An Anti-Ethiopia Alliance Takes Shape

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: South African prosecutors won’t charge President Cyril Ramaphosa, U.S. Supreme Court rejects Benin Bronze lawsuit, and Cameroonians wonder if their  president is still alive.

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Security experts have raised the alarm that a dangerous alliance is taking shape as Egypt looks to gain a foothold in the Horn of Africa.

Egypt, Eritrea, and Somalia agreed last week to forge an “axis” of resistance against Ethiopia. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki hosted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in the Eritrean capital of Asmara on Thursday, after which the leaders signed a security partnership.

A joint statement said the three men had agreed to “enhance the Somali state institutions to confront various internal and external challenges and to enable the Somali National Federal Army to confront terrorism in all its forms.”

The meeting marked Sisi’s first-ever visit to Asmara and came after Egypt sent arms to Somalia in September. Mogadishu has asked the African Union (AU) to replace 10,000 Ethiopian peacekeepers—the largest troop contributor to the U.N.-approved AU mission fighting militant Somali group al-Shabab—with Egyptian troops.

In January, landlocked Ethiopia agreed to lease 20 kilometers (12 miles) of coastline from Somaliland—which Somalia regards as its own territory—in exchange for recognition of the breakaway region’s independence. Abiy has underscored Ethiopia’s “right” to regain historical access to the Red Sea even though neighboring Djibouti has offered an alternative port. And Egypt has a decadeslong dispute over Addis Ababa’s recently built mega-dam in the Nile, which Cairo says threatens its water security.

Egypt, Eritrea, and Somalia are also involved in Sudan’s civil war. They are aligned with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which back the Sudanese army in the ongoing conflict. Meanwhile, Ethiopia has a close partnership with the United Arab Emirates, which supports the rebel paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

In recent months, Egypt, Turkey, and Gulf nations have strained tensions within the Horn of Africa as they vie for a key shipping route. Turkey signed a deal for the deployment of some of its troops to Somalia’s territorial waters for two years. The UAE is accused of supporting the Somaliland port deal because it would get to build a new port as part of the agreement.

Ethiopian and Eritrean troops were enemies until recently, but from 2020 to 2022, they fought together against a common foe—the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)—during a two-year Ethiopian civil war that ended with a peace agreement Ethiopia signed with the TPLF in Pretoria in 2022.

However, Eritrea was unhappy with the deal and is bent on destroying the TPLF. Eritrean troops still occupy contested border areas seized when war broke out in Tigray.

Critics of Somalia’s government contend that its president is inviting proxy wars in his country that could threaten clan divisions within Somalia’s fractured federalism. Addis Ababa has previously intervened militarily in Somalia’s clan-based states. Some of those states, such as the South West, have shown their preference for Ethiopian troops. But a direct conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia looks unlikely with Somalia’s army on the backfoot in its fight against al-Shabab.

Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that an alliance between Egypt and Eritrea could rekindle conflict with Addis Ababa. As Mohamed Kheir Omer wrote last year in Foreign Policy, both Abiy and Afwerki’s “characteristics might set the stage for calamity. Abiy is known for his paradoxical approach of promoting peace while contemplating war.” Perhaps more importantly, Egypt’s alliance with Somalia could strengthen al-Shabab by giving its militants another reason to mobilize and recruit fighters against the Mogadishu-based central government.

Wednesday, Oct. 16 to Thursday, Oct. 17: Kenya’s Senate will debate whether to remove Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua from office after parliament voted to impeach him.

Friday, Oct. 18: Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan stands trial in Nigeria’s Federal High Court in Abuja

Tuesday, Oct. 22, to Thursday, Oct. 24: BRICS+ Summit hosted by Russia in Kazan.

Wednesday, Oct. 23: U.N. Security Council discusses its mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA).

Sudan’s catastrophic war. A Sudanese army airstrike on a market in the capital city of Khartoum on Saturday killed at least 23 people and injured 40. Fighting has intensified since Friday in the city, which is controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Only one hospital is functioning in the capital following more than 100 attacks on health facilities since fighting began last April between Sudan’s rival generals. Doctors Without Borders has suspended its work in Zamzam camp in Sudan’s North Darfur region, home to 5,000 malnourished children, due to what the organization described as the blocking of aid by both the RSF and the Sudanese army.

The U.N. Human Rights Council voted last Wednesday to extend its investigation into alleged abuses committed by both parties. However, the war is also being fueled by foreign powers. The UAE, a U.S. ally, is transporting Chinese-made drones to the RSF via Chad, according to a New York Times investigation published in late September.

Is Cameroon’s president still alive? Cameroon has banned any discussion about the health of 91-year-old President Paul Biya. From now on, “any debate in the media about the president’s condition is therefore strictly prohibited. Offenders will face the full force of the law,” said Interior Minister Paul Atanga Nji.

