Kampala Catholic Archbishop Paul Ssemogerere has a practical mind. At the beginning of March, he advised the authorities to abolish electoral politics if it can’t be practised without endangering people’s lives. In other words, the way the current model of democracy is practised is not worth shattering people’s lives for.

Barely 10 days after the archbishop’s sermon, a by-election to fill one of Kampala’s 10 parliamentary seats was held and both the ruling party and the (victorious) opposition cried foul, expressing disgust at the execution of the exercise. But archbishops are men of humility, so Ssemogerere did not thump his chest in I-told-you-so-last-week mode.

During the by-election, held during Ramadhan in the Kawempe division of Kampala which is predominantly Muslim (meaning the public were operating under maximum restraint), there were two main casualties – the media and the military.

Read: Our elections are nothing but mere carnival of deceit

The national military which is generally well respected on account of its professionalism and discipline, had its image dented as for some reason we civilians cannot figure out, was deployed to police the polls in a singular constituency as if the police had been deemed unable to secure the exercise.

And the media personnel had their priceless bodies and precious equipment battered by the military whose mission remained unclear to the ordinary public.

That is when frustrated opposition members of parliament woke up to re-echo what the prelate has said calmly and hysterically addressed the press calling for abolition of elections so that their children get time to complete their education in peace.

But Archbishop Ssemogerere’s prophetic call shouldn’t be deemed to be directed at Kampala alone. It is also directed at Addis to benefit all African minds.

And here one hopes that the new African Union Commission leadership will not perpetuate the perverted excuse of “internal affairs of sovereign states” to justify looking away as elections ruin African lives and economies. All countries could do well to review the democracy models to ensure it is the best for citizens’ wellbeing.

The East African Community is a case in point. Starting with the original three, who doesn’t know how political contest in Kenya wastes resources that could be put to improve the citizens’ well-being?

Kenya may have many dollar billionaires but many of its people live in subhuman deprivation because its electoral politics is fused with individual private economic fortunes.

As for Uganda, lives are lost during elections though not to the scale of Kenya’s 2007-08 ‘democracy’. Sadly, Tanzania recently seemed to have enrolled as a “mature age entry” student in the political violence class.

As for Rwanda, only lengthening the current dispensation gives hope that the old vindictive mindsets will tire out to let new young citizens attain the critical mass and guarantee sustainable justice.

Burundi had better pray that its Tanzanian guarantors don’t graduate with honours from the East African school of political violence they enrolled in recently.

Read: Nothing like looming polls brings out creative juices in CCM cadres

For South Sudan, please be kind and don’t wonder if their leaders have read their constitution.

Finally, Somalia, for which Uganda, Burundi and Kenya paid the blood of our young peacekeepers/ builders, needs to ask if the elective democracy model they have adopted will hold when the foreign troops leave. If they don’t leave, then Somalis should ask in whose interest they are mainly staying.

In case you are not aware, the United Arab Emirates is probably the biggest printer of ballot papers in the world. Are the powers in Abu Dhabi picked with ballots?

It is like China earning more money from Christmas sales than any country, or Israelis earning big tourist monies from Christian worship which they despise more than Islam whose followers they are eternally locked in combat with. Is UAE less developed than African countries that hold elections with clockwork punctuality?

Elections are good, sometimes even nice. But if they can throw even mighty US in confusion and trigger a nasty trade war with Canada, can’t Africans find better ways to recruit leaders than through polls? Must Africans believe that the only alternative to elections is crude dictatorship? Other than perpetuating corruption, have elections delivered justice and transparency where they are held?

Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail: [email protected]

Many observers were dismayed by President William Ruto’s campaign tour of the godforsaken parts of Nairobi. On that campaign trail, Mr Ruto made outrageous pronouncements from the rooftop of his car.

He promised residents that he would procure a machine capable of making a million chapatis daily. Then he promised that, in a short period of time, skyscrapers, in the fashion of New York City, would define the skyline of their piece of hell on earth. He promised markets and roads and bridges, and everything under the sun.

Does Mr Ruto plan his speeches beforehand, or does he make them up on the fly, egged on by the excitement of the campaign? Even assuming some of these promises are practically doable, their funding would be unprocedural, because they exist nowhere in the budget statement to parliament.

In any case, government is struggling to pay doctors, teachers and civil servants. Unions representing these sectors have either called for or threatened industrial action.

At the moment, doctors and nurses are on strike and the universal healthcare plan under SHA is not working. This is not the time for campaigning for an election that is two and a half years away.

It is time to sit quietly in an office for countless hours with the best brains in the country to find solutions to these huge problems.

The parts of Nairobi covered by Ruto’s campaign tour are proof of government failure since independence. Basic amenities like water, power, sewerage, roads, clinics, playgrounds are woefully inadequate or nonexistent.

In addition, joblessness, especially among the youth, and crime are sky high. The government should address these shortcomings before attempting to turn slums into New York City.

Once you address these conditions, people will be able to feed themselves and not have to wait for miracle machines to make them chapatis. They will be able to build business premises that, in time, could become skyscrapers.

Read: Kenya's Ruto pledges to bring down cost of living ‘in 100 days’

Mr Ruto’s campaign encapsulated the elements that constitute Africa’s crisis of development. First, it demonstrated haphazard planning, not linked to the overall development plan.

China determines where it wants to be in a hundred years, and plans accordingly. Second, it aptly captured the cause and effect of extreme poverty in Africa.

It showcased how obscene opulence wastes scarce resources. African leaders are beloved of the trappings of power. Mr Ruto’s motorcade snaking through impoverished neighbourhoods recalled Bola Tinubu’s 60-car motorcade going through hellhole of neighbourhoods of a Nigerian city.

Mr Ruto was accompanied on the tour by the governor of Nairobi, a county which recently unveiled garbage as a problem-solving tool. While China is defining the future city, top officials of Nairobi County came on TV to defend their ‘garbage’ strategic plan.

Our intellectuals develop complex theories why Africa has been left behind by the rest of the world. The answer is a lot simpler – “garbage” and pie-in- the-sky, or more aptly, chapatti-in-the-sky planning. Evidence of this kind of “strategic” planning is everywhere in Africa.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political and social commentator.

A lot of it is about migration, I mean much of what the world is suffering today flows out of people and peoples being restless and mobile, going from place to place, vacating spaces and filling up spaces elsewhere as the case may be, and entering into relationships that may engender future complications.

The adage that everybody came from somewhere else may not sound like an overstatement simply because the history of each one of us seems to be placing our ancestors very close to where we are today but just think a little bit about a few centuries back.

Even with the English, that arrogant race that once did “bestride the world like a Colossus” are a recent migrant tribe to the smallish islands out there that they have seen proper to call “Great”.

Yes, even the great Romans seem to have emanated from some Greek islands who underwent various ‘collabos’, mutations and synthesizations that made them what they were before they arrived wherever they were headed. Idem for all the civilisations in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Americas and Oceania, great and not so great.

But we are different than all those, it being said that humankind somehow originated from Africa and spread outward to other lands, which should make all the other races to sit up and take notice and show some respect to us as their forefathers, (whatever that would be worth.

But in our self-contained land pieces we call home, we are more likely to grow chauvinistic and lay exclusive claim to where we are, and — if our ignorance suffers the same level of ambition as that of extreme Zionism — to cite God as our biblical real-estate agent in whose name we are going to exterminate whoever says they were there before we landed.

In certain cases, when new immigrants arrived and found welcoming hosts they settled without a fuss, and thus blended peoples, cultures and histories.

Read: US presidential candidate Trump pledges to deport Haitians from Ohio if elected

In others, however, antagonisms on both sides were the initial impetus for the relationship, and things developed in one way or another, sometimes by annihilation (as in America and Oceania), sometimes by working out a modus vivendi.

In certain cases, a lot of water had to go under the bridge before the hatchet was buried (such as the end of Apartheid in South Africa in 1994 or the Good Friday agreement in Ireland in 1998).

But in the particular case of the Native Americans of the US, Donald Trump’s forbears used slow attrition, aided by smallpox, forced labour, war and whiskey to impose ‘pacification.’ Consequently, the issues relating to the genocide of the “Red Indians” is buried, largely in oblivion.

Some of the conflicts engendered by the more ragged aspects of migration have not died out entirely, even after decades of enforced ‘normalcy.’ And now, hard-nosed imperialists believe that if past crimes have not been punished there is no reason to suppose that fresh ones will be.

