Africa Aware: Towards just transition in Africa Audio NCapeling 1 March 2023

African countries face collective climate and job creation-related challenges, yet policymaking often remains regionally siloed.

This podcast reflects on the key policy messages from the Africa programme’s series on Towards just transition: Connecting green financing and sustainable job creation in Africa.

African countries face collective climate and job creation-related challenges. Yet policymaking often remains regionally siloed according to differing political, energy sector and ecological realities.

This output is part of a stream of work supported by the Chatham House Sustainability Accelerator and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 

A critical juncture for Sudan’s democratic transition Expert comment LJefferson 28 March 2023

International pressure is essential to reach an agreement that establishes a credible civilian government.

The signing of the Framework Agreement (FA) on 5 December 2022 between Sudan’s military leaders and its leading pro-democracy parties is a major step to reversing the damage done by the disastrous military coup in October 2021.

The FA removes any formal role for the military in Sudan’s politics. A civilian head of state and prime minister will select the cabinet and chair the Defence and Security Council. The armed forces will be prohibited from non-military business activities and security sector reform will lead to a unified, professional and non-partisan national army. Elections are due to take place at the end of a two-year transitional period. 

Signatories included General Abdel Fatah Al Burhan, chair of the Sovereign Council and head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), his deputy and Commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and more than 40 civilian entities, including the Forces of Freedom and Change- Central Council (FFC-CC), a few other political parties, former armed movements, civil society organizations and professional associations. However, the agreement has faced criticism from the street for not being sufficiently radical, has been overshadowed at times by heightened tension between the two military leaders, and has seen sabotage attempts by supporters of the Bashir regime.

Building consensus on the Framework Agreement

The agreement meets most of the demands of the anti-coup camp, at least on paper. Yet doubts persist as to whether the military are genuine about handing over power, particularly among the neighbourhood-based resistance committees – the heart of the youth-led mobilization that forced the military to recognize the failure of their power grab. Peaceful protests against the coup have seen 125 killed and over 8,000 injured by government security forces. Many want to see Burhan and Hemedti held accountable.

Recognizing the need to expand popular support, FFC-CC leaders have been reaching out to other pro-democracy forces to build a united civilian front. They report increased buy-in from some resistance committees in the last few months, recognizing that street protests alone were not sufficient to overthrow the coup, and that engagement with the military is necessary to find a way out of the impasse.

The FA offers the only currently available path to embedding civilian politics in Sudan and has received active diplomatic support from UNITAMS, AU and IGAD (who form the Tripartite Mechanism), the Troika of the US, UK and Norway, alongside the EU, as well as Saudi Arabia and the UAE (who are members of ‘the Quad’ with the US and UK).

Broader public participation has also been developed through a series of conferences, facilitated by the Tripartite Mechanism, on five contentious issues – dismantling the old regime, the Juba Peace Agreement, Eastern Sudan, Transitional Justice and Security Sector Reform. Recommendations will be incorporated in a final political agreement. 

The political process has been overshadowed by increasingly visible tension between Burhan and Hemedti, seen in parallel foreign visits, conflicting public statements, and a heavy military presence in Khartoum. But concerns that SAF and the RSF were heading towards confrontation appear to have been assuaged thanks to international pressure and preliminary agreements reached between military and civilian signatories of the FA on security sector reform and integration. In a significant breakthrough, both sides have now agreed to draft the final agreement and transitional constitution, with the aim of forming a civilian government by 11 April.  

Potential spoilers and interests from Sudan’s regions

Progress has been made, but significant challenges remain, notably from supporters of the former Bashir regime in ‘the deep state’ and from Sudan’s historically marginalized peripheries. Old regime elements have been intensifying social media campaigns to derail the agreement and drive a wedge between the SAF and RSF, and have been accused of deliberately inciting instability in the peripheries to undermine the democratic transition. 

The Popular Defence Forces, established by the National Islamic Front in the 1990s, have been reactivated under different names in several parts of the country and there are reports of mobilization and recruitment of armed militias in Darfur. The recent public appearance of Ali Karti, the Secretary-General of the Islamic Movement, who has close relations with Islamists in SAF, has also caused renewed concern.

