Raila, the bros and battle for AU chieftain in times of climate change, debt and war

Because no one of Raila’s stature had bid for the AU Chairperson throne before, it has brought a high-stakes element to the election that will take place in February next year.

Raila is also an oddity in that until June, he was a political rival of Kenya’s President William Ruto, with the two locking horns in the August 2022 presidential election. But in the never-say-never land of Kenyan politics, Ruto is today his biggest cheerleader, the two have buried the hatchet.

Many are billing this as a race between Raila and Youssouf, with Randriamandrato in with a longer shot. If Raila were to prevail, he would exact some Kenyan revenge.

Outgoing Commission chair Moussa Faki Mahamat was first elected on December 6, 2016, after seven rounds of voting at the African Union’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Faki, Chad’s Foreign Affairs Minister at the time, won in the seventh round of voting, securing the necessary two-thirds majority.

He defeated other notable candidates including Kenya’s then Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed and Senegal’s Abdoulaye Bathily, who was at that time the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Central Africa and Head of the UN’s Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA) in Libreville, Gabon.

Faki all but snatched the crown from Amina’s hands. Amina led in the initial rounds but lost to Faki in the final tally, to the disbelief of many in Nairobi.

Whoever wins will take over the seat at a time that is both uncannily similar to the global situation on January 30, 2017, when Faki took over the reins, but also in an Africa and world that is very different.

Faki took office just 10 days after Donald Trump’s inauguration for his first term on January 20, 2017, as the 45th President of the United States.

The next AU chair will come to office weeks after Trump has been sworn in for a second run, after a spell in the cold, having lost his re-election bid in 2020.

At the time, parts of Africa were roiled by terrorism, particularly in Nigeria and regions like the Sahel, where groups like Boko Haram and others were active.

The 2017 Global Terrorism Index reported an 80 percent decrease in terrorism deaths attributed to a weakened Boko Haram in 2016, but it was still able to carry out numerous attacks in 2017. Reports indicated that the group executed more than 100 attacks, leading to 716 deaths.

The security crises have led, in part, over the past three years to a return to coups in West Africa’s Sahel, with Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, and Niger now under junta rule.

South Sudan was in the throes of a war that was only marginally less destructive than the current one in Sudan. But it was a humanitarian catastrophe nonetheless.

It was grappling with one of the worst humanitarian crises since its independence in July 2011. Famine was declared in parts of Unity State in February 2017, the first such declaration anywhere in the world in six years, affecting about 100,000 people.

By year’s end, around 7.5 million people needed humanitarian assistance due to the conflict, displacement, and food insecurity.

Ethnic dimensions of the conflict intensified in 2017. Reports emerged of ethnic cleansing, particularly against the Shilluk in Upper Nile and the Bari in Central Equatoria. Despite multiple peace talks and agreements between the Juba government and its adversaries, none were fully implemented.

The most significant was the August 2015 agreement which saw a brief return of opposition leader Riek Machar to Juba in 2016, only for fighting to reignite.

The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) had its mandate shifted towards civilian protection, but it was met with resistance from the South Sudanese government, limiting its effectiveness.

The UN Security Council, due to the escalating violence and human rights abuses, imposed an arms embargo on South Sudan in July 2017.

The conflict led to massive displacement. By the end of 2017, over 4 million people were displaced, either internally or as refugees in neighbouring countries.

Uganda hosted the largest number of South Sudanese refugees, with Bidi Bidi becoming the world’s largest refugee settlement.

Faki’s background in peace and security, notably his role in chairing the UN Security Council and the AU Peace and Security Council, was considered relevant to helping end the mayhem. His record has been mixed, at best.

The Africa of today has been battered by climate change’s ravages. The Horn of Africa is on edge, and the reckoning from the brutal war of 2020-2022 between the Ethiopian government and the rebellious Tigray province is yet to come. The conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo just won’t go away or end.

Many countries are in debt distress, and too many economies on the continent are anaemic. The post-Cold War world order is fracturing, and populists, some of them racists and archaic isolationists, are being swept into power by angry voters.

Faki must be glad to leave. Hopefully, his successor won’t regret that he came.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the Wall of Great Africans. X (Twitter) @cobbo3