So, they will try to make Gaza a Middle East riviera and return South Africa to Apartheid, where it should have remained in the first place if wiser counsel had prevailed when it mattered.

Mental cartographers are hard at work reimagining the world as it ought to be. Even in Africa, where it was said, back in 1964, that tinkering with colonial frontiers—however arbitrary and illogical they were — would be to invite disaster, some people in Kinshasa, Congo, seek to ignore the dictates of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on the issue.

Of course, in parenthesis, a question has to emerge in our minds from time to time: We have sanctified colonial frontiers since 1964 for expediency’s sake, not out of principle: In principle, we abjure these borders as being symptomatic of our subjugation by foreign powers during our Dark Ages.

But this would have made sense only if it served as a clarion call for the unification of the African continent, not as a pious wish we reverentially inherit from Kwame Nkrumah and the founding fathers, but as a pragmatic, programmatic desire to redeem Africa from her tribulations of the past.

This is particularly troubling now, as our ongoing division and disunity leave us vulnerable in a world that grows more aggressive every day.

It still remains true that we all came from elsewhere, and the whole world came from Africa, or so we are told, and we incline to believe this particular line of thought.

Read: Trump and Zelenskiy clash, leaving Ukraine exposed in war with Russia

In light of this belief, we Africans are called upon to take up the leadership mantle that behoves us as the elders of the world, to impart to the world some basic principles of propriety and decorum, which the world seems to have lost every time we observe the behaviour of the big leaders of the world who are refusing to be great.

For instance, we might want to start by civilising Donald Trump and his vice, J. D. Vance, that it is improper to receive a guest in your home (Vlodomir Zelensky) and to tell them to their face that they should go kiss the feet of their sworn enemy… That is in bad taste, even if you have decided to throw the poor little guy under the bus. At least have manners!

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam.

The Horn of Africa is facing another familiar and dangerous tension as Ethiopia and Eritrea spar in public.

Despite both countries saying they are not interested in war, the rhetoric from both capitals have not hidden the growing animosity between them.

Ethiopia and Eritrea may be rivals shaped by years of bloodshed. But this new tension has broken an environment of calm that had seen Eritrean forces even back Ethiopian troops in the Tigray war.

But after Tigray conflict was somewhat resolved, we have seen another slide toward the prospect of war. The border is tense, with both sides massing troops.

Old wounds, once papered over by a fragile peace, are reopening. The stakes go far beyond their borderlands — another full-scale war between these two countries could destabilise the entire region.

In the past, their friendship was on and off. By 1998, the two were fighting over a patch of contested borderland, dragging both nations into yet another brutal war.

Read: Ethiopia’s Abiy rules out war with Eritrea over Red Sea access

The conflict killed tens of thousands and left both sides locked in hostility. It wasn’t until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s unexpected visit to Asmara in 2018 that the two began talking peace again.

Yet the peace never fully held. Eritrean troops backed Ethiopia in the fight against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), but when peace was brokered in Pretoria in 2022 by the African Union, Eritrea was left out of the deal. The fallout has strained relations ever since.

Now both sides have ramped up military deployments along their shared border, even though they officially vow to avoid war. Tigray is also unravelling from within, with rival factions turning on each other.

While Ethiopia accused Eritrea of fuelling the unrest, talk in Addis Ababa about reclaiming a path to the Red Sea has only heightened tensions in Asmara.

If fighting breaks out, it will not be a local affair. Both countries are militarised, and their history suggests that any border clash could escalate quickly.

Worse, this could draw in regional and global actors — from Egypt, Israel, Gulf States to Western governments with stakes in Red Sea security and migration flows.

A renewed war would come at a heavy price. Both sides are heavily armed, and given their history, even a small clash could spiral fast.

The danger goes beyond their border - Egypt, Gulf states, Western powers, and others with interests in the Red Sea could quickly find themselves pulled in.

Another war would be ruinous. Ethiopia is struggling with internal divisions, a weakening economy, and mounting unrest. Eritrea remains isolated, its people burdened by conscription and President Isaias Afwerki and his party, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice—(Shabia)— are firmly in control. A new war would only push both countries closer to economic collapse and deepen the misery on both sides of the border.

The fallout wouldn’t stop at their borders. A war in the Horn of Africa will rarely stay contained. Another Ethiopia-Eritrea war would possibly unravel the whole region.

It would likely drag in neighbours such as Sudan and Somalia, displace thousands, fuel violent extremism, insurgency, guerrilla warfare, arms trafficking, and turn the region into a battleground for outside powers.

For the region to avoid this conflict, leaders should act now. The African Union and member states must urgently step in and bring both sides to the table before shots are fired.

The region should bring external players into line: Egypt, the Gulf states, the US, China, and the EU all have a stake in Red Sea security. They need to coordinate their influence and push both Ethiopia and Eritrea to step back from confrontation and commit to regional stability.

More importantly, Ethiopia should put its house in order: Addis Ababa must confront its internal fractures, starting with long-standing tensions in Tigray, before those domestic issues spill over and fuel external conflict.

While at it, the African Union should deploy a credible mediator: The African Union with the support of neutral member states should urgently appoint a senior envoy—someone with credibility and access to both sides—to broker talks, calm the situation, and open a path to long-term de-escalation.

Read: Ethiopia, Eritrea promise to avoid war but offer no peace guarantee

This tension won’t end if both sides avoid dialogue. Ethiopia and Eritrea need to reopen military and political channels, pull troops back from the sensitive border areas, and take real steps to defuse tensions before they spiral out of control.

As this is a risk to the wider Horn of Africa, neighboring states like Sudan and Somalia would face spillover effects, including refugee flows, arms proliferation and the risk of proxy involvement by outside powers.

The Horn of has little room for another war. Both governments are under growing pressure — economically, politically, and socially — but renewed active conflict will only make matters worse. The question now is whether African and international actors can act quickly enough to prevent history from repeating itself.

Abdisaid M. Ali is the chairperson of Lomé Peace and Security Forum.

East Africa is chaotic, yet, as numerous international and pan-African financial institutions frequently note, the region continues to weave its economic magic.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has consistently predicted that East Africa will be the continent’s fastest-growing economic bloc.

The most recent and detailed forecast for 2025 appears in the African Development Bank Group’s African Economic Outlook (AEO) 2024, published on 30 May 2024 during the Bank’s Annual Meetings in Nairobi. It states:

“East Africa, the continent’s fastest-growing region, will see real GDP growth rise from an estimated 1.5 per cent in 2023 to 4.9 per cent in 2024 and 5.7 per cent in 2025.”

The surprise is that East Africa—particularly the East African Community (EAC)—isn’t performing twice as well, given its vast potential. To truly shine, it must shed its destructive habits, starting with fostering greater peace.

In recent years, six of the 18 sub-Saharan African states with active armed conflicts were EAC members, accounting for roughly 33 per cent of such conflicts in the region.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, and South Sudan have endured high-intensity armed conflicts, while Burundi, Kenya, and Uganda have grappled with low-intensity, subnational skirmishes.

Beyond this, rampant corruption, governance failures, and political repression plague several EAC states. Yet the region boasts immense strengths it could leverage to rake in busloads of moolah.

For one, it has a decent share of arable land to revolutionise agriculture. Though Somalia, and to a lesser extent Kenya, drag it down, the EAC holds between 18 and 26 per cent of Africa’s arable land. The data here is shaky, and some generous estimates push this figure even higher.

The EAC is home to Lake Nalubaale/Nyanza (Victoria), Africa’s largest lake and the world’s second-largest freshwater lake by surface area, after Lake Superior in Canada and the US. Despite a handful of ships and mostly artisanal fishing, the lake sees little economic activity.

Yet, with its 1,000 islands, it could become the global capital of resort partying, tourism, and water sports. (Fun fact: Lake Bunyonyi in southwestern Uganda is 1,500 times smaller than Nalubaale but has 29 islands, giving it a far greater per capita wealth in islands.)

In these climate change-ravaged times, water is gold. Africa’s total renewable internal freshwater resources (internal river flows and groundwater from rainfall) are estimated at around 3,931 billion cubic metres. The EAC countries collectively hold 1,096.76 billion cubic metres—about 27.9 per cent of the continent’s inland freshwater.

Forests, too, have soared in value. Africa’s total forest area spans approximately 6.7 million square kilometres. The EAC’s combined forest area is roughly 2.46 million square kilometres—about 36.7 per cent of Africa’s forested land.

