Africa’s second most populous nation is being plunged into catastrophic war which is also threatening to engulf the Horn of Africa. It’s scorched-earth geopolitics.
After two years as prime minister Abiy Ahmed has overseen the collapse of a once strong and independent country, the only nation in Africa never to have been colonized by foreign powers.
There is an underlying current for war that may prove unstoppable driven by two populous and thirsty nations whose leaders are badly in need of shoring up their political authority amid internal discontent.
The sheer level of America’s meddling and colossal bungling in Somalia led to Hollywood films like Black Hawk Down. Yet now a U.S. ambassador’s foibles and insecurities appear to be writing a new Hollywood script.
More often than not Africa is written about by the same people who write about every region of the world never making contact with anyone from any of them.
The Trump administration has weighed in to back Egypt in its long-running dispute with Ethiopia over a crucial hydroelectric dam about to come into operation.
Unlike the west, Russia has the advantage of having encouraged African development during the dark days of the Cold War and is thus infinitely more trusted than the west.
Although Donald Trump can barely place a single country in Africa, his few utterances on the continent have yielded what can only be described as a nostalgia for the 1960s. It was a decade that saw three white minority-ruled governments ruling in South Africa, Rhodesia, and the South African territory of South-West Africa.
