Sub-Saharan Africa

Niger

  • Sub-Saharan Africa
    Refugee Flows from Northern Nigeria
    The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs has registered 37,332 people fleeing the fighting between the Nigerian security services and jihadist insurgents called Boko Haram. According to the UN, the refugees have been registered at Diffa, in southeast Niger. The flow of refugees into Niger has increased sixfold since the Abuja government declared a state of emergency in Yobe, Borno, and Adamawa states in June this year. The UN reports that of the 37,332 registered, more than 29,000 are Nigerien nationals living in Nigeria. Many are women and children. The border between Nigeria and Niger is largely open, with people of the same ethnic groups living on either side. People regularly move across the border looking for pasture for their animals or food in times of shortages. The UN has urged the states bordering Nigeria to “keep their borders open.” But, refugees are bound to strain the already scarce resources of Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world. According to the UN, a million people already face food shortages. Clearly, the international community must step forward with humanitarian assistance.
    Blog Post by John Campbell November 18, 2013 Africa in Transition
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
    Why the U.S. Military Should Care About African Opposition Parties
    This is a guest post by Catherine Kelly, a Ph.D. candidate in Government at Harvard University; and Jason Warner, a Ph.D. student in African Studies and Government at Harvard University. Sub-Saharan Africa is an increasingly important theater of operation for the U.S. military. From al-Shabaab, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and Ansar Dine, the Department of Defense is recognizing that Africa will be a vital strategic battlefield in the next century. Yet in discussions of future African security policy, the potential role of opposition political parties in Africa has received virtually no attention. Following are three reasons why the Department of Defense should pay close attention to African opposition parties. 1) Opposition parties can be barometers of domestic opinion about foreign presence. Opposition parties’ rhetoric on U.S. foreign policy and intervention—when it exists—can reveal local attitudes that incumbent governments may not openly share. This is especially helpful in countries such as Djibouti, Niger, and Ethiopia, where the U.S. military is currently engaged in a wide range of activities including military training, crisis management exercises, drone activities against al-Qaeda, and operating the United States’ only military base on the continent; Camp Lemonnier. Foreign policy debates tend to have scant prominence in African elections, precisely because of the limited range of choices available to some of the world’s weakest states. But major opposition party leaders almost invariably have more social and cultural capital than foreign diplomats, and thus have the potential to function as intermediaries between the U.S. government and the wider African public on potentially contentious issues. 2) Today’s opponents could be tomorrow’s incumbents. Being cordial to (and even cautiously supportive of) opposition parties is deeply important in states where regime changes—electoral or otherwise—are likely. The absence of such a contingency plan in the event of a regime transition limits U.S. policy options. In late March 2012, for instance, the U.S. offered few critiques as Djibouti’s president, Ismail Omar Guelleh, repressed supporters of the Union for National Salvation (USN) opposition coalition. Were the USN ever to control the presidency, the U.S. could potentially face expulsion from the U.S. military base Camp Lemonnier. Given Djibouti’s geographic proximity to volatile and strategically important countries in the Horn of Africa, the loss of such a geostrategic foothold would profoundly undermine the United States’ already modest security assistance capabilities throughout the region. 3) Certain opposition members are potential interlocutors on issues of conflict and terrorism. Major opposition party leaders can play integral roles in local conflict resolution efforts, and often exhibit the capacity to encourage or stem particular antagonistic behaviors among the populace. For instance, the leaders of six major opposition parties in southern Sudan recently joined rebel groups in “endorsing peaceful and armed opposition to Sudan’s government;” and in Kenya’s 2007 elections, ethnic violence, allegedly fueled by certain ruling and opposition party leaders, reduced regional stability and inflicted devastating human costs. Although opposition leaders in these contexts can at times exacerbate delicate security situations, their social networks could also potentially facilitate the resolution of other U.S. security concerns. To this end, Eritrea’s opposition parties—some of which apparently launched an unsuccessful coup attempt in January 2013—could be the key to the U.S. acquiring domestic leverage on President Isaias Afewerki, a known source of regional instability in the Horn of Africa. This said, although opposition parties might have some role in mediating security outcomes, opposition leaders are almost never the most central players involved in such instances, nor are they necessarily tied to insurgencies that serve as the core security concerns of most African regimes. Nevertheless, cultivating opposition leaders as potential participants in peacebuilding, transparency, or counterterrorism measures could indeed increase the quality of human and state security on the continent. In summary, although democratization is not yet the norm in Africa, the trends towards greater political opening across the continent signal new opportunities for U.S. military engagement. As such, though it is the Department of State that invariably shoulders the responsibility for crafting U.S. diplomatic policy regarding opposition parties, the Department of Defense—a silent observer on the political front—should be deeply cognizant of the security implications bound up in the politics of African opposition parties. Indeed, given the unavoidable U.S. reliance on a mix of authoritarian and democratic allies for security-related initiatives in Africa, an effective U.S. security strategy must continue evolving to take heed of the unique roles played by opposition parties on the continent.
