29 Nov 2024

African Think Tank

Association For Strategic Culture and Research Foundation

African Think Tank

The Strategic Consequences Of A Possible French Military Intervention In Mozambique

A publicly available expert-level newsletter on Mozambique news reports and clippings from the middle of May predicts that France might launch a limited military intervention in northern Mozambique's Cabo Delgado Province in order to protect the offshore energy deposits of its national champion Total, which necessitates an analysis of such a move's strategic consequences if it does indeed come to pass.

By Andrew Korybko

8 June, 2021

Russia and China: Geopolitical Rivals and Competitors in Africa

Interview by Kester Kenn Klomegah

By Lipton Matthews

4 August, 2021

Samoa’s First Woman Prime Minister Finally Takes Office

Fiame has long been a trailblazer for women’s leadership. As a long-serving member of parliament and Samoa’s first woman deputy prime minister, she is used to breaking glass ceilings and has been a strong advocate for gender equality throughout her political career.

By Kerryn Baker

22 September, 2021

France's Worries About Wagner's Alleged Deployment To Mali Make No Sense

In the event that those reports turn out to be true and such a deal is ultimately reached, then it should be internationally praised instead of condemned.

By Andrew Korybko

26 September, 2021

The Great Games of Diplomacy: Russia Sees Neocolonialism as An Investment Barrier in Africa

Some argue that the best way to fight neocolonialism is to invest in order to jostle for economic influence. Nevertheless, Russia has sought to convince Africans over the past years of the likely dangers of neocolonial tendencies perpetrated by the former colonial countries and the scramble for resources on the continent.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah

30 September, 2021

The Dilapidated Misery of Sahel

The world’s most unstable regions are undoubtedly knitted in the Middle-East and the Sub-Saharan Africa. On one end a handful of the middle eastern countries account to the most chaotic warfare since World War II.

By Syed Zain Abbas Rizvi

14 October, 2021

Wagner: Putin’s secret weapon on the way to Mali?

France is outraged at the prospect of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group arriving in Mali. However, Paris is seeking a way out of an unwinnable conflict.

By Richard Rousseau

23 October, 2021

Interpreting the Biden Doctrine: The View From Moscow

It is the success or failure of remaking America, not Afghanistan, that will determine not just the legacy of the Biden administration, but the future of the United States itself.

By Dmitri Trenin

25 October, 2021

Africa Condemns the Continuing Imperialist Legacy of France

France for centuries had been involved in the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism making it one of the leading imperialist powers to emerge from the tumultuous conquering of large swaths of territory throughout the world

By Abayomi Azikiwe

25 October, 2021

What Next After Sudan Changes Guards At The Crossroad?

Besides the search for peaceful political pathways, Sudanese authorities need to address the deep-seated economic deficiencies and tackle common problems (basic infrastructure) facing people in micro levels of the society. This also relates many African countries.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah

27 October, 2021

Morocco And Algeria On The Edge Of The Precipice

Algeria’s hostility toward Morocco since its independence in 1962 is considered a real enigma by many foreign observers. In reality, it is explained by the nature of power in Algeria, which, lacking democratic or at least historical legitimacy, sees this hostility as necessary for its internal hegemony and continuation.

By Dr. Mohamed Chtatou

29 October, 2021

Chad wants to lead the charge against Russia’s inroads in Françafrique

Russia and all of its partners in 'Françafrique' should be seriously concerned about what the Chadian Foreign Minister said instead of that diplomat and his country's French patron faking concern about them and Wagner.

By Andrew Korybko

29 October, 2021

Sudan Coup Prompted by Failures in Washington’s Foreign Policy

For decades now the political affairs of the Republic of Sudan have been a preoccupation of the U.S. State Department, Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Prior to the partition of the country in 2011, Sudan was the largest geographic nation-state in Africa. The country of 50 million was becoming an emerging oil-producing state maintaining ties with both the West and the developing countries.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

1 November, 2021

African Union Must Implement Strategies to Reverse Military Coups

Over the last 14 months, several African governments have been subjected to numerous attempts and actual military usurpations of political authority. In Niger, which is one of the world’s largest producers of uranium, it was reported that elements within the defense forces were thwarted in efforts to take control of the government on March 31 of 2021.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

4 November, 2021

France and Africa: Towards a New Model of Relations?

In recent decades, French foreign policy in Africa has been preoccupied with a jump-start of relations with the African nations, marked by a gradual curtailment of the Françafrique, a concept that provided for a direct military and political intervention in affairs of the French-speaking nations on the continent. France is now in search for a more balanced framework for interaction with the countries in the region.

By Alexei Chikhachev

9 November, 2021

The United States and Africa: Building a 21st Century Partnership

We welcome the African Continental Free Trade Area, because we want to see Africa’s economic power in the world grow. More consumers should gain access to African goods and services. More jobs must be created for Africa’s young people – the global workforce of the future.

By Antony J. Blinken

25 November, 2021

Africa Taking Concrete Steps to Write Its Own Economic Success Story

The AfCFTA aspires to connect all the regions of Africa, to deepen economic integration and to boost intra-African trade and investment. It aspires to create a single market for goods and services across 55 countries and our continent, creating a market of as much as 1.3 billion people with a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion.

By H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa

25 November, 2021

Russia's Influence in the Central African Republic

Conflict over CAR's mineral resources could also intensify amid fears that the government may compensate Wagner or associated companies by handing them control of mining zones. Wagner arrived in 2018, around the same time that the government granted gold and diamond mining licences to the Russian-owned company Lobaye Invest SARLU.

