ACE

Category: Sub Saharan Africa

  • Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism in Kenya and Somalia

    Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism in Kenya and Somalia

    Introduction

    The United States has been diplomatically engaged with Kenya since 1964, and with Somalia since 1960. Substantial amounts of aid have accompanied diplomatic relations, including development, monetary and military aid. In later decades, particularly since the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, these aid types have made up a significant part of the US response to terrorism in the region. Two semi-distinct approaches to terrorism have emerged: countering violent extremism (CVE) and counterterrorism (CT). The two are used to address terrorism in different ways, including through actions taken against terrorism’s immediate and proximate causes. US attention to these issues became more comprehensive during the Global War on Terror in response the attacks on September 11th, 2001.

    Counterterrorism 

    The Department of Defense defines terrorism as “[t]he unlawful use of violence or threat of violence, often motivated by religious, political, or other ideological beliefs, to instill fear and coerce governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are usually political.” Counterterrorism, in turn, is the neutralization of the ability of terrorists and their organizations to perpetrate this kind of violence. This neutralization is primarily accomplished through military operations, law enforcement activity, and the prevention of terrorism through the strengthening of these capabilities.   

    The United States has had and currently has numerous counterterrorist programs in both Kenya and Somalia, spanning a wide breadth of approaches. Numerous government agencies are responsible for these programs, including the Department of Defense, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of State. These programs address the threat of terrorism through kinetic action, law enforcement and investigation, and conventional security programs. 

    Kinetic action involves active forms of warfare, which the US has used in Somalia since 1992. Between 2001 and 2011 the US, through the Department of Defense, used ground raids and traditional airstrikes to find and neutralize elements of Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda. Starting on June 23, 2011, counterterrorism efforts in Somalia included the extensive use of drone strikes. These strikes have resulted in an estimated 1,729 deaths as of June 3, 2022. Of these deaths, 1,589 are estimated to be militants with either Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda, or ISIS. The strikes occur in areas of high Al-Shabaab activity, such as in the southern part of the country. Training camps for terrorist organizations are preferred targets for strikes, as they represent large gatherings of individual terrorists often located some distance from major civilian population centers. These strikes deny terror organizations manpower and cripple their leadership, resulting in hampered capability to carry out violence. 

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation handles investigations into terrorist activity against US assests in the region, most notably in the aftermath of the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Its investigation was, at the time, the largest conduct in the history of the bureau, drawing on over 900 agents and many more supporting staff. The investigations in Kenya and Tanzania set a precedent for a greater overseas presence for the FBI, bettering the organization’s ability to counter the threat posed by terror groups. Additionally, the cooperation between US law enforcement and law enforcement in Kenya was demonstrated to be strong and yielded arrests, extraditions and prosecutions. 

    The Department of State aids in augmenting the ability of local forces to respond to terror attacks. An internal component called the Diplomatic Security Service trains and helps equip local teams of police officers, from both regular forces and from the Special Program for Embassy Augmentation and Response (SPEAR). Both of these units were tested during the attack on the DusitD2 hotel in Nairobi on January 15, 2019. Members of the SPEAR team engaged and dispatched at least two of the attackers. The following explosive sweeps of the compound were then accomplished by bomb squads equiped by the Anti-Terrorism Assistance program (ATA). The SPEAR program and ATA program have been implemented in countries across Africa, aiding response to terror activity and increasing international cooperation through joint training excersises. 

    Countering Violent Extremism 

    Countering violent extremism (CVE) policy approaches the problem of terrorism by addressing its driving factors. The United States Agency for International Development is the primary US agency responsible for this kind of program, and has active programs in Kenya. Its stated goals for CVE policies are to reduce the risk of recruitment into and support for terrorist organizations, as well as building local capacity to do the same. 

    USAID’s program Kenya NiWajibu Wetu (NIWETU), translated from Kiswahili to Kenya is Our Responsibility, was an effort to engage local officials and individuals to build capacity to prevent violent extremism. One of the program’s key actions was its support and funding of an expansion of the Kenya School of Government to build curriculum teaching CVE policy to civil servants in Kenya’s administrative bureaucracy. The cooperation and willingness of the Kenyan Government to engage with and support this policy has been key to its success, and will result in civil servants taking their knowledge to postings in departments across the country. In addition to education initiatives, NIWETU has worked with Kenya’s National Counter Terrorism Center and county level authorities to create county-level CVE action plans for creating solutions at a more local level. These plans were developed with the assistance of various groups of local stakeholders, including religious and youth leaders, government and security officials, private sector representatives and women’s groups.  

    Other USAID programs aim to address driving factors of violent extremism directly, through creating programming that offers alternatives to recruitment by violent extremist organizations. The Agile and Harmonized Assistance for Devolved Institutions program provided assistance to county governments in bettering access to social services for youth and vulnerable groups. Another program, the Kenya Youth Employment and Skills program, aimed to address lack of access to economic opportunities and help youth register for ID cards that prove Kenyan citizenship. 

    Benefits and Drawbacks 

    The strengths of counterterrorism activities lie in their ability to address the immediate effects of terrorist violence, as well as acting against terrorist organizations. CT programming improves the ability of host nations to respond to terror attacks as they occur, and improves their ability to proscute liable individuals in the aftermath. They allow for the destruction of assets utilized by terrorist organizations, and allow military assests to hunt and destroy individual terrorists. These policies are not without their drawbacks,  Counterterrorism programming can result in locals becoming discontented with the United States. In Kenya, some locals blame the United States for discouraging tourism, and even for causing an uptick in terrorist violence by the American presence. Counterterrorism programming does not address the roots of terrorism itself, and so remain necessary so long as the ideology remains rooted among at-risk communities. 