    Blog Post by Guest Blogger for John Campbell March 27, 2013 Africa in Transition
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
    What’s Happening With the ECOWAS Force in Mali?
    It’s hard to get the details on the logistical arrangements, or numbers, of the ECOWAS force in Mali. The majority of Nigeria’s promised 1,200 troops are reportedly deployed to a military base in Niger, or still stationed in Bamako. However, the Nigerian media organization Premium Times reports that the Nigerian troops actually in Mali are suffering from inadequate provisions, especially food. Citing a “defense source,” Premium Times  reports that Nigerian soldiers are resorting to, in effect, shaking down their Malian hosts under the guise of making “courtesy calls.” Apparently, they ask for–and receive–food, in one case a cow and fifty bags of rice from a prefect. The story is roundly denied by a Nigerian defense spokesman who is quoted, “we have provided the contingent with enough food and funds to last them for the initial three months. Is Nigeria not bigger than that?” Another Nigerian defense spokesman claimed to a different newspaper that Malian “community leaders” are expressing gratitude to the Nigerian troops “by donating cows to them.” Absent much independent media presence in Mali, it is hard to know where the truth lies. Countries contributing to the ECOWAS force moved quickly to send troops to Mali in the aftermath of the January French intervention. Initially ECOWAS had planned to deploy in September, allowing time for equipping, training, and making the necessary logistical arrangements. Given the haste of the deployments, it is credible that there have been glitches in supply delivery and that some troops are going hungry. Moreover, it is also credible that Malians in Bamako are grateful for the ECOWAS troop presence, and give them gifts.  However, given the cost, the idea of Malians freely gifting cows to foreign troops stretches credibility.  
    Blog Post by John Campbell February 15, 2013 Africa in Transition
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
    Jumping to Conclusions About the U.S. Military Presence in Niger
    There has been press speculation that the United States is going to establish a drone base in Niger. They claim that the drones would initially be for surveillance, but they could later be armed. A drone base in Niger would represent a significant shift in the Obama administration’s policy toward the region, which has previously emphasized partnerships with African governments and military training over the presence of U.S. facilities or troops on the ground. Is there reality behind the headlines? Niger’s president Mahamadou Issoufou says he wants a closer security relationship with the United States. To that end, the United States and Niger signed a status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) on January 28, 2013. Such an agreement is a legal and technical document, and a common first step to a closer security relationship. Among other things it grants immunity from domestic laws to U.S. military personnel stationed in the country. Such an agreement is necessary were the larger military presence required by drones to be established at a later date. But a SOFA–in and of itself–does not necessarily imply that drones will be stationed there or even that the U.S. military presence will increase.  The U.S. has SOFAs with twenty-two countries in sub-Saharan Africa. A drone base would require a significant number of support personnel, active-duty military, contract, or both.  The spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State has reiterated that there are no plans to commit U.S. troops to Mali: she is quoted as saying, “the U.S. military is not going to be engaged in combat operations in Mali, and we don’t expect U.S. forces to become directly involved on the ground in combat either.” It is true that a drone base in Niger would not constitute U.S. “boots on the ground” in Mali.  But, it certainly would be close–and the distinction between the U.S. military in Niger focused on Mali rather than in Mali itself would be largely lost by most West Africans—and on most Americans. This SOFA was on the table for over a year before the French intervention into Mali, and should not immediately be considered a result of the current crisis.
