With Mali’s implosion, Islamic extremism in the Sahel, and the “Boko Haram” insurgency in Nigeria’s north drawing international attention, the Niger Delta has dropped off the radar of many West Africa watchers. Yet, only five years ago an insurrection there resulted in a major reduction in Nigeria’s oil production and impacted on state revenue. In 2009, then-president Umaru Yar’Adua introduced an “amnesty” that has been continued by President Goodluck Jonathan and ended (or at least reined-in) that cycle of violence. The United States Institute for Peace has just published an assessment of the amnesty by Aaron Sayne. The report is based on a wide range of interviews, but he cautions that it not a rigorous assessment of the amnesty’s success because the necessary data is absent. Nevertheless, the tone of his report is positive. Read more »

This is a guest post by Tiffany Lynch, a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The views expressed are her own and may or may not reflect the views of the Commission.

For almost two years, stories about violence in Nigeria have focused almost exclusively on Boko Haram’s attacks on churches and Christians; police stations and other government buildings; schools and politicians; and Muslim critics. Forgotten is Nigeria’s longer and more deadly history of religiously-related violence. Too much analysis of Boko Haram fails to take into account how Nigeria’s history of Muslim-Christian violence directly contributes to the Boko Haram phenomenon. Read more »

The Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF) has done Africa watchers and policy makers an important service by publishing David J. Francis’s analysis of the Mali crisis with his suggestions as to the way forward. Titled “The Regional Impact of the Armed Conflict and French Intervention in Mali,” Francis teases out for the educated non-specialist the highly complicated Malian narrative, identifying key players, groups and events. The study is especially strong on the French domestic political dimensions of President Hollande’s military intervention, and what the likely consequences may be. Read more »

Around one billion people live in fragile or failing states. Yet no Washington administration has developed a strategy for helping such states address the causes of their fragility. Instead, most administrations respond ad hoc to the crises of the day, ranging from Tunisia and the debut of the Arab Spring, to Mali and radical Islamism in the Sahel. Too often, Washington’s focus is short term and on “international terrorism,” rather than on the root causes of state failure. 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 »

CFR.org published today an expert brief Asch Harwood and I co-authored on violence in Nigeria. It is based on the Nigeria Security Tracker (NST) that also went live today. Based on NST data, we conclude that Boko Haram, the radical Islamic insurgency against the Nigerian political economy, is expanding its area of operations. In 2011, Boko Haram violence was largely confined to Nigeria’s northeast. By the end of 2012, the NST had documented Boko Haram related incidents across all of northern Nigeria. Read more »

Transparency International has just issued its Corruption Perceptions Index 2012. The scale ranges from one hundred (“highly clean”) to zero (“highly corrupt.”) One hundred-sixty-seven countries were surveyed this year. The African countries with the highest scores were those that usually do best on such scales: they are small (Botswana, sixty-five; Cape Verde, sixty; Mauritius, fifty-seven.) Among the larger states, Ghana (forty-five) and South Africa (forty-three) did the best, as they usually do in that category. At the bottom were Chad (nineteen), Sudan (thirteen), and Somalia (eight.) Among larger African states, Ethiopia’s score was thirty-three, Kenya’s was twenty-seven, Nigeria’s twenty-seven, and Congo-Kinshasa’s was twenty-one. Read more »

The distinguished human rights non-governmental organization (NGO) Human Rights Watch has issued an anticipated report on Boko Haram and security force abuses in northern Nigeria; Spiraling Violence.  It provides a close analysis of Boko Haram and the government’s disastrous response to date. Its analysis is supported by impressive research and on-the-ground interviews in a region currently inhospitable to outsiders. The report is an authoritative must-read. Read more »

That Africa has a growing middle class has become conventional wisdom, and the prospect of a new and expanding consumer market excites investors. How to define the “middle class,” to say nothing of how big it is remains unclear. Uri Dadush and Shimelse Ali show a way forward in their article, “In Search of the Global Middle Class:  A New Index,” recently published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Read more »

The International Crisis Group (ICG) has just issued a must-read analysis of China’s new initiatives in South Sudan. “China’s New Courtship in South Sudan” is a cogent, credible analysis of the tightrope Beijing must walk between Khartoum and Juba in the aftermath of the Sudan split. Most of China’s oil investments in the former Sudan are in the south, and Chinese companies are also salivating over the possibility of participating in the the construction of South Sudan’s now almost absent infrastructure. The ICG reminds its readership that the number of Chinese in the South Sudan has spiked over the past year. But, China has been a close ally of Khartoum in the past, and the memory of that reality is a factor in Juba and likely a brake on Beijing’s ambitions. Read more »