We owe much of this to the DRC joining the EAC; it alone accounts for around 27.1 per cent of the continent’s forest area, meaning the rest of the EAC is largely riding its coattails.

The EAC could also be a tourism titan. Consider the Pyramids of Giza (Egypt), Serengeti National Park (Tanzania), Mount Kilimanjaro (Tanzania), Victoria Falls (Zambia/Zimbabwe), Maasai Mara National Reserve (Kenya)—linked to the Serengeti’s migration—Table Mountain (South Africa), Kruger National Park (South Africa), Ngorongoro Crater (Tanzania), Zanzibar Archipelago (Tanzania), Sahara Desert, Okavango Delta (Botswana), Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (Uganda), Namib Desert (Namibia), Marrakech Medina (Morocco), and Virunga National Park (DRC).

Within the EAC, Bwindi and Virunga mean mountain gorillas—an arena where East Africa dominates entirely. Bwindi, Virunga, and Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park host 100 per cent of the world’s mountain gorilla population.

The EAC also claims Africa’s five highest mountain peaks, though their icy summits are vanishing fast due to climate change. Mount Kilimanjaro (Tanzania) stands tallest at 5,895 metres, followed by Mount Kenya at 5,199 metres.

The Rwenzori Mountains (Uganda/DRC) house Mount Stanley, the third-highest at 5,109 metres, followed by Vittorio Emanuele Peak and Edward Peak, both in the same range.

Lower down, the Virunga Mountains (Rwanda/DRC/Uganda) feature a chain of volcanoes, including Mount Karisimbi (4,507 metres), while Mount Elgon (Kenya/Uganda), an extinct shield volcano, reaches 4,321 metres. Like the gorillas, this is another East African monopoly.

On renewable energy, roughly 27 per cent of Africa’s untapped non-solar renewable potential—hydropower, wind, geothermal, and biomass—lies within the EAC, based on an estimated 135 GW out of Africa’s 504 gigawatts.

This could range from 25–30 per cent depending on biomass estimates and project developments, driven by the DRC’s hydropower and Kenya’s geothermal, though tempered by weaker wind and biomass contributions.

The region is also a creative hub and a magnet for venture capital, largely thanks to Kenya’s star power. In 2023, Kenyan startups attracted £800 million in venture capital—28 per cent of all funds raised continent-wide.

EAC countries collectively secured 20 per cent of Africa’s $5.805 billion in tech funding that year, with Uganda securing $141.9 million, Rwanda $64.5 million, and Tanzania $25.8 million, all trailing behind Kenya.

For those, like Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, who champions growing populations, the EAC excels. Four of Africa’s 10 fastest-growing populations—Uganda, Burundi, DRC, and Tanzania—are EAC members.

East Africa might soon dominate Africa’s airways, too. Three of the top 10 African airlines—Kenya Airways, RwandAir, and Fastjet (Zimbabwe/Tanzania)—are EAC-based. If Ethiopia joins the EAC, Ethiopian Airlines, the continent’s leader, could shake things up. And if Air Tanzania and Uganda Airlines get their act together, it could be game over.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult for East Africa to excuse its failure to become an economic powerhouse.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter: @cobbo3

It was almost the perfect year for the Women’s Run to take place in Dar es Salaam. IWD2025 fell on a Saturday, which would have allowed for us to convene at dawn in the rich neighbourhood’s open green space and enjoy some exercise together.

It didn’t happen, the holy month of Ramadan had begun and there is an unspoken understanding that we reduce our physical exertions then. Respectable reason to delay the event.

However, when the event organisers mentioned that this year the Women’s Run will also carry the theme of Clean Cooking, I had an adverse reaction.

Spent the whole day feeling bent out of shape over it — how dare they chain this event to our stoves, can we just have one (expletive deleted) day when we’re not being strangled by the focus on domesticity? The intensity of my fury shook me a little, so I had to call myself in for a chat about it.

I made myself take a beat and a cup of tea and asked my Self why I was having such big feelings this year? What was really going on?

And my Self honoured the request, drank the tea, had a nap and eventually told me: Because the corporations are doing their thing again and co-opting a deeply necessary political response to injustice for their own purposes.

Because it is not okay to reduce a women’s run to “cook clean” even if the intention is a good one: This particular intersection re-enforces the “mwanamke jiko!” problem in my stubbornly patriarchal society.

Because it took us this long to be able to exercise in public in Dar es Salaam without being pummelled to death by unsolicited comments from the sexists: these public walks are where people cheer athleticism in women!

So many “becauses” but the main one was the co-optation.

My Self told me that the anger had been brewing for a while. She has seen what happens to movements that get co-opted: it is just death, usually by Capitalism.

I asked my Self: Baby Girl, you have spent a lifetime studying the ways of Power as a social force, surely you can do better than throwing a tantrum at having your Special Day taken over by a couple of “well-intended” thugs?

My Self refused to speak to me any further as She had plans for the weekend that revolved around rejuvenation. She told me that “self-care is an act of Love, and Love is radical in 2025!” My dramatic Self has a habit of capitalising certain words for emphasis.

In due time, my Self grabbed a tampon to soak up the tears so that She could re-engage. If corporations, politicians and other actors are able to co-opt Women’s Day for their own profane uses, it is because nobody calls them out about it regularly, she said.

You used to relish being considered dangerous because you are a Feminist, she said. Maybe writing about it can start a conversation, she said. So here we are.

I am no longer split in two with agitation over Women’s Month 2025, I will be enjoying it in peace as I plot on how to co-opt or otherwise corrupt cynical and profiteering attempts to pink-wash products and services.

Besides, my Self and I are laughing in relief that at least we were not “gifted” a kanga with the President’s face on it for Women’s Day 2025. Can you imagine? Tcha!

Although I was born and raised near our capital city of Kampala and even nearer to the international airport of Entebbe, I had no need to wear pants fulltime until I went to school aged four.

Kindergarten was a later 1970s introduction. Such was newly independent African life, that many little boys also enjoyed independence from clothes in our warm weather.

Growing older, we realised the reason we weren’t stopped from running around the neighbourhood without clothes was that we had nothing worth covering then.

Watching the Ukrainian president last week as he stood his ground before a White House disciplinary committee (or lynch mob, depending on which angle you view the re-alignment of global politics from), it felt like seeing a group of Igbo brothers nodding in the background saying that Comrade Zelensky indeed deserves wearing trousers. Soon Africans will know which of their leaders qualifies to wear trousers.

At no other time after Independence did Africa need real men and women to guide it through the unjust jungle of global affairs.

The other day in Munich we saw European tears rolling when Vice President Vance indicated that US may no longer view Russia and China through Euro lenses. At least Zelensky neither wept nor caved in while being roasted in Washington.

How long will it take for a critical number of African leaders to identify and define what stakes the continent has in the oncoming storm?

Africa today is like a woman approaching middle age and running out of time to determine how to lead the rest of her life and raise sensible children.

She has been (mis)used by men who are now fighting themselves, and if she isn’t blind, sees her chance to determine her own destiny before they finish fighting and return to her, with a new formula for abusing her.

Read:  Africa presidents, look in the mirror to confirm it isn’t Trump you’ll see

And how apt that this is happening during the anniversary of the Berlin Conference when outsiders agreed on how to rob Africa without a single African at the table where the sharing was taking place!

There could be six or more options for Africa, four of them monogamous. Three possibilities would be to enter an exclusive relationship with America, or with China, or Russia.

Fourth would be to go monogamous with EU, but given the fast advancing years towards her menopause, Africa might find European indecision a big turnoff.

A fifth option would be a deal with Ukraine. Yes, many may not be aware that at the Soviet breakup 33 years ago, Ukraine was/is the second most powerful unit after Russia, of those that comprised the mighty Union in technology, military, economy and human resource development.

That Ukraine has remained standing and fighting since Russia attacked (some Americans now say Ukraine caused the war) is testimony to this. Let’s also add a footnote that the largest aircraft ever was built by Ukraine.

The Antonov An-225 Mriya, a real wonder of aviation engineering, was destroyed during the Russian invasion. Since Ukraine dreams of rebuilding the mass air transporter (its name means ‘dream’ in Ukrainian), Africa which lacks roads and railways could offer a partnership here to realise its African Continental Free Trade Area dream.

