesters with treason, and the African Union sounds the alarm in Mali.
Over the weekend, protests in opposition to U.S. navy intervention popped up within the Nigerian cities of Lagos and Kano following U.S. President Donald Trump’s current menace to go “guns-a-blazing” into Africa’s most populous nation over false claims of Christian persecution.
Demonstrators chanted “America, go away us alone.” They held placards that learn, “Nigerians united in opposition to U.S. menace of navy invasion” and “America needs to manage our assets.” The protests might have been modest, however they replicate rising concern amongst Nigerians as their endurance wanes for his or her authorities to reply decisively to Trump’s threats.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s administration has urged the general public to keep calm whereas it pursues diplomacy with Washington. In the meantime, Nigeria’s newly appointed military chief , Lt. Gen. Waidi Shaibu, has vowed to accentuate operations within the nation’s north, which has been beneath assault by Islamists for many years.
Up to now, the federal government’s combined and uncoordinated response to Trump has angered many Nigerians. As an illustration, whereas Senate President Godswill Akpabio has been hesitant to criticize Trump’s actions, his deputy, Barau Jibrin, has been blunter.
“I’m not afraid of Trump,” Jibrin mentioned final week. “He’s saying lies about our nation, and we have now the best to dispute it.” Akpabio then informed the Senate clerk to delete Jibrin’s feedback from the official file, arguing that Jibrin had “spoken out of tune.”
U.S.-Nigerian ties have weakened this yr over commerce and immigration disputes. Within the face of an unpredictable Trump administration, Abuja has sought to diversify its economic system, rising exports to China; India; South Africa; and its largest overseas investor, the United Kingdom.
“If non-oil income is doing properly, then haven’t any concern of no matter Trump is doing on the opposite aspect,” Tinubu mentioned in September. He has not visited the USA since Trump reentered workplace.
Bilateral relations deteriorated precipitously on Oct. 31, when Trump redesignated Nigeria as a “nation of explicit concern”—a label for nations that Washington deems to have severely violated non secular freedoms—and claimed on Reality Social that Christianity was “going through an existential menace in Nigeria.”
The next day, Trump ordered the U.S. Protection Division to organize for potential navy motion and threatened to chop all support to Nigeria if its authorities continued to permit “Islamic Terrorists” to “assault our CHERISHED CHRISTIANS.”
Claims of a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria have circulated amongst Republicans and the U.S. evangelical group for years, regardless of restricted information for this. (Washington additionally named Nigeria as a rustic of explicit concern throughout Trump’s first time period.) However in current months, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. evangelical leaders had been ramping up strain on Trump to behave.
Nigeria’s inhabitants of 230 million is roughly cut up between Christians and Muslims. Interfaith marriages are frequent; Tinubu is a Muslim, whereas his spouse, former Sen. Oluremi Tinubu, is an ordained pastor. As insecurity has risen within the nation, Nigerians of all faiths have skilled elevated violence.
Over the previous yr, Islamist teams—equivalent to Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province—have ramped up operations within the northeast, a predominantly Muslim area. In northwest, central, and southeast Nigeria, armed gangs that aren’t ideologically pushed have elevated kidnapping-for-ransom operations and taxed farmers to entry their lands, in response to information from ACLED, an unbiased monitoring service.
In the meantime, local weather change and the Islamist insurgency have pushed Fulani herding communities, that are primarily Muslim, into areas which can be primarily Christian, resulting in lethal clashes over land and water entry.
Provided that Nigeria is a fragile state with advanced social divisions, some Nigerians concern that Trump’s newest strikes might worsen home tensions.
“Faith, cash, regional divisions, and risky politics have produced a flamable scenario—one that would flip right into a roaring hearth. U.S. motion would add gasoline to this conflagration, not quench it,” Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún wrote final week in International Coverage.
Tinubu’s administration is feeling the warmth. He’s beneath elevated strain to swiftly appoint an envoy to the USA—after recalling all Nigerian ambassadors worldwide when he took workplace in 2023—and deal with the insecurity that has festered for many years. A number of opposition politicians have even welcomed U.S. assist to deal with insecurity or known as on Tinubu to both finish the violence or resign.
Wednesday, Nov. 12, to Thursday, Nov. 13: The European Union-Zambian Enterprise Discussion board is held in Lusaka, Zambia.
Thursday, Nov. 13: The United Nations Safety Council meets to increase its peacekeeping mission within the Central African Republic, whose mandate is about to run out on Nov. 15.
Tuesday, Nov. 18: The U.N. Safety Council holds an open briefing on peace consolidation in West Africa.
