Death, debts and democratic doubts in Africa 

For large parts of Africa 2023 was a rough year. Violence cut a swathe across the Sahel, where coups and civilian misrule have shaken faith in democracy. Sudan’s catastrophic civil war, fuelled by outside powers, is spreading relentlessly: on December 15th fighting engulfed Wad Madani, a city 200km south of the capital, war-torn Khartoum. Across the region government debt levels have reached their highest levels since 2001, while economic growth in the world’s youngest continent barely outstripped population growth. Measured in current dollars sub-saharan Africa’s share of world GDP fell to just 1.9%, compared with its share of 18% of the world’s people. Why did things go wrong for Africa in 2023? And what does that mean for the continent in 2024?

The best place to start is also the bleakest: the civil war in Sudan, whose enormity has yet to be fully appreciated by the outside world, whose politicians and public have focused on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. The struggle erupted in April between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, and has now displaced more than 7m people. Reported fatalities are 12,000 but the actual death-count is likely to be far higher. Peace talks by Saudi Arabia have failed to stop the violence. The RSF, which following the assault on Wad Madani now has the upper hand in the war, is widely understood to be armed and funded by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), though the UAE denies this. America and other Western powers have said little and done less to stop the carnage, even as the RSF’s predominantly Arab gunmen have committed acts that may amount to genocide in Darfur, a region of Sudan with a large black African population.

The catastrophe in Sudan has occurred in parallel with an intensification of other conflicts. Jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) continue to terrorise the Sahel. They control swathes of territory in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and threaten the densely populated and economically crucial coastal states in the Gulf of Guinea. In Benin, for example, there were 182 attacks targeting civilians between January and the end of November, an increase of 75% on the same period in 2022, according to ACLED, a research group. On the other side of the continent, in Ethiopia, where a civil war that killed 600,000 people ended in November 2022, ethnic conflict continues to smoulder. Don’t discount widening violence there in 2024. Abiy Ahmed, the country’s messianic prime minister, has raised fears that he might start a war with Eritrea or its neighbours over access to the Red Sea.

Look farther down the map of Africa and another hotspot is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Chaotic elections took place on December 20th: the result is not clear yet and several opposition candidates have already demanded a rerun. Meanwhile rising violence between the army and the M23, a rebel group backed by Rwanda, displaced some 450,000 people in the six weeks to the end of November. Some fear a full-blown war is brewing between the two countries. The last time that happened, in 1998, it sparked a conflagration that sucked in eight states and caused over 3m deaths, mostly from disease and hunger. America and others are working to defuse tension. Whether a repeat of that nightmare can be avoided will shape millions of lives in 2024.

Rising violence has taken place alongside another dispiriting trend: Africans’ declining faith in democracy. Just 38% of people say they are satisfied with democracy in their countries, according to Afrobarometer, a pollster. Support for military rule has increased since 2014 in 24 out of 30 countries surveyed. Rampant insecurity helps explain some of the discontent even though military rulers have not made Africa safer. When Niger’s generals overthrew the democratically elected president in July, political violence surged by 42% in a month. A series of coups in other Sahelian countries over the past few years, including two apiece in Mali and Burkina Faso, have had similar results. The generals have sought to legitimise their power grabs in part by scapegoating France, west Africa’s former colonial hegemon, which has maintained troops in the region in order to fight jihadism but which is now being pushed out. The military men promise to restore democracy. Don’t hold your breath. Mali was scheduled to hold elections in February 2024; in September the junta postponed them, citing “technical reasons”.

African democracy is far from dead. But it is ailing in the most important countries. Nigeria, Africa’s largest country by population, elected a new president, Bola Tinubu, in March. Power changed hands peacefully. Yet voting was marred by irregularities and only one in four Nigerians eligible to vote bothered to cast their ballots. Mr Tinubu has since introduced much-needed reforms, notably ending exorbitant petrol subsidies. Yet the change had not been fully implemented, according to the World Bank. South Africans, who will head to the polls in 2024, are even more apathetic. Fully 72% say they would surrender democracy to a leader who could deliver jobs and reduce crime.

Amid rising violence and strains on democracy, a third worry haunts Africa: debt distress. Overall government debt in sub-Saharan Africa has risen to 58% of GDP, the highest ratio since 2001. Sub-Saharan Africa’s external debt stock (money borrowed by governments and private firms from abroad) reached 44% of national income. It more than doubled in the decade to 2022, growing 72% faster than national income, according to the World Bank. As central banks globally have raised interest rates, the cost of servicing debt has ballooned. It is projected to gobble up more than a fifth of tax revenues in 19 African countries in 2024. That leaves less for spending on schools and hospitals.

Some countries made progress on debt in 2023. Somalia was granted $4.5bn in debt forgiveness. Zambia and Ghana, both of which are in default, struck restructuring deals on sovereign debts. Nonetheless Zambia faced a setback in November when creditors, led by China and France, rejected a proposal to restructure some $4bn owed to private bondholders. A big question hanging over 2024 is how fast domestic debt, which has grown even faster than external debt in Africa over the past two decades, should be restructured. Large write-downs would imperil the financial health of domestic banks which hold lots of government debt on their books; in turn damaging growth.

Amid the gloom there have been shafts of light. Liberia bucked the trend toward both conflict and democratic decay. Just 20 years after a brutal civil war that killed perhaps a twelfth of its population, it held peaceful elections, its first without UN peacekeepers supervising since the war. And despite a nail-bitingly tight result the incumbent president, George Weah, quickly conceded. Global economic woes did not prevent Ivory Coast from notching up another year of over 6% growth alongside a construction boom that has transformed the capital, Abidjan. Benin and Rwanda, too, kept up brisk growth. And beneath the surface a mega-trend began to shift: fertility rates in Africa started to fall more sharply.

What’s more, Africa’s global standing has in many ways risen during 2023. Afrobeats, a musical genre, had the whole world singing in African slang. A climate summit hosted by Kenya jump-started action on carbon markets. The African Union became a permanent member of the G20 in September. The hope is that Africa can now speak to the world in a louder, more confident voice. There will be a lot to talk about.■