    Countering violent extremism targets the roots of terrorism by attempting to build stability among communities and create lasting solutions from within countries. As Kenya works to build its own robust CVE capabilities, US support to their efforts has helped to advance and improve the quality of their CVE policies as well as the implementation of CVE at the local level. US-Kenya cooperation has been dependent upon political, security, and diplomatic good will on both sides; effective cooperation will require continued good will. For both the United States and Kenya, CT has been the main budgetary focus of both governments; CVE receives substantially fewer resources. USAID handles US CVE efforts, and has a budget for 2023 of $60.4 billion, of which CVE makes up a very small percentage. CT efforts, on the other hand, received $96 billion across various agencies in 2017.    

  • The US Role in Countering Terrorism in Kenya and Somalia

    The US Role in Countering Terrorism in Kenya and Somalia

    Introduction

    On October 11, 2001, President George W. Bush announced the beginning of the Global War on Terror. New US policies were implemented domestically and internationally to combat the threat of terrorism. Both military operations and civilian aid programs have been used for this purpose, and Kenya and Somalia have experienced a combination of both policy types. Both countries have been of interest to US security efforts for the past three decades, with US military operations in Somalia predating the war on terror, and diplomatic relationships with both established shortly after their respective indepences. 

    Diplomatic Overview 

    The US established diplomatic relations with Somalia shortly after its independence from Great Britain and Italy in 1960. Since independence, the country has experienced coups and civil wars which made consistent diplomatic relations difficult. For example the US embassy in Mogadishu was closed from 1991 to 2018. During this period, the US undertook military operations in 1992-1994 and 2002, at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa. At the same time, the Somalian government received $3 billion in humanitarian, governance and security aid since 2006. Additionally, the United States works with local and global organizations to create and support effective systems to locally address humanitarian issues. 

    US relations with Kenya are stronger than those with Somalia. Relations were established in 1964, and the scope of bilateral engagement between the two countries began to expand in 1992 when Kenya became a multiparty democracy. The relationship was elevated to a strategic partnership in 2018, and the first Bilateral Strategic Dialogue with Kenyan representatives took place  in 2019. This dialogue affirmed US commitment to work with Kenya on addressing a variety of issues, including defense and civilian security in both the country and region. Kenya receives a large amount of aid from the United States, which totalled $560 million for fiscal year 2020. The United States and Kenya cooperate closely on security programs, with US agencies including the State Department and Department of Defense contributing millions to improving both civilian law enforcement and defense institutions. Programs focus on different approaches to security, including counterterrorism and countering violent extremism, as well as bolstering criminal investigation capacity, border security, and crisis response. 

    Historic and Present Threats 

    US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were bombed in 1998 by Al-Qaeda, killing a total of 224 people and injuring over 4,500. During the War on Terror, Kenya and Somalia were one region of concern due to Al-Qaeda and its regional affiliate, Al-Shabaab. In January of 2020, Al-Shabab militants attacked a Joint US-Kenyan military installation, CSL Manda Bay, on the Northern, killing three Americans.

    Al-Shabaab, a regional cell of Al-Qaeda established 1993 is the primary terror group operating in Kenya and Somalia. The group has varying ideologies, but most members are unified by a commitment to Sharia Law and opposition to the Western-backed Federal Government of Somalia. The group has been responsible for many terrorist attacks in Kenya and Somalia, targeting embassies, shopping malls and hotels. They are composed of an estimated 8,000 active members.  

    Policy 

    United States activities confronting terrorist threats in Kenya and Somalia can be grouped into two categories, counterterrorism (CT) and countering violent extremism (CVE). Counterterrorism encompasses a variety of actionable policy, including border security, military operations, law enforcement and legislation. US agencies and military bodies will cooperate with host nations in solving issues in these categories through equipping local armed forces, intelligence support, and advisory support. Countering violent extremism takes a different approach, focusing on prevention through increasing peaceful options for political, economic and social engagement for communities. To accomplish this, programs engage with communities at local levels, focusing on regional governments with specific focuses to prevent the spread of violent extremism. 

    Involved Agencies and Their Roles 

    The State Department increased its focus on regional security following the embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. Soon after, Kenya was added to the Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA) program, which acted as a signal of increased US interest. The program didn’t receive funding until a few years later, and involved training Kenya Defense Force personnel through the Special Program for Embassy Augmentation and Response (SPEAR). SPEAR is a program through which the Diplomatic Security Service trains forces from ATA member countries in tactical responses to instances of terrorist violence, protecting the interests of both the member state and US personnel and facilities. 

    The Department of Defense cooperates with and trains soldiers and personnel from the Kenya Defense Force (KDF), as well as providing intelligence and technical support during counterterrorist operations. Soldiers from Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) train alongside KDF units, such as SPEAR teams, in situations including crisis response, humanitarian assistance, and evacuation of non-combatant personnel. US military assets are also deployed in tandem with Kenyan military personnel during counterterrorism operations such as Operation Linda Nchi, whose goal was combating the threat Al-Shabaab to the Kenyan homeland. US air assets provided intelligence and survey information, while the KDF shouldered the bulk of the fighting and ground operations.  

