Kenya, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and, by extension, the international community currently face the dilemma of dealing with a president and a deputy president, freely and fairly elected (more or less; many questions remain) that are charged with crimes against humanity associated with 2007 election bloodshed. Africa Confidential has an excellent review of the current state of play. Read more »

While violence broke out sporadically, post-election Kenya is far from the domestic Armageddon that followed the 2007 elections. Uhuru Kenyatta, under indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity in the aftermath of those elections, will be sworn-in as president this month following the 2013 elections judged credible by the Supreme Court. His chief rival, Raila Odinga, has accepted the Court’s ruling, and has conceded. Read more »

This is a guest post by Emily Mellgard, research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program.

The illegal trade in “bloody teeth,” the name traffickers have given ivory, reached new heights in 2012. According to TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, more than 32,000 elephants were killed in Africa in 2012 alone to supply the growing demand in ivory. This is a higher number than at any point since the international ivory trade ban was implemented in 1989. Read more »

There is criticism in Africa and in the United States that, given Africa’s growing strategic, political, and economic importance, President Obama paid insufficient attention to it during his first term. In fact, the Obama administration has many program initiatives in Africa; and cabinet officers, led by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, regularly visited the continent. During her four year tenure as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton visited Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Benin, Somalia, South Africa, Kenya, and Malawi, among others. Read more »

More than a week after elections under Kenya’s new constitution, the prospects for peace and security remain challenging.

The country appears calm in the aftermath of the election commission’s announcement that Uhuru Kenyatta won a razor-thin victory over Raila Odinga. Kenyatta has avoided a runoff with 50.07 percent of the votes. Read more »

Kenyan elections took place on March 4. While some technical aspects of it were ragged, especially the transmission and consolidation of vote counts, voting appears to have been largely peaceful. Thus far, there has been little questioning of the credibility of the process. Read more »

The Robert S. Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin has just published a research brief on Islamist violence in Africa; “Tracking Islamist Militia and Rebel Groups.” The author is Caitriona Dowd at Trinity College, Dublin. The brief is based on the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED), of which she is the senior research and data manager. The data covers the past fifteen years. Her discussion includes North Africa as well as sub-Saharan Africa, and she sees a “rising global consciousness among Islamist groups and Muslim populations” in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Read more »

Kenya goes to the polls on March 4 with Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga the only credible presidential candidates. The Ipsos Synovate poll shows that Kenyatta is ahead with 44.8 percent of the vote to Odinga’s 44.4 percent. Kenyatta is ahead in twenty counties while Odinga has nineteen. The polling company identifies Nairobi and three other counties as toss-ups. To win the presidency without a runoff requires the victor win 50 percent plus one of the votes. Under those circumstances, a runoff looks highly likely. Both candidates are longtime political rivals; Kenyatta is the son of Jomo Kenyatta, one of the early African independence leaders and Kenya’s first president. Read more »

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been active in sub-Saharan Africa. Seven investigations have been launched in Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, and Mali. Four prominent Kenyan politicians are due for trial in The Hague in April 2013. One of them, Uhuru Kenyatta, is a leading candidate in the upcoming Kenya presidential elections. Should he win, the new Kenyan head of state would start his term under ICC indictment. About half of sub-Saharan Africa accepts ICC jurisdiction. The United States does not. Read more »

Kenya is an African state of strategic importance to the United States. Not only does it provide the United States with air and maritime access, it plays an important role in preventing terrorists from using Somalia as a safe haven, and promoting peace between Sudan and South Sudan; two major Washington foreign policy goals. Read more »