Old wars, such as Islamist insurgencies in northern Nigeria and Somalia and militia wars in eastern Congo, have intensified dramatically. A new power struggle between the military elites of Ethiopia and Sudan has roiled Africa’s two largest and most populous countries. The Western Sahel countries are now the epicenter of global jihadism, with regional factions of al-Qaeda and Islamic State battling each other and unstable military regime groups.
This conflict corridor spans approximately 4,000 miles and encompasses approximately 10% of sub-Saharan Africa’s total landmass, and analysis shows that its area has doubled in just three years and is now approximately 10 times the size of the United Kingdom. It is said that there is By political risk consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft. The result is untold human suffering, including mass displacement, brutality against civilians, and extreme hunger in what is already the poorest continent on earth.
However, these extraordinary geopolitical shifts in sub-Saharan Africa have been overshadowed by higher-profile conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. As a result, global policymakers, especially in the West, are losing focus on severely underfunded humanitarian aid programs and fundamental questions about the future of hundreds of millions of people.
Conflicts in Africa have increased dramatically since 2010
There are more conflicts in Africa today than at any time since at least 1946, according to data collected by Sweden’s Uppsala University and analyzed by Norway’s Oslo Peace Research Institute. This year alone, experts from both institutes have identified 28 state-based conflicts in 16 of the continent’s 54 countries, more than any other region in the world and an increase from just 15 years ago. It has doubled. This tally does not include conflicts that do not involve government forces, such as conflicts between different communities, and the number has doubled since 2010.
There is no single factor that causes and intensifies so many different conflicts in such a vast and diverse region. But experts say many of the worst-affected countries have been unable to establish strong forms of governance after independence, either as functioning democracies or established authoritarian regimes, leaving them fragile. It is said that the country has become unstable during a once-in-a-generation crisis. Political transition.
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, former French colonies in the Sahel region, have had only nominal democracies for decades, with periodic turmoil caused by military coups. Congo’s central government in Kinshasa, like Nigeria’s central government in Abuja, cannot control vast tracts of territory, opening the door for local and foreign leaders to compete for resources and power, often through violence. It opened.
In Ethiopia, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s efforts to centralize power after ending decades of rule by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in 2018 have sparked a series of rebellions and clashes between regional militias. Ta. In Sudan, two powerful generals turned rivals after the ouster of longtime strongman Omar al-Bashir in 2019, and a civilian government that was supposed to transition the country to democracy two years later. Exiled.
One turning point came in 2011, when North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces intervened in Libya to support rebels fighting Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi during the Arab Spring democracy movement. Gaddafi’s death and Libya’s descent into chaos prompted thousands of militants to move south into Mali and reignited a Tuareg rebellion against the government in Bamako. This coincided with the global expansion of extremist ideologies promoted by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
“When it comes to the Sahel, it’s clearly a question of the collapse of Libya and the weapons and ideological highways it creates,” says Ken Oparo, a Kenyan scholar and associate professor of foreign affairs at Georgetown University. Guns and young people leaving Libya and ideology coming from Pakistan all flare up. ”
The jihadist insurgency spread from Mali across the porous border into Burkina Faso and Niger, where a new military regime, frustrated by its failure to defeat the extremists, brought in the armies of France and other Western countries. kicked out. It currently threatens West African coastal countries such as Benin and Ghana. According to a Verisk Maplecroft analysis of incidents collected by the US-based nonprofit monitoring service Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, 86% of Burkina Faso’s territory is currently occupied by fighting between jihadists and state forces. is influenced by. For Nigeria, the figure is 44%.
civilians exposed to gunfire
Counting deaths in African conflicts is notoriously difficult. Access to the front lines for journalists and aid organizations is often restricted. The disruption of phone service and internet due to war in Sudan and Ethiopia’s Tigray region complicates efforts to track specific events and their death toll. Many die not from the fighting itself, but from starvation and the collapse of medical services.
In the case of Ethiopia, for example, experts at Belgium’s Ghent University estimate that between 162,000 and 378,000 civilians have been killed in the two-year war between the government and the TPLF. Analysts at Accred, which scour local news sources and contacts for real-time conflict data, count fewer than 20,000 people killed in the fighting itself.