    The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) works to counter violent extremism (CVE) in at-risk countries, including Kenya and Somalia. As early as 2011, USAID began conducting CVE activities in the ethnic Somali majority community of Eastleigh in Nairobi. Subsequently, larger scale work began in cooperation with the Kenyan National Counterterrorism Center to support local capability to counter violent extremism. Leveraging the 2010 Kenyan constitution, USAID and the Kenyan NCTC worked with all 47 Kenyan counties to develop local level CVE action plans. USAID focuses primarily on the civilian cooperation between the United States and Kenya, and has provided substantial support for local authorities to counter violent extremist networks through civilian-made solutions.  

    Governance and control of Somalia is fractured, with regional governing bodies maintaining control over certain areas of the country. US organizations primarily work with the recognized Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) to support local efforts to combat violent extremism and terrorism. The FGS has implemented a number of its own programs, such as regulations on financial transactions requiring any suspicious movement of funds to be reported to the country’s Financial Reporting Center. The US military also has presence in the country with its stated mission being one of advise-and-assist, enabling local forces to orchestrate more effective campaigns against terrorism. This includes training, advising and equipping the forces of the FGS. 

    Conclusions 

    The United States has major security interests in Kenya and Somalia, stemming from its fight against Al-Qaeda. Policy in the region has been and is varied, using both CT and CVE methods to work towards broad and specific objectives. Cooperation with local authorities is a cornerstone of both types of policy, and will continue to be in the future. Currently active programs from USAID, DOD, and the State Department all cooperate with military and civilian sectors of the Kenyan and Somali governments.

  • Senegal-U.S. Relations: An Overview

    Senegal-U.S. Relations: An Overview

    Introduction

    As one of the few African countries that has never experienced a coup d’etat, Senegal is a notable center of peaceful power transfers, democratic values, and religious coexistence. Senegal is also unique in terms of its longstanding, favorable view of close partnership with the West, especially the United States. Since Senegalese independence in 1960, the U.S. has sought to maintain strong relations with Senegal, largely due to its geopolitical reputation as “the gateway to Africa”. As a convenient transit point for commerce and troop deployment, Senegal has historically been one of the foremost political, military, and economic allies of the U.S. within Africa. This strategic interest, combined with a long chain of pro-U.S. Senegalese presidential administrations, has led to a continuing politico-economic-military partnership between the two countries. 

    A brief history

    The U.S. formally recognized the Republic of Senegal on September 24th, 1960—a month after Senegal’s break from the previously-recognized independent Mali Federation and three months after the region gained independence from French colonizers. After his election in 1960, Senegal’s first president Léopold Sédar Senghor believed that cultivating close ties with the West would be functionally necessary for Senegal’s financial and technical survival in the early post-independence period. He saw Senegalese relations with the United States as a “natural consequence” of relations with Europe, and admired the US for its youthful dynamism and strides towards racial integration. In a meeting with U.S. President Richard Nixon, Senghor predicated Senegalese relations with the U.S. on the fair treatment of Black Americans. If discrimination rose in the U.S., he assured Nixon that Senegal would look elsewhere—ostensibly to China and the Soviet bloc—for partnership. Senghor’s immediate successor, Abdou Diouf, and the rest of Senegalese presidents have continued Senegal’s close political, economic, and military relations with the United States.

    Bilateral Economic relations

    Trade

    Senegal’s main exports to the U.S. are agricultural products, minerals, and textile fibers, while the main U.S. exports to Senegal are energy-related products, transportation equipment, and chemicals. Under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), Senegal is granted trade preferences that include the duty and quota-free export of many products to the United States. While this has given Senegal easier access to the American market, the trade balance remains skewed towards American exports to Senegal (Fig. 1). The U.S. trade surplus with Senegal has fluctuated over the past decade, but totaled 180 million in 2020.

    Senegal has also maintained a bilateral investment treaty with the US since 1990. U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) in Senegal was approximately 21 million in 2018, compared to Senegal’s 1 million FDI in the U.S. during the same year. U.S. investment in Senegal has expanded in recent years, with over 50 US private companies doing business with Senegal in various sectors. Senegal is also a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has its own investment agreement with the United States.

    Bilateral aid

    U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently announced the U.S’s conviction that “it is time to stop treating Africa as a subject of geopolitics and start treating it as the major geopolitical player it has become” during his visit to Dakar this past November. However, most U.S. involvement in Senegal revolves around some type of development aid. Contemporary U.S. aid to Senegal mostly focuses on agricultural production, infrastructure, healthcare, education, energy production. 

    For example, in 2018, Senegal signed on to their second Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC) contract aimed at improving Senegal’s electricity sector. The contract consists of $550 million from the U.S. government and will be supplemented by $50 million from the Senegalese national government. The U.S. (in partnership with the UN) provided 903,990 Covid-19 vaccine doses to Senegal, though logistical oversights—including the short shelf life of the donated vaccines – have rendered large amounts unusable. The U.S. also committed 3.3 million to Senegal’s Institut Pasteur de Dakar with the aim of improving vaccine production capabilities in Senegal.