A sixth option would be opting for permanent celibacy (claiming independence or non-alignment). But given Africa’s limited technology and military capacity, this could be risky and she could end up like a village widow whose door can be kicked in by any villain.

Then to safeguard herself against such midnight attacks moreover abetted by some of her domestic staff (corrupt public officials), she may end up accepting protection from a not-so-honest guy, and the secrecy of the relationship would lead to lack of accountability on his part.

So a deal with a young man who is hard as nails and can build big airplanes for her can be a more viable option. But it takes people who have something worth covering in their clothes to make such tough decisions at a critical time for the continent.

Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail: [email protected]

Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu has revealed in Senate that the system running the Social Health Insurance Fund (Shif) under the Social Health Authority (SHA) was unprocedurally acquired and is unconstitutionally operated. Its acquisition was single-sourced, shrouded in secrecy, and flouted public procurement laws.

The system cost a staggering Ksh104 billion (more than $950 million). That’s not all.

A percentage of contributions Kenyans make to the fund goes to shadowy providers and operators of the system. The Auditor-General cast doubt on the scheme’s lawfulness and effectiveness. 

These damning revelations come on the heels of public uproar over unavailability of services under the scheme. A patient who stormed the Health Ministry to protest that SHA was not working, and who was later abducted from a hospital for her derring-do, represents the frustration of Kenyans over the scheme.

Where was parliament when this scheme was being concocted ? Why didn’t relevant parliamentary watchdog committees launch their own investigation immediately the public began to complain? Why did parliament appropriate such a staggering amount for the SHA software ?

The answer is also the reason why parliament overwhelmingly passed Finance Bill, 2024, and cheered wildly when it was later withdrawn due to countrywide protests.

The reason is also why MPs supported the Adani airport deal and again cheered hysterically when it was withdraw after a US court indicted the corporation for illicit behaviour.

It is also the reason why parliament has not conducted an investigation into who murdered youth protesting plunder and misrule last year, and is continuing to abduct, torture, murder and “disappear” youthful critics of the regime.

Read:  Kenya slouching towards a police state

The answer in a nutshell is parliament long abdicated its constitutional mandate of safeguarding the public from excesses of the executive. It is no longer the people’s House. It is now the president’s House.

In a span of two years, we have witnessed abduction and murder of critics, thievery on an unprecedented scale, failure of or disquiet over flagship projects like Hustler Fund and Affordable Housing, high cost of living, Adani misadventure, fake fertiliser scam, continuation of deadly banditry in certain regions, the growth of a “culture of lies”, crises in health and education, foreign policy debacles, and now the SHA controversy.

In the spirit of King Midas, everything the regime touches turns to rust.

To adapt Winston Churchill, never in recent history has so much damage been caused to so many by so few in such a short period of time. 

Despite all the failures, many people have always assumed that the regime, at its heart, means well. They persuaded themselves that the regime would see the error of its ways and do better. No one wants to doubt that their government means well.

Even harsh critics want government to succeed. But the Auditor-General’s report mustnow force us to ask a painful question – has the regime ever meant well? Is it still logical or patriotic to assume the regime means well? Isn’t doing so living in a fool’s paradise? 

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political and social commentator.

Give it to Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta , one-time president of Kenya, just give it to him. He has the knack of sometimes making a serious point with such easygoing bonhomie you might even think he is only jesting, when he is actually in earnest.

This last one about Donald Trump cutting aid to our countries and people whining is one of them.

Uhuru puts it across with such simplicity: you do not pay taxes in America; it’s not your money, period; stop whining and instead ask yourselves what you are going to do to cover the deficit created by the end of the handouts that Trump has decreed, closing a another chapter of free lunches so beloved of our free-loading rulers.

It is concerning how much the people running our governments are prepared to go on bended knee to beg for the most rudimentary things, even when we really do not need them or we could have provided them from our own resources.

I have seen cases of very simple and cheap health campaigns carrying very loud and conspicuous billboards, just to remind us that our minds are enslaved and tied to that mental and psychological lethargy that does not allow us to see how we could have done whatever it is with our own resources, saving us the embarrassment of beggary.

Trump is back and for him that means America is back. Forget the megalomania for a moment, but remember America was not founded as an altruistic, do-gooder nation; rather it was established on the blood-soaked burial mounds of Native Americans, who were summarily exterminated and erased, and the Africans who were kidnapped and taken there as slaves.

Read:  However fantastical, world could be reinvented in Trump’s clamour

So, any attempt to see America as our benefactor must proceed from a serious misapprehension. Simply put, you are on your own, you have no rich uncle, and now you may want to remember what you were taught in primary school: cut your coat according to your cloth.
Stop living like you are rich, because you simply aren’t.

Those cars you are driven in, those luxurious foreign trips you take, the huge fraudulent deals you make on your countries’ resources… all these are not yours, but rather they are expenses you push onto your poor people who continue to suffer under you simply because they have failed to throw you off their backs.

It reminds me that Uhuru as his country’s minister of finance (before becoming president) abolished government cars and created a scheme under which senior officials got loans to buy and drive their own cars (Rwanda did pretty much the same thing) .

This was resisted in Tanzania, because it is more profitable for our officials to be driven in huge gas-guzzling government cars, which they can use to carry, say, firewood or charcoal without wear-and-tear concerns.

But then, strangely, under President Benjamin Mkapa and his infrastructure minister John Magufuli, the same bureaucrats thought up a scheme to give away (literally give away) government quarters to their occupiers because, it was said, they were too expensive to maintain!

In a couple of strokes of the pen, whole estates of state property on prime land across the country were given away for a song, and they have now become eyesores in our major cities as the new owners turned them into illicit beer shacks and auto-spare-parts shops.

Evidence abounds, too, that some of the recipients of this extraordinary government largesse were in fact not the recognised occupants of the said houses but the mistresses of those who made these bizarre decisions.

Maybe we should leave such matters to the future historians, who will be poring over records to determine who has been the most corrupt in our endless parade of brigands and blood suckers, but for the time being we are enjoined to find ways of plugging the holes in our budgets by Trump’s decision to plug the holes in his own exchequer.

It is his right to do so, absolutely, as it is our duty to stop the leaks (nay, gushes) from our own coffers. That is why I draw a lot of inspiration from what Uhuru has been telling us: Hey, people, it is his money he is withholding. It is not your money, and you have no right to whine.

So, if you have this heavy burden of keeping thousands of sick people who need life-saving drugs to keep on keeping on, do the done thing and put your money where your mouth is, Get rid of all those SUVs whose purchase price--- before it is even on the road --- is an appreciable percentage of a small ARV factory that could save a few of your people’s lives.

Do away with all those foreign travels in first class/business class and the fat allowances that go with them, and the Rolexes and the blings…. and you will find there is enough money for your schoolchildren’s desks, books and chalk.

In other words, be logical, make sense, behave like you mean what you say, that you care for your people. Simply put, jump off that long gravy train and you will find that Trump does make sense, at least on this one.

For the rest, tackle Trump where you can tackle him, like Gaza; or kick him on South Africa’s land issues, and you will make sense.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam.

This year I will score a self-designed gourmande hat-trick that I want to dub the Dar Special.

To kick things off, I celebrated Fat Tuesday with pancakes and mild debauchery in the form of cheesecake. This will be followed by wangling an invite to a Holi party, then the grand finale of Eid ul Fitr.

What a month, hey? And what a city to spend it in. While I was eating my Fat Tuesday pancakes, a colleague teased me about improving the quality and price of the meals that I buy because it is the month of Ramadan, and he can no longer demand his share.

A pretty mundane interaction, right? Except it isn’t.

When I was a kid, I jumped into a public swimming pool with a handful of other kids only to watch everyone else we had found there exit the pool hurriedly. It was somewhere in South Africa before 1994. Lacking the direct experience of my parents who lived through the last of colonialism, I wasn’t prepared.

I thought everywhere was a bit like Dar: A mixed chopped salad, if not a melting pot.

Travel is a great teacher and over time I learned that oases of competent cultural co-existence are not all that common. Dar es Salaam comes with a bit of a story, like all good cities do. “Founded” by Majid Bin Said — if you are comfortable erasing the Africans who already lived there as was the fashion at the time— it has been used as an administrative centre by successive regimes.

I think the arc goes: Locals minding their business, Sultan of Zanzibar, German, British, Tanganyika, finally Tanzania... and maybe one day, the Southern State of the East African Federation and onwards to the United States of Afrika.