    Blog Post by John Campbell January 30, 2013 Africa in Transition
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
    Revitalizing Africa’s Rural Future
    This is a guest post by Owen Cylke. Mr. Cylke is a development professional and a retired senior foreign service officer with USAID. Dr. Ibrahim Hassane Mayaki, Executive Secretary of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), this week declared his organization’s intent to “revitalize” development efforts in Africa. Recognizing the successful and well-supported efforts of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which has been the foundation for development efforts in Africa since its launch in 2003, Dr. Mayaki was careful to describe his intention as a natural next step in the CAADP process. CAADP itself has all the indicia of success. Following years of neglect, agriculture is once again central to the development agenda in Africa; and this African-led initiative has found affirmation and substantial support from the G8, donor communities, and not-for-profits such as the Gates Foundation. Indeed, Gates’ “End Hunger in Africa” and USAID’s “Feed the Future” programs define the central themes of international engagement in Africa’s development today. But as we all know only too well new realities emerge over time. France’s CIRAD (Agricultural Research for Development) supported a multi-year research effort in collaboration with the World Bank (RuralStruc) which has identified a demographic time bomb. There will be seventeen million new entrants to Arica’s workforce each year by 2030. The current agriculture sector cannot accommodate these numbers, and the current urbanization phenomenon in Africa is not producing jobs on that scale either. Dr. Mayaki, as a founder of the African think tank Le Hub Rural and as former Prime Minister of Niger, has emphasized the economic and political challenge of youth employment for years. It is not surprising then that Dr. Mayaki’s declaration was in the context of a signing of a new General Agreement between CIRAD and NEPAD in Paris on December 4, 2012. NEPAD’s effort to “revitalize” development efforts in Africa is organized under the rubric of Rural Futures, capturing space for agriculture, while emphasizing the links between and necessary transition from on-farm to off-farm employment, agriculture to industry, rural to urban settlement. In collaboration with WWF, NEPAD has also emphasized the links between this necessary progression, the environment, and sustainability–relieving pressures on the region’s fragile landscapes and creating the potential for investments in a green economy inherent to the process of transition. Equally portentous, Rural Futures points in the direction of a new approach to rural development itself. Moving away from the traditional focus on a defined or particular geography to one that takes account of the connections between different geographies, as they together create economic zones, underscore national economic cohesion, and support the evolution of regional economic progress. The question now will be whether international donor communities can follow on Dr. Mayaki’s leadership and support his vision of a more dynamic and promising Rural Future for Africa in the design of their ongoing agricultural programs.
    Blog Post by Guest Blogger for John Campbell December 11, 2012 Africa in Transition
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
    Food Insecurity: West Africa’s Turn
    Last year, international attention was riveted by the near humanitarian disaster in the Horn and East Africa caused by prolonged drought. Relevant UN agencies and NGOs were able to mobilize the necessary resources, and a famine of biblical proportions was forestalled, though there were high casualties among children and the elderly. This year, it is West Africa’s turn. A drought that began late last year destroyed much of the harvest, and some communities are running out of food several months before the next harvest is due. According to the national director of Mauritania’s Ministry of Water and Sanitation, a third of its population already suffers from food insecurity. Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria are calling for international assistance. As in East Africa last year, the UN and NGOs are trying to rally international assistance. But, thus far, the international community has pledged only about half of the $650 million dollars needed by the UN alone. NGOs also face funding shortfalls. José Luis Fernandez, regional emergency coordinator of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization points out the advantages of early mobilization with respect to efficiency and costs—to say nothing of lives saved. He notes, for example, that it costs ten to twenty times more to airlift food than to ship it. Droughts have long been feature of Africa. But their frequency and severity appears to accelerating, and the international community needs a better understanding of their causes. The conventional wisdom is that they result from the interrelationship between climate change, population growth, acute poverty, changing migration patterns, conflict and bad governance. No doubt, broadly speaking this is true, if not necessarily helpful for understanding a particular episode. Famine often is localized in its causes and frequently involves political factors, as it did in Somalia last year, where al-Shabaab blocked international aid efforts and Somali children paid with their lives. It can’t be the money. For the international community $650 million is peanuts. After all, the conventional wisdom is that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was costing the U.S. taxpayer $300 million per day. Perhaps more important in explaining apparent donor lassitude may be factors such as the international community’s limited attention span, compassion fatigue, and frustration over an apparent inability to deal with the root causes of humanitarian disasters. At least in West Africa, there is no al-Shabaab.