    The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has robust operations within Senegal. Currently, the USAID x Yaajeende project partners with rural Senegalese community-based solution providers to increase the production of high-quality agricultural products in rural areas. Moreover, Senegal hosts one of the largest Peace Corps programs in Africa, with over 4,000 volunteers having participated since its founding in 1963. As an agricultural powerhouse, Senegal is also a strong partner in USAID’s Feed the Future program. Many scholars assert that US development aid has not significantly progressed the Senegalese economy.

    Military cooperation

    Senegal’s strategic location and willingness to partner with US international missions renders it a cornerstone in US-Africa military operations. Senegal has one of the largest and most technically-advanced militaries in Sub-Saharan Africa and has been indispensable in U.S.-backed peacekeeping missions like those in Libya and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In 2016, Senegal signed a defense cooperation deal with the U.S. that solidified the country as a key military ally and troop transport point for America. The deal proactively deregulates the deployment of American troops to Senegal and is intended to speed up deployment in the wake of mass disaster or terrorist threat. Senegal is also a member of the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP), established in 2021 in response to the growing presence of Al Qaeda and Boko Haram in West Africa. Through the TSCTP, it receives military training and resources from the U.S.

    Perceptions of the U.S.

    While the Senegalese public has generally viewed the U.S. in a positive light, this perception has decreased in recent years, with a notable dip at the beginning of the Trump administration in 2016. However, Senegalese approval ratings of U.S. leadership seemed to stabilize at around 48% in 2018—a relatively high rating globally at the time.

    The lack of diplomatic engagement in Africa during the Trump administration was likely perceived as a foil to France’s significant intervention in and influence over Senegalese markets and politics. This relationship is sometimes viewed as a remnant of colonialism and often protested by the Front Pour Une Révolution Anti-impérialiste et Panafricaine (FRAPP) in Senegal.

    The Senegalese approval rating of U.S. leadership dropped to 32% in 2020, a major decline from 2018. This plummet could be the result of the Biden administration’s more active diplomatic engagement with a Senegalese public that supports less foreign interference, or negative perceptions of U.S.-backed COVID response programs. It is unclear whether this number has increased over the first two years of the Biden administration.

  • Growth for the Few: The Impact of Structural Adjustment Programs on Human Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa

    Growth for the Few: The Impact of Structural Adjustment Programs on Human Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa

    In the aftermath of World War II, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall issued a proposal that would mark the birth of a now-ubiquitous buzzword: international development. The Marshall Plan called for intensive U.S. investment in the reconstruction of Europe, provided that European countries agreed to reduce trade barriers and stabilize currency. After this plan proved effective in bolstering European Gross National Products, the U.S. shifted its focus to globally “underdeveloped areas”, including the African continent. However, like the Marshall Plan for Europe, this international aid to Africa did not come without conditions. African nations fundamentally restructured their economies in order to receive aid; thus, structural adjustment was born.

    Definitions and Context

    Generally, structural adjustment programs (SAPs) are macroeconomic policy reforms that nations must implement as a precondition for loans from International Monetary Institutions (IMIs) such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These loan conditionalities are based in neoliberal economic objectives, such as the privatization, stabilization, liberalization, and deregulation of national economies. While these key tenets exist within all SAPs, specific policy conditions vary from nation to nation. SAPs became popular in a wide variety of historically exploited regions—from Latin America to Africa—in the 1980s. This popularity was due in large part to OPEC’s 1970 oil price hikes which decreased sale prices for commodity exports and raised interest rates, making loan repayment more expensive for those nations. 

    While common discourse (both in academic circles and from IMIs themselves) frames SAPs as things of the past that tapered off in the late 1990s, the latest available data shows that 2014 IMF loan conditionalities are very similar to those from the 1980s. SAPs might not pervade modern discourse, but they still exist in practice. 

    History of SAPs in Sub-Saharan Africa

    SAPs are particularly relevant to discourse on Sub-Saharan Africa because the region accounts for the largest proportion of SAPs in the world. 37 out of the 46 Sub-Saharan nations have undergone structural adjustment due to the region’s tumultuous economic history.

    After the Era of Independence in the 1960s, many newly-empowered leaders in Sub-Saharan Africa set their sights on long-term economic plans with strong investment in state-run industry. The wave of independence also placed emphasis on Pan-Africanism and intercontinentally-driven development. This led to the creation of continental institutions such as the African Development Bank, which invested African funds in African-led development projects. However, a mixture of external market factors and internal governance problems in the 1970s caused many Sub-Saharan Gross Domestic Products (GDPs) to dip below pre-independence levels. This economic downturn left many African nations with few choices except turning to IMIs—rather than intracontinental organizations—for funds. Eventually, even the African Development Bank, founded on aspirations of intra-continental economic problem solving, came to mirror the strict structural adjustment lending system of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

    Impact on human rights in Sub-Saharan Africa

    While SAPs included a vast array of macroeconomic policies, they did not originally integrate social policy development or poverty reduction strategies, which were seen as the responsibility of national governments. This lack of consideration for the socioeconomic consequences of adjustment on common people and the imposition of homogenous policy conditionalities on a heterogeneous group of Sub-Saharan countries led to widespread neglect of human rights and social services in African debtor countries. SAPs reduced the power of national governments to fund social welfare programs and to act autonomously in general. In turn, this both delegitimized those governments in the eyes of their people and left poor and marginalized communities without safety nets as governments were cut back on public spending. While some SAPs have successfully achieved a narrow set of neoliberal macroeconomic objectives, there is a general consensus that their negative socioeconomic impacts on social services and human rights far outweigh their benefits in Sub-Saharan Africa.

