With the birth of podcasting in the 2000s, the medium has seen slow growth globally. According to a 2019 Edison Research study in South Africa, 22 percent of the country’s population had heard of podcasting, which was considerably lower than the 77 percent who were aware of podcasting in the United States for the same year. The same report noted that 19 percent of South Africans had listened to a podcast in comparison to 51 percent of Americans who had. Although podcasting is growing in Africa, radio, a close cousin that has been around since the days of colonization, remains prevalent.

Who Are African Podcasters

The largest podcasting markets in Africa include Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya. When it comes to content, African podcasters do whatever they want using a variety of techniques and formats with a thumbprint that showcases their heritage, place, language, and style, like Sound Africa, a podcast organization which aims to amplify regional voices. While Africa is the second most populated continent in the world, when it comes to conversations about the state of podcasting, Africa is rarely featured prominently.

Listeners can access podcasts globally from any mobile device, however, a lot of people hardly get to see and hear African stories unless they explicitly use an international lens. The media companies which focus on and/or produce global stories tend to gain popularity. For example, non-fiction podcasts about African news appear to be a growing segment, such as the BBC’s The Comb. However, almost none of the major podcast production companies have shows about African podcasting. Without the seemingly bottomless budgets a few new African podcasts have received to go big, to have an African podcast heard far from the continent is rare. Additionally, the African podcasts that get exposure typically sound familiar with commercial appeal in terms of format, content, and tone. This is why opportunities to center podcasting in Africa through gatherings like PodFest Cairo and Africa Podfest exist—to celebrate and support the growth of African podcasters. PodFest Cairo is Egypt and Africa’s first podcasting conference, bringing podcasters and podcast listeners together to share experiences. Africa Podfest is a Kenyan, woman-led company which founded Africa Podcast Day (February 12) and whose primary objective is to cultivate the African podcasting community through networking and sharing resources. 

Audiences in Africa

Potential audiences in Africa are similar to those of podcasts in any other part of the world: who knows about podcasting, is interested in them, and knows how to find them.

As podcasters in Africa look to grow their listener base, the numerous African languages present a challenge. Elsewhere, generally speaking, the majority of available podcasts are currently in English, whereas in Africa, podcasts are produced in many of the native languages, including Arabic, and thus reach audiences that are otherwise ignored by podcasters who reside outside of the Global South.

African podcasters are unique in their ability to engage counterpublics by recognizing that they are not centered in the international podcast habitats. Also, globally, including in Africa, traditional radio is tethered to governments in terms of regulation and licensing and thus subject to various levels of censorship. On the other hand, podcasting is more rogue, with niche non-standard formats and topics. As a result, there is an exciting variety of podcasts, including emerging podcasts in true crime, wellness, history, and identity and culture. There is also a reciprocal relationship between the content podcasters are creating and what podcast listeners are interested in; meaning there is a focus on audience engagement. Buoyed by the growth in African podcasts that speak to the African experience, African podcast listenership has expanded.

Challenges Faced

The challenges and barriers to podcasting in Africa are both technological and educational. Weak mobile and internet penetration, though increasing, stifles the ability of the industry to flourish since internet strength is not as robust as it could be. Even with mobile and internet access, the large amount of data consumed by podcast listening presents a problem as the field attempts to develop as an emerging media. Though many popular podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify*—media platforms where many listeners consume podcasts—are in English, in Africa, where it’s estimated that there are at least 1500 languages, podcasts are produced in many languages. This substantially limits potential listenership expansion.

Though the word podcasting may sound familiar to many, the inability to effectively educate potential listeners about what podcasts are and how to access them is another foregrounded obstacle. The former could be tackled with a public facing campaign through a podcast collective, such as PodFest Cairo or Africa Podfest, or by individual podcasters. Once potential listeners have the knowledge to find podcasts, we return to the topic of access, which brings to mind the issue of mobile penetration in Africa as well as the high costs of data consumption. Will the listener have to incur an expense in order to listen to a podcast? If so, Aaisha Dadi Patel, a writer and journalist at the Wall Street Journal Africa bureau, says audiences are more likely to listen to the radio as opposed to undertaking the added burden of trying to find, download, and then listen to a podcast, not to mention the exorbitant cost for data. Also, the cost of accessing podcasts using streaming services is prohibitive.

Along with the data expenses, many of the challenges facing podcasters in Africa are technological and steeped in the digital divide. Many Western podcasters have the luxury of technology infrastructure in podcast creation spaces in addition to access to production equipment. African podcasters produce their podcasts through a variety of approaches, basing their production decision on access to equipment and technology. Some have access to audio studios or utilize smartphones to produce their podcasts, and many do have proper podcasting equipment, such as microphones and computers, to record and produce their podcasts. However, in 2020, the Africa Podcasters Roll Call, a collaboration with PodFest Cairo and African Podfest, revealed that a lot of African podcasters have a do-it-yourself setup for production, and, as a result, their ability to produce high quality audio is hampered. Those succeeding in podcast production also have access to knowledge of advanced audio production and/or can afford studio time.

Finally, the economics of African podcasting are directly affected by market factors, including the internet and access to electricity. Often there is uneven access to electricity with more than a few countries experiencing frequent blackouts and needing to rely on generators.

Podcasting Research in Africa

Just as the podcast medium’s presence is increasing in Africa, so too is research in the field. South African podcasters have seen their community grow and firms, like Edison Research, have taken notice by collecting data on the region, releasing their first report on South Africa in 2019. Scholarly research has also increased. Though the method of data collection was not outlined, in 2020, Nigeria-based Tony Doe Media published data about the podcasting scene with some basic demographic statistics. The study found that the majority of podcast listeners, 70 percent, are male and all listeners listen to podcasts on a mobile device. From an academic perspective, one article, “Podcasts and new orality in the African mediascape” by Reginold A. Royston, was published earlier this year and documents the rise of the medium on the continent.

However, research on African podcasting remains in the early stages. How can African podcasters thrive if they do not know who they are podcasting for, and what their listeners and potential audiences want to hear? As mentioned previously, academic researchers have begun to examine African podcasting in greater depth. Simultaneously podcast organizations, like Africa Podfest, have also collected and disseminated early surveys on podcasting in Africa. By creating a baseline for knowledge on who African podcast listeners are, these efforts will assist in building a  profile of African podcast pioneers, expanding understanding on the business of podcasting in Africa, and beginning to paint a picture of what African podcasting by Africans everywhere could look like. 

The Future of Podcasting in Africa

According to Statista, Africa is the continent with the youngest population worldwide, with around 40 percent of the population aged 15 and under compared to the global average of 26 percent. With such a large youth population, podcasting has the potential to explode in the coming years. Moreover, barriers to entry are lessening due to knowledge sharing and improvements in technological infrastructures.

Monetization has been the buzzword in podcasting over the past few years, with many potential podcasters seriously inquiring as to how they can make a profit from podcasting. U.S.-based podcasters have widely benefited from inserting brief advertisements, such as live reads, into podcasts, but that proves viable depending on audience size, which is measured by companies like Edison Research and Nielsen as well as some podcast platforms, like Apple.

The ability for African podcasters to disrupt the current podcasting ecosystem is foreseeable despite the challenges they face. One example of this kind of schism came from podcaster and journalist Paul McNally. He was part of the team that utilized WhatsApp to distribute the podcast “What’s Crap on WhatsApp?” about misinformation on WhatsApp and created a community to thwart its spread.

The technological issues for podcast listeners, like data consumption, could unearth unique potential for podcasting on the continent as producers and audiences look for ways to navigate the podcasting ecosystem in a way that is convenient for this part of the world. That could mean developing a podcast distribution method that either uses less data consumption and/or distributing audio content via pre-established platforms like messaging apps.

Africa Podfest reports dating back to 2018 indicate that the types of podcasts released in Africa are consistently hyperlocal to Africa and may vary in language, context, and other features, such as distribution. Additionally, across our mostly Android continent (nearly 84 percent according to Statista’s 2021 data), the average podcaster is young.

For the African podcast ecosystem to continue to grow, it will take investment in the skills and knowledge of young podcasters who are excluded from traditional media networks. They are the drivers of growth for African podcasting and despite the hurdles, one thing is certain: if we do nothing to support African podcasting, few others will.

*For many years Spotify was not available in Africa, but then was introduced to South Africa in March 2018. It became available in Egypt and other parts of Africa in late 2019, however, only for music. The company does not always make announcements about updates or provide details, but podcasts polls are now available via the Spotify app possibly from September 30, 2021.

On July 8, the United Nations Security Council convened in response to a call by Tunisia, its Arab non-permanent member, to discuss Egyptian and Sudanese objections to Ethiopia’s unilateral launch of the second phase in the filling of the mega-dam reservoir—the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)—before reaching an agreement between the three riparian states.

The Council had two positions before it: the first being Ethiopia’s, which had informed Egypt and Sudan in official communication that the second stage of filling had commenced in time with the start of summer rainfall. The 18.4 billion cubic meter reservoir would take two years to fill, during which 6.9 billion cubic meters are intended to be stored in July and 6.6 billion in August 2021. This unilateral announcement came with an invitation to share information and an offer to arrive at an acceptable solution for the hydroelectric dam’s operation through progressive negotiating stages under the auspices of African Union president, Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi. Ethiopia also asserted that the right to operate the dam is an internal and technical matter and declared that negotiations should occur at the African level and no other.

The second position—the Arab one—was pushed by Egypt and Sudan and conveyed in Tunisia’ draft resolution. It called for all parties to refrain from unilateral measures and appeal negotiations to a wider framework, at the joint invitation of the African Union president and Secretary of the UN and with the presence of active observers, to reach a binding agreement surrounding the dam’s operation in six months and to enable Ethiopia to generate electricity without harming downstream countries. The resolution urged the three Nile Basin states to refrain from making any statements, or taking any action, that may jeopardize the negotiation process and called on Ethiopia to stop the second stage filling of the GERD reservoir. It also invited  the Secretary General to present reports to the Security Council on the implementation of the resolution.

Egypt and Sudan anticipated  the Security Council meeting with extensive communications with member states and UN officials. French Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere, the Council’s president for July, issued a statement that the Council does not have sufficient expertise to deal with the issue. Other statements from the UN and the United States cautioned against unilateral actions, saying that the filling complicates the progress of negotiations.

Throughout their session, Council member states called for Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia’s cooperation in arriving at a solution within an African framework, independent from the UN Security Council. The Norwegian delegate was the most blunt and straightforward on this point. Speakers avoided direct demands for Ethiopia to cease its unilateral activity and sufficed to call on the three riparian states to avoid actions or rhetoric that would complicate the talks. The Russian delegate, who completely avoided touching upon Ethiopian conduct, was the strongest in voicing opposition to any threat of the use of force. The U.S. ambassador pointed to the Declaration of Principles in 2015, but deliberately overlooked a draft agreement in 2020 forged under the care of the previous U.S. administration, which Ethiopia did not sign. All parties avoided discussion of the ideal goals of negotiation as well as its timeline.

Egypt issued a strong statement at the Council, and Sudan explained its position in precise and frank terms, even with regard to the somewhat different perspectives between the two. That said, both countries showed a high degree of flexibility and agreement even before the start of official discussions .They had decided to ask that negotiations be held in a broader, four-way setting given that the African talks have so far gone nowhere. However, the two countries , in the draft resolution submitted , accepted  continuing talks in the African framework, supported by the United Nations and other active observers.

Egypt and Sudan succeeded in casting light on the delicate and potentially dangerous ramifications of the GERD on their water supply, especially Ethiopia’s wish to exercise unilateral decisions on the course of the Blue Nile. But the Council deliberations in the first meeting  did not end in a proposal to change the framework of the negotiations or their present sponsor, the African Union. Neither did the Council move to support the presence of auxiliary parties to the talks, such as the United Nations or active observers. The council did not include, in its deliberations or in the statements of its members, a call to reach a binding agreement about the water release by a defined time period. All of these are elements proposed by the Tunisian resolution.

It is thus quite difficult to imagine that Egypt and Sudan were satisfied with the results of the meetings, especially since they were the ones who requested the council address this issue. Even if we observe in the coming days some international effort, whether inside the Security Council or out, to protect such as through supporting the role of observers in the negotiations or defining a timeline—there will be little cause for celebration so long as the main points of contention remain unresolved. Of chief importance is that there be joint, trilateral decisions surrounding the water release according to legally binding rules for all, complete with a mechanism to settle disputes.

In fact, a political reading of member state positions in the Security Council and the international arena indicates how difficult it is to expect binding decisions from the Council that fulfill the requests of the draft resolution. This is more apparent in light of the quotidian disputes of member states. The options available to Egypt and Sudan for recourse are dwindling , whether that means taking harsher measures or changing their tactics to facilitate and move negotiations forward. This strategy however holds great risks, for it means accepting, even implicitly, Ethiopia’s fait accompli. Consequently, sooner or later confrontation seems inevitable, unless we see a sudden and unexpected change in Ethiopia’s position.

Africa, the oldest inhabited continent on the planet, is often regarded as a monolith by the global North. But, it is far from homogenous. With a population of over 1.37 billion—over 17 percent of the world population—Africa is the second most populous continent, after Asia. It hosts forty-eight mainland countries and six island nations, comprising 20 percent of the Earth’s total land area.

An estimated two thousand languages are spoken among the fifty-four total countries. Nigeria alone boasts two hundred and fifty languages, one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the world. Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is the second-largest French speaking city in the world, after Paris, France.

Spanning around 18.87 million square miles, the United States could fit comfortably three times over within the continent. However, the popular Mercator map projection, the common world map found in Western classrooms, distorts the size of land masses near the poles, leaving Africa shrunken and Canada, the United States, Russia, and Europe enlarged. 

With the mainland broken into five regions—north, central, south, east, and west—Africa is the only continent to span all four hemispheres, as both the Equator and the Prime Meridian intersect the continent.