    Blog Post by John Campbell February 17, 2012 Africa in Transition
  • Elections and Voting
    El-Rufai Comments on Nigeria’s Elections
    Former Nigerian Minister of the Federal Capital Territory El-Rufai speaks during his appearance at the Federal High court in Abuja. (Afolabi Sotunde/Courtesy Reuters) Mallam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, Nigeria’s former minister of the Federal Capital Territory, spoke at Chatham House last week. In his public remarks--“Nigerian Democracy and Prospects for the 2011 Elections”--El-Rufai demonstrates his cautious optimism for the April polls. The elections have the potential to be an “opportunity for reconciliation” and the start of myriad reforms. However, El-Rufai also suggests another possible outcome: if the 2011 elections experience the fraud of the 2003 and 2007 polls, then urban areas may witness large, potentially violent street protests. He said: If INEC conducts decent elections next month, the link between politics and governance will be established and our democracy will begin to deliver real dividends… If the 2011 elections turn out to be as flawed as the those of 2003 or 2007, I do not think the opposition candidates have sufficient confidence in the Judiciary to take their complaints to the Courts. In fact one of them has publicly declared that he would not. In that case, the discontent will spread to the streets of the major urban centres. I predict massive protests in various parts of the country, as we have witnessed recently in Cote D’Ivoire and some countries in North Africa and the Middle East, until those that steal the elections vacate office. In a forthcoming article on Foreign Affairs’ website, Asch Harwood and I formulate a not dissimilar argument about the outcomes of Nigeria’s elections. Like El-Rufai, we are somewhat optimistic about the prospects of a peaceful vote, and we also recognize the real possibility of violence.
    Blog Post by John Campbell March 23, 2011 Africa in Transition
  • Niger
    Interview with John M. Staatz on Niger’s food crisis
    Locust swarms and a lack of rainfall have caused severe food shortages in Niger, leaving more than 2.5 million people in danger of starving to death. John M. Staatz, an agricultural economist at Michigan State University, says the situation in Niger requires long-term development, not just short-term aid, and cites nearby Mali as an example for combating future famines. What caused the latest food crisis in Niger?A widespread lack of income growth over a number of years, combined with a period of climatic and other shocks like the locusts, pushed people over the edge into destitution. But I think this year’s famine, or food crisis, is more of an income collapse than, necessarily, a shortage of food. You had last year’s short rainfall, which hurt both crop and pasture production, and you had the locusts, which hit primarily pastures more than crops. So all the people up north who rely on animals had to start moving them south early. A lot of the livestock died, so people had to sell their animals quickly, which led the price of animals—cattle, goat, sheep—to fall. At the same time, you had a reduction in crop production, so the price of basic grains, such as millet, started going up. What do you mean by “income collapse”?Their ability to acquire food collapsed. It wasn’t that there absolutely was no food available, but the food available got priced out of most people’s market because the price of food went up while prices of what they had to sell, mainly livestock, collapsed. What’s the difference between a famine and a food crisis?A famine, in my mind, is more widespread. You’ve got thousands and thousands of people dying of malnutrition. I think in a food crisis, people are still hurting, but it isn’t generalized over a large area. I see the press referring to the situation in Mali, for example, as a famine. It’s not; it’s a food crisis, because in Mali, at least, food prices are coming down.How can we prevent future food shortages in western Africa?We really need to focus on long-term development. In these countries, where you’re dealing primarily with agrarian populations, you have to focus on how to get agriculture going as a motor that will drive the rest of the economy, and then you can begin tapping some of that income to invest in a better health system, education, and so on. [The West] has pulled away from supporting higher education in agricultural training in these countries because it has a very long-term payoff, and funding agencies have to respond to congresses and parliaments that want to see quick results. If you train a better entomologist who figures out for Niger a better way of treating locusts, that’s a ten-to-fifteen-year investment; that’s not something you can go back in six months to Congress and say, “look at this great result.” If you can show them pictures of airplanes flying in with food relief, that’s something visible to point to. But that’s dealing with a crisis after it’s happened.So just sending more aid is not the answer?I don’t think it’s just a matter of sending