Africa

Where things stand. Africa is usually counted as 55 states by the African Union, which includes Western Sahara, or 54 by the UN, which does not — split along colonial-linguistic lines that still shape trade and diplomacy today: a Francophone bloc anchored by the CFA franc zone across West and Central Africa, a larger Anglophone bloc across East and Southern Africa, a five-country Lusophone bloc (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe), and a single Hispanophone enclave, Equatorial Guinea. These aren't just linguistic labels: the CFA franc is still pegged to the euro through a reserve arrangement with the French Treasury, and a 2019 plan to replace it with a new "Eco" currency remains unimplemented six years on.

The decision point

The sharpest current break isn't along the old colonial lines but a new one. Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso — formerly ECOWAS's Francophone core — formed their own confederation in mid-2024, formally exited ECOWAS in January 2025, and by the end of 2025 had launched a joint 5,000-strong military force, a shared investment bank, and withdrawn from the ICC. Whether that bloc holds together, or fractures under the jihadist pressure it was partly built to resist, is one of the continent's live tests.

Who holds the leverage

Outside powers are competing directly for what's under African ground. The US signed a strategic minerals partnership with the Democratic Republic of Congo in December 2025, paired with a US-mediated DRC-Rwanda peace deal — the DRC holds more than 70% of the world's cobalt reserves. Guinea, Morocco, and Rwanda signed related cooperation agreements at a February 2026 US Critical Minerals Ministerial, though DRC's own lawyers have challenged the deal for bypassing parliamentary ratification. China's Africa engagement is reportedly leaning harder into critical minerals as Western attention fragments across other crises. Meanwhile in Mali specifically, the jihadist group JNIM has run a fuel and trade blockade on the capital since September 2025 — a reminder that in the Sahel, armed groups hold real leverage on the ground even as governments sign resource deals in the capitals.

What to watch

The demographic numbers are the biggest under-covered story on the continent. Africa's population passed 1.5 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050 — 28% of the world's population, up from 10% in 1960 — with some 620 million people projected to enter the labor force over that period. The UN's own Economic Commission for Africa is explicit that "a demographic dividend is by no means guaranteed": roughly 10 million young Africans enter the labor market every year against only about 3 million new formal jobs, and more than 100 million employed young Africans already live in extreme working poverty. Whether this generation becomes the growth engine the raw numbers suggest, or a destabilizing pressure, depends far more on governance and job creation than on demographics alone.

Country watch: twelve to track

Ivory Coast. Alassane Ouattara secured a fourth term in October 2025 with 89.77% of the vote after his two strongest rivals, Laurent Gbagbo and Tidjane Thiam, were disqualified on legal technicalities — a process that has left a legitimacy question hanging over an otherwise decisive win. The IMF projects 6.4% growth for 2026 on a cocoa-and-gold export mix (gold now edges cocoa as the top earner), and unlike its Sahel Alliance neighbors, Abidjan negotiated France's exit from its last military base in February 2025 while choosing to keep cooperating with Paris militarily — a moderate contrast to Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso's harder break, even as jihadist spillover from that bloc remains Côte d'Ivoire's clearest security risk.

Nigeria. Bola Tinubu's government is managing a rare convergence: a US "Country of Particular Concern" designation over Christian-persecution claims, with Trump floating military action, alongside a security picture that has genuinely improved in the northeast (insurgent-held local government areas fell from 17 to under 6 since 2022) but remains fragile in the northwest, where banditry persists despite a 64% defense-budget increase since 2023. Growth is projected at 4.4% for 2026, helped by crude output hitting a 74-month high in June 2026 at 104% of Nigeria's OPEC quota.

DRC. The US-brokered June 2025 peace deal with Rwanda, paired with a December 2025 US-DRC minerals partnership, has not stopped the fighting — credible reporting puts civilian deaths at over 1,000 in the months since signing, and the US pact itself faces a constitutional challenge in Congolese courts for bypassing parliamentary approval. Minerals-driven growth is strong (one industry estimate puts 2026 growth near 7.8%, though this needs independent confirmation against IMF or World Bank figures), and DRC has moved from a cobalt export ban to a quota system while separately signing a new mining agreement with China in March 2026 — leaving Kinshasa courted by Washington and Beijing at once.

