Hi everyone, 

We hope you enjoyed last week’s Closer Look. Back to your week’s briefing.

Cheers, 

• BRICS. BRICS is now bigger. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the newest members of the economic bloc. Their membership became official on 1 January, after their inclusion was agreed to by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa at the 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg (News24).

• Chad. Nearly half a million people who fled from West Darfur, Sudan to eastern Chad in 2023 to escape the civil war are now confronting a humanitarian crisis with limited access to food, water, and health care (Bloomberg). 

• Democracy. Africa will host 18 general elections this year with South Africa’s election the most anticipated on the continent (Foreign Policy).

• Ethiopia. Ethiopia is taking its first legal steps on a path that could one day enable the landlocked country to gain access to the sea via Somaliland, a semi-autonomous region north of Somalia. Somalia has criticised the deal as infringing its sovereignty (AP).

• Kenya. President Ruto threatened to disobey court orders from ‘corrupt judges’, claiming that some unnamed judges had teamed up with opposition politicians and ‘cartels’ to block his government's projects (BBC).

• IMF. Six of the top-10 performing economies in the world are forecast to come from Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

• Nigeria. The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation was suspended after certain financial transactions in the government’s social welfare program were scrutinised (AP News).

• Senegal. Senegal's Constitutional Council rejected jailed opposition leader Ousmane Sonko's candidacy for next month's presidential election. Sonko filed his candidacy with the Constitutional Council this past December, despite the state's refusal to provide him with the necessary documents to run (News24).

• Sierra Leone. Former President Koroma has been charged with four counts of treason in connection with an attempted coup. Last November, gunmen broke into a military armoury and several prisons in Freetown, freeing almost 2,000 inmates (Reuters).

• Sudan. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, leader of the Sudanese rebel group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is touring the continent. He met with President Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria as he continued his tour meeting civilian leaders on the continent (News24).

• Zimbabwe. The World Food Program (WFP) plans to provide food for 270,000 Zimbabweans over the next three months amid an anticipated poor harvest due to an El Niño-induced drought (Reuters). Once considered the bread basket of Africa, the southern African country has been struggling to feed its people since 2000 after a botched land reform program.

In Context: New year, more growth. The World Bank forecasts that the past half-decade will have seen the slowest economic growth in 30 years. Based on its projections, the organisation suggested that global GDP will expand by just 2.4% this year. Despite a constrained economic outlook for the globe, Africa continues to grow.

The French energy major, TotalEnergies, said it would review its land acquisition practices for a US$10bn project covering Uganda and Tanzania, following criticism by environmentalists and human rights groups. The company, together with Chinese company CNOOC International, plans to construct more than 400 oil wells at Uganda's Murchison Falls nature reserve (BBC).

The Zimbabwe dollar plummeted over 40% in 2023. The currency was trading at Z$10,900 per US dollar this week. Despite efforts to stabilise the currency since its 2019 reintroduction, many Zimbabweans still prefer to use US dollars (Bloomberg).

The International Monetary Fund approved an immediate disbursement of about US$60.7 million to Mozambique after the conclusion of the third review of the country’s three-year loan program (Reuters). 

And finally, a $20bn mining project is set to begin development in Guinea — a country of 13m people with a GDP of just $16bn. It will involve building an iron ore mine, railway and port (The Economist). 

In Context: Last year was by far Earth’s warmest in a century and a half and among the warmest in at least 100,000 years. Africa will be disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change. 

Africans in at least 18 countries will cast ballots this year to choose a president or national legislature. This week voting begins as Comoros holds its presidential elections. The New York Times asks “Can liberation movements survive?” A new generation of voters will test liberation-era parties in South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and Botswana. South Africa is the most closely watched contest — 30 years after Nelson Mandela became president, the governing African National Congress faces widespread discontent.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) election commission has disqualified 82 candidates over alleged fraud and violence in the contested general election that took place Dec. 20 2023. The opposition has called the entire election a “sham” — demanding a rerun amid widespread claims of electoral irregularities. President Félix Tshisekedi was reelected for a second term with 73% of the vote (BBC). 

The Financial Times reports that Ethiopia has taken the first legal steps on a path that could one day see the landlocked country gain access to the sea. The country has signed an MoU with the self-declared republic of Somaliland to use one of its ports. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has previously described sea access as an existential issue for his country. His statement last October prompted tensions across the Horn of Africa. The current deal purports to grant Ethiopia 50 years of access to the port of Berbera and a leased military base in exchange for international recognition of Somaliland as an independent country and an unspecified share of Ethiopian Airlines.

The US said it "recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Somalia [over Somaliland].” The African Union, the EU, Turkey, and Egypt also released statements of support for Somalia.

In the Sahel, France has confirmed that it is closing its embassy in Niamey, but it intends to maintain its relationship with the country on a remote basis from Paris. Niger's military government, which seized power last year, demanded that France withdraw its soldiers and political presence, preferring closer ties with Russia (News24)

TechCrunch reports that 2024 presents a mixed bag for African startups. The article gives an excellent rundown of the winners and losers of 2023 and how both investors and founders can rethink the year ahead.

United States in Africa

The Africa Report presents an interesting analysis of how the US can navigate its relationship with geopolitically important semi-authoritarian states, especially Angola and Mozambique. 

And finally, the US is negotiating with several coastal West African countries to establish bases for surveillance drones to monitor jihadist activity. In 2023 it paused the flight of drones from its existing base in Niger after a coup there (The Economist).