more aid. It depends on what kind of aid. Are you dealing with more emergency aid, aimed at trying to relieve human suffering in a short-term crisis, or development aid, which is aimed at trying to get those countries to the point where these crises don’t occur? Last year in Ethiopia, the United States spent approximately $500 million in food aid and $4 million on agricultural-development aid. Well, that’s dealing with a short-term crisis without doing much to avoid the next crisis. However, clearly when people are starving you’ve got to respond. What’s your take on Niger’s president downplaying the famine?There’s some controversy within these countries over how severe the crisis is. Some groups have been perceived by some people as trying to make it look more severe, particularly the UN World Food Program, for whatever reason. They’re in the business of emergency relief. They see crises, and they want to react to them. Naturally, you can overestimate the problem or you can underestimate the problem. If you overestimate the problem and bring in too much food aid, you may have some disruptive effects on the economy. But if you really underestimate it, a lot of people die. Part of the moral dilemma is if you bring in too much [food aid], you solve the immediate crisis but you undermine longer-term development. What does that do to lives lost over the long run if a country stays mired in poverty? So then what would you recommend? If you had a local public-works program that could get up really quickly, employ those people, give them some income or give them food as payment, then that’s a way of dealing with relief without undermining the market. That’s a strategy that India, Botswana, and parts of southern Africa have really developed over the years. It’s something some of these western African countries are beginning to think about; it’s developmentally friendly relief that isn’t a conflict between relief and development. The World Food Program is also trying to think about better ways of [providing relief].  Is there concern that emergency aid creates dependency?There’s always concern you will create dependency. It’s often feared by some that if you give people food, they’re less likely to grow it themselves. There’s also a real concern about corruption, and of hopelessness, that this is something that’s never going to be solved, which creates donor fatigue. We need more press on some of the success stories you never hear about. In Africa, there’ve been some remarkable successes, like Mozambique, which went from abject civil war to something a lot better. I think Mali’s another case; there are occasional crises, but it’s no longer the hundreds of thousands of people who were starving in the mid-70s during the great famines of the Sahel. Why do you think the international community was so slow to respond to what was happening in Niger? Were we simply distracted by other more pressing events, perhaps the war in Iraq, or the tsunami earlier this year? I think people—in [the United States] and in various relief agencies—get focused on the crisis of the day, and if there’s something building quietly in the background, even though some people may be trying to draw attention to it, it gets less attention. In the press, everybody wakes up only when they see pictures of the dying kid. It’s often too late by then.But compare the crisis [in Niger] to Mali, for example, where the donors have invested over twenty-five years, developing a good agricultural market-information system, what they call a local early warning system [for famines]. Malians knew pretty early where locusts were exactly and what was happening in the markets, and so there was a lot more information out there for people to plan ahead. What other lessons have the Malians learned from Niger’s food crisis?I think the Malians have done a pretty good job in managing this crisis, and part of that was getting the information out to all the actors quickly about what was going on. Also, there was an explicit aim by the government to engage the private sector as a partner rather than seeing merchants as an enemy. Most of the food that’s coming in [to the region] is from the private sector. You want to give [merchants] a clear signal so they go out and act; a lot of the time, they’re reticent because they’re not sure if the government, or donor community, is going to come in with tons of food aid and ruin their investments. Nigerand Mali are multiparty democracies. Is [Bengali economist] Amartya Sen’s theory that famines never occur in democracies no longer applicable?I don’t think there’s a famine in Mali. But hunger isn’t necessarily resolved by a parliamentary debate. There is an open press, for instance, in Mali, to help alert people where the problems are. But you could flip it around: Public-opinion surveys done in Mali asked Malians what the most important political issue to them was, and they said food security. People didn’t have enough to eat. If you don’t solve that problem, then I think democracy is under threat.
    Interview with Lionel Beehner and John M. Staatz August 16, 2005