Angola. João Lourenço is barred from a third presidential term in 2027 but is seeking re-election as MPLA party president with no named successor, making the party's December 2026 congress arguably the real succession decision point. The economy is diversifying in earnest — non-oil FDI hit a record $959 million in 2025 and the Lobito Corridor rail project, linking Angola's port to DRC and Zambia's mineral belt, is central to a US strategy explicitly pitched as a counter to Chinese logistics dominance — even as Angola simultaneously seeks a new $4.8 billion China loan for a refinery while also reporting it is paying down existing Chinese debt, a contradiction still unresolved in the reporting.

Morocco. Western Sahara recognition keeps building: Washington reaffirmed its position on August 2, 2026, following a November 2025 UN Security Council resolution that boosted Morocco's autonomy plan and prompted Rabat to declare a "Unity Day" holiday. Domestically, PM Aziz Akhannouch announced he won't seek a third party term amid sustained "Gen Z 212" youth protests over public-service failures, while Morocco presses ahead with $32.5 billion in green hydrogen megaprojects backed by a genuinely multipolar investor mix of Gulf, Chinese, and European capital.

Egypt. Cairo secured a $1.8 billion IMF disbursement on July 31, 2026 — its seventh review, taking total program disbursements to roughly $7.3 billion — even as core inflation is projected to climb to 16.7% in the second half of the year and the IMF flags elevated public debt as an ongoing vulnerability. The more consequential dispute is regional: Egypt has called Ethiopia's completed Grand Renaissance Dam "illegal" and escalated to the UN Security Council with no binding Nile-sharing agreement in place, while separately fast-tracking a $25 billion nuclear plant with Russia — underscoring Egypt's habitual balancing between Western financing and Russian or Gulf partnerships.

Ethiopia. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is complete and exporting power regionally, but with no Nile-sharing agreement and Egypt's dispute now at the UN Security Council. Domestically, Abiy Ahmed's Prosperity Party was projected to dominate June 2026 elections held under suspended polling in Tigray and parts of Amhara amid brief but real Ethiopia-TPLF clashes in January-February 2026, while a preliminary $1 billion Eurobond restructuring — a G20 Common Framework test case involving China, France, and the UK as creditors — remains only partially resolved after a prior deal collapsed.

Congo-Brazzaville. Denis Sassou Nguesso, 82, won a fifth term in the March 2026 election with a government-reported 94.9% of the vote, extending a hold on power that began in 1979 (with a 1992–1997 interruption) toward its 42nd year — a run enabled by a 2015 referendum that removed presidential age and term limits, held under conditions where fifteen opposition parties were suspended and two prominent opposition figures remain imprisoned. Succession politics inside the ruling PCT are unsettled: the president's son, Denis-Christel Sassou Nguesso, is the presumed heir but has struggled to consolidate party backing against rivals, including Jean-Jacques Bouya, whom the president named deputy prime minister in the cabinet formed after the election. The economy stays oil-dependent and debt-strained — public debt stood near 97% of GDP at end-2025, China remains the largest bilateral creditor at roughly 11% of GDP, and the IMF's March 2026 post-program assessment rated repayment capacity "adequate but subject to significant risks" — even as Congo signed a $23 billion oil-development deal with China's Wing Wah in September 2025 and Eni brought its Congo LNG Phase 2 online in February 2026, leaving Brazzaville leaning on Chinese and Italian energy capital at once. The habit of hedging between outside patrons has deep roots here: Brazzaville served as the capital of Free France from October 1940 until 1943, after Charles de Gaulle arrived and made it the seat of the Free French resistance, and it hosted the January–February 1944 Brazzaville Conference, whose promised colonial reforms — an end to forced labor, wider political rights — went largely unrealized until Congo's 1960 independence. That same instinct for balancing outside power is visible today, pointed toward China rather than France: French investment stock in Congo fell roughly 21% between 2020 and 2024 and China now ranks as Congo's leading trading partner in several categories, according to France's own foreign ministry — a real and measurable shift in relative weight, though TotalEnergies remains a major oil producer and France still maintains an embassy and dozens of subsidiaries in the country, making this a diversification toward Beijing rather than a clean break with Paris.