Every region has its calling card, though they also share certain commonalities. North Africa accounts for one-third of Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP), owing largely to oil production. The region intersects sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and was the center of the Arab uprisings of 2011. West Africa is the most populous region, with an estimated 350 million people as of 2015. Nigeria accounts for more than half of the region’s population and is projected to be the third most populous country in the world by 2050. The West African region has a long history of post-colonial civil wars which presented obstacles to economic development. Central Africa contains the Congo Basin, which is home to the second largest rainforest in the world. East Africa is the world’s second-fastest growing region behind East Asia, with growth expected to continue for the next several years. Southern Africa is rich in mineral deposits, though eighteenth-century colonial mining enterprises triggered violent conflict throughout the continent. South Africa—the birthplace of Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela—in particular was notorious for the apartheid system that the colonial stewardship of its gold and diamonds produced. Apartheid finally ended in 1994 with the establishment of an inclusive process which saw Mandela become South Africa’s first democratically elected president.

In 2003, some social scientists began to recognize a sixth region—the African diaspora—to encourage the participation and engagement of people of African origin living outside the continent with their home countries. The five countries with the largest African diaspora population are Brazil (55.9 million), the United States (46.4 million), Haiti (10.1 million), the Dominican Republic (9.2 million), and Colombia (4.9 million).

In 2020, Africa was home to six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies—South Sudan, Egypt, Benin, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania—according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Egypt are the most populous countries, and the continent as a whole is projected to undergo impressive population growth in the twenty-first century, nearly reaching the population of Asia by 2100. Some 60 percent of Africa’s population is under the age of twenty-five, making it the youngest continent. However, if the continent is unable to address its burgeoning youth population, it risks high youth unemployment which can lead to conflict, economic underperformance, and brain drain. According to the UN Development Programme, the success of African governments to address this population burst will be the single most important factor determining the continent’s future prospects. While presenting a policy hurdle, the African Union’s Youth Charter argues Africa’s young population is the continent’s biggest resource, offering enormous potential. This ‘youth bulge’ could provide an emerging labor force to drive domestic market creation and development, helping to meet the increasingly competitive demands of modern global markets. 

Egypt, aiming to become a vaccination manufacturing hub in Africa, is the first country on the continent to locally produce COVID-19 vaccines after starting production of the Sinovac-Vacsera vaccine, with South Africa quickly following suit.

Natural Resources

Africa has much to offer on the global stage. The continent contains around 30 percent of the world’s mineral reserves, and it is estimated that around 65 percent of the world’s diamonds are mined in Africa. The world continuously profits from Africa’s natural wealth, leading it to become a net creditor of $41.3 billion to the rest of the world in 2015. 

Aside from mineral wealth, Africa boasts numerous natural resources in need of protection. In length, the Nile River bests the Amazon by just 132 miles, for the title of longest river in the world. The Sahara Desert, the largest hot desert in the world, spans 8.6 million square kilometers, about 25 percent of the continent. 

The island of Madagascar is the world’s fourth-largest island and second-largest island country, spanning over 587,000 square kilometers. Mount Kilimanjaro is the tallest peak on the continent, standing at 5,895 meters above sea level.

At the gateway to the Sahara lies Morocco’s Noor Power Plant, the largest concentrated solar farm in the world. The plant spans 3,000 hectares, produces enough electricity to power a city the size of Prague, and provides 2 million Moroccans with a clean energy source.

Morocco’s neighbor, Algeria, is the largest country in Africa. However, only 12 percent of the country is inhabited due to the heat of the Sahara. It is also the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas on the continent, with an export volume of 16.6 billion cubic meters in 2019. Neighboring Libya is the richest African country in oil as of 2020, with 48.36 billion barrels of reserves. 

The continent is also home to the largest land migration in the world. Between one and two million wildebeest and zebras make the round trip each year from the Serengeti plains of Tanzania to Kenya, across the Mara River. Additionally, Botswana has the world’s largest elephant population, at over 130,000.

However, Africa is the continent most vulnerable to climate change and will be directly and adversely affected—food insecurity, population displacement and stress on water resources—more than others despite accounting for just two percent of world coal demand and historically negligible carbon emissions, according to The Brookings Institution. Differences in infrastructure, investment, and development today are the result of the legacies of colonialism, which play a defining role in climate vulnerabilities. 

Pop Culture & Famous Faces

Conversations surrounding the African continent often center on its economic and developmental potential. However, the continent is rich in the arts and sports which illuminate its vibrant and multifaceted culture.

Nigeria’s film industry is the second largest, in terms of output, in the world, producing around 2,500 films per year. It is the country’s largest employer after agriculture, comprising 5 percent of GDP.

Egypt hosts a unique film industry as well, earning it the moniker “Hollywood of the Middle East.” On the list of 100 best Arab films compiled by the Dubai International Film Festival in 2013, 38 are Egyptian, and 35 of those date to the golden age of Egyptian cinema, between the 1940s and 60s. The Mummy, the 1969 film by Egyptian director Chadi Abdel Salem, topped the list at number one.

No mention of the Egyptian art scene would be complete without Umm Kulthum, often referred to as “the star of the East” and “Egypt’s fourth pyramid.” A Western counterpart does not exist to compare with her sixty-year career, complete with around three hundred songs. Her voice, a contralto—the lowest type for a female—inspired some of the West’s greatest singers, such as Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Bob Dylan. She drew energy from her audience. Never singing a line the same way twice, her songs could last anywhere from forty-five to ninety minutes as she indulged calls for improvisation and line repetition.

Lupita Nyong’o, a Kenyan-Mexican actress and filmmaker, began acting in her teens in Kenya and won renown for her role, and accompanying Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, as Patsey in 12 Years a Slave. She is also well known for her role as Nakia in the Marvel film, Black Panther. Trevor Noah, a South-African born comedian, became one of the top comedians in South Africa, going on to tour in the United States and internationally. He is currently the host of The Daily Show, a popular late-night American television talk show, and author of Born a Crime, which details Noah’s experience growing up directly after apartheid.

In 2010, the FIFA World Cup was hosted by South Africa, a first for the continent. The tournament could soon return to the continent as Morocco has a confirmed bid for the 2030 Cup. This is the country’s sixth bid for hosting rights after denial in 1994, 1998, 2006, 2010, and 2026.

Egyptian football star Mohamed Salah is poised—as captain of Egypt’s national team—to lead the Pharaohs to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. A two-time African Footballer of the Year, Salah is one of the most prolific forwards in European football with 125 goals in 203 appearances for Premier League club Liverpool.

The famous footballer, George Weah, who was named African, European, and World Player of the Year in 1995—an unprecedented achievement, became the president of Liberia in 2018.

The continent has yet to host an Olympic Games, but Dakar, Senegal will hold the postponed 2022 Youth Olympic Games in 2026, which could signal the possibility of future Olympic games being hosted in Africa.

The continent is not without its quirks. Ethiopia uses its own twelve-hour clock with two daily cycles—from dawn to dusk and another from dusk until dawn—and a thirteen month calendar system.

Africa is also home to the restaurant with the most varieties of milkshakes commercially available. Gibson’s Gourmet Burgers & Ribs in Cape Town, South Africa offers 207 varieties in all, according to the Guiness Book of World Records.

Diversity reigns on the African continent, from natural resources to sports to pop culture, leaving much to be discovered beyond the assumptions made about the continent around the world.

It is July in the second year of the Coronavirus, and suddenly Africa feels like Europe and the United States in the first months of the pandemic. Reports of infections burning through populations—and hospitals nearly buckling under pressure—are making news headlines from Johannesburg, Lusaka, and Kinshasa sound like they are being beamed in from Lombardy, New York, and London circa April and May 2020. The intensity of transmission that African states tried to avoid through early and somewhat regular lockdowns in 2020 has finally arrived. 

The irony, of course, is that this was avoidable—vaccines are available and with them COVID-19 deaths have also become avoidable. In the global North, the narrative is that the impossible has been done—vaccines for COVID-19 have been developed in under a year through massive public investment in research and development (R&D), and almost half of the populations of the United States and United Kingdom have been vaccinated. 

And then, too, for much of the rest of the world, the narrative is that the impossible cannot be done. While the coronavirus has billions in India, Brazil and Peru gasping for breath, the dominant narrative remains that it is too complicated and too cumbersome to transfer newly developed COVID-19 technologies to the south. The EU has argued, for example, that dose-sharing is a more efficient response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the global South than a proposed COVID-19 TRIPS waiver tabled by India and South Africa at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in October 2020, which aims at building local manufacturing capabilities. The waiver would exempt global South countries from intellectual property (IP) rights which have been protected since the introduction of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement in 1995.

On this basis, many countries in the global North have stringently opposed the TRIPS waiver, though some within this block have shifted their position in recent months as evidenced by the newly announced mRNA technology transfer hub France will be launching in South Africa to locally manufacture vaccines. It remains that a more equitable distribution of existing doses is a necessary step in addressing the pandemic of vaccine hoarding that has exploded since effective vaccines have been authorized for use. But it should not be used as legitimate grounds for blocking vital technology transfers that could help secure what Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe has described as “the universal right to breathe”.

One wonders, given the speed with which mRNA technologies were developed, whether the issue is one of complexity. Perhaps a more accurate word would be sacrilege? This sentiment is captured by the words of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, who described C-TAP, the COVID-19 patent pooling mechanism, as “dangerous” and “nonsense” —presumably in light of the fact that it would disrupt the sacred status attributed to intellectual property rights by the 1995 TRIPS agreement. Here, it is vital to state that this status is misplaced in the context of the pandemic. As the UN’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) has correctly pointed out, “intellectual property is not a human right, but a social product, having a social function”. This means that member states of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), who have a duty to interpret TRIPS in a manner that protects public health, should consider supporting the TRIPS waiver.

These states have a legal obligation to ensure that multinational corporations domiciled in their territories do not violate the rights protected by the covenant abroad. In the time since the pandemic first hit, we have lost many lives—and have gained more infectious viral variants—while debating the “impossibilities” of technology transfer.

Vaccine Apartheid 

Two words have been become commonplace in our conversations about the management of the COVID-19 pandemic: apartheid and solidarity. The second seems to offer hope; the first, despair. Apartheid is of course frequently used to describe the unequal distribution of access to vaccines globally.

Vaccine apartheid is a now-familiar shorthand used to highlight that as of June 23, 2021 more than 2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses had been distributed globally, with the lion’s share of 85 percent administered in high-income countries (HICs) and by contrast only 0.3% administered in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Vaccine apartheid is a predictable consequence of the unequal power relations between states, particularly LMICs and pharmaceutical corporations, that was brought into being with the TRIPS regimen. This imbalance in power relations was highlighted in the work of Susan K Sell, a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, who has written extensively on intellectual property and international development. In the early 2000s, she vividly illustrated the importance of the human rights obligations of global pharmaceutical companies to allow the sick access to antiretroviral medications.

Mirroring the racial apartheid of the South African regime prior to 1994, access to COVID-19 vaccines has been extremely limited in those parts of the world that historian Vijay Prashad has referred to as the “darker nations”—those African and Asian countries which newly liberated themselves from colonialism and declared their vision for remaking the world anew at the Bandung Conference of 1955. This vision of Third World internationalism shared at Bandung centered on economic cooperation aimed at securing human welfare, anti-racism, and political solidarity. The interdependent nature of these important principles was echoed in two other declarations that anchored the Third World political project: 1974’s the Declaration on a New International Economic Order (NEIO) and the Alma Ata Declaration (1978). 

The close connections drawn between racial domination, technological progress and political independence are particularly striking in the NIEO, which was adopted at the Sixth Special Session of the UN General Assembly on May 1, 1974. The preamble of the NIEO declares that the international community wishes to “work urgently” to “make it possible to eliminate the widening gap between the developed and the developing countries and ensure steadily accelerating economic and social development and peace and justice for present and future generations”.

Its opening paragraph frames technological progress as something that can ensure the welfare of “the community of free peoples”, but that this potential is undermined in the context of “the remaining vestiges of alien and colonial domination, foreign occupation, racial discrimination, apartheid and neo-colonialism in all its forms” perpetuated by a “system which was established at a time when most of the developing countries did not even exist as independent States and which perpetuates inequality”.  

The solution to this, the Declaration argues, is not simply more aid and greater technology transfer, but a fundamental restructuring of political power within global governance structures. It calls for “active, full and equal participation of the developing countries in the formulation and application of all decisions that concern the international community”. 

Like the NIEO, 1978’s Alma Ata Declaration explicitly argues that the value of technological progress and the global economy lies, first and foremost, in the ability to promote human welfare. Furthermore, it argues that promoting human welfare is unlikely to occur unless both technological progress and the global economy are subject to political oversight, and in particular, democratic decision-making procedures at the global governance level that include meaningful participation by the global South. Focusing on the right to health in particular, the Alma Ata Declaration emphatically maintains that “The people have the right and duty to participate individually and collectively in the planning and implementation of their health care”.

These formulations are striking in their efforts to frame solidarity as a multi-dimensional and relational process that transforms everyone involved in it. Former President of Mozambique Samora Machel said solidarity is “not an act of charity, but mutual aid between forces fighting for the same objective” and involves both “political tasks and material support”.

His words are striking because in the context of vaccine apartheid, solidarity is more often framed as an act of giving by those who have to those who don’t, rather than a process. The ailing COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative is perhaps the most striking example of this approach to overcoming vaccine apartheid. It is explicitly described as a “global solidarity initiative” and prioritizes providing material support to LMICs by subsidizing the price of vaccines for eligible countries and attempting to pool procurement. This objective has been undermined by the rapacious behavior of countries in the global North that have bypassed COVAX by using bilateral deals to purchase excessive amounts of vaccines in proportion to their population size—effectively monopolizing access to the already-limited global supply of vaccines.