Two Darfuri armed movement leaders who signed the October 2020 Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) and are members of the current military-led government, have not signed the FA, allegedly due to concerns about their representation in the next government.

Despite intensive efforts to bring them on board, there is continuing disagreement over the inclusion of other members of ‘the Democratic Bloc’, a political alliance backed by Sudan’s influential neighbour Egypt, which is reportedly angry at being excluded from the Quad. The FFC-CC say that the door is open for the two Darfuri leaders and some other political parties, but they will not allow the agreement to be ‘diluted’ with political forces who intend to torpedo the transition, including by imposing a weak prime minister.

Both Burhan and Hemedti have courted support from the regions. Burhan used the 2020 SAF takeover of Al Fashaga in the contested eastern border region with Ethiopia to boost his national standing and secure backing from local tribal leaders; while Hemedti has sought to position himself as a champion of the peripheries, particularly in his Darfur heartlands, while simultaneously advancing his business interests.

Competition between them in building domestic powerbases, as well as alliances with neighbouring states, risks reigniting tensions, particularly given deep grievances and contrasting ambitions between and among Sudan’s diverse regional leaders and communities.

Africa Aware: Supply chains, land contestation, conflict Audio NCapeling 30 March 2023

This episode examines relations between Ethiopia and Sudan as part of an XCEPT project mini-series.

The war in northern Ethiopia since November 2020, and subsequent conquest of disputed farmlands in Al-Fashaga by the Sudanese army on the Ethiopia-Sudan border, has brought into focus the importance of agricultural commodities such as sesame as a potential driver of land contestation and conflict. 

The panel discusses the interrelation of commodity and conflict supply chains, land contestation, and boundary disputes in the Horn of Africa, with a particular focus on the regions of Wolkait/Western Tigray in northwest Ethiopia and Al Fashaga in eastern Sudan.

This podcast was produced with support from the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) project, funded by UK Aid from the UK government.

Fighting over ‘white gold’: Sesame in Ethiopia and Sudan Expert comment LJefferson 3 April 2023

The supply chain of a seemingly innocuous cash crop – sesame – has intersected with transnational conflict dynamics, exacerbating tensions between Ethiopia and Sudan.

Late 2020 saw the beginning of the devastating war in Tigray and the occupation of a disputed region on the Ethiopia–Sudan border – Al Fashaga – by the Sudanese army. These shocks disrupted settled patterns of land ownership and control in both Ethiopia’s volatile north and Sudan’s borderlands, historically the heart of the sesame and oilseed production that is economically vital to both countries.

These seemingly harmless cash crops are now embedded in local, subnational and national political contestations in both countries. Sesame value chains are being reshaped, with power and profits being used to entrench the grip of political and armed actors who are reinforcing new patterns of land control and driving informal and illicit trade – impacting the coping mechanisms of local communities and threatening to fuel further conflict.

Regional rivalries drive contestation over the Ethiopia supply chain

Internal borders between most of Ethiopia’s regions are marked by boundary disputes, which often degenerate into violent conflict. The most important is between the Tigray and Amhara regions. Since the war began in 2020, the Amhara region has annexed vast areas of western and southern Tigray, which the Amhara region claims were taken from them by Tigray 30 years ago, after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) dominated ethnic coalition came to power.

Ethiopia’s exports of spices, oilseeds and pulses brought in over half a billion dollars in 2021, roughly a quarter of the country’s total export revenues and second only to coffee. The sector has been rocked by the war in the north, which accounted for much of Ethiopia’s sesame production, with an estimated 500,000 hectares of sesame fields taken out of cultivation during the 2021 growing season. Conflict has exacerbated a steady decline in formal revenues from sesame exports, dropping over $115 million from 2016 to 2021.

Alongside falling production, the previously integrated value chain has been disrupted and decentralized by political fragmentation and land competition between Amharas and Tigrayans. Before the war, the agricultural sector in Western Tigray/Welkait was dominated by Tigrayan business interests, through the TPLF’s regional endowment fund EFFORT, a business conglomerate including subsidiaries such as Guna Trading House, and Hiwot Agricultural Mechanization.