    While SAPs impacted all genres and levels of human rights across Africa, the following analysis examines their impact on so-called first and second-generation human rights. First-generation rights include physical integrity rights and equity, while second-generation rights include the right to healthcare and education. 

    Physical Integrity Rights

    As SAPs force national governments to privatize institutions, the power and size of governments decrease. Additionally, since governments must adhere strictly to policy guidelines set by IMIs as conditions of the aid, they become less accountable to their people and thus suffer from perceptions of delegitimization. As the size, power, and perceived legitimacy of African governments decrease, national police and military forces obtain more discretion in using force against citizens. SAPs have also been shown to increase protest and ethnic conflict as African populations condemn their decreasing economic prosperity. When combined, increases in protest and military autonomy lead to physical integrity rights violations such as the extrajudicial imprisonment, forced disappearance, and torture of protestors. 

    Gender and Wealth Inequality

    As Sub-Saharan governments introduced austerity measures and privatized industry, national unemployment rates rose disproportionately for poor populations. Moreover, as countries attempt to achieve economic “stabilization,” central banks increased interest rates to combat inflation. This exacerbated preexisting wealth inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa by blocking poor populations out of markets and decreasing small businesses’ access to affordable loans. Even after the IMF employed its PRGF targeting income inequality, the resounding impacts of SAPs in Sub-Saharan wealth gaps remain. Ultimately, women and girls are the “shock absorbers” of adjustment. Since they are typically barred from participation in the formal sector, women make up 70% of informal entrepreneurs—the population least acknowledged or protected in SAP policies. Overall, policies that increase income inequality affect women disproportionately, perpetuating already dire situations of gender inequality in the region. 

    Access to Education and Healthcare

    When governments adopt austerity measures, they limit funding for non-privatized public institutions like schools and health clinics. As governments defund schools, the socioeconomic benefit of completing primary and secondary education decreases; enrollment then dwindles as poor children choose to work instead. Moreover, the declining quality of public education creates an opportunity gap between those children whose parents can afford private school tuition and those whose parents cannot. The push to defund and privatize healthcare has had a similarly detrimental effect. Many healthcare professionals see their salaries drop and choose to migrate rather than be laid off or accept low wages. Poor families are unable to afford quality medical supplies. As access to medical supplies and qualified professionals decreases, public health crises are exacerbated. Neonatal mortality rates have increased and responses to HIV/AIDS have been significantly impaired in Sub-Saharan Africa over the duration of SAPs.

    Case study: Mozambique

    While Mozambique is generally hailed as a structural adjustment success, human rights tell a different story than economic growth. Left in socioeconomic disarray from a civil war that began in 1979, Mozambique began requesting aid in the 1980s. Because it refused to sign with the World Bank or IMF, aid was withheld from the country—even during a national famine—until it conceded to what it saw as exploitative and capitalist conditions in 1987. From then on, SAPs shifted Mozambique to a market economy and privatized over 900 public enterprises. In the first year of SAPs, the Mozambican government cut health and education subsidies from MT 21 billion to MT 15 billion. 

    Even after “pro-poor” PRGF programs from the IMF were implemented in 2001, government spending on health and education remained constrained. Mozambican education reached dismal levels of quality and enrollment, and the Mozambican life expectancy remains one of the lowest in the world. Mozambique’s GDP has grown 6-8% per year for the past decade, but that growth remains unevenly distributed. Over the same period, Mozambican wealth inequality and degrees of poverty have increased. Nearly 60% of Mozambicans lived on under $1.25 per day in 2016 compared with 54.1% in 2002, one year after PRGFs were implemented. After over 30 years of SAPs in Mozambique, the country still has one of the worst education systems, shortest life expectancies, and lowest HDIs in the world.

    Conclusions

    Looking to the future, the UN Economic Commission for Africa suggests three conditions to make SAPs more viable for the region: 1) country-specificity, 2) loaner accountability to common people, and 3) increased African participation in identifying problems, ideating solutions, and implementing programs for development.

  • An Overview of COVID-19 Vaccinations in Africa and Its Impacts on International Development

    An Overview of COVID-19 Vaccinations in Africa and Its Impacts on International Development

    Background

    No continent is experiencing as much difficulty with COVID-19 vaccination roll-out as Africa. As of September 14, 2021, there were 8.06 million COVID-19 cases recorded in Africa. In the week of September 12, there were 125,000 new cases. Though this was a 27% drop from previous weeks, weekly new cases are still as high as they were during the peak of the first wave. Currently, 19 African countries continue to report high or fast-rising numbers while the highly transmissible Delta variant has been found in 31 countries. 

    The continent as a whole is currently standing at a low COVID-19 vaccination rate, with only 3.6% of its population fully vaccinated. COVID-19 vaccines are provided to Africa via the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) scheme. This scheme is a joint venture between the World Health Organization (WHO); Center for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI); Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and UNICEF. COVAX has a bulk purchasing program that is meant to allow smaller nations to get vaccines at the same price as larger countries. 92 of the world’s poorest nations depend on COVAX to secure vaccines. 