This focus on material aid to countries that have been priced out of the market for vaccines effectively reduced COVAX to a charity mechanism. Moreover, the marginal role of the World Health Organization (WHO)—and its member states—in its decision-making structures ignores the “political tasks” that are necessary to enact solidarity. COVAX does not aim to dismantle the IP thickets that impede access to vaccines, and which have contributed to an official global death toll that has currently surpassed 4 million people. It certainly does not aim to dismantle the injustice created by the unequal control of money, power and resources that has intensified since the 1990s, and that reflects a longstanding extractivist orientation established in the colonial period, These have led to COVID-19 disproportionately damaging the livelihoods and taking the lives of racial and ethnic minorities, women, migrants, indigenous peoples, and the poor. As the extracts from the declarations above show, a commitment to this political work was encoded in the forms of internationalism that led to, and were endorsed in the Bandung Declaration, NIEO, and the Alma Ata Declaration. 

Social Vaccines

The challenge then becomes how to address Third World concerns whether another more equitable mechanism is possible. Endorsing the TRIPS waiver request submitted to the WTO by South Africa and India in October 2020 is one necessary approach. The waiver has been challenged on the grounds that it will not make a meaningful difference in increasing access to vaccine supply in the short-term, given that it will take some time for countries in the global south to build up local manufacturing capacity. A second argument is that we don’t need the waiver, as existing TRIPS flexibilities are sufficient for addressing supply shortages. These arguments miss the political and normative significance of the TRIPS waiver. 

The power of the waiver is that it sets a legal precedent in favor of prioritizing public good over profiteering, and it affirms this principle as non-negotiable and unambiguous in the context of international trade, R&D, and manufacturing practices. To borrow from Austro-Hungarian economist Karl Polanyi, it re-embeds the market in society, thereby introducing a significant normative shift in light of the neoliberal discourse that’s become hegemonic in recent years. The waiver, much like the important recommendations of the UN High Level Panel on Access to Medicines released in 2016 (and since systematically erased from initiatives to reform the global R&D landscape for essential medicines), affirms that the market works to promote collective wellbeing. It also creates legal certainty—something that currently doesn’t exist when countries in the global South attempt to use TRIPS flexibilities. This is worth implementing because the space created by discounting the threat of retaliation (on the grounds of alleged copyright infringement) can create forms of collective action and collaboration that are currently not possible in the context of the existing legal and political landscape.

From a technical point of view, patents might thus seem to be a small impediment to accessing vaccines. However, from a political and normative point of view, an IP waiver on the copyrights, industrial designs, patents and undisclosed information relevant to COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines is potentially revolutionary, as it reasserts political control over the market. This aspect of the waiver and the precedent it sets is perhaps why it is being resisted at all costs by big pharma and some powerful countries in the global North. Law functions as an important mechanism for regulating the interplay of public health and for-profit or private interest. The historical declarations cited above demonstrate that while legal reforms are a necessary component of addressing this crisis, they are insufficient. As argued by Australian social scientist Fran Baum, in addition to these reforms, an investment in “social vaccines” is needed:

“A social vaccine is a process of social and political mobilization which leads to increased government and other institutions’ willingness to intervene with interventions, applied to populations rather than individuals, aimed at mitigating the structural social and economic conditions that make people and communities vulnerable to disease, illness and trauma. While medical vaccines help develop immunity against disease, social vaccines develop the ability of communities to resist and change social and economic structures and processes that have a negative impact on health and force governments to intervene and regulate in the interests of community health.”

The vaccine apartheid has legalized racially based discrimination. Today, the TRIPS regime is implemented in a manner that means people suffer pain, discomfort, death and permanent disability because they do not have the money to pay for patented medicines, and because their governments cannot easily manufacture or import these medicines or their generic equivalents. The hoarding of vaccines in the global North, their “gifting” to the global South, and the profound hesitancy to support local manufacturing of a life-saving technology in these countries, are all part of a long and disturbing history of global capitalism, which has allowed a small group of elites the power “to foster life or disallow it to the point of death,” in the words of French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is exactly this necropolitics—this undemocratic concentration of power which dictates how people live and die—that was supposed to be challenged by the multilateral system born out of World War II and that the liberated nations of the Third World aimed to reshape. 

The TRIPS waiver offers an entry point for reversing this tide and must be supported as a matter of urgency. In tandem, we need transparent, multilateral mechanisms that allocate vaccines based on medical need—not purchasing power—and that allow governments of the global south meaningful participation in decisions about collective procurement and allocation of global vaccines supplies.

The narrative has been around for a little more than a decade: Africa is rising—and is still rising. The second-largest continent has some of the fastest-growing economies, a trend which began—and continues—long before the global financial crisis hit major economies. 

Africa weathered the storm of the 2008/09 global financial crisis, which debilitated even the most powerful economies. In 2011, two years after the crisis, figures showed six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies were in Sub-Saharan Africa, with Angola leading the pack. China (in second position), Myanmar, Kazakhstan and Cambodia were the non-African countries on the list. All six Sub-Saharan countries had posted growth rates of around 8% over 10 years. At the time, forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suggested Sub-Saharan Africa would grab seven of the top 10 places between 2011 and 2015.

That came to pass, and as recently as 2019, Sub-Saharan Africa still had the fastest-growing economies in the world. The coronavirus pandemic, which struck in December 2019 and is still wreaking havoc, will see growth slowing down, but statistics still suggest Sub-Saharan economies will continue to grow at an impressive rate. Though still battered by the pandemic—some countries are being bailed out by the IMF and the World Bank—the star performers remain Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, South Sudan and Uganda. 

African economies can continue to outpace their non-African counterparts, and they have done so for years, which is why some people are saying that Africa is rising. But then you have conflict, poverty (which the fastest-growing economies have done little to eradicate), poor infrastructure, etc. These are the broken rungs on the prosperity ladder, which Africa is trying to climb.

The Natural Resources Advantage

The region’s impressive economic growth is coupled with tremendous potential. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than 30% of the world’s mineral reserves. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone is estimated to possess $24 trillion of mineral resources. That is 10 times more than the GDP of Sub-Saharan countries combined. 

From Uganda to Nigeria to Angola to South Sudan, the geological lottery called oil has been won. Oil exports have provided billions of dollars in revenue for at least seven countries, although some are choking on debt to China, a key buyer of African oil, and multilateral lending institutions.

Then there is the demographic dividend. Africa is the youngest continent in the world. By 2040, says the IMF, it is projected to have the largest labour force—1 billion workers strong—more than China and India combined. The 1 billion-plus people, half of whom will be under 25 years old by 2050, according to the World Bank, speak to a diverse continent capable of providing the human and natural resources required to foster inclusive growth and eradicate poverty.

Free Trade Area

On January 1, 2021, Africa unveiled the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the continent’s most ambitious integration initiative and the blueprint for intra-Africa trade. 

An integral part of Agenda 2063, the African Union’s master plan for transforming Africa, the AfCFTA will not only set the stage for a market for goods and services but will also foster free movement of people and investments. 

It has been signed by 54 nations and ratified by 31—and promises to create one of the world’s biggest free-trade areas with a 1.2-billion-person market. 

The potential benefits will be amazing. Consider this: Nigeria imports flowers from Europe yet the leading flower exporter in Africa is Kenya. A functioning AfCFTA would see Nigeria buying flowers from Kenya and spending less as it seeks to eliminate tariffs and non-tariff barriers. Tariffs on 90% of goods will have to go within 10 years. More for the remaining 10% will be eliminated, but the phased implementation means real benefits will not be seen until 2035.

What is more, consumers will see prices reducing significantly. Tariffs have kept prices for a range of commodities much higher than they should be. A South African farmer, for example, exporting oranges to Kenya pays a 25% tariff, according to the African Trade Observatory. If Kenya removes the tariff, the price of those oranges can go down.

Democratic Rule

Away from trade, there has been commendable progress in governance where, for decades, Sub-Saharan Africa was the laughing stock, often falling victim to coup d’etats and other violent and unconstitutional changes of government. Sub-Saharan Africa has seen its number of democracies increase significantly over the years. 

In 2019, South Africa held its sixth election since 1994. In the same year, Malawi also held its sixth presidential election since it became a multiparty democracy in 1994. In Southern Africa, 15 of the 16 countries that form the regional bloc Southern African Development Community (SADC) hold regular elections and have changed leaders. (The exception is Swaziland, an absolute monarchy which changed its name to eSwatini in 2018.) 

Elections do not necessarily mean good governance, but many countries have set their governance on a firm democratic footing.

Central, East and West Africa are not any different. Out of 44 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, only Eritrea, South Sudan and Sudan have not held proper elections.

The Challenge of Conflict and Political Instability

Some independent observers say that now is the take-off stage for the continent. It has got its feet firmly on the bottom rungs of the prosperity ladder and has started to climb. Sadly, there are still major challenges. In fact, sceptics would say that some rungs of the prosperity ladder are broken. Are they right?

To see how the road to prosperity is littered with hurdles, one must take a long and deep look at conflict in Africa. In East Africa and the Horn of Africa, for example, several countries are mired in conflict and have strained relations with each other. The DRC, despite its vast potential, has not seen peace since the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko, who seized power in 1965 and presided over a kleptocracy until his ouster in 1997. 

For decades, the country’s east has been a flashpoint, with a myriad of armed groups, some with foreign fighters, operating in South and North Kivu provinces, all vying for power and control of natural resources. Civilians have borne the brunt of the violence. But sometimes the victims are individuals working for foreign governments or international organisations.

In February 2020, the Italian ambassador to the DRC, Luca Attanasio, was shot dead by armed groups in the east. UN peacekeepers have also been killed, including experts investigating violence and sources of weapons used by groups involved in the conflict. The DRC is home to the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping operation, which began life in 1998, but the mission has not succeeded in restoring peace and security in the country. Africa accounts for the largest proportion of UN peacekeeping operations.

In the late 1990s, the conflict sucked in armies of six African countries, namely Angola, Burundi, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Although troops from all six countries left decades ago, the DRC, 89 times bigger than Rwanda, is still being used as a base by armed groups seeking to attack neighbouring countries, such as Rwanda and Uganda.

Rwanda, the victim of the 1994 genocide, which saw the majority Hutus butchering the minority Tutsis, killing up to 800,000 people, has had to enter the DRC to flush out remnants of the FDLR, the Hutu militia it blames for the genocide. But the UN has also accused Rwanda of backing some of the rebel groups operating in the east. Rwanda has also battled armed groups in the DRC with links to Rwandan dissidents. 

A 2018 report by the UN Group of Experts on the DRC confirmed the presence of an armed group in the eastern Fizi and Uvira territories linked to Rwandan dissidents. It added that Burundi, Rwanda’s neighbour to the south, was arming the group named P5, also linked to Rwandan dissidents. Consequently, relations between Rwanda and Burundi, currently under EU sanctions over the 2015 deadly crackdown on protests, have been frosty.

Although efforts have been made to mend ties, Rwanda still provides sanctuary to individuals who tried to overthrow the Burundian government in 2015 and has been reluctant to hand them over to Burundi, insisting they should be relocated to foreign countries.

Rwanda is also at loggerheads with its northern neighbour, Uganda, which it accuses of arming groups bent on destabilising it. The border between the two countries, both members of the East African Community, a regional bloc, remains closed. And Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, was the only head of state in East Africa who did not attend his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni’s inauguration in May.

Regional political instability has seen Uganda becoming home to more than 1.4 million refugees, mainly from South Sudan, which erupted in violence in 2013 and remains unstable; Burundi, which was rocked by violence in 2015 when former President Pierre Nkurunziza sidestepped term limits to extend his rule, sparking deadly riots; and the DRC, a playground of (foreign) armed groups.

 The DRC shares a border with the Central African Republic (CAR), which is grappling with a major conflict and has troops from the UN and its former colonial master, France, on its soil trying to restore peace and security with limited success.

To the CAR’s east is South Sudan, which has been trying, in a series of talks, to end the conflict to no avail. A power-sharing deal was signed in 2018, but insecurity in the south has persisted and has seen Ugandans getting killed by South Sudanese soldiers.

In November 2020, Ethiopia, South Sudan’s neighbour to the east, launched an offensive on the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in the country’s north, sparking a conflict that has not only killed thousands but has also sucked in neighbouring Eritrea and led to the imposition of sanctions by the US. The conflict started when Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, was already embroiled in a high-profile standoff with Sudan and Egypt over a hydro power dam his country is building on the Blue Nile.

Turn to Somalia, Ethiopia’s eastern neighbour, and you will see a country still far from being peaceful even though Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and Uganda have provided peacekeeping troops for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which has been working since 2007 to rein in the militant group Al-Shabab and restore peace and security.

To the north of the CAR lies Chad, which along with Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso (all share borders), forms a part of Africa called the Sahel—currently a by-word for an Islamist insurgency that has stymied a multinational effort to stamp it out. There has been deadly violence in Burkina Faso and Mali, which has seen at least three coups since 2012, two of which in the past nine months. French President Emmanuel Macroni has threatened to withdraw his country’s 5100-strong force if the coup plotters gang up with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

Given the seriousness of conflict and political instability, it is hard to see how the AfCFTA will come to fruition. Countries such as Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and South Sudan may have some of the fastest-growing economies, but how can they make the most of this trade deal when they and their neighbours are reeling from violence?

Poverty and Infrastructure 

Sub-Saharan African nations have additional daunting challenges. The most pressing challenge here is that poverty is still rampant. Thirty-three out of 48 least developed countries are found in Africa. By 2030, the World Bank says, nearly nine of every 10 people in extreme poverty will be living in Sub-Saharan Africa. Seven of the 10 most unequal countries in the world, the bank says, are in Africa, most of them in Southern Africa.

Infrastructure remains woefully inadequate. According to the IMF, over the past three decades, per capita output of electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa remained virtually flat. In cities such as Kampala, Lagos (the commercial capital of Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria) and Nairobi (the capital of East Africa’s largest economy, Kenya), power outages lasting for hours are common. Only 16% of all roads in Sub-Saharan Africa are paved, compared with 58% in South Asia. These shortfalls, says the IMF, represent huge costs to businesses—and to people.

