18 February 2023

A renaissance of non-alignment: With the original 1955 Bandung movement having run out of steam, recent impulses for up-to-date versions of non-alignment have mostly come from Latin America and South-East Asia while African voices have largely been absent from the debate. In December 2023, Uganda will take over the rotating chair of the Non-Aligned Movement for three years. “Strengthening the organisation into a more cohesive bloc, while fostering unity within the global south, is a major goal of its tenure.” To reach a Pax Africana, the article’s author advocates dismantling US, French and Chinese military bases and ending Russian military presence and instead “building local security capacity in close cooperation with the UN;                promoting effective regional integration; and fencing off the continent from meddling external powers, while continuing to welcome trade and investment from both east and west.”
https://theconversation.com/when-two-elephants-fight-how-the-global-south-uses-non-alignment-to-avoid-great-power-rivalries-199418

AU/Israel: In recent years, Israel has tried to gain ground in Africa. In 2021 it obtained observer status at the African Union – “but this decision was queried, with Palestinians urging a rethink, and a committee was formed last year to look at the issue.” At the opening of the annual AU summit in Addis today Saturday, Israeli diplomat Sharon Bar-li was escorted out of the congress hall by a security guard. A spokesperson of the Israeli foreign ministry blamed Algeria, South Africa and other such “extremist countries”, “driven by hatred and controlled by Iran”. Rather undiplomatic language, it seems…
BBC Africa Latest Updates 18 February 2023. 13:11




17 February 2023

AU & Pan-Africanism: If the African Union has not made much progress in achieving political, economic and cultural goals of the Agenda 2063 – which was adopted in 2013 -, in the article’s author’s view, four main reasons are responsible for this: that the AU has no possibility to enforce its decisions, i.e., to make sure that members implement AU decisions; that the AU depends heavily on external financing; an unclear division of labour between AU and regional economic communities; members insisting on their sovereignty being little inclined to have the AU develop common policies.
https://theconversation.com/pan-africanism-remains-a-dream-4-key-issues-the-african-union-must-tackle-199791

Sub-Saharan Terrorism: The updated UNDP report finds that preventing extremism is much better than fighting it – it is necessary to address the root causes and not the symptoms – yet prevention measures are very much underfunded. For members of terrorist groups to sustainably get out of violent extremism, local communities and national governments’ amnesty programmes are essential.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)00323-9/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email

Kenya: David Pkosing, MP for Pokot South (west of the country) has been arrested and questioned by police - he is suspected of having links with armed bandits. In Kenya, such “heavily armed bandits operating with impunity” have killed over 100 civilians and 16 security personnel in the past half a year. “The government has declared the prevailing security situation in the north a national emergency and imposed a 30-day dawn-to-dusk curfew in the region” and as from today, the army will help police fight armed bandits whose focus is cattle resp. cattle rustling for the lucrative meat trade. But can the banditry problem be solved militarily? Would not “dialogue and improving the economic well-being of communities who have faced historic marginalisation” achieve better results?
BBC Africa Live 17 February 2023. 7:12

Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali: Ahead of an African Union summit in which they will not be allowed to participate, the foreign ministers of the three countries are in Addis Ababa to lobby for the end of their suspension from the AU, arguing that their exclusion is “hindering (…) the transition back to civilian rule”.
BBC Africa Live 17 February 2023. 5:09

Frobenius: “Commendably, Frobenius brought African art to the attention of people in the culturally western world” and especially the rock art of South Africa’s San, building on “earlier efforts of the little-known South African teacher and rock art copyist Helen Tongue”. If Frobenius is not much credited for this in South Africa, it is partly because of “inadequacies in the copies created during his expedition” (1928-30) and partly because of his racism, his closeness to Nazi and Apartheid ideologies. “To Frobenius, African achievements were the influence of foreign cultures”, what “primitive” Africans kept as leftovers from highly civilized Atlantis.
https://theconversation.com/leo-frobenius-made-african-rock-art-famous-but-is-tainted-by-racism-and-a-lack-of-understanding-198811