By Pauline Bax

6 December, 2021

Russia-Africa Relations: “Geopolitical Arena with Many Players Operating”

Russia has to upgrade or scale up its collaborative engagement with Africa. It has to consider seriously launching more public outreach programmes, especially working with civil society to change public perceptions and the private sector to strengthen its partnership with Africa. In order to achieve this, it has to surmount the challenges, take up the courage and work consistently with both private and public sectors and with an effective Action Plan.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah

8 December, 2021

Africa-China Relations Could Serve as Bulwark against Imperialist Hegemony

Note: These remarks were prepared and delivered in part for a webinar held on Sunday December 12 entitled “China/Africa Relations: Challenges of Cooperation and Development.” The event was sponsored by the International Manifesto Group and the Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA).

By Abayomi Azikiwe

14 December, 2021

Collective Sanctions Isolating Mali in the Sahel Sahara as Russia Rides the Wave of Anticolonialism

Over the past few years, Russian authorities have in their speeches expressed anti-colonial sentiments and openly declared unflinching support for fighting against what they referred to as neocolonial tendencies in Africa. Russia is particularly against France in French-speaking African countries in West Africa including the entire Sahel and Central African Republic.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah

27 December, 2021

Africa in Review 2021 (Part II) : Regional Conflict and the Role of Imperialism

During the coup in Conakry in May 2021, the presence of AFRICOM troops were strongly in evidence. These military leaders could not act with this degree of impunity absent of the full backing of transnational corporations, international finance capital and their security apparatuses. Stability and security will only be realized once the resources, land and labor of African people are retaken and used for the benefit of the majority.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

31 December, 2021

St. Petersburg – Venue for Second African Leaders Summit

In their first joint declaration, emerging from the Russia-Africa summit, at the initiative of African participants a new dialogue mechanism—the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum—was created. The declaration stipulated that all top-level meetings take place within its framework once every three years, alternately in Russia and in an African state. It says further that the foreign ministers of Russia and three African countries—the current, future and previous chairpersons of the African Union—will meet for annual consultations.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah

20 January, 2022

The State and Future of Africa

The creation of $650 billion in new Special Drawing Rights last year was a step in the right direction but more needs to be done to enable African and other developing countries to access the SDRs that are not needed or being used by developed or emerging economies. It is also clear that public debt vulnerabilities will dominate macro-economic policy management in Africa over the next few years.

By His Excellency, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo

27 January, 2022

Burkina Faso Military Coup Reflects Wave of Insecurity in West Africa

The U.S. nor France has the willingness to provide genuine assistance to the African people in their contemporary struggles for economic development and territorial sovereignty. The mass sentiment against Paris and Washington is well-founded. What is needed is revolutionary organization which can bring together the people of the region in a program aimed at continental unity and socialist reconstruction.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

1 February, 2022

What Does 2022 Have In Store For Africa?

Compared to other recent periods, the continent has relatively fewer conflict situations at the dawn of 2022 and a few conflicts that are quite deadly. Several states—Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria and Somalia—are experiencing a range of violent conflicts that are leaving much civilian suffering in their wake. Many have tended to privilege military approaches to ending them. A change in strategy in Ethiopia and states in the Sahel could move them closer to peace.

By Dr Issaka Souaré

12 February, 2022

African Union Summit Addresses Continental and Global Issues

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the AU Summit was the challenge by South Africa and Algeria to the unilateral decision made during 2021 by Commission Chair Mahamat to grant Israel observer status within the continental organization. Historically the progressive and anti-imperialist forces in Africa have demonstrated unconditional solidarity with Palestine along with other national liberation movements fighting colonialism.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

12 February, 2022

A Conversation With Ghana’s Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia

In an exclusive interview with PAV, Dr Bawumia sheds light on progress with key segments of the agenda of President Akufo Addo under his purview, COVID 19, and other seminal developments across the continent.

By Ajong Mbapndah L

17 February, 2022

Disarming the Black Masses Secured the Failure of Reconstruction

However, within these contexts, the enslaved and free Africans were objectively fighting on behalf of European colonial regimes and not for their own freedom. Although the British and the Americans told the Africans that their service in the war of independence and 1812 would lead to emancipation, slavery and national oppression continued leading up to the beginning of the Civil War.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

23 February, 2022

Russia and the Maghreb: Future Geostrategic Perspectives?

Today, the Maghreb is not a fundamental interest for Russia, but rather a source of economic and political opportunities. The Russian redeployment in the Maghreb, which began during Vladimir Putin's second term in 2004 and has been over the last decade, relies on new vectors, distinct from the old anti-imperialist aura from which the Soviet Union had benefited in Algeria and Libya.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah

23 February, 2022

Many Africans Reject Washington’s Position on Ukraine Crisis

Since the post-World War II period national liberation movements and independent countries in Africa have developed solid diplomatic and economic relations with the former Soviet Union and today’s Russian Federation.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

14 March, 2022

Spain Abandons Former Colony in the Western Sahara Endorsing Morocco Domination

Algeria, which has been a longtime advocate for liberation movements on the continent, has continued to demand that the UN abide by its legal obligations with respect to the SADR. Algiers routinely challenges on a diplomatic level those entities which support the continued colonization of the Western Sahara.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

27 March, 2022

After 60 Years of Independence Algeria Remains a Center of International Affairs

France along with other European imperialist states such as Spain, Portugal, Britain, Italy, Germany, Belgium and the United States had met in Berlin in 1884-1885 where they carved up the African continent into spheres of interests based upon their overall strengths economically and militarily.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

13 April, 2022

Congress Passes Anti-Russia Bill Reinforcing Neo-colonialism in Africa

Russian military operations in Ukraine are in response to Washington and Wall Street’s efforts to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) deeper into Eastern Europe as a direct threat to the interests of the Russian Federation and its allies.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

15 June, 2022

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