    Worldwide Vaccine Shortage

    COVAX’s main promise was that by the end of 2021, 20 percent of the world’s population would be vaccinated—620 million doses. Wealthy nations fund COVAX in return for secured vaccine shipments in the future. Many had signed deals with manufacturers as early as July 2020, while COVID-19 vaccines were still in development and undergoing trials. Buying up large quantities of the vaccine far in advance has dried up the supply, leaving nothing for poorer nations. Due to this lack of supply, COVAX has only been able to distribute 65 million vaccines to over 100 countries. The primary supplier of vaccines to COVAX, the Serum Institute of India, has exported more vaccines than it has given to the entire Indian population, and due to this discrepancy, they have halted delivering vaccine shipments to other countries. 

    Larger countries with poorer populations are falling behind in vaccine distribution compared to more wealthy nations with smaller populations. It’s estimated that poorer countries will not get broad access to vaccines until 2023 or 2024.

    Africa has received just 276 million doses and administered 198 million. Currently, less than 10 percent of African nations are expected to meet the end-year goal of fully vaccinating 40 percent of their population. 

    WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, warned about the consequences of not getting vaccines to places like Africa, saying “the staggering inequity and severe lag in shipments of vaccines threatens to turn areas in Africa with low vaccination rates into breeding grounds for vaccine-resistant variants. This could end up sending the whole world back to square one.” However, world leaders at the Global COVID-19 Summit in September announced that they would pledge hundreds of millions of doses to low- and lower-middle-income countries through COVAX in the next year.

    Unusable Vaccines in Africa

    Even when some vaccines are able to make their way to Africa, problems arise. Many African countries have had to either destroy or return thousands of vaccine doses because they had exceeded the expiration date. For example, Malawi destroyed 20,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and South Sudan announced that it would destroy 59,000 doses. These countries had both received vaccines from the African Union, which receives vaccines from other nations as well as manufacturers. Many of the vaccines donated through COVAX  had already gone bad. The Democratic Republic of Congo said that it could not use most of the 1.7 million vaccines it received under the COVAX scheme for poorer countries. Also through COVAX, South Sudan received 132,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in March with an expiration date at the end of June. South Sudan did not have the ability to undergo a mass vaccination rollout in such a short period of time, so it handed back 72,000 of those doses. 

    In South Africa, one million doses were received from India in February, with an expiration date of April. The government, however, was concerned that those vaccines would not protect against the South African COVID variant, and so, in late March, the doses were passed on to other African countries such as South Sudan, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, and The Gambia. Although Togo and The Gambia were able to use all of their vaccines prior to the expiration date, larger nations were unable to use all theirs. 

    Vaccine Mobilization and Skepticism

    Other than receiving almost-expired vaccines, many African countries were unprepared to undergo such a vast vaccine mobilization program. These nations know how to vaccinate, but many do not have sufficient financial resources and are plagued by an ineffective government, poor transportation networks, and poor health services. There has been trouble with training health care workers and convincing them to take the vaccine. Concerns over the safety and efficacy of vaccines, fueled by myths and false information, have long plagued many nations in Africa, particularly Sub-Saharan ones. These myths have created distrust among communities and generated a dangerous environment for increased COVID transmission rates.

    The Africa CDC conducted a study on COVID-19 vaccine perceptions in 15 countries that indicated a significant proportion of those living on the African continent express concerns over vaccine safety.  Respondents tended to view new COVID-19 vaccines as less safe than vaccinations in general. For example, while 94 percent of Ethiopian respondents said they would be willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, other nations rated lower. The Democratic Republic of the Congo had only a 59 percent willingness to get vaccinated. More than half of respondents surveyed felt that the threat from coronavirus is exaggerated and that it does not pose the risk that others claim. Moreover, 41 percent of respondents mentioned online sources as their most trusted source for information about COVID-19, and respondents who demonstrated vaccine hesitancy were more inclined to consult online sources than those who were willing to take the vaccine. The problem seems to be a lack of education about the effects and transmissibility of the virus. 

    Impacts on International Development

    There could be a greater force affecting people’s perceptions about the virus. In the same study by the Africa CDC, a survey was conducted to find out the exposure to general misinformation regarding COVID in Africa. Unsurprisingly, the most popular story heard on this continent, and other continents too, was that COVID-19 was created by China. The second most popular was that the virus was created by the United States, and the third was that people in Africa are being used as lab rats in vaccine trials. 

    These rumors reveal something deeper about how people in Africa perceive the West. Throughout history, Africa has been exploited by Western nations through the global slave trade and the Scramble for Africa, which saw European powers divide the continent for their own commercial and political interests. These two major historical events had direct consequences on the development of Africa, and the continent has not forgotten the injustices it had to endure. Anti-Western sentiment stems from centuries of colonization, occupation, and intervention. The reluctance to trust Western countries in providing vaccines for a novel virus is unsurprising given these facts.

  • Gender Equality in West Africa: Legislation Versus Lived Experience

    Gender Equality in West Africa: Legislation Versus Lived Experience

    From Burkina Faso’s Code of Persons and Family, stipulating equal inheritance for brothers and sisters, to Mali’s state-manded electoral gender quotas, requiring at least 30% of candidates on electoral lists to be women, eye-catching progressive policy is perceived as a beacon of change in regions like West Africa. However, statutory legislation often conflicts with lived experience for women in these areas where women’s rights have been stifled since colonization. Burkina Faso’s Family Code does not apply to women married under customary law and Mali’s electoral quotas coexist with customary laws that limit women’s autonomy, rendering them virtually ineffective in boosting female representation. While it is important to recognize progressive policy successes in West Africa, it is equally critical to avoid muting the voices of those still suffering despite legislation.

