Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: U.S. President Donald Trump’s Africa policy comes into focus, Nigeria becomes a BRICS partner, and a South African musician speaks truth to power.
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Frelimo Forms Cabinet as Opposition Threatens to Paralyze Country
Mozambique’s new president, Daniel Chapo of the ruling Frelimo party, appointed 12 cabinet ministers on Friday amid ongoing protests over alleged election rigging. At least 308 people have been killed since protests began on Oct. 21, according to election-monitoring group Plataforma Decide.
The Frelimo party has been in power for 50 years—ever since the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975—but young Mozambicans born after the colonial era want to rid the country of a party tainted by graft scandals. It’s part of a trend seen nearby in South Africa, Angola, and Botswana—in which young Africans have turned away from liberation movements due to corruption and poor governance.
The 48-year-old Chapo reportedly received 65 percent of the vote in the Oct. 9 election, according to the country’s election commission. But 51-year-old anti-establishment opposition candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who officially received 24 percent, said that he had won the ballot and that Mozambique’s electoral authorities manipulated the results. European Union election observers noted the “unjustified alteration” of votes.
Poverty and unemployment remain high while an armed insurgency persists in the north of the country. Total public sector debt has risen to nearly 94 percent of gross domestic product. Chapo vowed to tackle those issues and protect democracy and human rights. Importantly, he is the first president of Mozambique who did not fight in the war of independence. But his cabinet nominees—essentially reshuffled long-term government employees—did little to suggest that the party will reform.
Chapo appointed Maria Benvinda Levi as the second female prime minister since Mozambique’s independence. Levi once served as the justice minister and as a judge. Carla Louveira became finance minister—she was previously the deputy minister of economy and finance. And Estevão Pale, who once held the role of national director of mines, was appointed as the mineral resources and energy minister.
Demonstrations and police violence continued during Chapo’s inauguration on Jan. 15, which many African leaders avoided; neighboring South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was one of the few heads of state who attended the ceremony. Meanwhile, as parliament officially opened, civilians continued to pour into neighboring Malawi, fleeing the ongoing violence. Malawi is hosting an influx of more than 13,000 Mozambicans at a time when the country is experiencing food shortages from drought.
Mondlane returned to Mozambique on Thursday after more than two months of self-imposed exile following the killing of his lawyer, a senior member of his party, in a shooting on Oct. 19. He has urged supporters to continue demonstrating. “We’ll protest every single day. If it means paralyzing the country for the entire term, we will paralyze it for the entire term,” he said.
Chapo faces the challenge of reducing the massive national debt that his party helped create in one of the biggest corruption scandals in Africa. In 2022, Ndambi Guebuza, the son of former Mozambican President Armando Guebuza—along with 10 other former state officials, including ex-Finance Minister Manuel Chang—were sentenced for their role in a $2.2 billion debt scandal.
The convictions related to loans that Swiss company Credit Suisse arranged for the country between 2012 and 2016—ostensibly for government-sponsored projects including maritime security and a state tuna fishery. However, Mozambican contractors were later found to have secretly arranged what a U.K.-based bank regulator called “significant kickbacks” worth at least $137 million, including $50 million for bankers at Credit Suisse.
The scheme is estimated to have cost around $11 billion to Mozambique’s economy—the equivalent of its entire GDP in 2016, according to a 2019 study. The scandal was only discovered after the Mozambican government defaulted on debt payments. One of Chapo’s predecessors, former President Filipe Nyusi, was also implicated.
Adding to its economic woes, Mozambique has lost about 42 billion meticais ($658 million) of revenues in post-election unrest, according to Louveira, the new finance minister. That and the impact of two devastating cyclones drove down the country’s economic growth last year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Mozambique is seeking an extension of its IMF loan program, and negotiations are uncertain. The IMF said in December that discussions with Mozambican authorities would resume once a “new government is in place.”
But Young Mozambicans are determined not to let the party cling to power. This has made for a tumultuous few months in a country rich in mineral resources and fighting an Islamic State-linked insurgency, which Russia’s Wagner Group has failed to quash. Protests may fizzle out but will likely reemerge, as they did in many African nations last year, prompting fresh instability.
Wednesday, Jan. 20, to Friday, Jan. 24: The World Economic Forum continues in Davos, attended by 40 African officials—including the presidents of Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, and South Africa.
Saturday, Jan. 25: The 14th anniversary of the start of the Egyptian revolution, which led to the resignation of former President Hosni Mubarak.
How Trump impacts Africa. U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order to initiate the United States’ withdrawal from the World Health Organization weakens global surveillance of Ebola and mPox pathogens.
His pledge to ramp up oil exports would plunge prices and exacerbate stubbornly high inflation in oil-reliant countries such as Nigeria and Angola, where Washington is attempting to gain influence.
Africa is expected to warm faster than the global average, and another of Trump’s initial orders—a second U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement—will hurt African nations yet brings opportunity for fossil fuels investment in African electricity. As Vijaya Ramachandran and Ted Nordhaus argue in Foreign Policy, “it is up to poor countries to seize the moment and return to their own priorities with investments in energy, agriculture, infrastructure, and jobs.”
Marco Rubio’s confirmation hearing last Wednesday, before he was confirmed in a vote on Monday as the U.S. secretary of state, gave further indications about Washington’s priorities for Africa under Trump. As expected, Rubio spent his hearing pointing to competition against China and Russia over critical minerals in West Africa alongside goals such as boosting the Abraham Accords within North Africa. Rubio also said he wanted greater engagement with Morocco, where the United States recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in exchange for Rabat normalizing relations with Israel in an agreement made during Trump’s first term.