Read: Life in Dar es Salaam during Christmas holiday

Up until now, countless people and dozens of cultures have made their way here bringing religious and cultural diversity. This is not a clean and friendly history written by Disney, but somehow over a century and some change we have figured out how to make it work with a bit of grace given to us by Utu.

Considering what it took us to get here — tolerance is a form of sacrifice, of love — it would be unpatriotic of me not to revel in this kaleidoscope of languages and cuisine, music. Hedonism has such an unnecessarily bad rap, you know? In Kiswahili, one of the expressions for actively enjoying life translates into “eating life” — yes, thank you.

Perhaps this is why Professor Doctor Honourable Minister Palamagamba Kabudi told us at excessive length using excessively formal Kiswahili that Singeli music was going to be officially recognised and promoted as a unique Tanzanian cultural product.

It is a brilliant move to recognise and celebrate an art form that is homebrewed out of youth unemployment, world-class drumbeats, disruptive resistance humour, lasciviousness and illegal alcohol.

Definitely not a transparent grab for young urban votes during an election year via the co-optation of a popular genre of music, nope.

In Singeli I hear the offspring of mdundiko and other endangered native genres that have always contrasted with and inspired more “polished” forms like taarab.

After my last sinia of holy day pilau has been devoured, the coloured powder has been washed from my hair and the smell of Catholic incense clears the air in April, it will be my patriotic duty to find a dive bar and lose myself all hot and sweaty in fast songs with louche lyrics. Least I can do for the joie de vivre in the port of peace. See you there?

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report; E-mail: [email protected]

South Sudanese soldiers encircled Vice President Riek Machar’s home in the capital, Juba, on Wednesday, and several of his allies were arrested after an armed group loyal to him overran an army base in the country’s north.

Machar, whose political rivalry with President Salva Kiir has previously erupted into full-blown war, warned last month that the dismissal of several of his allies from government positions jeopardised the 2018 peace deal that ended South Sudan’s five-year civil conflict. That war claimed more than 400,000 lives.

While Machar’s struggles have a distinctly South Sudanese post-independence flavour, his predicament is also part of a broader African tradition—where presidents and their deputies often endure relationships defined by suspicion, power struggles, and outright betrayal.

Take Kenya, for instance. Last October, Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua was impeached, marking the first such removal of a deputy president in the country’s history. His alliance with President William Ruto had disintegrated within months, culminating in his ouster just two years after he took on Kenya’s second-most powerful role.

Ironically, Ruto himself endured a famously toxic relationship with his predecessor, former president Uhuru Kenyatta, in the four years before the 2022 elections that propelled him into power.

Sometimes, these rivalries turn deadly. Burkina Faso’s charismatic revolutionary leader, Thomas Sankara, once trusted Blaise Compaoré as his right-hand man.

They had seized power together in a 1983 coup. But Compaoré’s ambitions poisoned their relationship. On October 15, 1987, he orchestrated Sankara’s assassination and took control for himself.

This remains one of Africa’s most infamous cases of a deputy turning against their president.

Read: South Sudan defends detention of Riek Machar allies

Zimbabwe’s case is equally illustrative. Former president Robert Mugabe, Africa’s longest-serving leader, appointed Joice Mujuru—a respected liberation war veteran—as vice president in 2004, seemingly grooming her as his successor.

But as First Lady Grace Mugabe entered the political arena, she sought to sideline Mujuru. In 2014, Grace accused Mujuru of plotting to assassinate Mugabe. The ensuing smear campaign saw Mujuru unceremoniously ejected from the party and her vice presidency.

Then there is Somalia, where former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, who lost re-election in May 2022, maintained a notoriously acrimonious relationship with his deputy, Mahdi Mohamed Guled.

In August 2020, a video surfaced purporting to show the two attempting to strangle each other during a heated press conference.

The story spread like wildfire, and given their well-known enmity, many found it plausible. It later emerged that the video had been doctored—an old political scuffle repackaged for dramatic effect.

For all the dramatic falling-outs, Africa has also had vice presidents who perfected the art of staying out of trouble. Few mastered it as well as Uganda’s Edward Ssekandi, who served as President Yoweri Museveni’s deputy for a decade. If Ssekandi ever disagreed with Museveni, he ensured the public never caught wind of it.

Museveni, who has been known to publicly berate his ministers and prime ministers, never turned his wrath on Ssekandi. Months would pass without Ssekandi making a public appearance, save for the occasional grainy photo on social media of him dancing alone in a dimly lit pub. When his tenure ended, there was no fanfare, no angry statements from his supporters, and no tearful television interviews.

Ssekandi reportedly walked away with a smile—and remains a much-loved figure.

His approach reinforced a crucial African political lesson: to survive as a vice president, one must either master the art of invisibility or wholeheartedly embrace the role of presidential cheerleader, bag-carrier, and flatterer-in-chief.

Of course, sometimes fate intervenes. Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan became president not because of any strategic manoeuvre but because his boss, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, fell gravely ill and died in office in 2010. The lesson? If you’re a VP, luck can be more useful than loyalty.

Then there’s the “sexually transmitted successor” strategy—Kenyan slang for those who ascend by family ties. Equatorial Guinea’s Vice President, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, enjoys a seemingly smooth relationship with his boss—who also happens to be his father, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Read:  South Sudan on edge as cracks emerge in ruling coalition

But beyond individual ambitions and betrayals, structural factors also shape these tensions. At independence, many African states adopted highly centralised systems where presidents wielded near-absolute power. Those who tasted such power grew paranoid about potential rivals. The vice presidency, by design, became a precarious position.

Additionally, many VPs are appointed not out of trust but to appease ethnic, regional, or political constituencies. If a vice president has ambitions of their own, they naturally seek to consolidate power, making them a threat to the boss.

Weak institutions also fuel instability. In some countries, the first lady, first son or daughter, or even the head of state’s personal witch doctor wield more influence than a vice president – and sometimes are the de facto presidents.

When power is informal and succession rules are unclear, chaos follows. This is often exacerbated by the lack of presidential term limits.

This instability has led to dismissals, coups, assassinations, and full-scale wars—none more devastating than South Sudan’s December 2013 conflict, triggered when Kiir first sacked Machar as vice president.

For Machar, history appears to be repeating itself. And if Africa’s past is anything to go by, his latest standoff with Kiir will not be the last chapter in the continent’s long, blood-stained book of presidential-vice presidential rivalries.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter: @cobbo3

Germany temporarily closed its embassy in South Sudan’s capital Juba because of rising tensions that have brought the country to the verge of civil war, the German foreign ministry said on Saturday.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir this week sacked the governor of Upper Nile state, where clashes have escalated between government troops and an ethnic militia he accuses of allying with his rival, First Vice President Riek Machar.

The standoff has heightened concerns that the world’s newest nation could slide back into conflict some seven years after its emergence from a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

“After years of fragile peace, South Sudan is once again on the brink of civil war,” the German foreign ministry wrote on x.

“President Kiir and Vice President Machar are plunging the country into a spiral of violence. It’s their responsibility to end this senseless violence & finally implement the peace agreement.”

South Sudan’s United Nations peacekeeping chief, Nicholas Haysom, has also said he is concerned the country is “on the brink of relapse into civil war”.

Angola will step down from its position as a mediator between parties involved in an escalating Rwanda-backed rebel offensive in eastern Congo, the presidency said on Monday, with another African state set to lead efforts to get peace talks back on track.

The M23 escalated their long-standing rebellion this year, seizing east Congo’s two biggest cities since January and encroaching into territory rich in minerals such as gold and tantalum.

As the current rotating African Union (AU) chairperson, Angola’s President Joao Lourenco had been trying to mediate a lasting ceasefire and lower tensions between Congo and neighbouring Rwanda, which has been accused of backing M23. Rwanda denies this.

Read: Lourenco’s gamble: Interests in Angolan leader’s quest to broker peace in Congo

Congo and M23 were scheduled to hold direct talks for the first time in Angola’s capital Luanda last week after Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi, who had long refused dialogue with the rebels, agreed to send a delegation.

M23 pulled out at the last minute, following European Union sanctions against M23 and Rwandan officials.

“Angola considers the need to free itself from the responsibility of the mediator of this conflict” to “devote itself more” to the AU’s overall priorities, the presidency said in a statement that mentioned the “aborted” meeting in Luanda.