Biya’s failure to attend the United Nations General Assembly in September and a summit in France in October sparked rumors that he had died. The president’s private office insisted he was “in excellent health” and on a private stay in Switzerland. Biya, who has been alleged to primarily reside at a hotel suite in Geneva, has not been seen in public since attending the China-Africa forum in Beijing in early September. Cameroon borders Nigeria, Chad, and the Central African Republic, and it faces conflict from Anglophone secessionists and armed groups based in northern Nigeria.

Biya’s death could lead to a chaotic succession battle, since he has eroded almost all democratic institutions in the country after 41 years in power.

South African president escapes charges. South African prosecutors have decided not to pursue a case against President Cyril Ramaphosa in connection with alleged money laundering and corruption charges over a robbery at his game farm. Thieves stole thousands of dollars’ worth of foreign currency hidden in a sofa on Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala game farm in 2020.

The Democratic Alliance, previously South Africa’s main opposition party and now a coalition partner of Ramaphosa’s African National Congress party, called on Friday for a review of the decision not to charge Ramaphosa. “The Phala Phala scandal is much too important to simply disappear without thorough scrutiny and full interrogation of the reasons behind this outcome,” it said in a statement.

Binance executive court trial. Nigeria’s federal high court in Abuja denied bail for a second time for Binance’s head of financial crime compliance, who had applied for it on health grounds.

Tigran Gambaryan, a U.S. citizen and a former agent for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, has been in detention in Nigeria since late February on allegations of money laundering and currency manipulation. He and Binance deny the charges, including a separate case against the cryptocurrency firm concerning tax evasion. A judge ruled that there was “no evidence” that Nigeria’s prison could not handle Gambaryan’s medical needs. Another Binance executive, Nadeem Anjarwalla, escaped custody in March and fled the country. The judge adjourned the trial to Oct. 18. The trial comes at an odd time for the country, as the Nigerian government is attempting to increase foreign direct investment, which hit its lowest level in a decade, earlier this year.

Supreme Court rejects Benin Bronze lawsuit. The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a lawsuit by a group of Black Americans, called the Restitution Study Group, who challenged the Smithsonian Institution’s return of nearly 30 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. The group claims that the bronzes are part of the heritage of descendants of slaves in the United States and should thus not be returned.

The Benin Bronzes are a collection of more than 3,000 sacred items looted in 1897 by British soldiers who razed the kingdom of Benin, which was located in modern-day southern Nigeria.

“There is no reason why we should be obligated to travel to Nigeria to see them,” Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, who initiated the lawsuit, told the BBC. “I don’t want to get kidnapped,” she added. But Nigerian critics hit back that hundreds of Black Americans and Brazilians travel to Nigeria’s southern region for the Osun-Osogbo Festival yearly without getting kidnapped. The Yoruba festival celebrates the goddess of fertility.

Farmer-Paellmann said that she is 27 percent Nigerian and that therefore, she and other descendants have a right to lay claim to the Bronzes. She argued that the Benin Kingdom traded in slaves and that the Bronzes were made with brass manillas—bracelets exchanged for slaves; however, only a small number of artifacts among the Benin Bronzes are made from brass, and not all manillas used in Benin date back to the slave trade but rather to the sale of ivory and pepper.

Analysts observe a growing disconnect between how African Americans and Africans perceive each other—which some observers attribute to a reactive U.S. foreign policy on Africa and negative media coverage of the continent.

Germany returns artifacts to Egypt. Germany has handed over to Egypt three illegally stolen and exported items. Among the artifacts are a gold-plated mummified skull and hand, which were on display at Hamburg’s Museum of Art for more than 30 years, and date back 2,000 B.C. An amulet was also returned that dates back 600 B.C. It was confiscated at Frankfurt Airport after being smuggled from the United Kingdom. The Grand Egyptian Museum, costing more than $1 billion, opened today after an 11-year wait.

Huawei opens Nigerian data center. Chinese telecom company Huawei announced plans to open a data center in Nigeria by Oct. 31, in a move aimed at meeting new data storage regulations in Nigeria’s Data Protection Act, which was passed in 2023. Huawei operates data centers in 33 countries, mostly in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The Nigerian center will be Huawei’s third cloud site in Africa after building centers in Egypt and South Africa.

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Egypt’s million-dollar train without passengers. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Saturday that the state has invested about 2 trillion Egyptian pounds ($41 billion) in developing and upgrading its transport sector, including the railway system, in the past few years. In Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, Nora Youssef explains how a $1.2 billion loan from China to build a railway in Egypt’s new capital city is part of that increased Egyptian government spending—and squandering on infrastructure that is not improving the living costs of ordinary Egyptians.

Kenya’s dirty money. An investigation by various media outlets, including Africa Uncensored, claims that Kenyan politicians and civil servants accused of corruption own several luxury properties in Dubai, likely to avoid a 15 percent capital gains tax in Kenya. The report comes just months after youth-led protests against government corruption rocked Kenya.