For Africa to fix these problems—and increase, for example, its proportion of global trade from the dismal 2.6% to something decent—it is going to need to work tremendously hard. The optimism and narrative that it is rising (among Africans themselves) will continue, but Africa needs to put an end to conflict and political instability to pave the way for the AfCFTA initiative to succeed.

The year 2020 has been the worst on record for global travel tourism, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) said in a report published earlier this year. The UNWTO says that one billion fewer international tourists travelled globally in 2020, with Africa suffering a 75% fall in international tourist numbers. While many countries had not yet imposed travel restrictions in the first quarter of 2020, the world welcomed 180 million fewer international arrivals in the first quarter (January to March) of 2021 compared with a year earlier.

The number of international tourists to Africa plummeted by 81% in that same period.

As a result, Africa remains high as a priority region for the UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili. In a bid to focus on tourism to the continent, Africa will this year celebrate two major UNWTO events; namely, the official celebrations of the World Tourism Day in Côte d’Ivoire on September 27, and the 24th UNWTO General Assembly in Morocco a few weeks later. 

At a UNWTO Brand Africa Summit in Windhoek, Namibia on June 17, African ministers agreed in a communique—known as the Windhoek Pledge—to work together to reinvigorate the tourism industry on the continent.

“African destinations must take the lead in celebrating and promoting the continent’s vibrant culture, youthful energy and entrepreneur spirit, and its rich gastronomy,” Pololikashvili said.  

Member States unanimously endorsed the Windhoek Pledge on Advocating Brand Africa: “UNWTO and its members will also work with the African Union and the private sector to promote the continent to new global audiences globally positive, people-centered storytelling and effective branding,” the UNWTO said in the communique.

This is expected to strengthen partnerships with the media as a priority so that African tourism stories could be showcased to the world, thus reaching new and diverse tourism markets.

New Mutations Threaten Recovery

But as the different mutations of the Covid-19 virus have now taken on characters in a Greek tragedy (they’re receiving Greek letters as nomenclature), tourism operators say Delta is currently disrupting their plans to re-open and move further along the long road of recovery. And this also threatens recovery in Africa.

Some countries, such as Australia and Malaysia have reinforced lockdowns in major cities, while Israel, which has a very high vaccination rate, shows the hurdles the industry faces as it announced on June 23 that people indoors must wear masks and that it would modify its reopening travel schedule. 

Vaccinated tourists were originally supposed to be allowed into the country starting July 1. This was announced in a tourism recovery plan that now looks to be on hold.

The decision by Israeli authorities may trigger a similar response in other tourism destinations around the world. It may increase restrictions for arriving tourists, despite the assumption that vaccination is the golden key for the travel and tourism industry.

On June 24, popular tourist destination Portugal said that 70% of its new infections were due to the Delta variant, and announced shutting down the capital Lisbon just a month after opening up for tourism travel. The authorities said that they would impose stricter restrictions in Lisbon and popular tourism destination Albufeira fearing a blow to tourism recovery.

The good news is that there are baby steps being taken currently in terms of the global tourism industry as people are keen to get out and explore, but these are still very tentative. Initially, this will mostly be domestic tourism, but that will ensure that many tourism establishments survive to welcome international travellers once the new variants are brought under control. 

In Africa, one challenge that will need to be overcome to boost continental tourism is that travellers will require easier issuing of travel visas.

While significant visa facilitation improvements have taken place over the past decade, visa facilitation still needs to be a priority for African countries. This is particularly important to promote regional travel as the recovery of international tourism will be a long road. This means member countries should implement the Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) for free movement of goods and services, which includes the acceptance of the African Union passport. 

This would entail more collaborative efforts to address the lack of harmonised health and travel protocols across the continent and beyond, especially during and post-pandemic crises to reassure tourists and build traveller confidence.

France, South Africa and the World Health Organization signed an agreement on technology transfer last month to create Africa’s first independent COVID-19 vaccine production hubs.

This comes on the heels of data which shows that Africa has only vaccinated 3 percent of the continent’s population, compared with 67 percent in North America and 31 percent in Asia. Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) is holding enough stock to provide almost seven vaccines per person, the UK eight and the United States five. The lack of access to these vaccinations in Africa is not due to lack of trying, however. When African governments tried to procure vaccines on the open market, they found themselves at the back of the line as stronger economies bought more than they needed.

Bringing African Tourism Sectors Together

Destinations all over the world will be vying for tourists as countries emerge from the lockdowns imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. In that respect, Africa may have an advantage, as the post-lockdown travel trends could include the desire for outdoor trips, uncrowded destinations and personal travel bubbles with a focus on physical and mental health and wellness, including for instance quiet spaces where the sounds of nature can be heard again – such as the lion’s roar, the chirping of birds and insects, or the sound of antelopes walking through elephant grass.

But the collapse in international tourism has meant that African tourism had to switch to promoting domestic tourism. 

In the case of Namibia, for example, domestic tourists accounted for two-thirds of the hospitality sector’s occupancy rates in the first quarter of 2021 compared with only one-third in the same period a year earlier. Given the small size of its domestic population of only 2.5 million, however, this meant that the total number of beds sold in Namibia dropped by 53% compared with the first quarter of 2020. 

The latest data from Namibia’s hospitality association showed that bed occupancy in the first quarter of 2021 barely reached 17% compared with 27.2% in the first quarter of 2020. On a seasonal basis, the first quarter tends to be muted with respect to international travel and tourism. Room and bed occupancy rates during this time are often associated with people travelling for business or work conferences. However, even for business travellers, bed occupancy rates are down to 13% in the first quarter of 2021 as more people work from home and practice social distancing compared with 17% in the same period in 2020. 

To fill up empty rooms, tourism establishments are discounting their rack rates and Toshari Lodge, which is close to the Etosha National Park in Namibia, for instance, has dropped their rack of N$ 1,099 ($75) per person sharing for a standard room to only N$ 600 ($40) for the high season period of July 1 to November 20. This is not an isolated instance as many establishments are offering half price specials so that they can survive until international tourism recovers. 

But is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Alain St.Ange, President of the African Tourism Board and former Tourism Minister of the Seychelles, says that Africa—with all the possibilities and an array of ‘Unique Selling Points’—is seen as the next success story in attracting tourists to the continent. But it does have many obstacles to overcome; some are from beyond the borders of the continent and others are man-made by ourselves and for ourselves.

“[The] Covid-19 pandemic brought reality to the continent as it did for the whole wide world. Vaccines were introduced and Africa struggled to get an adequate supply to ensure that Africans were better prepared to protect itself and in order to play its part to stop the continued propagation of the pandemic through mutations and new variants which in turn will only extend the Covid-19 pandemic across the world,” he told The Cairo Review.

He pointed out that Africa was unprepared for such a pandemic which would cripple its tourism industry. Many of the 54 nations that make up the continent were cash-strapped and could not fight for their fair share of the needed vaccines. Africa was lucky to be resilient as many of its leaders and professionals rallied to offer assistance through the HOPE Project of its African Tourism Board, which is a roadmap for economic growth and a tourism recovery for those countries which depend on the industry for revenue. The project was created to bring African tourism sectors together to face the crisis as one. and to empower local solutions according to each country’s specific needs.

This included the involvement of Dr. Taleb Rifai, the former Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization, who joined the HOPE project as the Patron of the Organisation.

The HOPE Project also saw many sitting ministers, former tourism ministers and industry leaders working together to guide and to be prepared for Africa to start doing the one needed thing—rewrite its own narrative. 

“Friends from around the world rallied as well and press personalities were seen to be by the side of Africa at a time when Africa needed its children to be together working for their motherland,” St.Ange added.

He warned, however, that it would be a long road to recovery and there would be occasions when the continent would take two steps forward and then have to take one step back. 

Like most of the world, the situation on the ground is seeing a light at the end of the tunnel with many countries announcing an end to lockdowns and their readiness to accept foreign tourists.

But that optimism disappears the next day as a new surge of Covid is seen to be creating havoc in country after country. The new Delta variant has now spread to 92 countries, for example.

“It is clear that the world must come together and tackle Covid as one. The richest countries and leaders need to take care of their own, but see at the same time that one new Covid variant mutating on our continent or elsewhere will prologue to the disruption of the last two years,” St.Ange says.

The slow vaccine rollout in Africa and the hesitancy of international tourists to venture outside their own country lest they be subjected to quarantine restrictions on their return as has happened to UK tourists, will mean that it will be a long road to recovery for African tourism. There is no magic silver bullet such as an international vaccine passport that can shorten this process.

In the meantime, Africa must look inward for homegrown solutions. It must call on its very own to rally forces and “to put square pegs in square holes and round pegs in round holes”. 

“The time is now and yes it can be done,” he says. 

Many communities and individuals are forced to leave their place of origin because of conflict, violence, political persecution, and natural disaster. ‘Some remain within the borders of their countries, also known as internally displaced persons (IDPs), while others flee their country to seek asylum elsewhere.’ A person who seeks the protection of another country is known as an asylum seeker. If they submit an asylum application and the application is successful, they become a recognized refugee.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the total number of forcibly displaced people at the end of 2020 was 82.4 million. Among them are 26.4 million recognized refugees, 48 million IDPs, and 4.1 million asylum seekers. The remaining 3.9 million are those displaced as a result of the economic situation in Venezuela. From among the 78.5 million (not including Venezuela), the majority are displaced from ten countries: Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, South Sudan, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia, Central African Republic (CAR), Eritrea, and Burundi. As such, seven of the ten largest populations of forcibly displaced people are found in countries in Africa. Aside from North Africa, displacement from the four other regions—Central Africa and the Great Lakes, Southern Africa, East and the Horn of Africa, and West Africa—accounts for 32 percent of the global displacement. 

Africa also witnessed new displacement in 2020. In the Sahel region, three quarters of a million people were newly displaced, more than 54,000 fled the Tigray region of Ethiopia into eastern Sudan, and in northern Mozambique, hundreds of thousands were forced to flee the massacre initiated by militant groups. More importantly, the features that characterize population displacement in Africa have implications on both the proposed solutions for the displacement crisis as well as on the overall development of the continent. 

First,  the number of displaced peoples from the overall population is the highest in Africa. Apart from Syria, which currently has the highest percentage of displaced people in proportion to the overall population (76 percent of the Syrian population is now displaced), all other countries that have been exhibiting such features over a long period of time are in Africa. The African country with the highest percentage of displaced people is South Sudan where 35 percent of the population is displaced, followed by CAR (27 percent), Somalia (21 percent), and Eritrea (16 percent).

Second, the vast majority of those displaced remain in their own countries. Over 50 percent of the forcibly displaced populations from Sudan, Somalia, DRC, and CAR are internally displaced. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) 2019 report, the vast majority of displacement from 2009 to 2018, with the exception of 2012, was due to ethnic and sectarian conflicts. Remaining within the borders of a country from which they fled personal persecution based on ethnicity and/or religion leaves a large segment of the displaced population in serious danger.  

Furthermore, the vast majority of those seeking international protection and asylum remain within the continent. The highest number of African asylum seekers and refugees are hosted by other African countries. For example, Kenya hosts 272,490 Somalis as compared to Germany, which hosts 34,640. Uganda hosts 889,054 South Sudanese refugees, and Kenya hosts 123,968 while the UK and France together host only 35,483. 

Uniquely, African countries producing asylum seekers are themselves also hosting asylum seekers from other countries in Africa. For example, South Sudan, one of the most critical countries from which people are displaced, hosts 291,263 Sudanese (from its northern neighbor). For its part, Sudan has since November 2020 has been hosting more than 61,000 people fleeing violence in Tigray, Ethiopia. This compounds existing economic challenges for Sudan as 36 percent of its population are living in poverty, 25 percent of which are living in extreme poverty. 

In such a scenario where the host country itself is facing such levels of poverty, hosting additional groups of displaced persons means that both the displaced population as well as the host population suffer. Reports suggest that those displaced from Tigray are facing hunger and inadequate shelter in Sudan. Such conditions are not confined to Sudan and South Sudan but are also the case for many other struggling African countries which are hosting displaced populations from other African countries.  

One of the most disturbing features of the above statistics is that a majority of those displaced are women and children. The percentage of displaced children under 18 in Africa is higher than all other regions. The estimated proportion of children among refugees hosted in Africa is above 50 percent as compared to 38 percent of the refugees in Europe and 24 percent in the Americas. The percentage of women among displaced populations in Africa is also high. In the East and Horn of Africa, 51 percent of those displaced are women (27 percent adult women and 24 percent young girls). In southern Africa, 49 percent (23 percent adult women and 26 percent girls) and in West and Central Africa the percentage is 54 (26 percent adult women and 28 percent young girls). Women and children are at a higher risk of suffering from different types of abuse including trafficking for the purpose of prostitution, forced labor, and domestic servitude. Research suggests that children and women refugees suffer from trafficking, sexual exploitation, and forced labor more than men. Research also highlights that women’s health is disproportionately affected by extreme climate conditions compared to men.

When Drivers of Displacement Converge

The factors leading to displacement in Africa are complex and intertwined. In addition to ethnic and religious conflicts, other economic and environmental reasons induce displacement including underdevelopment, poverty, inequality, unemployment, corruption, environmental degradation, climate change, and natural disasters. Although most displacement on the continent occurred as a result of conflict, substantial displacement was also witnessed as a result of natural disasters. For example, in 2012, massive floods led to displacements from Nigeria and other West African countries. As such, it is important to understand the aggregate effect of both the drivers and impacts of conflict and disasters. Disaster induced displacement can amplify preexisting conflicts or lead to new ones thus inducing additional displacement.

Impact on UNHCR and Host States

The large numbers of IDPs and displaced populations in neighboring countries combined with the large population exodus Africa has been witnessing since the 1960s has impacted the solutions put forward by both UNHCR and host states.. The immediate response to large scale displacement is how and where to host the displaced. There are two ways to host displaced populations: either to accommodate them in camps or to allow them to self-settle.