Mali. Assimi Goïta's transition has no fixed endpoint: a July 2025 law granted him a renewable five-year presidential mandate "until the pacification of the country," stripping references to political parties from the charter, and an alleged coup plot that August led to the dismissal of about a dozen officers — including two generals — that October. The JNIM fuel blockade on Bamako, running since September 2025, remained severe through mid-2026 despite military-escorted convoys — schools closed, night-time power cut, a February 2026 convoy attack near the Senegalese border killed at least 15 — while a new alliance between JNIM and the secular Azawad Liberation Front opened a second front across Kidal, Gao, and Sévaré in April 2026, producing what analysts describe as a military stalemate that Russia's Africa Corps air support has not broken. The economy is nonetheless projected to grow 5.4% in 2026 on a gold rebound, after Mali resolved its dispute with Barrick over the Loulo-Gounkoto complex — charges dropped, detained employees released, arbitration withdrawn — though the IMF is urging Bamako toward a "non-mining fiscal framework" rather than banking on elevated gold and lithium prices holding.

Senegal. The Faye-Sonko governing tandem that won power in 2024 broke apart in 2026: President Bassirou Diomaye Faye dismissed Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko and dissolved the government on May 22, installing economist Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo in his place, only for Sonko's PASTEF to elect him National Assembly speaker days later and for Faye to launch his own new party, "Kiiraay," in July — splitting a movement that still holds 130 of 165 Assembly seats. The rupture centers on debt strategy: Faye favors an IMF-backed restructuring of the roughly $13 billion in hidden debt uncovered under predecessor Macky Sall, while Sonko called restructuring "a disgrace"; no new IMF program had been finalized as of a June 2026 Fund visit, and Senegal's bonds were trading at distressed levels around 52-58 cents on the dollar, with one analyst calling default "a question of when rather than if." Even so, the country's new energy wealth is real and growing — the Sangomar oil field generated $1.29 billion in the first half of 2026 and the bp-operated Greater Tortue Ahmeyim gas project has been flowing since January 2025 — though most of that revenue accrues to international partners and cost recovery before it reaches the state treasury, and France's July 2025 withdrawal from its last Senegalese bases was followed within weeks by a renewed Faye-Macron security partnership.

Equatorial Guinea. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 84, has held power since a 1979 coup against his uncle — among the longest tenures of any sitting head of state — with his son and First Vice President, Teodorín Nguema Obiang Mangue, positioned as heir apparent though no succession timetable has been set. Freedom House rates the country "Not Free" at 5 of 100 points, citing a ruling party that holds "virtually all governing power" and no realistic opening for the opposition; French courts separately convicted Teodorín in 2017 of laundering proceeds through a Paris mansion, a conviction upheld on appeal in 2021. The economy remains built on a fast-declining oil base — output has fallen by more than two-thirds since a mid-2000s peak near 380,000 barrels a day, a decline that continued through ExxonMobil's full exit in 2024 — pushing Malabo toward a 2026 licensing round covering 24 new blocks and an IMF Staff-Monitored Program, non-financing by design, that passed its third review in February 2026. Relations with China were elevated to a "comprehensive strategic partnership" in mid-2024 even as Washington placed Equatorial Guinea on a mid-2025 travel-ban list, underscoring how unevenly Western pressure and continued engagement now coexist.

Gabon. General Brice Oligui Nguema, who ousted the Bongo family after 56 years in power via an August 2023 coup, converted the transition into an electoral mandate: a November 2024 constitutional referendum passed with 91.6% support, he then won an April 2025 presidential election with a certified 94.85%, and his newly formed Democratic Union of Builders party took 101 of 145 National Assembly seats that October — ending the former ruling PDG's six-decade dominance. The economy remains dependent on oil, manganese, and timber, which the World Bank puts at 97% of exports, with public debt on a rising path — from 70.6% of GDP in 2023 toward a World Bank-projected 86.1% by 2027 — even as the state oil company's 2024 pre-emptive $1.3 billion acquisition of Assala Energy from the Carlyle Group extended nationalization of the sector. France's presence has been recast rather than removed: its Libreville base, one of only two permanent French installations left on the continent, has shrunk from roughly 1,200 troops a decade ago to under 200 focused on training, and a November 2025 state visit by Macron produced new rail-financing and manganese-monitoring agreements rather than a rupture — a notably softer version of the French drawdown playing out elsewhere on the continent.