Tanzanian protest aftermath. Tanzania has charged greater than 100 individuals with treason following protests sparked by the nation’s Oct. 29 presidential election. Incumbent President Samia Suluhu Hassan claims that she gained with almost 98 % of the vote in what political observers have described as a “staged” and “violent” election.
Hassan’s ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi social gathering and its predecessor have maintained an iron grip on energy since independence in 1961. She successfully ran unopposed, as her two essential opponents have been struck off the poll. Major opposition social gathering Chadema and rights activists have mentioned that a minimum of 1,000 protesters have been shot useless throughout the demonstrations—a determine disputed by the federal government.
In a joint assertion, the overseas ministers of Canada, Norway, and the UK cited “credible studies of a lot of fatalities and important accidents.” A number of movies have emerged on-line displaying safety forces firing stay rounds at unarmed civilians. For now, the state’s use of lethal drive has silenced opposition within the nation.
AU sounds alarm in Mali. The African Union on Sunday known as for pressing worldwide intervention in Mali over an ongoing gasoline blockade within the capital of Bamako by al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). The blockade has led to the short-term closure of colleges and companies, in addition to shortages of important provides.
In a assertion, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, the chairperson of the African Union Fee, known as for “enhanced cooperation, intelligence sharing, and sustained help” throughout Sahel nations affected by insurgency.
JNIM emerged in 2017 as a coalition of a number of jihadi teams that the French navy had pushed again in northern Mali in 2012. In recent times, its assaults throughout the Sahel have surged. On Monday, Malian authorities mentioned that suspected jihadis had executed a pro-army TikTok influencer in entrance of a crowd in northern Timbuktu.
Uganda’s $4 billion refinery. The Ugandan authorities has mentioned it’s on the right track to open a $4 billion oil refinery inside 5 years. The ability, which is partly financed by the Dubai-based Alpha MBM Investments, shall be designed for a 60,000-barrel-per-day capability and is predicted to produce refined oil to Uganda’s neighbors.
In recent times, a number of African nations, together with Nigeria, have confronted gasoline shortages because of the price of importing refined oil, regardless of being resource-rich in crude oil.
Now, extra African nations wish to develop their very own refineries, together with Ethiopia and Niger, that are partnering with Chinese language and Canadian corporations, respectively. Nigeria’s $20 billion Dangote Refinery, which opened in 2023, has already lower the nation’s gasoline imports by half.
The UK lately chosen British-Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr.’s semi-autobiographical directorial debut, My Father’s Shadow, as its Oscar submission for greatest worldwide function movie on the 2026 Academy Awards.
The movie is about in Lagos and Ibadan throughout Nigeria’s 1993 coup, when the navy annulled the outcomes of the presidential election and Gen. Sani Abacha seized energy. It was the primary Nigerian film within the official choice of the Cannes Movie Competition, the place it gained a Caméra d’Or particular point out within the “un sure regard” class in Could.
As a Nigerian and British co-production, it was eligible for Oscar submission by both nation. (The Nigerian Official Choice Committee declined to submit a movie this yr.)
It’s unclear whether or not the academy will approve the submission. The Nigerian movie trade, often called Nollywood, is underrepresented in overseas movie award classes with language necessities as a result of, as a former British colony, its official language is English.
In 2019, Nigeria’s first-ever Oscar submission, Lionheart, was disqualified as a result of it didn’t have “predominantly non-English dialogue.” My Father’s Shadow options a mixture of spoken Nigerian pidgin and Yoruba, however a lot of the dialogue can also be in English.
No matter whether or not the movie is accepted, its choice by the UK speaks to the nation’s shut relationship with Nigeria, as each nations proceed to affect one another culturally a long time after the top of colonialism.
Why the AU lacks tooth. In International Coverage, columnist Howard French argues that the African Union has been lacking in motion relating to the continent’s most necessary points, together with Sudan’s civil warfare, the battle in jap Congo, quite a few disputed elections, and the U.S. menace of navy motion in Nigeria.
“As a substitute of defending African pursuits on the world stage … the AU as an alternative grew to become a back-scratching membership of heads of state,” he writes.
Africa’s largest investor. For the primary time since 2012, the USA was Africa’s largest overseas direct investor in 2023, in response to the most recent annual information, Egon Cossou studies for the BBC.
The USA invested $7.8 billion in Africa that yr, in contrast with China’s $4 billion, in response to the China Africa Analysis Initiative of Johns Hopkins College. The highest beneficiaries in 2023 have been Egypt, South Africa, and Nigeria.