Refugee camps are temporary settlements built by host governments or international organizations to offer protection and provide refugees and IDPs with their basic needs. In protracted situations—situations in which at least 25,000 refugees from the same country have been living in exile for more than five consecutive years—the services provided in camps are usually extended to include educational and employment opportunities. While camps are able to easily assist refugees and IDPs, the disadvantage is that they isolate and restrict the movements of their residents. Self-settlement offers displaced populations more freedom of movement and allows them to be self-reliant; most self-settled urban refugees are confined to slums and underdeveloped areas.

Following the first Sudanese civil war of 1955-1972 and the Nigerian Civil war of 1967, rural refugee camps were established to host the displaced populations. The ‘camps’ solution continued to be the preferred approach by African host states for three decades because of the continuous large-scale displacement exacerbated by the displaced populations which remain on the continent in neighboring countries. Camps allowed host governments to isolate refugees and IDPs who were perceived as a ‘problem’ and to oblige the international community to take part in sharing the responsibility. It was only with the issuing of UNHCR’s 1997 Comprehensive strategy on Urban refugees that the rate of building camps in Africa slowed. It is worth adding that nine out of the current twelve largest refugee camps in the world are in Africa. 

Realizing that camps were turning into de facto prisons, the UNHCR continued to advocate against them and to promote the integration of refugees and IDPs in urban areas. In 2009, a UNHCR policy paper on urban refugees highlighted that cities are and should be the appropriate place for refugees. In 2014, UNHCR began phasing out of the camp solution and treated camps as the exception rather than the norm. As a result of this shift in policy, the vast majority of refugees today are self-settled in urban areas. According to the 2018 Refugee Council report, 60 percent of all refugees and 80 percent of all IDPs live in urban areas.

A Long Way to Go

With the exception of a few African countries where refugees are able to find economic opportunities in the informal sector, self-settled urban refugees in most African countries are unable to achieve self-reliance and remain dependent on UNHCR financial aid. If they cannot find accommodation with friends and families, they end up homeless. Even in countries where they are able to find economic opportunities, for example Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa, they are confined to the informal sector, are underpaid, and suffer from xenophobic attacks. Urban policy and the shift away from ‘camps’ as a solution did not entail a comprehensive strategy for local integration and the provision of livelihood opportunities for refugees and IDPs. The decision by African countries, like Kenya, to close down refugee camps was not for the purpose of integrating them in the local societies but for the ultimate hope that they either be repatriated or resettled. Other countries, such as Egypt and South Africa, are against encampment but do not recognize ‘local integration’ as a durable solution.   

Displacement for both IDPs and refugees should be temporary. IDPs should either return to their original place or become integrated into the new communities. 

According to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s report on durable solutions for internally displaced persons, “Whatever the cause of internal displacement, or the option chosen by IDPs for their durable solution, IDPs will commonly continue to have residual needs and human rights concerns linked to their displacement”. 

The report published by the Brookings Institution and the University of Bern Project on Internal Displacement in 2010 also says that “IDPs who have physically returned to their place of origin may find that they are unable to rebuild destroyed houses or reclaim their land, because the disaster that displaced them has made the land unsafe for habitation or the land is now occupied by others”.

To assuage the situation, the UNHCR has put forward three durable solutions: repatriation to the country of origin, local integration in the host country, and resettlement to a third country. All African countries are against local integration because of the large-scale displacement in Africa—the burden of which is borne by neighboring countries—and the fragile economic and social infrastructure that does not allow them to fully integrate the displaced populations. In Egypt, for example, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Egyptian government and UNHCR specifies only two solutions to the refugee situation: resettlement and repatriation.

Resettlement was the preferred solution for countries in the Northern Hemisphere following World War II from the 1950s to 1980s. War-ravaged countries were in need of labor to meet the demands of postwar construction requirements, economic expansion, and the loss of labor force. Moreover, the politics of the Cold War encouraged many Western countries adopting the capitalist model to provide resettlement opportunities to those fleeing communist regimes. For example, refugees fleeing communist regimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in 1975 were resettled to the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. The end of the Cold War in 1991 reduced the political will of capitalist countries to provide amnesty to refugees from the Global South. Moreover, African refugees were characterized as culturally and ethnically different and were not welcomed in the North. As such, as of the 1980s, repatriation became the preferred solution.

Repatriation was encouraged and promoted by both UNHCR and the host governments in Africa. This was facilitated by the variation in the political conflicts in the continent. For example, thousands of civilians started to flee Sudan in large numbers during the first Sudanese Civil War in the 1960s. After the Addis Ababa Accord ended hostilities in 1972, the conflict subsided for a while encouraging African host countries to promote repatriation. In fact, many Sudanese were repatriated. 

However, instability emerged again with the imposition of Islamic laws in 1983 forcing many non-Muslims—including those who were previously repatriated—to flee Sudan.  With the signing of the peace agreement between the government of Sudan and the People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) based in the country’s south in 2005, repatriation was promoted not only by host countries but also by UNHCR. A large-scale repatriation process of southern Sudanese civilians started to take place. The process was further expanded following the creation of the new state of South Sudan in 2011. However, many of those repatriated were displaced again in 2013 as South Sudan was rocked by a civil war of its own. By the time that civil conflict was brought to an end in 2018, four million people had again been displaced.  

The same is true of the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia; both countries alternated between periods of conflict and relative stability. The war which began in 1998 was interrupted by a number of ceasefires but the violence didn’t really fully end until 2018. During periods of conflict, many civilians fled their homes and when hostilities subsided, they were repatriated only to be displaced again with the eruption of a new cycle of violence.

Repatriation in Africa, as such, was promoted without carefully assessing the situation in the countries of origin. Moreover, though the UNHCR’s mandate of refugee repatriation stresses the voluntary character of refugee repatriation. Such character is questioned by many scholars who ask to what extent are refugees provided with the needed information to make an informed decision.

To what extent is the exile experience carefully assessed in terms of its impact on refugees and their ability to return ‘home’, and what does ‘home’ mean for them? These and other questions were usually overlooked when implementing repatriation programs in Africa.

Ending Repeated Cycles

Even though forced displacement is a global phenomenon, repeated violence in Africa has meant that repatriated civilians often find themselves forced to abandon their homes again.

Seven out of the ten countries from which most displacement is taking place worldwide are in Africa, accounting for more than 32 percent of the total global displaced persons, and the highest number of displaced people in proportion to the overall population are found in African countries. The factors leading to displacement are numerous and complex, ranging from ethnic and religious conflicts to economic and environmental reasons. Even though women and children constitute the majority among all displaced populations, the highest percentage is among African countries. Like displacement in other parts of the world, most of those displaced are either accommodated internally or in other countries on the continent. This, however, has more serious implications in Africa as the continent struggles with poverty, economic stagnation, population growth, poor governance, corruption, and unemployment. These features have forced the governments of the continent to resort to strategies that are harmful to both the displaced populations and the host countries. For example, most of those displaced before the 1990s were accommodated in camps that segregated the refugees and IDPs from the local communities, exacerbated the ethnic and religious tensions between those displaced and intensified acts of gender based violence against women. Violence was the trademark of refugee camps in Africa. Repatriation became the most favorable durable solution implemented without careful assessment. Those repatriated were in many cases displaced again either because of the eruption of new conflicts or their inability to reintegrate in their countries of origin.

International cooperation and responsibility-sharing are needed to effectively deal with displacement in Africa. Countries of the North should revisit their resettlement quotas, and resettlement and humanitarian provisions should not only be tied to political interests. African governments should come together to put an end to both their local and regional conflicts. The recent conflict in Tigray is an example of how Displacement will never end unless ethnic struggles in each country and between countries come to an end. Relatively stable governments of the continent together with UNHCR should implement local integration policies that would allow proper integration of refugees and asylum seekers. UNHCR’ repatriation policy should be based on careful assessment ensuring its voluntary character. Last, but not least, it should be remembered that displacement and development are related. Well designed development initiatives could reduce displacement and allow the return of displaced people. Without such a global approach, displacement in Africa will continue.  

Mango farmers in Malawi, who have always considered the fruit to be a source of revenue when food is scarce, have declared war on the Bactrocera dorsalis fly which threatens their crops and livelihood.

The mango is one of the most important fruits in Malawi, and is a source of income and nutrition for many smallholders—vulnerable farmers holding small plots of land used to produce an export commodity as a main source of income. Women and youth are among the main beneficiaries as they are involved in the harvesting, and sale, of fresh mangoes from their homes, by the roadsides and at small markets, thereby improving household income.

However, in recent years, many farmers have seen an increase in rotten mangoes and lost revenue due to what scientifically is called Bactrocera dorsalis, more commonly known as the fruit fly. According to the Centre for Agriculture Biosciences International (CABI), this is a highly invasive species native to Asia that is now found in at least sixty-five countries, including parts of America and Oceania, and most sub-Saharan African countries. 

The potential risk of their introduction to a new area is caused by increasing international tourism and trade, and is influenced by changes in climate and land use. 

The fruit fly introduction may also happen as a result of movements of people from one country to another, as may happen with refugees and other migrants, and is sometimes caused by cross-border trade. In terms of land use, certain human actions such as forest degradation that clears large areas of land can lead to certain species of pests to begin attacking trees that are left out for fruit consumption such as mango.

After introduction, fruit flies can easily disperse as they have a high reproductive potential, high biotic potential (short life cycle, up to ten generations of offspring per year depending on temperature), a rapid dispersal ability and a broad host range. 

This means that they reproduce quickly and then easily spread to colonize new areas where they begin the cycle anew, often laying eggs ten times a year depending on the area temperature.

The project is implementing all possible measures holistically to contain the spread of what is now an invasive species. The use of integrated measures is one way of containing the high reproductive potential of the fruit flies.

The fruit flies lay eggs in the mangoes, which hatch into maggots that burrow inside the fruit causing rotting. In some cases the fruit may not fall on the ground but it may simply be infested with maggots as a live fruit. This makes the fruit inedible when plucked from the tree for consumption, and it is no longer a viable commodity for export. The damaged fruit then becomes unmarketable, resulting in loss of both food and income at the household level and along the supply chain. 

The direct damage and the resulting quarantine restrictions (such as a ban on products originating from areas where the fruit species are infected by the flies) on rotting mangoes imposed by importing countries, such as Italy, India, South Africa, Tanzania and the United Arab Emirates (to name a few) are estimated to have cost Malawi and other African exporters more than $2 billion in annual foreign currency earnings. The economic impact results primarily from the loss of export markets and the costly implementation of quarantine restrictions and pest eradication measures. Restrictions come in the form of a ban on exports that are believed to contain products with infected plant disease.

In a bid to address the threat posed by fruit flies, researchers in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are implementing the Alien invasive fruit flies in southern Africa project which calls for the implementation of a sustainable Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program to combat their spread.

The project has received funding of C$ 2.8 ($2.2) million from the Canadian International Development Research Centre and the Australian International Food Security Research Centre, for the wide scale adoption of IPM interventions including combating fruit fly infestations.

The project kicked off in 2019 and will wrap up in September 2022.

Source of Income, Nutrition and Export 

According to a 2019 Michigan State University report on the mango value chain, smallholder farmers make gross margins (total sales revenue after subtracting incurred production costs) of 300,000 Malawian Kwacha—approximately $375—per farmed hectare. They earn a 78 percent profit margin, making mango farming profitable.

In addition to the presence of wild mangoes that are managed by Malawian subsistence farmers, the demand for both fresh and dried mangoes in global markets helped create the right market conditions for the establishment of  the first commercial mango farming company—Malawi Mangoes—in 2009. This is Malawi’s largest mango farming company and is based in the Lakeshore district of Salima about 110 kilometers east from the capital Lilongwe.

The company has set up the first large scale fruit processing facility in Malawi. Its proximity to Lake Malawi, Africa’s third largest lake, has helped the company to grow prefered grafted species of mangoes using technologies such as drip irrigation as part of the Green Belt Initiative, a government project to boost self-sustenance in food security.   

Charles Leaper, Malawi Mangoes Chief Executive Officer, told The Cairo Review by phone that they now have 230 hectares of land using drip irrigation technology—an approach which conserves water and minimizes water waste. So far, they are exporting 100 tonnes of fresh mangoes and 240 tonnes of dried mangoes to the United Kingdom and the European Union. 

“We have close to 5,000 farmers who are on contract farming with us. Our plan is to increase our area under cultivation to 350 hectares of land. As such, the combined harvests of our farmers who sell to us plus our own harvest will lead to us producing close to 800 tonnes of finished dried mangoes product for export,” Leaper said.

With such tonnage, his company hopes to export to India and Singapore, as well as to penetrate new markets in North America and Canada. Leaper said they are aware of the prevalence of fruit flies as a major threat to the mango business. However, with a fully-fledged agronomy unit, a branch of agriculture that grows crops, they have put stringent controls, such as nets, to trap the flies. 

Another local Malawian entrepreneur that processes ripped Mangoes in Lilongwe the capital is Thanthwe Farm located on the outskirts west of Lilongwe. George Mavuto is the Farm’s  agronomist.

“Yes, indeed as Thanthwe Farm, we process dried mangoes and package them as part of value addition. As a farm, we grow mango on a small scale around 2 hectares,” said Mavuto in an interview.

“To empower the communities around the farm economically, we encourage them to grow mango fruits. We move around and provide technical advice on how they can maximize yields. Then we buy all the mangoes from them,” he explained. The bulk of our quantity for our annual requirements come from them.” Mavuto acknowledges that the major challenge is the incidence of pests—fruit flies being one of them. He adds that yield is affected as the fruit flies compromise quality. All infested fruits are graded out soon after harvesting as they are of poor quality.

“As a result of fruit flies, instead of meeting the demand, we supply below the requirement due to this pest,” he said.

