A backgrounder written as part of an AllAfrica’s coverage of peacebuilding efforts across the continent.

In January 2011 the people of South Sudan voted in a referendum to secede from Sudan, putting behind them two civil wars which had consumed 39 of the 55 years of Sudanese independence. Six months later, they joyfully celebrated their independence.

Ten years on, the South Sudanese are still struggling to establish peace, deal with human rights abuses committed since independence, write an inclusive constitution, and focus on developing their country.

Read on: https://allafrica.com/stories/202111180383.html

Amid the explosive cocktail of ingredients which contributed to the outbreak of looting and burning in South Africa this week, new fault-lines running through a society divided by class as well as by race were on display as never before. The unrest may have been triggered by the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma and exacerbated by factors ranging from orchestrated incitement by pro-Zuma forces, to hardships caused by Covid-19 job losses, to wanton criminality. But as rioting spread from Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal to the economic heartland of …
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South Africa’s top court gave the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, a verbal tongue-lashing on Tuesday for his defiance of the law and ordered him to report to police within five days to serve a 15-month prison sentence for contempt of court. In a judgement delivered at the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, Justice Sisi Khampepe, the acting deputy chief justice, accused Zuma of “outlandish” behaviour when he refused to obey a court order to appear before a commission of inquiry into high-level government and private sector corruption.

Read on: https://allafrica.com/stories/202106290714.html

The toxic mix of factors which threaten the cohesion of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation include:

insurgencies generated by government neglect and corruption;
exploitation of discontent by armed bands of religious supremacists claiming to represent Islam;
increasing insecurity and violence;
climate change that is causing competition for scarce resources of land;
lack of health care that is exacerbated by the Covid19 pandemic; and
brutal state oppression.

A backgrounder for AllAfrica’s online discussion with scholars and peace practitioners.

https://allafrica.com/stories/202104090638.html

When the novel coronavirus hit South Africa harder than any other African nation earlier this year, the government’s handling of the pandemic became a rare good news story for President Cyril Ramaphosa. But then the bad news story of the past decade caught up with him and the governing African National Congress (ANC), triggering new debate about whether the party is capable of reforming itself and ending corruption.

Read on: https://allafrica.com/stories/202008190404.html

The novel coronavirus threatens to reverse the gains made in the global struggle to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030 – but Sierra Leone offers hope that progress can be made in improving people’s lives even in a pandemic. A new study published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Oxford University’s Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) shows that of 75 countries surveyed, Sierra Leone made the most progress in reducing poverty over a period in which it was also battling Ebola.

Read on: https://allafrica.com/stories/202007200002.html

Twenty-five years after Nelson Mandela led the African National Congress to victory in South Africa’s first democratic elections, the party is in danger of going the way of those led by an earlier generation of Africa’s liberation icons.

Read on: https://allafrica.com/stories/201905140003.html