Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: History appears to be repeating itself in Madagascar, a fuel blockade leads to chaos in Mali, and poverty rises in Nigeria even as GDP grows.
Military Takes Power in Madagascar
A powerful military unit has seized power in Madagascar a day after President Andry Rajoelina fled the country amid weeks of Gen Z-led protests.
Col. Michael Randrianirina said on Tuesday that the army’s Capsat unit, which he leads, had dissolved high-level government institutions except the lower house of Parliament. He added that a military council made up of officers, gendarmerie, and police would run the country alongside a transitional government and hold elections within two years.
History appears to be repeating itself. The country experienced coups in 1972 and 1975, as well as an uprising in 1991. Rajoelina, the former mayor of Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, took power in a 2009 coup with the help of Capsat after weeks of anti-government protests that he encouraged. He was banned from running in the 2013 election but returned to power after winning the vote in 2018 and in a disputed election in 2023, which opposition parties boycotted.
Rajoelina said in a Facebook broadcast on Monday that he was sheltering in an undisclosed “safe place” after what he described as an assassination attempt by a “group of military personnel and politicians.” His address was moved to Facebook after soldiers reportedly threatened to occupy the state television headquarters. The Malagasy Parliament overwhelmingly voted to impeach him hours before the army seized power.
A military source told Reuters that Rajoelina was evacuated via a military aircraft provided by France, Madagascar’s former colonial ruler. Rajoelina has French citizenship, which has angered his opponents and some members of the public in recent years amid a wave of anti-French sentiment across Africa. French President Emmanuel Macron refused to confirm reports on Rajoelina’s whereabouts while speaking at a Gaza peace summit in Egypt on Monday.
Madagascar’s current unrest, which was largely sparked by chronic power cuts and water shortages, escalated following the killing of at least 22 people in demonstrations that began on Sept. 25. Rajoelina ignored weeks of calls to resign and instead sacked his government and appointed an army general, Ruphin Fortunat Zafisambo, as his new prime minister—a choice many Malagasy saw as an attempt to cling to power through the military.
The country’s high levels of poverty coupled with youth discontent have made it a powder keg for political turmoil. Madagascar is one of the world’s poorest nations: Three-quarters of the country’s 32 million people live in poverty, and the average income is $600 annually.
Madagascar also faces greater economic pressures under the Trump administration, which has imposed high tariffs on the vanilla-exporting country and failed to renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act, ending Madagascar’s duty-free access to the U.S. market.
“We ask for jobs, we ask for electricity, we ask for rice we can afford, and what do we get? Damned speeches [from Rajoelina],” one protestor told Reuters.
On Tuesday, some demonstrators continued to protest in front of Antananarivo’s City Hall, where Randrianirina appealed for them to go home, claiming that protests risk worsening Madagascar’s economic crisis.
Some Malagasy fear that a new junta will lead to further chaos, especially in a country with a history of high levels of corruption. Madagascar ranked 140 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index.
The military is already indicating that it may follow a now-perfected African coup playbook by promising institutional reforms and a national referendum to establish a new constitution—key tools that military leaders in Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Mali, and Niger have used to delay elections and legitimize their power.
“Under the pretext of wanting Rajoelina’s departure at all costs, are we ready to absolve the opportunists who have already shown us what they are capable of?” an editorial asked in the Madagascar Tribune. As another op-ed in Madagascar’s L’Express put it, “If we have to do new things with old people, the Gen Z movement will have been useless.”
The Week Ahead
Thursday, Oct. 16, to Friday, Oct. 17: The East African Business and Investment Summit is held in Nairobi.
The Turkey-Africa Business and Economic Forum is held in Istanbul.
Friday, Oct. 17: Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party holds its annual conference.
What We’re Watching
Seychelles election. The Seychelles’s main opposition leader, former parliamentary speaker Patrick Herminie, won a presidential runoff last week against incumbent Wavel Ramkalawan with 53 percent of the vote, according to official results released on Sunday.