Continental strategy on the culprit: Fruit flies

In a bid to address the widespread mango losses as a result of fruit flies, Malawi’s Department of Agriculture Research Services at Bvumbwe Station based in the southern district of Thyolo—with support from the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) a regional think tank on entomology research based in Nairobi, Kenya, —is working with farmers in Ntcheu and Lilongwe districts to contain the devastating effects of these pests. 

The two districts are where wild mango trees are produced in large quantities. This is being done in hopes that extension staff can replicate these IPM interventions in other districts throughout the country.

The package includes various components of interventions such as baiting techniques, male annihilation, biopesticide application, orchard sanitation, and biological control using wasps called parasitoids, which attack fruit fly eggs and maggots.

Researchers have also extended a regional approach to the fruit fly Integrated Pest Management package, which has been adapted and promoted in the project’s target countries of Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe which are close neighbours of Malawi.

Experts hope the proximity of these countries which share common borders and were once under a single federation (in the case of Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia) will help address the fruit fly challenge from a regional perspective. 

They are also of the view that tackling the challenge in one country alone will only make the problem a challenge in another country as fruit flies do not respect international borders and territories.  

Suppressing native fruit flies with pheromones

Pheromones, known as Host Marking Pheromones (HMP), are used by insects to mark ‘hosts’ (usually a fruit), where they have already laid their eggs. These were evaluated in Kenya for their application and efficacy in deterring fruit flies of the same or different species from laying their eggs on host fruits, such as mango and guava. The results, which are applicable to the target countries, indicate a seven to nine fold decrease in fruit infestation by three types of indigenous fruit flies in plots treated with HMP compared to controls. This information not only contributes to knowledge on the chemical ecology of fruit flies but indicates the potential for these pheromones to be incorporated within IPM fruit sprays. HMP thus widens the options for fruit fly management through integrated pest management. 

Mass rearing of parasitoids

Colonies of two parasitoid species have been boosted by the ICIPE based in Nairobi, Kenya—the third largest exporter of mangoes in Africa. The laboratory has a capacity to produce approximately 25,000 wasps per month—sufficient to supply all target countries. However, Zambia has yet to upgrade its national laboratories in order to rear and multiply the wasp species and still needs to obtain an import permit to receive the parasitoid shipments from ICIPE. Malawi and Mozambique have upgraded their facilities in readiness of receiving the parasitoids and are now awaiting processing of the import permits and required phytosanitary certificates. Parasitoids have already been shipped to Zimbabwe where project staff have started rearing insects at a small scale but aim to be able to supply farmers with 1,500 wasps per hectare.

Male Annihilation

One other technique is male annihilation. This is the mass killing of male fruit flies in an area. The males are killed in mass by setting traps containing a parapheromone which attracts the fruit flies but also contains a killing agent which exterminates them when trapped. The technique works in a way that when many male fruit flies are killed in the environment, many females lay eggs which are not fertile and consequently the population of the pests reduces over time. 

Since mango is important in these countries and fruit flies are constraining its production and utilization, the combined use of all these techniques as part of fruit fly management will enhance the incomes and nutrition of farmers, entrepreneurs and commercial growers through increased production and consumption.

What Comes Next

When asked about the possibility for extension after 2022, ICIPE postdoctoral fellow Shepard Ndlela explained that, like any other donor-funded project, the Alien invasive fruit flies project in southern Africa will come to an end next September. The governments of Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique are expected to extend activities beyond the project implementation phase.

Hundreds of extension officers have been trained in fruit fly IPM, model farmers have also trained to be a source of information including Masters and PhD students. Thousands of women also trained through gender transformative actions, he added.

“We are building the capacity of these countries so that extension officers can incorporate what has been learned into their day to day activities with farmers,” Ndlela told The Cairo Review from Nairobi. “We have made great strides in the other countries where thousands are now using the fruit fly IPM package.” 

In recent years, African leaders have come together to promote initiatives that can manage, protect, and more equitably distribute the continent’s water resources. In keeping with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015, and particularly SDG6 (which calls for universal access to water services), bodies like the African Development Bank (AFDB) and the African Union (AU) have put forward plans that aim to enhance access to water services for all Africans by investing in dams, irrigation systems, pipelines, and wastewater treatment plants. They include the AFDB’s Africa Water Vision 2025, as well as the Continental Africa Water Investment Programme adopted by the AU in February 2021. These initiatives share a common objective: to support the continent’s economic growth and development.

These African-led strategies complement existing international projects, such as the United States’ Government’s Global Waters Strategy, and Germany’s funding measure, Water as a Global Resource (GroW). For several years, these projects have supported research and capacity-building efforts in Africa that lead to diversified water supply sources, higher standards in water quality, and the adoption of more efficient irrigation technologies, among others. 

Despite such efforts, limited access to water and sanitation services remains a critical impediment to economic and social development across the continent. More than 300 million Africans lack access to clean water services and 700 million lack access to decent sanitation. If greater investments are not made in the coming years to support regional initiatives that tackle these challenges—particularly in the rural communities that host most of the growing populations—the situation will only get worse. Around 5 percent of Africa’s GDP is lost every year due to water scarcity. Key sectors that employ millions, such as agriculture and mining, are severely affected by drought. 

To turn the tide on these issues, efficient domestic institutions in African states are essential. Policy structures articulated around solid and representative institutions would strengthen local support for policies that change how water resources are allocated. For example, while institutional arrangements that promote public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been introduced throughout the continent (in part to help with cost recovery for building water infrastructure in urban centers), they hardly take into consideration the local issues that many communities face. These include high inequality, poor maintenance of existing infrastructures, and growing urban populations. It is important therefore to increase institutional sensitivity to local needs—when setting prices for water services, for example.

The Current Water Paradigm

Africa is not water scarce, per se, if one considers its resources as a whole. The continent has more than sixty-two transboundary rivers which cover 64 percent of its total land area. 

The Nile River, which is the longest on the continent and the second-longest river in the world, links the economic and social futures of eleven riparian countries (Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda). Other major river basins include the Congo, Zambezi, Okavango, Limpopo, Volta, Niger, Senegal, Orange, Komati, and Gambia, along with the basins of Lakes Victoria and Chad, which together supply water to millions of Africans. 

However, the difficult economic conditions experienced by most countries make it challenging and expensive for governments to capitalize on those resources and promote inter and intra-basin water transfer arrangements from water-rich to water-scarce regions. Optimal allocation and management of both surface and groundwater sources requires sustained financial investment. Ongoing investment is also needed to enhance the wastewater infrastructure for water recycling, desalination, and greywater treatment. Many wastewater treatment plants are not operating at full capacity and their revitalization requires sustained public and private investment efforts. Even in South Africa, the most industrialized country on the continent, 60 percent of wastewater treatment plants do not meet discharge requirements. The current level of investment in the water sector, which hovers around $9 billion per year, is far below the $23 billion needed to support the continent’s SDG-6 goals (which include all aspects of water and sanitation access). Meanwhile, the African Development Bank estimates that $64 billion is needed annually to meet the 2025 Africa Water Vision of water security for all. 

Additionally, more competition for water between different sectors (agriculture, industry, and residential) raises the price of water, which leaves many communities—often the poorest and most vulnerable—in a situation whereby women and children must walk long distances to collect water to satisfy their basic needs. In countries where true water scarcity is not an issue because there are enough rivers and lakes, difficult economic and social conditions make it hard to use and value the resources at their disposal. This is because the infrastructure and institutions needed to extract, allocate, manage, and treat water are either missing or poorly managed, which leads to a situation of economic water scarcity. Such scarcity is characterized by a state of nature where water is available but not usable due to financial, technological, human capacity, and institutional constraints. Competition over water by several sectors is then exacerbated by both climate change and population growth.

More people will require greater food production, processing, transport, and distribution. This increases the water footprint of the agricultural value chain and makes water use efficiency a prerequisite for sustainable water management. For instance, if the middle class continues to grow as it has been in recent decades, only a system that uses water efficiently will be able to meet rising demand. Projections show that, by 2030, the demand for water in Africa will quadruple, and that most of that increase is driven by population growth and the development of the agricultural, industrial, and commercial sectors. 

At the same time, climate change reduces the frequency of rainfall and leads either to drought or flood, the costs of which have been steep for several African states. Previous episodes of drought, flooding, and changing rainfall patterns and temperatures have drastically increased vulnerability across various African regions. For instance, the 2005-2006 drought in Botswana damaged nearly 73,000 hectares of cultivated cropland, resulting in tremendous economic losses and social suffering. 

An earlier drought in 1991-1992 affected more than 80,000 people, of whom  20,000 faced a serious risk of starvation. In South Africa, more recent estimates show that the agricultural sector shed 31,000 jobs in provinces severely affected by drought and temperature change in 2018 and lost approximately 7 billion rand of turnover due to weather variability. Meanwhile, drought in Zambia in 2017-2018 sent more than 2.3 million people into poverty. 

Taken together, these issues paint a complex picture of the state of water usage in Africa. It comes as no surprise, then, that tensions surrounding its use often run high. One high-profile example, which has escalated to the point of crisis in recent years, is the conflict between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia over construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). 

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam

According to Ethiopian government officials, the GERD (located on the Blue Nile—a tributary of the Nile River—on Ethiopia’s western border) was built to help address the country’s problems with energy production and socio-economic development. It is expected to help reduce poverty and promote a massive youth employment program. Today, the country relies heavily on biomass energy sources and more than 60 million people lack access to electricity. The hydroelectric power expected from the GERD project should help the country reach its long-term development and structural transformation goals. The GERD is planned to become the largest hydropower project in Africa, and its cost, estimated at $5-6 billion, is financed by government bonds and private donations. Officials from downstream neighboring countries, namely Egypt and Sudan, however, are deeply skeptical of the project.  

More than 90 percent of the freshwater consumed in Egypt comes from the Nile river. According to Egyptian officials, the GERD represents an existential threat, as it could affect not only the amount of water the country has to draw upon, but also the output of the 2.1 GW High Aswan Dam, which provides electricity to many sectors in the country. Egypt’s economy and social stability would also be put at risk if less water becomes available to its farmers and the hydroelectricity sector once flows are controlled from the GERD.

Egypt claims that the dam’s construction does not abide by previous agreements which guaranteed Egypt the right to 55.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Nile water per year and Sudan 18.5 bcm per year (agreements which were signed, however, without Ethiopia’s participation). Similar concerns are expressed by Sudan regarding the potential impact of the GERD on the efficiency of its 280 MW Roseries Dam. Although Sudan initially supported the GERD project, the change in the country’s political landscape with the military coup of Al-Bashir has modified Sudanese discourse toward the GERD.  

Interventions in January led by former U.S Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin failed to produce an agreement. Meanwhile, concerns expressed by Egypt and Sudan have been exacerbated by Ethiopia’s recent decision to begin a second year of filling the GERD reservoir in July and August 2021. President Biden’s administration said in February that it would review policy on the GERD and look to renew U.S. efforts to mediate the long-running dispute. 

As of this writing, the countries are set to bring their negotiations before the UN Security Council. However, the council has expressed doubts that there is much it can do other than encourage the parties to keep negotiating. In truth, there are now monitoring technologies available that could address many of the problems raised by the riparian states (such as the management of flow during droughts). According to the UN’s Under Secretary General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary A. DiCarlo, the remaining issues should be surmountable. 

This case study shows that in Africa, as anywhere else in the world, water issues cannot be addressed in isolation. Water is linked to many other natural resources, such as energy, land, forestry, and mining, which all affect human livelihoods and support economic development, peace and security. This means that any action taken in the water sector will subsequently affect other non-water sectors and produce some positive or negative external effects. 

These effects can be direct and indirect, short-term or even long-term. Even absent the kind of international implications seen in the GERD case, the decision to build new dams will affect the energy sector, and help regulate the volume of water needed for irrigation purposes and other water-dependent productive sectors. Nonetheless, it may negatively affect the livelihoods of local populations and the ecosystem. Thus, investment options that aim at addressing water scarcity and water planning and management must take into consideration these external effects. 

A More Comprehensive, Inclusive, and Transparent Water Agenda

To cope with this complexity, policymakers must hone in on the specificities of each situation as they address it, bearing in mind the spatial and socio-economic differences between Africa’s regions. What works in West Africa might not necessarily work in East or Southern Africa. The institutional features, governance structures and geopolitical situations of each region should be taken into consideration when drafting water policies. 

One way to do this and address a number of problems at once is to seek local participation and buy-in from the populations affected by water problems and policies. For example, one set of problems associated with water scarcity is the nexus between water, health, and poverty. Poor people tend to consume less water because they live in remote, often rural areas. Bringing piped water to these communities is often costly because of the low density of the population, which in turn tends to affect water prices and infrastructure planning. Poor cost recovery makes it even harder to expand the water service coverage to remote areas. 

As a result, most rural dwellers end up exclusively using untreated underground water sources. This exposes those resources to depletion because little control is applied to usage and no one knows exactly how the extracted underground water is being utilized (so it is hard to regulate). The little amount of piped water available to rural dwellers is often also not of good quality. This exposes rural populations to water-borne diseases and higher mortality rates. The most affected are often children and women since they are, unfortunately, the most vulnerable. This is because, in rural areas, women have limited economic opportunities, given their low level of education and income, which in turn affects their children’s livelihoods. 

One way to address this is by promoting inclusive and decentralized water management approaches, which involve the local communities and several stakeholders in the planning and design of water policies. The resulting implications of such a comprehensive and inclusive water management approach allow policy-makers to establish trust and spur ownership of policies within the communities they serve. This helps build transparency in how public policies are implemented and supports initiatives that aim at strengthening local expertise. 

Such an approach creates communities that know how to maintain their own water infrastructures. This bottom-up management approach not only ensures better resource management and planning (because the people who know their own needs best are involved), but also helps mitigate any potential tensions associated with water allocation that might emerge between communities. Finally, it promotes a holistic view and concerted effort across sectors and institutions.

