A Farewell to Madiba
From “A Farewell to Madiba”, a praise poem by Thabo Mbeki, delivered by him to the National Assembly, Cape Town, on 26 March 1999 You have walked along the road of the heroes and the heroines. You...
View ArticleAfrican Youth and Conflict:The Influence of Urbanization, Employment and...
In my presentation at the Youth, Conflict and Governance in Africa workshop at Yale University on March 1, 2014, I drew from findings and analysis in the third chapter of my forthcoming book, The...
View ArticleWhen kleptocracy becomes insolvent: Brute causes of the civil war in South Sudan
Alex de Waal has published a newly released article in African Affairs, “When kleptocracy becomes insolvent: Brute causes of the civil war in South Sudan.” Below is the abstract, full text available...
View ArticleHandmaiden to Africa’s Generals
By ALEX DE WAAL and ABDUL MOHAMMED, originally published in the New York Times, Aug. 15, 2014. SOMERVILLE, Mass. — Security is a core concern of the American government’s Africa policy. This was made...
View ArticleResearching African Peace Processes: Opportunities and Challenges
Hailing from Belarus, I spent most of my UN career working in Africa, or on issues related to the continent. From 1992-1994, for instance, I was part of the United Nations Observer Mission in South...
View ArticleOpen letter to Gayle Smith
Below is an excerpt from Alex de Waal’s “open letter to Gayle Smith, nominee for USAID administrator,” published by the Boston Review, June 15, 2015. […] I know you had enormous respect for Meles...
View ArticleLiberating African Economic History from the Tyranny of Econometrics
There is a longstanding joke about Sudanese statistics: 87.7% of official figures are made up on the spot. Morten Jerven’s fabulous short book is a vindication of such skepticism, continent-wide and...
View ArticleThe future of African Peacekeeping Missions: A shift from a militarized...
As of 31 March 2015, nine of the world’s 16 United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (PKO) with a total of 106,595 peacekeepers costing US $8.47 billion per annum are in Africa. These African...
View ArticleScott Straus: Making and Unmaking Nations
Why and how does genocide takes place—and why does it not happen in places where it may have seemed likely or even inevitable? This is the starting point of Scott Straus’ new book, Making and Unmaking...
View ArticleWhat leaders read
Alex de Waal’s recent blog included a long and interesting quote from Jean-Marie Guéhenno. In a way, Guéhenno would seem to be in agreement with Kissinger. They both seem to assert the importance of...
View ArticleTrans-national Organized Crime in Africa: Whose problem?
Remarks at the Tana High-Level Forum on Security in Africa, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, 20 April 2013. The first step in mastering a problem is to understand it, and to analyze the interests and logics of...
View ArticleHuman Security and African Peace Missions
This essay briefly examines the possible components of a ‘human security approach’ to African peace missions and security sector governance/reform. There are three overlapping general frameworks for...
View ArticleA Social Science in Africa Fit for Purpose
This piece is available in full on Next Generation Social Science, the blog of the SSRC. Below is an excerpt. In this presentation I will argue that African scholarship on Africa is operating at only a...
View ArticleAfrica’s $700 Billion Problem Waiting to Happen
Essay published by Foreign Policy, March 16, 2016. Back in 2002, Meles Zenawi, then prime minister of Ethiopia, drafted a foreign policy and national security white paper for his country. Before...
View ArticleInterview with Alex de Waal in Addis Fortune
Addis Fortune published an interview with Alex de Waal on March 21, 2016, “Do or Die of Political Liberalization.” Full transcript is below: Alex de Waal (PhD) is new neither to book writing nor to the...
View ArticleAll Perfectly Legal
Why Corruption is Only Part of the Story in the Misgovernment and Immiseration of Africa Africa loses at least $50 billion a year—and probably much, much more than that—perfectly lawfully. About 60...