Read: Tshisekedi, Kagame meeting in Qatar ‘surprises’ Angola

Another head of state will be appointed to the task in coming days, the statement said.

There have been several attempts to resolve the conflict, rooted in the fallout from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and competition for mineral riches, including several ceasefires that were violated, international condemnations, sanctions and regional summits.

The regional blocs of southern and eastern Africa will hold a second joint summit on Monday to address the crisis. Kenya’s President William Ruto and his Zimbabwean counterpart Emmerson Mnangagwa will co-chair the virtual event.

M23 last week dismissed a joint call for an immediate ceasefire by Congo and Rwanda and reiterated demands for direct talks with Kinshasa, saying it was the only way to resolve the conflict.

The rebel group said over the weekend that it would withdraw forces from the seized town of Walikale in support of peace efforts.

In response, Congo’s army said it would observe the announced withdrawal and refrain from any offensives against enemy forces to encourage de-escalation.

A civil society source and a resident in Walikale said on Monday that M23 were still in the town.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) says it is still open to direct dialogue with M23 rebels, a sign of changing stance on a group it had previously vowed never to engage peacefully.

According to statements by Congolese Foreign Affairs Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, the DRC is readjusting to realities of the conflict, especially coming at a time Southern African Development Community (SAMIDRC) forces are departing the country following a year of losses.

‘'We are following the logic of the evolution of the conflict and the DRC, at this precise moment, has decided that it is more appropriate for us and above all for our people to engage in this direct discussion with the M23, if this would have the repercussion of a cessation of hostility, a cessation of violence against our civilian populations," the Congolese minister for Foreign Affairs said on Saturday.

'‘It is difficult to predict how a conflict will evolve. We have long maintained that direct negotiations with the M23 should not be our priority or our immediate modus operandi, but the Angolan mediator (President Joao Lourenço) has invited the various parties to meet and discuss," she pointed out, adding that "a conflict evolves in its intensity, in its scope, in its actors too, in the posture of the different actors."

According to her, it would be regrettable to have a government that is unable to contextualise a situation as it evolves, suggesting Kinshasa's position will not be static "but that doesn't mean that certain principles don't remain."

On the ground in North Kivu, the M23/AFC announced that it has withdrawn from some of the areas it recently conquered during the fighting in March.

In a press release issued on Saturday, the M23 political spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka, stated that the decision was meant to foster conditions conducive to peace initiatives and political dialogue addressing the root causes of the conflict in eastern DRC.

 "The M23/AFC has decided to reposition its forces in the town of Walikale and the surrounding area, in accordance with the unilateral ceasefire declared on 22 February 2025," he said.

According to him, M23 are still ‘'committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict." 

Both postures are the latest positive sign of de-escalation in a war that re-erupted in February and had seen M23 take over two biggest cities in eastern DRC, Goma and Bukavu, and completely encircle the SAMIDRC.

Earlier in the week, Rwanda, accused of backing M23, and the DRC leaders met in Doha, Qatar and agreed on an immediate ceasefire.

Read: Qatar Emir brokers truce between Rwanda, DRC

M23 immediately broke it. The rebels and Congolese government officials had also planned a meeting in Luanda on Tuesday last week, but it failed to occur after rebels pulled a plug, protesting Jew European Union sanctions on leaders of the group.

Now the DRC government is declaring its "determination to put an end to the hostilities as quickly as possible, but also to the suffering of the civilian population."

Since the failed meeting between President Félix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame on 15 December with the mediator, Angolan President Joao Lourenço, the war had worsened.

According to civil society groups in eastern Congo, at least 10,000 people have died in the fighting since then. The number is difficult to verify especially since the area under battle.has also been inaccessible.

The M23 have since gained more territory, including the towns of Goma and Bukavu. On March 18, a meeting intended to open direct dialogue between the M23/AFC and the Congolese government was cancelled at the last minute when the rebels refused to travel to Luanda.

On March 18 in Doha, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda met his Congolese counterpart Félix Tshisekedi with a view to seeking a de-escalation of the war and conflict between the DRC and Rwanda. This meeting may have been the first step towards de-escalation. 

While attending the inauguration of Namibia's President-elect Netumbo Nandi Ndaitwah, President Tshisekedi reacted to the M23/AFC's refusal to take part in the negotiations l, labelling them a proscribed geoup 

"This is a terrorist movement. They want to destroy more than build. Peace is needed to build Africa," he said on Friday.

The conflict in the DRC is not, however, immune from a further U-turn by one of the parties to the conflict.

 At present, ‘the two heads of state, Tshisekedi and Kagame, may have no option but to soften their stance because, they have faced external pressure  to end the war and avoid sanctions.

On one hand, the Congolese head of state is in difficult situation militarily, with teo foreign missions, one from the East African Community, and another from the Southern African Community, failing to serve his interest of ending the menace of M23, and exiting unceremoniously in wuick succession.

Tshisekedi had lampooned EAC forces for refusing to fire on M23 and refused to extend their mandate, forcing them to leave in December 2023. SAMIDRC came in with mandate to fire on M23 but have sinxe reported more losses than EAC forces.

The Rwandan head of state, on his part, is in difficult situation, diplomatically, after a number of his senior military officials and a key company were sanctioned, amid aid cut.

The Emir of Qatar this week walked away with a publicity coup on the Democratic Republic of Congo crisis, even though the back channels were mostly American, employing a carrot and stick approach to conflict.

The EastAfrican learnt that Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani managed to bring together two foes, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Felix Tshisekedi of the DRC, by leveraging on his contacts in the Great Lakes, but riding on pressure from Washington, which threatened more sanctions on both sides.

And yet even after agreeing on a ceasefire, M23 rebels took control of the town of Walikale in North Kivu, potentially handing Kagame a deniability he needs this time.

According to the M23/AFC leader, the rebels are not concerned by the Doha meeting where President Tshisekedi and Kagame met for the first time in more than a year.

“What happened in Doha, as long as we don’t know the details, and as long as it doesn’t solve our problems, we’ll say it doesn’t concern us,” declared Corneille Nangaa, the leader of the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC), the political wing of M23.

In North and South Kivu, the M23/AFC leader said the rebel movement is still open to direct dialogue with Kinshasa government.

“We demand that if there is a dialogue, it be a direct dialogue,” he said. “We are keen on any peaceful solution.”

Experts told The EastAfrican, the bite-and-blow tactic would help the rebel movement continue their conquest, while putting pressure on the DRC to come to the table.

Yet these events came as Luanda prepared to host a meeting of Congolese government officials with M23 rebels, which failed to happen as rebels gave it a wide berth. Doha’s schedule appeared to surprise Angola, according to Tete Antonio, Angola’s Foreign Minister.

“All efforts to resolve conflicts are welcome, but that African problems should be resolved by Africans,” Téte António told reporters on Thursday in Luanda adding that President João Lourenço was surprised by Qatar’s initiative to bring together Presidents Tshisekedi and Kagame, in Doha.

Richard Moncrieff, Crisis Group Programmes Director for Great Lakes region, said the Doha meeting may achieve little on the ground.

“The meeting was quite interesting on how they have kept it secret. I don’t think there is any analyst on the conflict who knew of it. But the questions it raises are quite striking because the statement was very bland,” he told The EastAfrican.

“It called for ceasefire, but this is not the first time they have agreed on a ceasefire. It echoes a ceasefire they agreed on last year but wasn’t upheld. I don’t anticipate it will change a lot on the ground.

Qatar, he added, has a lot of influence especially on Kagame and it has greater importance to Kigali especially at this time as Western countries impose sanctions on the East African country.

Read: Tshisekedi, Kagame meeting in Qatar ‘surprises’ Angola

“It is unclear whether Angolans were aware or even consulted about this meeting (in Doha). We have to ask whether this is helpful if it will be uncoordinated. But it is also important to say that African mediation efforts have been dispersed and weak.”

For Rwanda, however, the US threat of more sanctions meant its exports could be curtailed and its access to lenders limited until it toes the line.

That threat, sources said, would have been too heavy for Rwanda which is still reeling from a series of other targeted sanctions. The US had already sanctioned Rwanda’s Minister of State for Regional Integration James Kabarebe, a former army chief, for his alleged role in the conflict in the eastern Congo. It also sanctioned Lawrence Kanyuka, the M23’s spokesman, as well as two companies he controls in Britain and France.