A Way Forward 

Despite all of the challenges highlighted above, the African continent has most of what is needed to plan and manage its waters efficiently and cost-effectively. However, it requires a paradigm shift wherein water policies are designed inclusively and transparently, involving various stakeholders operating in the water allocation chain.

The shared vision of creating an Africa where there is an equitable and sustainable use and management of water resources, socio-economic development, and regional cooperation—as highlighted in the Africa Water Vision for 2025—can only be truly realized if new methods are implemented by regional and continental organizations. This requires, however, regional collaborations in the water sector where national agendas are supplemented by regional ones, given the transboundary nature of this resource. More financial support could be given to institutions such as the Southern and the Western Africa Technical Advisory Teams, to enable them to develop regional water management visions. This is exactly what the Africa Water Vision is about: leveraging Africa’s internal expertise to promote sustainable water resources management. 

The objective of such African-led water management initiatives is the creation of a water governance system that is holistic, representative of  African realities, and takes into consideration the constraints and opportunities present on the ground. The integrated water resources management approach—often advocated by international institutions—should be reinvigorated to avoid a one-size-fits-all policy agenda that is imported and implemented without taking into consideration the domestic socio-economic, environmental and institutional context.  

For instance, more emphasis should be given to policies that promote demand-side management (DSM) and diversification of the water supply and that are gender-sensitive and more oriented toward rural and peri-urban centers where most of the African population lives. Investment  in new irrigation technologies and adjustment of water taxes are good examples of such DSM, especially given the rising challenges of climate change and population growth. 

From the supply side, widespread dissemination of low-cost and easy-to-maintain technologies can help to optimize the use of groundwater and promote recycling of wastewater for non-drinking purposes. With such an approach, we can expect Africa to leave behind inefficiency, and achieve a true paradigm shift in the way water resources are managed on the continent.

Though it lasted a mere eleven days, the battle in Gaza and across Palestine managed to dislodge an iceberg worth of support Israel had built up in the preceding decades. We are witnessing a transition that has radically shifted Israel’s relations in the region and beyond.

Not only did the world watch in horror as the highrises of Gaza fell and thousands of civilians lost their homes while hundreds more died; but relations between Israel and its Palestinian citizens suffered an irreparable fracture. The inter-ethnic violence raged in a way never before seen. The Gaza battle also renewed a sense of solidarity between Israeli Palestinians and their brothers and sisters in the West Bank and Gaza.

Relations between Israel and the United States have also begun a fundamental realignment. Despite the power of the U.S. Israel Lobby to control the domestic debate and promote a pro-Israel narrative, new voices of opposition have become emboldened. In fact, the progressive Democratic caucus played a critical role in rallying opposition to the Israeli assault. A short, but critical meeting between U.S. president Joseph Biden and Muslim-American House member Rashida Tlaib on an airport tarmac moved Biden to demand that Israel agree to a ceasefire. Not since the days of the first George Bush administration has a president been willing to force Israel’s hand in this manner.

Unlike in past Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, in which both parties shared blame, this time the fault clearly lay with Israel. It provoked the incidents that eventualy built up to full-scale combat by harassing and then violently assaulting Muslim worshippers at the holy Al Aqsa mosque during the month of Ramadan.

Saving Bibi

The Israeli government’s assault was motivated by purely cynical political reasons: to save Netanyahu’s career. The day after his political rivals had sealed an agreement to form a new government which would have excluded him, Netanyahu commenced the bombing. He knew the anti-Netanyahu coalition, containing factions from the far-right to the left, could not remain united in face of war. He was right. The key far-right leader, Naftali Bennett, announced he could not join in the midst of hostilities. In addition, the Islamist Party, Raam, which would have joined the coalition for the first time in Israeli history, also could not do so as long as there were anti-Palestinian pogroms on the streets of Israeli towns. 

Moreover, Netanyahu is also in the midst of a major corruption trial. If he is found guilty, he would go to prison and forfeit his role as prime minister. He knew that no court would convict him as long as the country was at war. As long as he remained the country’s leader, his apparent logic was that he might devise a legislative or legal stratagem to avoid punishment.

Thus, this war had no strategic or defensive purpose. It was a war to protect Netanyahu’s personal interests and political power. The cynicism of this charade has  not been lost on the world nor  even on Israelis themselves.

Before the bombing began in Gaza, Netanyahu had tried and failed to form a new coalition which he planned to lead. The mandate had then fallen to his rival, Yair Lapid. The only way to frustrate Lapid’s attempt, which almost succeeded at that time, was to provoke the attack.

Though Netanyhau’s tactic worked in the short term, it ultimately failed. In the weeks since the ceasefire, Lapid has cobbled together a new government. Lapid’s coalition will remove the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history. So, the soon-to-be ex-prime minister’s war on Gaza was a corrupt, ultimately failed effort to maintain power; at the expense of 265 Palestinian lives, among them 67 children. 

The world saw this stratagem for the deal with the devil that it was. As a result, Israel lost whatever moral high ground it had ever enjoyed and was left exposed as a nation engaged in war crimes against an essentially defenseless civilian population.

The War at Home

For the first time in Israel’s history of Palestinian conflict, the hostilities began not with events in Gaza, but with domestic turmoil at home. As a result of the naked assault by Israeli Border Police on Haram al Sharif, Israeli Palestinian communities throughout the country rose up in anger. They rioted, assaulted Israeli Jews, burned a Lod synagogue, and trashed Jewish businesses.

In response, Jewish vigilantes led by extremist settlers flooded into these towns to confront the Israeli Palestinians. These vigilante groups hunted Palestinians down, looted Palestinian businesses, threw firebombs into family homes, and beat victims senseless in the streets as police stood by. In one incident, they even beat a man they believed to be Palestinian with poles draped in Israeli flags. This pole attack was made darkly ironic when the media later learned that the victim was a Mizrahi Jew. 

In these Arab-majority quarters, the residents retreated to their homes, locked their doors, and tried to wait out the terror that ensued. 

Not since the Nakba had Palestinian citizens of Israel feared for  their lives from the onslaught of their Jewish neighbors. Of course, they had suffered their second class status within the majority-Jewish state largely in silence. During previous Israeli invasions of Gaza, they maintained a studied neutrality. They dared not express their feelings of solidarity publicly, if they had them, for fear of disturbing the tenuous inter-ethnic compact that permitted them to exist as a tolerated minority.

But the thuggish police attack on the Muslim holy site was one bridge too far for Israeli Palestinians. The young people especially chafed at the compromises their elders had endured. The Israeli Palestinian community decided enough was enough and the only way to assert their rights was to take matters into their own hands. That’s what drove them into the streets, where they struck a fatal blow to the internal Jewish-Palestinian social compact.

Palestinian Solidarity

For the first time, Hamas determined to act in solidarity with its Palestinian brothers and sisters under attack inside Israel. When Hamas supporters saw Israeli police invade and defile Al Aqsa, they could not stand back and watch. Hamas demanded that Israel withdraw from the Haram al Sharif. When the Israeli government ignored the warning, the militant group began firing missiles into Israel.

The volleys of Hamas rockets then brought a fearsome Israeli response. But unlike in the past, when Gaza fought Israel virtually alone, this time Palestinians on the West Bank rallied to support them. Israeli troops responded with live ammunition across the West Bank and nearly 30 Palestinians died there as a result.

Jordanians too rallied at the Allenby Bridge crossing into the West Bank to support their Palestinian brothers. Rockets were even fired from southern Lebanon and Syria, though they did little damage. All this offers a sobering reminder to Israel that in the future it may have to fight wars on multiple fronts.

Hamas came out of the fight victorious both among Palestinians and the world at large. The Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, stood by as a distant spectator. It was politically irrelevant. A neutered bystander.

Though Netanyahu and Israel’s supporters—including initially US President Biden—attempted to paint the Israeli assault as “defending Israel” from Hamas missiles, no one was buying it. Hundreds of thousands protested (150,000 in a single event in London) in major cities throughout the globe. There were similar demonstrations in many American cities. Nor were these ordinary events with a handful of Palestinian supporters. The rallies brought outraged citizens in their thousands who’d had enough of the slaughter they were watching nightly on TV news and social media. 

The Shift: America’s Unprecedented Response

In the beginning, President Biden dutifully sided with Israel. He and his secretary of state expressed solidarity with Israelis cowering in bomb shelters. They barely mentioned Palestinians and were silent on the havoc wrought on Gaza. 

Yet, the toppling of the media office tower, housing 20 foreign media outlets, was a turning point. It was something like the 9/11 moment of this war. After this, nothing was the same. The world could no longer avert its eyes. 

As the tide of US public opinion turned, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party awakened. 

It began to demand a ceasefire. But still the president remained passive. As a result, the Democrats intensified their campaign by calling for restriction on U.S. aid to Israel. It was an unprecedented break from previous domestic politics, by which American military aid was sacrosanct. Anyone calling for such a radical approach was labeled an enemy of Israel and considered a political persona non grata. 

This is the setting for the fateful meeting Biden held for a brief eight minutes on the airport tarmac in Detroit, where he’d flown to showcase the new Ford electric pickup truck. In that short time, Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her colleague Debbie Dingell impressed upon the president the urgency of the disaster facing Gaza. 

Within a day Biden had shifted his position. He announced that he expected a marked de-escalation of fighting within two days. Behind the scenes, Biden and Secretary of State Blinken exerted enormous pressure on a reluctant Netanyahu to call a halt to the fighting. By the end of the two days, Israel had agreed to the Ceasefire. On the Palestinian side, Egyptian mediators had secured a similar commitment from Hamas—though in truth, the Palestinians had offered such a deal within the first few days of fighting which Israel had earlier turned down. 

The Changing American View of the Conflict

As a result of successfully lobbying Biden, the Democratic left has found its voice. Though the US Israel Lobby remains powerful in American politics, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party now understands that it has power that cannot be denied. Support for Israel in public opinion polls has declined dramatically; while support for Palestine has increased. 

No longer can the Lobby cow dissenting voices into submission. An example of this is Muslim-American Rep. Ilhan Omar’s tough questioning of Secretary Blinken before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She pointedly asked the secretary if the United States refuses to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to adjudicate Israeli-Palestinian war crimes, where could Palestinians look for justice.  He replied lamely, that they could look to Israel.

In fact, the ICC has opened a war crimes investigation of Israel and Hamas for the events of Operation Protective Edge and the Great March of Return. This could lead to charges being filed and a trial of Israeli and Palestinian military and political leaders for their culpability. 

In response to Blinken’s response, Omar countered, “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.” 

Democratic Jewish House members, prompted by Aipac, immediately pounced, claiming Omar had likened “democratic Israel” to “terror groups” like Hamas. They further insinuated that her statement was anti-Semitic. The stage was set for yet another assault on progressive Democrats for their sympathy toward Palestinian human rights. Yet, that’s not what happened. Omar’s fellow left Democrats came to her defense and cast scorn on the claims of the Pro-Israel wing of the Democratic Party. 

Fifty progressive groups released a statement of support for Omar, which ridiculed the claims against her and warned Omar’s opponents that their attacks threatened to split and weaken the Party. 

Instead of holding an emergency caucus meeting and demanding that Omar renounce her views, Speaker Pelosi made do with a statement of concern. The Democrats who had attacked Omar beat a retreat of sorts by accepting her “clarification” of her remarks. And they all returned to the job they were elected to do; that is, to bring the economy out of the COVID pandemic. 

America’s Flawed Gaza Response

President Biden determined early in his term that he could not solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue. As vice-president in the Obama administration, he saw the intensive efforts both President Barack Obama and Obama’s secretary of State, John Kerry, exerted to achieve a peace deal. Years of effort ended in failure due to Netanyahu’s refusal to concede a Palestinian state.

As President, Biden knew there was little he could do to overcome Israeli intransigence. Thus, he resolved to put the Israeli/Palestinian conflict on the back burner and deal with more pressing American foreign policy issues like Russia and China.

The Gaza attack upset this calculation. So once he’d succeeded in securing a ceasefire, Biden felt he had to show good faith by offering a helping hand to the devastated enclave. However, the path he has chosen shows that the president remains mired in the tired approach of the past.

The US-Egyptian-brokered ceasefire has not resolved any of the outstanding issues between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Israel continues to refuse to lift its siege of Gaza. It refuses to recognize Hamas as a legitimate partner for negotiation. It demands the release of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in 2014, without offering to release Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Knowing this, Biden appears to have determined, as had Bush II and Trump before him, to address the conflict as a humanitarian, rather than political crisis. 

In the weeks following the Ceasefire, he has promised billions in aid to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed by Israeli bombs. But he has not dealt with the critical issue, which is granting Palestinians political power to control their own lives. 

Unfortunately, Biden has not determined a mechanism by which the U.S. aid will reach Gaza. Since the United States has designated Hamas as a terror organization, the United States cannot transfer aid directly to the enclave. So, the US government has decided that the proper intermediary is the Palestinian Authority (PA). However, the PA can’t even speak to Hamas without having Egypt act as an interlocutor. 

Relations are so bad between the PA and Hamas that Abbas cancelled the first election since 2006 because he was guaranteed to lose. It remains hard to see how US aid will get to Gaza given this level of dysfunction from the Palestinian side. 

Furthermore, all aid will have to pass through Israeli checkpoints, which serve as bottlenecks preventing Palestinians from leaving the enclave and aid from entering. Most of the time these checkpoints are closed. The few times they are open, Israel exercises oversight, and unilaterally determines which items may enter and which are prohibited. This seems to be a recipe for failure of any large-scale program of reconstruction.

When Secretary Blinken traveled to the region for meetings in Palestine, Jordan and Egypt, he didn’t bother to travel to Gaza, since the United States considers Hamas a terror group. Instead, he confined his visit to the PA’s headquarters in Ramallah which, during the attacks of May, never suffered from a single Israel missile strike.