View ArticleHow to chose the next AU Chairperson
In the next few months, the African Union is set to choose its next Chairperson: the woman or man who will lead the Commission and guide the entire continent for the next four years, or possibly eight....
View ArticleBrexit is Bad News for Africa. Period.
Originally published by Foreign Policy on June 27, 2016. Everything from the economy to peacekeeping missions will suffer. The British diplomatic corps is in a state of shock. Overnight, Great Britain...
View ArticleNew Report Outlines a “Political Agenda for Peace” in Africa
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – July 21,2016 – The World Peace Foundation has outlined a bold new vision for the African Union to prevent and resolve armed conflicts. In an independent new report titled...
View ArticleVirtual issue of African Affairs on South Sudan
Alex de Waal has a new essay introducing African Affairs‘ virtual issue on South Sudan. As the journal’s editors explain, the virtual issue is the journal’s contribution to making in-depth analysis...
View ArticleThe danger of a single story on the contested transition in The Gambia
The current crisis in The Gambia has a simple story. On 1 December 2016 presidential elections were held in the country with the incumbent Yahya Jammeh and the opposition leader Mr Adama Barrow as...
View ArticleTen Lessons from Africa’s Struggle for Rights and Democracy
Most adult Africans have, at one point in their lifetime, woken up to martial music on the radio, an unfamiliar face in a military uniform on the television, and the numbing discovery that their...
View ArticleInclusion in Peacekeeping
Below is an excerpt from Alex de Waal’s chapter, “Inclusion in Peacemaking: From Moral Claim to Political Fact,” in the recently published, The Fabric of Peace in Africa: Looking Beyond the State,...
View ArticlePartnering to make peace: The effect of joint African and non-African...
A new journal article by Allard Duursma is now available through International Peacekeeping. The essay, ‘Partnering to make peace: The effect of joint African and non-African mediation efforts’ was...
View ArticleFamine and epidemic disease in Africa
The below is Alex de Waal’s “Introduction” to African Muckraking, edited by Anya Schiffrin with George Lugalambi (Jacana Media, 2017). When we think about media coverage of famines, images of starving...
View ArticleBeyond the Red Sea: A new driving force in the politics of the Horn
This essay was published by African Arguments on July 11, 2018, and is the first part of The Thin Red Line, an African Arguments series focusing on dynamics around the Red Sea. The opening of the Suez...
View ArticleThe return of Eurafrica?
In an article published on September 20, 2018 by The Economist, “Why Europe should focus on its growing interdependence with Africa,” WPF’s Alex de Waal discusses the shared space of the Mediterranean,...
View ArticleThe Prairie Fire that Burned Mogadishu
From the occasional paper by Alex de Waal, The Prairie Fire that Burned Mogadishu: The Logic of Clan Formation in Somalia, produced as part of the Conflict Research Programme. Overview:For the last 25...
View ArticlePax Africana or Middle East Security Alliance in the Horn of Africa and the...
The Horn of Africa is located on a fault-line between two distinctly different strategies and philosophies for peace and security: the multilateral norms, principles and institutions that have been...
View ArticleTransnational Conflict in Africa: A New Field of Study and a Shift in Policy...
It’s rare in political science to be able to say, authoritatively, that an extensive sub-field of study has been operating under a false assumption, and that there’s an adjacent sub-field that has been...
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Why Ethiopia is in deep trouble, and how it got here
“Why Ethiopia is in deep trouble, and how it got here” by Mulugeta G. Behre is originally published in The Conversation, February 2, 2020 Ethiopia has seen dramatic transformation and change over the...
View ArticleBashir to The Hague?
The announcement by the Government of Sudan that it intends to hand over former President Omar al-Bashir and three other individuals to the International Criminal Court is dramatic, surprising, and...
View ArticleCan There Be A Democratic Public Health? From HIV/AIDS to COVID-19
This article was originally published by African Arguments on March 19, 2020. As we are re-learning with the coronavirus pandemic, the outbreak and global spread of a novel disease, which has neither...