    Definitions

    For the purposes of this article, statutory law is defined as legislation passed by legislative bodies in West Africa, as well as international or continental treaties, conventions, and charters signed or ratified by West African nations. Conversely, customary law consists of traditional or religious rules and practices accepted as law by a specific culture. This article adopts the conceptualization of West Africa as defined by the African Union and African Development Bank; the 15 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Women’s rights is a complex and multifaceted term, but this article focuses on the four core dimensions of women’s rights as outlined in the OPEC Social institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), a global measure of sociopolitical discrimination against women. These dimensions include family practices, physical integrity rights, access to financial resources, and civil liberties. 

    Statutory Law

    Many statutory policies have been created and ratified by West African nations in the past three decades, spanning all four dimensions of the SIGI. Several examples for each dimension are outlined below.

    Customary Law and Lived Realities

    Statutory policies often conflict with customary law and social practices in West Africa. This leaves room for significant abuses of the four SIGI dimensions of women’s rights. 

    Grassroots Social Norms Change 

    Given the clash between statutory laws and customary practices, efforts to promote women’s rights must be endogenous to local communities to be relevant and sustainable. West African women are not passive victims to policy; they are agents of change and critical actors in bridging the gap between their statutory and customary rights. Today, several West African grassroots organizations work to spread awareness about women’s rights in communities where customary law may tolerate abuse. One such organization is Ligue LIFE, a Beninese group whose awareness campaigns about child trafficking and domestic violence are being adapted and disseminated by the UN Democracy Fund. Another successful organization is Project Alert on Violence Against Women, created in 1999 by female activists in Nigeria. Project Alert administers school and church-based advocacy programs that partner with local schools and places of worship to train parents, teachers, and religious leaders how to recognize and respond to GBV. By taking a bottom-up approach to social norms change, these grassroots initiatives and others like them help to bridge the gap between women’s rights under customs and women’s rights under statutory law in West Africa.

    Conclusion

    While this article has illuminated the wide gap between West African women’s customary and statutory rights, it is important to note that not all statutory policies in West Africa are ineffective. Some laws have effected remarkable change, such as Senegal’s 2011 Gender Parity Law that increased female representation in the national government from 22.7% to 42.7% over one election cycle. Unfortunately, not all West African statutory policies have created such concrete change in the lives of women. Thus, it is critically important to consider how women’s rights as outlined by law and as experienced by women differ in everyday life. Moving forward, it seems that grassroots social norms change is a crucial tool in bridging this difference, especially when spearheaded by West African women who have the most to lose if the gap between customary and statutory rights remains. 

  • Building from the Bottom Up: Grassroots Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

    Building from the Bottom Up: Grassroots Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

    Introduction

    From mission trips to Red Cross donations to foreign aid from the World Bank, international development is often perceived as flowing unilaterally from the Global North to the Global South. Arguably more than any other region on the planet, Africa is often conceptualized as the endpoint of this international development cycle. But considering how 40 years of so-called “development” aid from international lenders have only spurred more tumult, what if Africa was recognized for its own creation, not reception, of progress? This form of indigenously-generated progress in Africa is often called to mind with the phrase grassroots development. 

    Definitions and Terminology

    Also known as community-led development, grassroots development is a bottom-up process by which a community defines its own socio-politico-economic needs and implements strategies to achieve them at the local, regional, national, or international level. Grassroots development can involve various sectors such as agriculture, education, infrastructure, and healthcare. However, the term “grassroots development” exists against a backdrop of controversy concerning the eurocentric implications of “development” as a concept. “Development” emerged as a common theory in Western foreign policy discourse in the mid-1900s, as a product of Modernization theory and the Truman Doctrine. Today, many scholars and activists see “development” as a culturally-imperialist conjecture. They believe it absolves the West of its role in creating the “underdevelopment” it sees as an inherent feature of the global south while suggesting that the success of nations could be accurately gauged by Western measures like GDP.

    Because of this, there exists a push amongst some African grassroots activists to erase the word “development” from social progress discourse because it ignores the political nature of “underdevelopment.” The term obscures colonialism’s long history of forced impoverishment, political destabilization, and cultural erasure, expecting African nations to simply “develop” from it. For many grassroots changemakers in Africa, however, the challenge is not development but emancipation.

    On the other hand, some African scholars divorce the term from Western imperialist concepts of modernity yet still use the term to describe the fight for socio-political progress. Whether it is referred to as emancipation, participatory development, grassroots development, or another name, the bottom-up paradigm remains the same. For Africa in particular, this bottom-up strategy represents a shift away from Western concepts of “modernity” and dependence on foreign aid to self-reliant, pluralistic, and Pan-Africanist strategies of progress.

    History of Grassroots Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa

    While grassroots development has become a buzzword in global affairs, it is not a novel concept in Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, popular activism has served as the foundation for successful independence movements and anti-corruption uprisings across the continent for more than a century. 

    Anti-colonial uprisings from the 1880s through the 1950s provide early examples of grassroots organizing in Africa. In the Matabeleland Rebellion of 1896, a local spiritual leader galvanized the people of Southern Rhodesia (presently Zimbabwe) to rise up against the British South Africa company. Over 50 years later, trade unionists, women, and students formed grassroots movements that pushed Guinea’s Sékou Touré to reject a constricting French constitution and instead declare independence in 1958.

