Top Africa Stories in 2022 - 0 views
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On Feb. 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, and sanctions imposed on Russia by Western states led to surging food, fuel, and fertilizer prices. Burkina Faso saw two successful coups and a third foiled putsch. There were failed power grabs in São Tomé and Príncipe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and against Mali’s military junta, sparked by armed groups’ escalating attacks and creeping inflation on food and services. It was a continuation of a trajectory set in 2021, a year that saw four successful coups in Africa (in Chad, Guinea, Mali, and Sudan).
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Tunisia is just one of many countries experiencing a rollback of democratic gains. Amid an economic crisis worsened by the pandemic and made even more acute by the war in Ukraine, democratic backsliding is increasing. As reported in Africa Brief this year, Sudan’s democratic future still hangs in the balance, and Mali’s putsch leaders agreed to a two-year democratic transition that would allow coup leader Col. Assimi Goïta and other military members to run in general elections in 2024. Ibrahim Traoré, an army captain in Burkina Faso, proclaimed himself the new president of the country’s military junta in the country’s second coup in eight months while Guinea’s military rulers issued a three-year ban on public demonstrations to combat growing calls for democracy. And around 50 people were killed by security forces as Chadians took to the streets to demand a quicker transition to democratic rule.
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Recent elections in Kenya and Angola showed democratic gains as Kenyans defied their outgoing president’s chosen successor and young Angolans increasingly challenged their one-party state. Africans want more democracy even if their leaders want less of it.
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