What is clear from the data is that civilians are far more likely to be deliberately targeted in conflicts in Africa than in many wars in other regions. In Ukraine, for example, less than 7% of the violent incidents recorded by Akred since February 2024 targeted civilians, compared to more than a third in African conflicts. .
“More people than ever before are living with violence, and more people than ever before are continuously exposed to armed groups,” said Clionado, founder of ACRED and professor of political violence and geography at the University of Sussex in the UK.・Mr. Laurie says.
The impact goes beyond the immediate loss of life. Stalled development, delayed elections, and a widespread sense of impunity are all reinforced by the protracted conflict, Rowley said.
mass displacement
The escalating conflict has forced record numbers of Africans to flee, most of them within the country. The continent is currently home to almost half of the world’s internally displaced persons, amounting to approximately 32.5 million people by the end of 2023. That number has tripled in just 15 years.
Displacement makes civilians, especially women and children, more vulnerable to the fallout from war. In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local officials and health workers estimate that 80% of women in displacement camps around Goma have been raped, many multiple times. In Sudan, where the world’s first famine was reported since 2017, the hungriest are those who have been deprived of their communities and the jobs and fields that supported their livelihoods.
not a priority
Africa’s current conflicts have not evoked the outpouring of Western sympathy that accompanied Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the anger caused by Israel’s war in Gaza. Comparable to the famine-motivated Live Aid concerts in Ethiopia in the 1980s, the genocide protest marches in Darfur in the early 2000s, or the #BringBackOurGirls campaign linked to the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from the Nigerian town of Chibok. There is nothing to do. 10 years ago.
A lack of public interest has led to a lack of political action to resolve wars or alleviate suffering in Africa. Africa’s share of official development assistance from rich countries, primarily Western countries, in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is at its lowest level since at least 2000, according to an analysis by the nonprofit One Campaign.
And while funding for humanitarian aid, which makes up a small portion of all development aid, has increased, it has not kept pace with growing needs. The United Nations has received only half of the $2.6 billion it needs for humanitarian aid in Congo in 2024. The appeal for Sudan has raised 64% of the funds, but Nigeria has only received 57% of the targeted amount.
This also comes as the Wall Street Journal reports that diplomatic pressure on the United Arab Emirates, which supplies weapons and fighter jets to one of Sudan’s rival generals, is helping to maintain the country’s support in Sudan. This means that America’s desire to do so has always been put on the back burner. middle east. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has visited Africa just four times since 2021, followed by 43 trips to Europe and 22 trips to the Middle East.
Other forces come in
In the absence of U.S. and other Western governments, other powers have multiplied, often to the detriment of local populations.
Russia has sent mercenaries to fight in Mali and the Central African Republic, which human rights groups say has increased violence against civilians. The UAE supports Sudan’s Rapid Support Force, which also receives support from Egypt, Iran, and recently Russia, allowing both sides to continue fighting. In Congo, Rwandan troops are fighting alongside the rebel March 23 Movement, and more than 2 million people have been displaced.
Data from Uppsala University shows that internationalized civil wars are on the rise in Africa, and that wars with foreign intervention are more deadly than those without.
What’s next?
Despite the turmoil in Europe and the Middle East, the United States remains a major donor of humanitarian aid in Africa. Washington contributed 47% to the UN’s Sudan 2024 emergency response plan and nearly 70% to Congo.
Other traditionally large donor countries, such as Germany and the UK, have already cut aid budgets due to the Ukraine crisis and domestic economic problems. And many experts predict that under the incoming Trump administration, U.S. foreign and aid policies, particularly toward United Nations agencies, will undergo significant changes, further weakening U.S. influence.
The United States and the United Nations have been able to “draw the line on what is considered unacceptable in some cases,” says Ackred’s Rowley. Those causing violence across the continent will go unchecked. ”
Email Gabriele Steinhauser (Gabriele.Steinhauser@wsj.com), Andrew Barnett (andrew.barnett@wsj.com), and Emma Brown (Emma.Brown@wsj.com).