    However, immediately after the era of independence, increasing national power led to the suppression and integration of grassroots organizations into national parties from the 1960s to the 1970s. In this period, Sub-Saharan Africa saw the rise of centralized national ruling parties, many of which epitomized nationalist beliefs by claiming a monopoly on national progress and perceiving grassroots movements as threats to the independent governments they helped create. Grassroots movements were pacified or integrated into national systems. For example, preexisting peasant unions were dissolved by Mali’s first post-colonial ruling party, and popular resistance to this dissolution was violently repressed by the state.

    As OPEC oil price hikes in the early 1970s exacerbated the financial crises of several Sub-Saharan nations, an era of national debt and structural adjustment emerged and continued until the early 1990s. This period saw an immense increase in grassroots activity for two reasons. First, the erosion of state power under structural adjustment programs (SAPs) decreased previous state suppression of grassroots movements. Second, the deleterious effects of SAPs on already-marginalized communities such as the rural poor, working-class, and women galvanized those populations to protest top-down development models that increased their poverty. This era marked the first time that local grassroots movements partnered with international NGOs. 

    The 1990s brought a process of “NGOization” to Sub-Saharan Africa, in which the number of registered formal nonprofit organizations skyrocketed. The wave of pro-democracy movements in the 1990s and 2000s led to a preference for highly professionalized and bureaucratized transnational agencies over less formal grassroots organizations. Thus, private donations and public funds flowed to the formal nonprofit sector. 

    While the 1990s and 2000s constricted space for grassroots activity in Sub-Saharan Africa, the 2010s have seen a reawakening of grassroots priorities. Younger generations born in post-independence Africa are actively protesting authoritarian national governments and Western imperialism without the influence of donor agendas. Students have organized notable grassroots movements for the decolonization of education in South Africa, against authoritarianism in Angola and Zimbabwe, and for gender equality in Namibia. Even corporate NGOs have adopted more grassroots-friendly stances, although some remark that the use of buzzwords like “grassroots,” “human-centered,” and “community partnerships” has done little to change the top-down approaches of large transnational NGOs.

    Relative Benefits of Grassroots Organizations

    Despite their tumultuous history in Sub-Saharan Africa, grassroots development organizations offer several benefits relative to both state-led development programs and large transnational NGOs. 

    Compared to many African national governments, grassroots movements may be more accessible and efficient in their efforts to reduce poverty and promote equality. Due to a long history of colonialism and structural adjustment causing the typical African state to grow separately from society and its wills, many national governments have been forced to focus on meeting loan conditions rather than listening to constituents. Even barring a preoccupation with loan conditionalities, national governments are often inaccessible to the most vulnerable populations who “live far from international conference halls and capital cities.” Conversely, grassroots movements are more accessible to locals who might not have the education or wealth to pursue careers in government. With their heightened sensitivity to human rights abuses on the ground, they can also fill key gaps in human rights protection left unfilled by national governments. 

    Compared to larger transnational NGOs, grassroots organizations feature several unique strengths. From the Red Cross to Oxfam, several large NGOs have come under fire for violence towards the local populations they purport to serve. The bureaucratized nature of many such organizations makes it difficult for local communities to have a say in their strategies, resulting in “band-aid” solutions that are divorced from local cultural and economic contexts. Even when local activists offer their input, many large nonprofits—even those who preach grassroots partnerships—end up predicating decisions on the opinions of major donors and elite political interests rather than the people they purport to serve. On top of this, there is a more philosophical drawback to transnational, Western-based NGOs with all-White boards purporting to save the Global South from problems that were largely created by Western colonialism. Grassroots movements remedy many of these drawbacks. As organizations created by members of a community for their community, they are inherently people-centered and thus more in tune with nuanced local dynamics. This is significant seeing as alignment with community goals is a predictor of nonprofit success. 

    While grassroots organizations certainly provide a host of advantages, it is important to note that grassroots movements cannot effectively operate in a vacuum. Rather, effective strategies for change often emerge when grassroots movements partner with other institutions such as local governments to make progress.

    Challenges for Grassroots Organizations 

    While the international community is gradually becoming more aware of the important role that grassroots organizations play in African development, grassroots organizers still face myriad obstacles. Broadly, the biggest barrier for grassroots organizations is the dominance of large, corporatized NGOs that have turned charity into a lucrative industry. Both public and private donors are more likely to give funds to more familiar or formal organizations, leaving grassroots movements with few paths to substantive funding except being integrated into the business models of larger NGOs. When they do try to get involved with larger NGOs or departments of their national government, grassroots organizers are required to complete substantial legal paperwork. This makes it more likely for people with experience in the formal sector or with higher levels of education—predominantly men—to be able to partner with larger institutions when they want to, placing the most vulnerable at even more of a disadvantage when it comes to making their voices heard. 

    Conclusion

    Grassroots organizations and community-led activism are embedded in the cultural and political history of Africa. They proved key in securing liberation from formal colonialism, and despite barriers to success, African grassroots movements are on the rise again. Overall, grassroots movements truly embody the struggle for emancipation. They resist the influence of Western elite donors while protesting the remnants of structural adjustment programs and other imperialist policies. They are grounded in the ideas and innovation of African people, subverting the sentiment that Africa is the recipient or “endpoint” of development initiatives. In this sense, grassroots participatory organizations are a true symbol of the oft-revered mantra “African solutions to African problems.”