Ramkalawan was elected in 2020 in the first vote won by an opposition party since the country’s independence from Britain in 1976. His administration has faced criticism for its failure to halt the country’s heroin addiction crisis and address environmental concerns associated with the tourism industry, which has helped make the Seychelles Africa’s wealthiest country.
Herminie has pledged to cancel a controversial Qatari-backed luxury resort project currently being built near a UNESCO World Heritage coral reef. The election marks a dramatic turnaround for Herminie, who was arrested on charges of witchcraft in 2023 that were dropped in 2024. His party, United Seychelles, regained its parliamentary majority in elections last month.
Mali fuel blockade. A monthlong blockade on fuel imports to Mali imposed by al Qaeda-linked insurgents is heavily impacting businesses and residents, who face long lines at gas stations, power cuts, and inflated fuel prices. Militants from Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) have attacked tankers on major highways as part of the blockade.
JNIM emerged in 2017 as a coalition of several jihadi groups pushed back by the French military in northern Mali in 2012. In recent years, it has strengthened its attacks across the Sahel. Mali’s junta is on the back foot against JNIM, which has captured several of its soldiers, and it is facing growing pressure from the public to negotiate with the fighters to end the blockade.
Sudan’s besieged city. At least 60 people have been killed in drone strikes by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces at a refugee camp in the city of El-Fasher in North Darfur, according to local groups. More than 250,000 civilians are trapped in the city, which has been under siege for 18 months.
Last month, the United States and the three main backers of the war—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—put forth a plan for a cease-fire, but nothing has come of the talks so far. Around 150,000 people have been killed in the two-year conflict.
This Week in Finance
Nigerian protectionism. Under Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s fiscal reforms—which have restructured tax policy, suspended fuel subsidies, and free-floated the country’s currency—the country is seeing faster growth and slower inflation. Yet a lack of relief programs, coupled with protectionist trade policies such as food import bans, is harming the poor, according to a World Bank report released this month.
Poverty rose from 40 percent of the population in 2019 to an estimated 61 percent this year, affecting around 139 million people. Meanwhile, Nigeria is looking to borrow $2 billion from China’s Export-Import Bank to build a new power grid and reduce electricity outages.
Loan refinancing. Kenya has converted the remains of its $5 billion U.S. dollar-denominated railway loans from Beijing to Chinese yuan, the South China Morning Post reports. Policy analysts suggest that the move, which is expected to reduce Kenya’s annual debt-servicing costs by $215 million, supports Beijing’s ambitions to de-dollarize the global economy.
The move follows Nigeria’s renewal of a $2 billion currency swap deal with China last December and the China Development Bank’s $290 million loan agreement with the Development Bank of Southern Africa in July.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- One Question Looming Over the Gaza Deal: Why Now? by Daniel Byman
- Russia’s Next Opposition Will Not Be Liberal by Alexey Kovalev
- Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize Obsession Isn’t Over by James Crabtree
What We’re Reading
Hate speech in Algeria. For Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), Majida Zwein writes about the Algerian government’s failure to hold social media companies accountable for promoting hate speech against the Indigenous Kabyle people in northern Algeria.
“For more than a decade, countless documents, videos, and articles have circulated portraying Kabyle regions and their residents as traitors, holding them responsible for various tragedies that have afflicted the Algerian people,” one journalist told ARIJ.
Universal health care? In 2003, Ghana established the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to provide free universal health care. But more than two decades later, many of Ghana’s modern hospitals, built with state financing, consistently reject patients with NHIS cards.
“Every cedi of tax waivers, public loans, and pension funds invested into these hospitals was meant to build health infrastructure for Ghanaians. Yet the very system designed to guarantee access—the NHIS—stops at their doors,” Prince Ato Kwamena Koomson reports in the Fourth Estate.
The post Madagascar’s Crisis Takes a Dangerous Turn appeared first on Foreign Policy.