Republicans have also framed the debate on recognizing Somaliland’s sovereignty as a way to enhance U.S. security against China. They argue that establishing a military base in Somaliland would provide Washington with a buffer for its largest African military base, located in nearby Djibouti, where China also has a base and runs the port.
But Somaliland independence risks becoming a Republican Party policy that could be rolled back by a future Democratic administration. It could also provide several emerging powers with opportunities for stronger alliances in the Horn of Africa.
Overall, Trump’s proposed policies to exert U.S. supremacy over global trade “would embolden other powers to pursue expansionist agendas, potentially destabilising global politics and leading to a new era of great power competition. No African country is prepared for this,” warned Nigerian risk analysis firm SBM Intelligence this week.
Atrocities rise in Sudan. The United States has announced sanctions against Sudanese military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan for accusations of the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, extrajudicial killings, and starvation as a weapon of war. “Burhan’s SAF has committed lethal attacks on civilians, including airstrikes against protected infrastructure including schools, markets, and hospitals,” the Treasury Department said.
Burhan remained defiant. “We welcome any sanctions for serving this country,” he said Thursday in comments broadcast on Al Jazeera. According to the New York Times, Sudan’s army has targeted civilians with chlorine gas, a chemical weapon banned in warfare. Last week, Washington sanctioned Rapid Support Forces (RSF) leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo—days before former U.S. President Joe Biden left office. The U.N. warned on Friday that the death toll from ethnically targeted attacks in Al Jazirah state committed by the RSF and its allied militias were likely to be higher than estimated.
Nigeria joins BRICS. Nigeria has officially joined the BRICS group as a partner, according to a statement on Saturday by the Nigerian Foreign Ministry’s acting spokesperson, Kimiebi Ebienfa. Nigeria is the ninth country to join the group’s second-tier partner states—a list that also comprises Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Thailand, Uganda, and Uzbekistan. When factored in with its 10 full members, BRICS now represents half of the world’s population and more than 40 percent of global GDP.
As covered in Africa Brief’s 2025 preview, South Africa is looking to use the expanded BRICS grouping to push for African interests in global financial reforms and against U.S. hegemony. Last month, China and Nigeria renewed a 15 billion yuan (about $2 billion) currency-swap deal, designed to boost trade and investment between the two countries amid dollar shortages. China is Nigeria’s biggest trading partner.
Expansion of Alliance of Sahel States. Togo’s foreign minister has said the country would not rule out joining a defense pact struck by the military-led governments of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. “It’s a decision for the president. … It’s not impossible,” Robert Dussey told Voxafrica while criticizing global powers. “Africa is only used to serve the great powers, and this is unacceptable,” he said.
Mali’s new military prime minister, General Abdoulaye Maïga, met new Ghanaian new President John Mahama in the Ghanaian capital of Accra over the weekend, during which the pair agreed to cooperate more closely on security despite Mali’s exit from regional bloc ECOWAS.
“Despite the temporary setback that we’re facing, we must continue to keep our relationships strong. Ghana remains in strong solidarity with Mali,” Mahama said. Extremist violence in the Sahel has spread into Ivory Coast, Togo, and Ghana in recent years.
U.S. looks to relaunch Africa trade partnerships. Prosper Africa, launched under the first Trump administration, and African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) have signed a memorandum of understanding to boost trade and investment between the United States and Africa, mainly within critical minerals and emerging technologies. At the same time, the African Development Bank has signed a $700,000 donor agreement with the U.S. Treasury and Prosper Africa to create a data platform that helps member nations better engage with international credit rating agencies.
FP’s Most Read This Week
Kenya’s foreign work strategy. In Africa is a Country, Naila Aroni argues that the Kenyan government’s policy on exporting its young workers is a flawed quick fix that prioritizes remittances and avoids the need for domestic job creation.
Why land reform fails. In an excerpt of his new book Land Power that was published in Foreign Policy, Michael Albertus notes that land reform efforts in South Africa have suffered repeated failures partly because “Black South Africans are not a monolithic, undifferentiated group,” he writes. “The land restitution commission originally viewed its role as simply transferring plots of land and its job complete once it handed over a farm to a claimant. That narrow focus led to failure among many early land recipients.”
South Africa’s post-apartheid generation. Lynsey Chutel—a New York Times reporter and former FP Africa Brief writer—profiles South African musician Thandiswa Mazwai in the Times. Mazwai rose to prominence as the lead singer of the band Bongo Maffin in the heady post-apartheid days of the 1990s, performing for luminaries such as President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Mazwai’s lyrics often have a political message, and these days, she is not holding back.
At a post-election gala following the announcement of results last June, she chastised a gathering of politicians in a speech and then “burst into a set of songs whose lyrics, rather than offering light entertainment, instead doubled down on her determination to call out political malpractice. She sang of ‘fools for leaders’ and ‘thieves’ who ‘should leave Parliament,’” Chutel recounts.
“With her music reaching a wide audience and often containing sharp social commentary, Ms. Mazwai has emerged as the voice of a generation born during apartheid’s violent twilight: the first group of Black South Africans to enjoy the freedoms of a democratic South Africa but also to be confronted with its disappointments,” she writes.
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