The War on Social Media and in the American Mainstream Media

While the political battle over how the United States addresses Gaza and the greater Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues the play out, the battle for hearts and minds has been writ large on social media platforms. 

As recently as 2016, Israel held the upper hand there as well. Executives from Facebook and Google met with Israeli ministers who boasted that the companies had agreed to censor anti-Israel content. 

Though the executives responded by rejecting the Israeli characterization of the meetings, the effect was clear in the censorship of pro-Palestine content, and deletion of accounts of Palestinian journalists and media outlets. The platforms also generally acceded to demands from the official Israeli cyber-agency to take down content offensive to Israel.

However, during the war, the overwhelming tone of posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter was harshly critical of Israel. Israelis, who usually responded with vigorous defense of their country, were hard to find.

In May, over 50 human rights groups launched a “Facebook: We Need to Talk” campaign decrying its censorship of Palestinian content during the war. In a separate effort, thousands of employees of Amazon, Google and Apple urged their chief executives to stand with Palestine. Some of the employee groups were explicitly formed by Jews aghast at the carnage. Never before have these executives faced this sort of lobbying from within their own companies.

The impact of the Black Lives Matter movement on public opinion in the  United States has also played a critical role in promoting solidarity with Palestine. It has forced Americans to examine assumptions they had long held concerning white privilege and anti-Black racism, and has also increased sensitivity to human rights, which in turn has elicited sympathy for Palestinians.

Last month, 500 Biden staff and campaign alumni released a statement urging the president to hold Israel accountable and lift the siege of Gaza. Biden has never been associated with the progressive wing of the Party and thus, the mainstream credentials of the signers show that support for Palestine has become normalized among Democrats.

Meanwhile in legacy media sources proceeding the Gaza assault, journalists obeyed rigid but largely unspoken rules in its coverage. 

Reporters for major media outlets like the Canadian Broadcasting Company and Associated Press could not use the term “Palestine” in their coverage. The vast majority of op-eds in mainstream media were penned either by Israelis or think tank analysts like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) friendly to the Lobby. 

In all the New York Times’ op-eds on Israel-Palestine over a twenty-year period, only 2% percent were written by Palestinians. It generally buried the perspective of Palestinians in its pages. Last month, the AP also fired a young Jewish reporter because she had been a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine during her student days.

When Israel bombed the AP offices in Gaza, it blew up this previous consensus. Editors are now managing to find Palestinian voices in their reports and op-ed section. Use of the terms “racism,” “war crimes,” “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacy” in Israel-Palestine reporting has become normalized. 

Jewish Voice for Peace announced a campaign for media platforms to adopt fair, transparent, unbiased editorial standards for covering Palestine. Another extraordinary shift involved both Haaretz and the New York Times featuring images of the 67 Palestinian children Israel killed on their front pages. Never before has Palestinian suffering been so prominently acknowledged.

The Battlefield of Language

Both sides in the conflict have expended a great deal of energy over many years defining words and terms to shape a favorable narrative. For example, Israel laid claim to being a western country that was both a “Jewish and democratic state.” The Israeli narrative has proclaimed that its wars are always defensive, fought to protect its citizens sheltering in air raid shelters, and its enemies were Islamist terrorists seeking global domination. Hamas was, as the narrative went, a terrorist group using civilians as human shields, as it fired rockets at a civilian population.

There were also words used to decribe Israel which the Israeli narrative held to be taboo like apartheid, genocide and phrases like from the river to the sea (i.e. from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean). Israel’s supporters claimed that terms which likened Israel to Nazi Germany were anti-Semitic. However, now this consensus among Israel supporters too has deteriorated.

In recent months, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem issued scathing reports labeling Israel as an apartheid state. They marked a watershed, because previously Israeli human rights groups focused on the Occupation, something external to Israel, as its primary violation of international law. These new findings determined that the Israeli state itself, along with its Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, was racist and founded on Jewish supremacy. The human rights NGOs cite 50 Israeli laws which discriminate against Israeli Palestinians citizens, along with recent legislation like the Nation State Law, as proof that the regime of apartheid extends throughout the Occupied Territories and within the State itself.

 Though likening Israeli mass attacks on Palestinians to genocide remains controversial, increasingly activists are arguing that Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on civilians; mass arrests of children; the criminalization of Palestinian arts, culture and media; and the ongoing theft of Palestinian lands, meets the legal definition of genocide as determined by the UN charter.

In the early years of the Palestinian national movement, it coined the term “from the river to the sea” to indicate its goal of a single Palestinian state in all of “occupied Palestine,” including Israel itself. Israelis perceived such maximalist slogans to mean Palestinians sought to eradicate Israel and expel its Jewish citizens.

But the recent worldwide protests against the violence in Gaza offered the same slogan, but in a different context. Most Palestinians no longer use the term to indicate the elimination of Israel or its Jewish population. Instead, it has come to embrace a vision of a single democratic state of Jews and Palestinians.

Another phrase has long been an Israeli mantra: it is a “Jewish and democratic” state, as portrayed in its 1948 Declaration of Independence. However, this is hopelessly tarnished by the country’s increasing turn toward racism, fascism and Jewish supremacy. 

The Nation State law passed by the Knesset in 2018, declared that Judaism was the only official religion. The state was by and for Jews. Non-Jewish citizens were tolerated, but not officially recognized. Also, Israel’s increasing turn to religious extremism reinforced the notion that Israel was no longer a democracy, but rather a theocracy.

The tragic events of May’s Gaza conflict have accelerated a process of decline of Israel’s moral-political standing in the world. They have also aroused unprecedented opposition within US political circles. These developments will, in the long term, lead toward a more just one-state solution offering Israeli Jews and Palestinians a democratic state for all its citizens. 

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, some African countries have recorded relatively low rates of infections and related deaths. With a population of over one billion, the continent has registered 4.5 million cases of the virus, amounting to 3.08 percent of global infections. The number of recorded deaths stands at roughly 120,000; compared with 1 million in Europe; 506,000 in Asia; and 1.6 million in the Americas, making the African case-fatality ratio (CFR) significantly lower than the global CFR. 

This contrast can be attributed both to the international community’s lack of cooperation in the face of the global health crisis, and to the African Union’s prompt show of initiative and multilateral response. 

Challenges to multilateral cooperation

For years now, a number of ongoing challenges have hindered multilateral cooperation in the international sphere. Chief among these apocalyptic threats to the international community, as outlined by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, are growing geopolitical tensions among global powers, climate change, growing inequality within and among states; and the downsides of technological innovation, epitomized in automated weapons and warfare. The reverberations of these challenges were strongly felt in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, when the lack of cohesion between different bodies of international governance led to a belated and arguably insufficient response. 

Speaking at the 2021 Aswan Forum Strategic Dialogue, Former Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs and member of the African Union Panel of the Wise Amre Moussa denounced the United Nations’ inaction in the early stages of the pandemic, saying, “In the initial months, the United Nations seemed to be unable to act or to react”. 

Indeed, while the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020; it was not until July 1 that the UN Security Council took action in the form  of UNSC resolution 2532, calling for a global ceasefire to direct attention to combatting the deadly virus. By then, the global number of confirmed cases had reached 10.3 million, and projections for global economic growth had fallen 6.5 percentage points below the pre-covid projections of January 2020. 

Brazilian ambassador to Egypt Antonio Patriota also touched upon these issues at the Strategic Dialogue. Echoing Moussa’s remarks, he denounced the global trend towards isolationism and called for a stronger and more inclusive multilateralism, saying “I believe that no country, no region, can single-handedly deal with the dimension of the public health and economic crisis we are facing; that in itself is an incentive for a renewed, reinvigorated multilateralism, or networked multilateralism”.

Yet, as he soundly noted, the UN Security Council may not be the institution best equipped to deal with the present crisis. The UNSC is charged with authorizing peacekeeping operations; but more prominently serves as the primary body for authorizing coercive action in the form of sanctions or military intervention -neither of which are of use in the face of a global pandemic. As such, the international community may look to other bodies of governance to take the lead in shaping the path towards recovery. 

African leadership

While international mechanisms may have fallen short of expectations, since the onset of the pandemic, African states at large have demonstrated exceptional crisis-management ability and regional cooperation. The African Union was among the first regional organizations to take action in the advent of the novel coronavirus. As early as February 24, 2020, representatives of member states met in Addis Ababa to devise a continent-wide strategy to curb the spread of infections and recover African economies from the virus’ ramifications. 

This exceptional show of initiative and leadership reflects Africa’s growing role on the global stage. Since the United Nations’ inception, African states have largely been relegated to the margins of the international system: there are no permanent African members in the UNSC composition, and the continent has historically stood on the fringes of global financial institutions. That said, the tide has slowly begun to shift in Africa’s favor, with African citizens increasingly taking on leadership positions within these institutions; these include but are not limited to the World Trade Organization, the International Finance Corporation, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. 

Most recently, under the leadership of the Ethiopian Dr. Tedros Adhanom, the World Health Organization has worked to provide more equitable vaccine distribution to the world’s less affluent regions through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX). In Moussa’s view, these efforts could be further strengthened by the establishment of an African Health Organization, “not as a challenge to, or separate from the World Health Organization, but in cooperation with that organization and with other bodies of the African Union.” 

What these various successes have shown is that, in Patriota’s words, there can be a future “where Africa will not be resigned to a diminished role in shaping a reinvigorated, more networked and hopefully more efficient multilateralism.”

Paving the way forward

Strong initiatives and multilateral cooperation have served to spare African nations from the staggering rates of COVID-19 infections and related deaths witnessed in other parts of the world. Nonetheless, the virus has deeply exacerbated pre-existing socio economic challenges and hindered ongoing peacekeeping and development efforts across the continent. Travel restrictions have placed significant strain on global supply chains and the tourism sector, launching the Sub-Saharan region into its first recession in over twenty-five years. Meanwhile, North African countries have been especially hard-hit by fluctuations in oil prices, according to the Cairo International Center for Conflict Resolution, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding (CCCPA). 

Rebuilding African economies and setting the continent back on its developmental track, in line with the African Union’s Agenda 2063, will be no easy feat. But as the various panels of the Aswan Forum for Sustainable Peace and Development have demonstrated, there are concrete steps to be taken towards a more united and equitable African future. 

First among these steps is granting African bodies of governance greater emphasis in international decision-making processes. Over the past decade, the AU Peace and Security Council and its sub-regional organizations have made important strides in conflict prevention, management, resolution and post-conflict reconstruction across the continent. 

Building on these achievements, Moussa suggested greater and more even-handed cooperation between the UN Security council and its African counterpart, saying, “we need to elevate the AU Peace and Security Council into a truly relevant council; one not only focused on African affairs but on international affairs.” 

A second issue of pivotal importance in the African and international spheres is climate change, which has only recently come to be recognized as a leading environmental and humanitarian issue. Across the African continent, global warming has been among the lead causes of water scarcity, food insecurity, and lack of access to sanitation; and has had devastating socio-economic and health impacts on marginalized communities. In light of these growing challenges, the Aswan Forum dedicated a panel to the subject of Climate, Security, and Development; with a focus on how policymakers can more effectively assess and respond to climate-security risks. 

A key step forward, noted Moussa, is devising a continent-wide response to the challenges wrought by global warming. “As I suggested an African Health Organization, I do suggest that we have to meet in a Pan-African conference on the issue of climate change,” he proposed. 

A third developmental objective which figures at the forefront of the Agenda 2063 is the empowerment of women. Across the African continent, a number of national and international mechanisms have been established in recent years to promote gender-inclusive policy. A notable example would be the Network of African Women in Conflict Prevention and Mediation, or FemWise-Africa, which is a subsidiary of the AU Panel of the Wise, established in 2017 to strengthen the role of women in conflict prevention and resolution. 

This year’s edition of the Aswan Forum brought light to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on African women living in conflict zones. In light of the twentieth anniversary of UNSC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, one panel invited policy makers and civil society representatives to reflect on persisting challenges to the resolution’s implementation, and what national leaders can do to devise gender-inclusive policy in both conflict and post-conflict settings. 

A fourth pillar of the Agenda 2063 is strengthening Africa’s engagement with the rest of the world and positioning the continent as a dominant player in the global arena. This objective figures at the forefront of the Aswan Forum Strategic Dialogue, during which Patriota applauded Egypt’s Chairmanship of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, noting that “[the commission] already tries to implement something that the Aswan Forum has been highlighting: the continuum between peace and development and the emphasis on prevention.”

Patriota further spoke of the historical and ever-growing ties between Brazil and the African continent as a notable example of Africa’s engagement in the multilateral system. “Brazil feels very close to Africa for historic reasons. It is the country with the largest diaspora of Africans in the world and the Latin American country with the largest number of embassies in Africa,” he said, adding that “there is a scope for Brazil to engage more actively, bilaterally, with the African Union and through African institutions.”

The Mercosur Free Trade Area’s free trade agreement with Egypt, he noted, is a testament to the strength of diplomatic relations between the two regions, and could serve as a blueprint for closer ties between Latin America and the newly enforced Continental Free Trade Area in Africa (CFTA). 

In Moussa’s view, one way to enhance Africa’s vocal participation in the multilateral system is to hold more intranational dialogues like those allowed by the Aswan Forum. “I hope that we should not have to wait for the same month next year to see the activities of the Aswan Forum,” he said. To this end, he suggested a monthly meeting of experts and diplomats to discuss policy solutions and strategies to deal with the ever-changing dynamics of African and global geopolitics. 

Patriota reinforced this point, before restating the importance of multilateral cooperation in an increasingly complex international system. 

“One vision for the future that we could have is a multiple world that is post-hegemonic, where we cooperate internationally, across regions to enhance the frameworks that we have for improving the lives of our societies; without falling into big power tensions or rivalries for hegemonic control of resources, nations, or the future of different parts of the world. This is my final thought: a post-hegemonic, multipolar world of enhanced cooperation,” he concluded.