A State Department official told The EastAfrican, Washington would not shy away from employing “a variety of tools at our disposal” to ensure violators are tamed. The official refused to discuss further punitive measures facing Rwanda.

This week, the European Union sanctioned, among others, M23 political leader Bertrand Bisimwa, the governor installed by the rebels in North Kivu, Erasto Bahati, and General Major Ruki Karusisi, former commander of the Rwandan army’s special force.

The sanctions also affected Françis Kamanzi, CEO of Rwanda Mines, Petroleum and Gas Board and the only gold refinery in Rwanda, Gasabo gold refinery in Rwanda, accused of using the armed conflict, instability and insecurity in the DRC to illegally exploit gold and natural resources.

The decision was protested in Kigali but celebrated in Kinshasa.

“The government of the DRC welcomes the sanctions imposed by the EU on the Gasabo gold refinery. These sanctions are the first step in the fight against Rwanda’s plundering of the DRC’s mineral wealth,” the Congolese government said in a statement on March 17.

“The government of the DRC will continue to work with the international community to implement an embargo on minerals illegally extracted in the DRC and exported by Rwanda, to suspend Rwanda’s contribution to UN peacekeeping forces and to impose greater transparency on arms transfers to Rwanda with a view to obtaining the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of its troops from Congolese territory.” Rwanda’s Foreign ministry said the sanctions would not resolve the conflict in the DR Congo, terming them “unjustified and unfounded.”

“Punitive measures, including sanctions, make no contribution toward long-term security, peace and stability for all the countries of the Great Lakes region,” Rwanda’s Foreign ministry responded in a statement.

Beyond their war of words Rwanda wriggled out of attachment to the M23, something that could potentially depict Kigali as not in control of the M23 group.

In Doha, Kigali insisted that Kinshasa has to deal with the FDLR rebel group while also maintaining that only peaceful solution can come from direct talks between Kinshasa and the M23.

 M23 rebels sit on a truck at the Goma-Gisenyi Grande Barrier border crossing on March 1, 2025. 

“The leaders also discussed the urgent need for direct political dialogue with AFC/M23 as key to addressing the root causes of the conflict in Eastern DRC,” a dispatch from the Rwandan Presidency said on March 19.

Read: DR Congo crisis: M23 rebels pull plug on planned Luanda talks

“President Kagame expressed his belief that with all parties working together, things can move forward faster.”

Both presidencies in Kigali and Kinshasa said they had reiterated support from the EAC-SADC process as the primary mechanism to get a sustainable solution in the DRC conflict. But it was clear Qatar’s influence on both leaders had pushed the meeting to take place.

Kinshasa said Doha’s “good relations of cooperation and friendship with the two countries” was crucial to the process.

“The modalities for implementing what has been agreed will be specified in the coming days within the framework of the achievements of the coming days.”

Qatar’s influence in Africa, generally, and the eastern Africa region has been rising. A bulletin from the Qatari Foreign ministry says Doha has been advancing “relations and strategic partnership with the African nations at all levels” …in the areas of “preventive diplomacy, mediation in conflict settlement and peace-making in Africa.”

Dr Majed Al Ansari, Qatar Foreign ministry spokesperson said Qatar’s experience shows conflicts can only be solved via dialogue.

“The State of Qatar reaffirms that dialogue is the best way to resolve conflicts between countries and promote peace and stability,” he said on Thursday.

“It expresses its appreciation to His Excellency President Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda, and His Excellency President Felix Tshisekedi, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, for the friendly meeting held in Doha today, hoping that direct dialogue and constructive discussions will continue to achieve a bright future for the region.”

Qatar’s mediation

Qataris had tried mediating conflicts in Sudan, Chad, Somalia, and the border dispute between Djibouti and Eritrea, along with its humanitarian and development efforts in many African nations, according to the bulletin. In some of those areas, they were elbowed by other Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Read: Qatar Emir brokers ceasefire between Rwanda, DR Congo

In November 2023 it sent $20 million to support the ‘Grain from Ukraine’ programme in support of African countries, pledged $12 million in humanitarian aid for the Horn of Africa region to counter famine and food insecurity challenges.

The Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD) has financed projects in Somalia in collaboration with the UK and US governments. Overall, it sent $60 million to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) over last year. With Rwanda, it is constructing a major airport outside Kigali, which could boost connectivity.

On the ground, however, the posture of M23 and the Congolese government showed Qatar could just struggle as well. President Tshisekedi said the M23’s “refusal confirms to national and international public opinion that these violent activists are puppets waiting to receive orders to act.”

“In these conditions, I don’t see how we can build something solid and genuine with these infidels. So, it was better to talk to their mentor.”

Since the resurgence of the M23 in 2021, the rebel movement has always called for direct dialogue with the Congolese authorities to ‘resolve the root causes of the Congolese crisis.’ This basic demand has remained unchanged even after the rebels’ military victories over the Congolese army.

Rwanda, which is also negotiating with the DRC through the Luanda process, had made the need for direct dialogue between the M23 and the Congolese government a condition before it would sign any peace agreement.

On the other hand, Congolese authorities had sworn ‘never’ to open any direct negotiations with the M23.

However, Kinshasa’s recent lobbying for Rwanda to be whipped has been undone by other losses, such as the withdrawal of the SADC Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo (SAMIDRC) troops.

Experts say Kinshasa now has little room not to hold dialogue.

“President Tshisekedi has no option apart from negotiating with Kagame. That is the option on the table, and I think the meeting in Doha, he had already foreseen the SADC troops going away,” said Dr Kizito Sabala, Peace and security expert and lecturer at the University of Nairobi.

“And while the meeting in Doha is good for both Kagame and Tshisekedi, it seems to me that Tshisekedi needed that meeting more than Kagame.”

President Tshisekedi had requested for SADC troops after declining the East African Community Regional Force in 2023. South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi and Burundi troops who formed SAMIDRC, were then deployed to eastern DRC in late 2023, replacing the EACRF which had been deployed in late 2022 under the umbrella of the EAC.

But even before the arrival of the EACRF, DRC pushed for the complete withdrawal of the UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in DRC (MONUSCO) by the end of 2024. He turned around and asked them to stay, after running into more war.

“The M23 are being supported by Kagame, and they are making progress on the ground. The troops that were supposed to forestall that advancement are those troops that have now left. The DRC military has no capacity to stop the M23 and therefore it leaves Tshisekedi in a very precarious position that if he doesn’t negotiate the M23 could move up to Kinshasa,” explained Dr Sabala.

“So it is in his interest that the negotiations begin to take place so that the M23 can also halt their advancement and capture more territories.”

Read: M23 rebels issue demands ahead of direct talks with Kinshasa

A joint meeting of EAC and SADC held on 17th March 2025, in Harare, Zimbabwe, called for ceasefire, again, and the re-opening of Goma Airport which is currently under the mandate of M23. These leaders had made the same call on February 7 and 8.

“The situation in eastern Congo is complicated. Tshisekedi’s decision to have the EACRF withdrawn was partly because he viewed the EAC as biased towards Kagame. And now that all the peace keeping troops have been withdrawn, his strategy is to seek global support,” said Dr Benson Musila, a political science lecturer at Riara University, Nairobi.

“However, it is unlikely that the M23 will support the process in eastern Congo given the insistence by DRC that they have Kigali’s backing.”

The DRC appears to be turning to the US in its latest efforts to find an ally in its fight against advancing M23 rebels. Kinshasa and Washington have been discussing a mineral exploitation deal, which Congolese officials think could guarantee peace and security in eastern Congo.

But just how this will affect African-led mediations is uncertain. New AU Commission Chairperson Mahamoud Ali Youssouf commended the Doha meeting and the two countries “for their commitment to dialogue” and urged all parties to “maintain the momentum”. And he said that meeting “complement ongoing regional mechanisms.

“By the time EAC and SADC organise themselves, we shall have a different scenario in eastern DRC. Their peace efforts are unlikely to work,” Dr Sabala warned.

Tanzanian lawmakers are urging authorities to speed up work on a major road linking the port of Bagamoyo to Malindi in Kenya.

The parliamentary committee on infrastructure inspected the construction of the Tanga, Pangani to Bagamoyo road last week and called on the government to hasten the work to boost trade with Kenya.

Selemani Kakoso, chairman of the committee, said the cross-border road would boost economic development through cargo transport and tourism. 

While the Kenyan side is nearing completion, Tanzania has been slow, with the government initially citing financial constraints.