View ArticleCOVID-19: “Know your Epidemic, Act on its Politics.”
Three questions to ask about epidemic control policies in Africa This essay suggests three basic considerations for planning COVID-19 responses in Africa: (1) anticipate the country-specific...
View ArticleGovernance Implications of Epidemic Disease in Africa
The memo, “Governance Implications of Epidemic Disease in Africa: Updating the Agenda for COVID-19″ was originally posted by the London School of Economics, as part of the Conflict Research Program....
View ArticleAfrica’s Imminent COVID-19 Recession in Historical Context: First Thoughts
The COVID-19 pandemic will, it is feared, bring about the most severe global recession for decades. It will also restructure the global economy. Some of these dynamics are already clear in the U.S.,...
View ArticleKenya and Covid: Pandemic Response Risks Excluding Minority Groups
Today, the divide between those who the Kenyan state recognizes and those it does not is being felt in new, potentially harmful ways as the Covid-19 response reinforces existing fault lines of power...
View ArticlePOMEPS Studies 40: Reflections on Africa and the Middle East
This blog is excerpt from the Concluding Reflections of the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) Studies 40 – Africa and the Middle East: Beyond the Divides. If ‘Africa’ straddles the...
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Pan African Solidarities: Insights from Africa and America, a Discussion with...
Photo: Afewerk Tekle Glass, Africa Hall, Alan Johnston, June 6, 2010 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) The podcast series “African Voices, African Arguments” features African scholars, writers, policy makers and...
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Race and Liberation in South Sudan and the U.S: A Discussion with Jok Madut Jok
The podcast series “African Voices, African Arguments” features African scholars, writers, policy makers and activists on issues of peace, justice and democracy, and is produced by World Peace...
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Emancipating the Humanitarian System in Africa: A Conversation with Degan Ali
The podcast series “African Voices, African Arguments” features African scholars, writers, policy makers and activists on issues of peace, justice and democracy, and is produced by World Peace...
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Elevating Voices in Sudan
The podcast series “African Voices, African Arguments” features African scholars, writers, policy makers and activists on issues of peace, justice and democracy, and is produced by World Peace...
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Talking and fighting about self-determination in Ethiopia
Summary: the political dispute that led to war in Tigray, Ethiopia, was sparked by contending interpretations of the right to self-determination in the country’s constitution. A themed collection in...
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“They Have Destroyed Tigray, Literally”: Mulugeta Gebrehiwot speaks from the...
This a special podcast from World Peace Foundation on the war in Tigray, Ethiopia. It is a recording of a phone call from somewhere in rural Tigray on January 27, in which Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe...
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Is Democracy Retreating in West Africa?
The podcast series “African Voices, African Arguments” features African scholars, writers, policy makers and activists on issues of peace, justice and democracy, and is produced by World Peace...
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Development Partnerships or Transactional Politics?
“Development Partnerships or Transactional Politics? An Insight into the Continent’s Struggle for Economic Transformation” was originally published May 12, 2021 on the African Arguments blog,...
View ArticleMaking Peace in a Political Market: Four Questions for a Mediator
Many of the world’s conflicts are in places where institutions have failed and violent transactional politics rules. Often, the battlefield is only the tactical arena—what counts strategically is the...
View ArticleThe Deluge Facing Africa’s Leaders Is Going to Get Worse
Originally published by The New York Times on August 13, 2023. An uninterrupted swath of African countries from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea is now under military rule. Mali, Guinea, Chad, Sudan,...
View ArticleMobile Space-Times and the Rescaling of Political Community
Essay originally drafted for the WPF seminar, ‘What Animates and Challenges the Possibilities for Collective Action today?‘ held in September 2023. This exploratory paper explores a fundamental...
View ArticleAt Last A Treaty to Protect Citizenship Rights and End Statelessness in Africa
Last week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) adopted a new treaty Relating to the Specific Aspects to the Right to a Nationality and the...
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