JOHANNESBURG—From north to south, east to west, Africa is riven with conflict to a degree last seen during the 1990s, when wars and genocide killed millions, according to groups monitoring violence on the continent.
After a series of coups, the military now governs four countries in the Sahel, the arid region that stretches from Mauritania in northwest Africa to Eritrea in the northeast.
Jihadist groups linked to ISIS and al-Qaeda are sowing fear across the continent, with African governments and international partners—including the United States—unable to stop the spread of violent political Islam and subsequent attacks that often result in massacres.
According to the United Nations, more than 25 million Sudanese need humanitarian assistance, and deteriorating food security is triggering the “world’s largest hunger crisis.”
In the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia, an emerging continental powerhouse, is struggling to contain insurgencies in the regions of Tigray, Amhara, and Oromia, while the al-Shabaab terrorist organization continues to wreak havoc in Somalia.
In Kenya, regarded by the West as a bastion of democratic hope in East Africa, youth-led revolts over higher taxes and corruption allegations against the administration of President William Ruto have sparked deadly riots.
Across the border in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1982, has been accused of using his security forces to crush dissidents and restrict political opposition.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is battling to contain popular unrest as critics say President Bola Tinubu’s government policies have contributed to a cost of living crisis.
South Africa is grappling with political uncertainty as a new multiparty government tries to assert its authority and violent crime continues to be a problem, with the latest police statistics reflecting a murder rate of almost 85 per day.
In Zimbabwe, rights activists say President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s brutal ZANU-PF regime continues to execute and imprison political opponents, while developing close ties with China and Russia.
Advocate Kwame Senou, director of the Holding Public Opinion civil rights group in Ivory Coast, told The Epoch Times that Africa is more violent than it has been for years because of “multiple failures” by the continent’s leaders.
“Africans, and especially a youth made more conscious of their rights by social media and the internet, have realized that the old guard, whether democratic or not, doesn’t care about their future, only in maintaining the status of the elite,” Senou said.
“Millions of youngsters across Africa are turning against the elders. Some join terrorist organizations; others join rebel groups. Others join protests organized via social media channels like WhatsApp.”
Jakkie Cilliers, head of African Futures and Innovation at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa, said the continent is in a “place of serious unrest” because expectations of improvements in living standards, health, and economic well-being as a result of regular elections have not been met.
“People are desperate, angry, and increasingly violent,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Regular elections offer the promise of progress, but generally, democracy has not delivered economic growth in Africa. Nor has it improved security.”
Cilliers said “sham democracies” in countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger had failed to deliver development and stability, which has allowed a resurgence of the military in politics.
“If so-called democracy isn’t working for people, they turn away from it and are more susceptible to the demagogues and dictators of this world,” he said.
Cilliers pointed out that the West has been promoting democracy in Africa since the end of colonialism in the 1960s as the only feasible path to ensure the continent’s development.
“The belief was that democratization would promote strong states firmly rooted in territories with clearly identified borders,” he said. “But dictatorships and rigged elections have fueled social divisions.
“Weakened internally, and burdened by high and often unfair debt, African states struggle to strengthen the continental and regional collective security frameworks of the African Union and regional economic communities.”
Cilliers said democracy needs strong states with viable institutions, something that is lacking in Africa.
Felicite Djilo, an independent peace and security analyst, told The Epoch Times that Africa’s large youth population is a major contributor to higher levels of violence.
According to the United Nations, more than 60 percent of Africa’s population of 1.5 billion is younger than 25. In 2030, it projects that young people in Africa will make up 42 percent of global youth.
“These young people are mostly in cities,” Djilo said. “So we now have large, young, educated urban populations who are ... demanding rights and services from governments who are more accustomed to sailing along and not having this kind of pressure on them.”
Professor Sharlene Swartz, social scientist at South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council, said poverty is also driving violence in Africa.
“There’s extreme deprivation in Africa,” Swartz said. “But at the same time, better education, urbanization, and greater access to the internet and social media are creating expectations that these conditions can and should improve, and that ruling elites are the problem.
“And so we’re having these build-ups of anger and frustration across Africa, driven especially by an alienated youth.”
Cilliers said the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is also in large part responsible for increasing levels of conflict and social unrest in Africa.
“The pandemic cost the continent eight years of income growth, and many Africans are still battling to make ends meet,” Cilliers said.
“The IMF analysis suggests that periods of stagnation lasting four years or more tend to increase income inequality by almost 20 percent.”
Djilo said African states are particularly vulnerable to armed insurgencies because, more than 60 years after independence, many still don’t have complete control over their territory.
For Cilliers, poor governance is another factor resulting in more violence.
“Most governments spend too much of their budget on defense, security forces, and weapons. They do this in many cases to protect their own illegitimate regimes,” he said.
“They neglect the functions of state that result in good service delivery, and citizens are rightfully angry.”
The rule of law is often lacking in African countries, further heightening the possibility of violent protests and coups, Cilliers said.
In the future, his forecast shows, given the continent’s young population, the average African economy will grow more rapidly than it does in other regions, perhaps about 1.5 percentage points faster, but not rapidly enough.
The model put forward by Cilliers suggests that the number of extremely poor Africans will stabilize at about 457 million people in 2026–2027.
By 2030, the year that international organizations such as the United Nations have vowed that extreme poverty will be eliminated, about 26 percent of the continent’s population will still live on less than $2.15 per day.
Cilliers said the “critical variable” here is rapid population growth, at 2.6 percent annually.
“This growth provides a more significant labor force, but it also requires economic expansion of more than 10 percent per year for several decades to absorb that cohort,” he said.
“Instead, average rates of economic growth will probably come in at just above 4 percent, a shortfall that will set the scene for more social upheaval.”
Cilliers said the “sheer number” of Africans in the future and the pressure that they will exert globally in terms of migration, particularly on neighboring Europe, will demand serious attention.