Read: Road connecting Kenya-Tanzania to be done by 2024

When completed, the Malindi-Bagamoyo transnational road, which is partly funded by the African Development Bank, will provide quick access to Saadani National Park for tourists travelling between Arusha, Tanga and Dar es Salaam.

Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan launched the road construction in late February last year.

The road is part of the East African Coastal Transport Corridor, which stretches from Lamu in Kenya to Mtwara in Tanzania and aims to promote regional integration by reducing travel time and facilitating trade and movement of people across borders. 

Germany temporarily closed its embassy in South Sudan’s capital Juba because of rising tensions that have brought the country to the verge of civil war, the German foreign ministry said on Saturday.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir this week sacked the governor of Upper Nile state, where clashes have escalated between government troops and an ethnic militia he accuses of allying with his rival, First Vice President Riek Machar.

The standoff has heightened concerns that the world’s newest nation could slide back into conflict some seven years after its emergence from a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

“After years of fragile peace, South Sudan is once again on the brink of civil war,” the German foreign ministry wrote on x.

“President Kiir and Vice President Machar are plunging the country into a spiral of violence. It’s their responsibility to end this senseless violence & finally implement the peace agreement.”

South Sudan’s United Nations peacekeeping chief, Nicholas Haysom, has also said he is concerned the country is “on the brink of relapse into civil war”.

The Islamic State in Somalia is an affiliate of the transnational militant group Islamic State, known in short as ISIS.

Based in the semi-autonomous northern Somalia territory of Puntland, the terrorist group was the target of the first foreign combat operation of the Trump administration in February 2025.

Previously, the group has been linked to planned terror attacks on the Vatican and on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm.

Stig Jarle Hansen, a researcher and author of several books on extremism in Africa, examines its origins, rise and recent battlefield defeats in the mountains of Puntland.

Read: Puntland offensive deals blow to Islamic State in Somalia

1. The rise of the Islamic State

Before the establishment of the Islamic State in Somalia in 2015, the Somali militant group Al Shabaab had established itself in the north.

The small group had extensive connections to smuggling networks.

It later split into two and the future leader of the Islamic State in Somalia, Sheikh Abdulqader Muumin, emerged from one of the splinter groups.

In Somalia, clans define the relationship between people and all actors in the society. The connections of the new group to the Ali Suleiban sub-clan enabled it to profit from the clan’s links to smuggling and maritime piracy groups.

Puntland is the hub of communication and maritime trade between Somalia and Yemen, as well as the wider Middle East. Smuggling has gone on in the region for centuries. The rugged terrain is ideal for piracy, illegal smuggling and insurgents.

Puntland has been more or less autonomous from the rest of Somalia for more than three decades, and the Somalian government has little influence there today.

2. The militant behind the Islamic State in Somalia

Muumin lived in Sweden through the 1990s and early 2000s and later moved to the UK.

Back in Somalia, he joined Al Shabaab and became a prominent figure in the group’s extremist videos. Such videos aim to maintain morals, attract new recruits and create sympathy for the group.

In 2015, Muumin defected to lead the Islamic State in Somalia. His second-in-command was another Ali Suleiban clansman, Mahad Moalim. In 2016, the first video of the group was circulated through Islamic State media outlets.

A milestone for the group followed its 2017 suicide bombing of the Juba Hotel in Bosaso, Puntland’s commercial capital and seaport.

This enabled the Islamic State in Somalia to pressure Bossaso-based businesses to pay it protection money, the single most important source of income. In 2017-2018, the group is believed to have been behind as many as 50 assassinations in Central Somalia.

The killings were a forceful tool to generate protection money.

Read: Al-Shabaab turns 18: Why has it refused to die?

On July 27, 2018, the Somali group was officially designated as a full province by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. The Maktab al-Karrar regional office was based in the small Puntland chapter, giving it global responsibilities.

The Somali group was made responsible for the Central African and the Mozambique provinces of the Islamic State. Money flowed to the group from the Islamic State, as did extortion money from Bossaso, other northern Puntland cities and more infrequently from Mogadishu.

In the first half of 2022, the US Treasury claimed that the organisation generated $2.3 million from extortion payments, related imports, livestock and agriculture.

The regional office and Muumin emerged as key financial players in east Africa, and even outside it, from their base in Buur Dexhtaal in Bari Puntland. Indeed, unnamed US officials claimed in 2023 that Muumim had been made the transnational leader of the Islamic State.

3. An overblown reputation

The Islamic State’s reputation in Somalia is often overstated. The group has never captured or held large territories. Its numbers in 2024 were estimated to be between 600 and 1,600. That pales in comparison to Al Shabaab in the south of Somalia.

Its links to a planned attack on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm 2024 were probably weak and failed to hold up in court. And the militant linked to a planned attack in the Vatican 2018 seems to have left Islamic State prior to the planning.

It is also doubtful that Muumin is the global leader of the Islamic State as claimed by some. That’s for two main reasons. First, an Islamic State leader has to be drawn from a tribe related to the prophet (Qureshi).

Muumin is not. Second, the Islamic State in Somalia is the smallest of the Islamic State provinces in Africa. It is likely that a leader of a stronger province would have ranked higher.

Although the income-gathering capacities of the Puntland-based group give it prominence in the Islamic State media, the Islamic State in Somalia does not rank higher than the Islamic State in the Sahara and Mozambique.

Read: For Somali media, fear is dressed as law

4. Down but not out

The Puntland authorities launched a relatively successful counter-offensive against the Islamic State in January 2025. This was combined with air support by the US and the United Arab Emirates.

Puntland won important battles in January and February, including an attack in which it killed 70 Islamic State fighters.

By late February, the morale of the Islamic State fighters seemed to break. With the fall of Buur Dexhtaal, the main base, in March, all the larger known bases had fallen. Many of the fleeing foreign fighters were captured.

But the Islamic State is not defeated. The terrain enabled some of the fighters to hide. Neither Muumin, who is in his 70s, nor his second-in-command Abdirahman Fahiye have been reported killed. There are at least several hundred fighters left.

If the Islamic State is still able to extort money from the northern business community, it could recruit from the large numbers of Oromo Ethiopian refugees in and around Bosaso, as well as locals who need jobs.

Authored by Stig Jarle Hansen - Professor of International Relations, Norwegian University of Life Sciences

Angola will step down from its position as a mediator between parties involved in an escalating Rwanda-backed rebel offensive in eastern Congo, the presidency said on Monday, with another African state set to lead efforts to get peace talks back on track.

The M23 escalated their long-standing rebellion this year, seizing east Congo’s two biggest cities since January and encroaching into territory rich in minerals such as gold and tantalum.

As the current rotating African Union (AU) chairperson, Angola’s President Joao Lourenco had been trying to mediate a lasting ceasefire and lower tensions between Congo and neighbouring Rwanda, which has been accused of backing M23. Rwanda denies this.

Read: Lourenco’s gamble: Interests in Angolan leader’s quest to broker peace in Congo

Congo and M23 were scheduled to hold direct talks for the first time in Angola’s capital Luanda last week after Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi, who had long refused dialogue with the rebels, agreed to send a delegation.

M23 pulled out at the last minute, following European Union sanctions against M23 and Rwandan officials.

“Angola considers the need to free itself from the responsibility of the mediator of this conflict” to “devote itself more” to the AU’s overall priorities, the presidency said in a statement that mentioned the “aborted” meeting in Luanda.

Read: Tshisekedi, Kagame meeting in Qatar ‘surprises’ Angola

Another head of state will be appointed to the task in coming days, the statement said.

There have been several attempts to resolve the conflict, rooted in the fallout from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and competition for mineral riches, including several ceasefires that were violated, international condemnations, sanctions and regional summits.

The regional blocs of southern and eastern Africa will hold a second joint summit on Monday to address the crisis. Kenya’s President William Ruto and his Zimbabwean counterpart Emmerson Mnangagwa will co-chair the virtual event.

M23 last week dismissed a joint call for an immediate ceasefire by Congo and Rwanda and reiterated demands for direct talks with Kinshasa, saying it was the only way to resolve the conflict.

The rebel group said over the weekend that it would withdraw forces from the seized town of Walikale in support of peace efforts.

In response, Congo’s army said it would observe the announced withdrawal and refrain from any offensives against enemy forces to encourage de-escalation.

A civil society source and a resident in Walikale said on Monday that M23 were still in the town.