Will Washington Sanction Sudan’s RSF?

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: A constitutional coup in Togo, Nigeria’s new AI strategy, and a prospective TikTok ban in Kenya.

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A group of U.S. senators has called for direct sanctions on Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the group’s leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti.

In a letter dated Friday that was sent to U.S. President Joe Biden to call for sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, the senators write that Hemeti “has committed abuses deserving of sanctions,” referencing allegations that the RSF has carried out mass rape, abductions, and assassinations of prominent political figures.

The lawmakers have given Biden 120 days to determine whether the RSF has carried out human rights atrocities and whether the president intends to impose sanctions.

Last September, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Hemeti’s brother, Abdelrahim Hamdan Dagalo, who is the RSF’s deputy commander, and Abdul Rahman Juma, the group’s top general in West Darfur.

At a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Friday, U.N. officials said around 800,000 people in the North Darfur capital of El Fasher are in “extreme and immediate danger” due to fighting between the RSF and the Darfur Joint Protection Forces—non-Arab rebel groups aligned with the Sudanese army.

U.N. political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo told the 15-member Security Council that reports of a possible “imminent” RSF attack on El Fasher, which serves as a humanitarian hub, raises “the specter of a new front in the conflict.” DiCarlo added that “fighting in El Fasher could unleash bloody intercommunal strife throughout Darfur.”

Earlier this month, clashes between the RSF and the Joint Protection Forces erupted in Mellit, a strategic town to the north of El Fasher. And west of the city, satellite imagery analyzed by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab indicated that at least nine communities had been razed and torched by RSF militias between March 31 and April 15.

The predominantly ethnically Arab RSF and various local Arab militias have targeted Zaghawa, Masalit, Fur, and other non-Arab ethnic groups, killing thousands. There have been numerous accounts of women and girls being raped, sold in markets, and forced into prostitution by the RSF and allied militia.

The atrocities resemble a repeat of the civil war that began in Darfur in 2003, when Arab “janjaweed” militias killed thousands of non-Arabs. By 2008, around 300,000 people had been killed and 2.5 million displaced.

In the current conflict, U.N. relief agencies have raised the alarm on risks of famine following reported deaths from starvation. A conference in Paris last week raised 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in international aid for Sudan. But security experts say that the solution to ending the conflict is to stop the supply of foreign arms.

DiCarlo told council members that the war was being fueled by weapons from foreign nations that flout U.N. sanctions. Foreign supply of arms “has been the main reason why this war has lasted for so long,” said Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the chairman of the African Union’s panel on Sudan and high representative for its “Silence the Guns in Africa” initiative.

The war has drawn in regional militias and nations including Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Ukraine. It has displaced 9 million people—around four times the entire population of Gaza—but has been met with little media attention. “Through the sounds of gunfire and shelling, the people of Sudan have heard our silence,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wrote last month.

Rights groups have called for support in establishing international investigations and direct consequences for the warring generals and foreign allies, as suggested by U.S. lawmakers. Peace negotiations are to resume in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, within the next three weeks, according to local media.

Wednesday, April 24: The U.N. Security Council discusses the Great Lakes region.

Wednesday, April 24, to Thursday, April 25: Namibia’s International Energy Conference will be held in the capital city of Windhoek.

South African Deputy President Paul Shipokosa Mashatile visits the United Arab Emirates on a trip that began Monday.

Monday, April 29: National Assembly election takes place in Togo.

U.S.-Sahel ties. Washington has agreed to withdraw more than 1,000 U.S. troops from Niger in a blow to the Biden administration’s aim of fostering closer ties with African nations. The $100 million U.S. military base in Agadez—built just six years ago—will close as part of the agreement. The dispute appears to be rooted in Washington’s decision to stop sharing intelligence gathered from two U.S. air bases in the country. That decision was made following a coup in July 2023. Niger’s military leadership has instead sought a Russian defense pact that includes air defense systems. It also signed an oil deal worth $400 million with China earlier this month that will likely be used to pay off state debt.

Meanwhile, Chad is threatening to end its military agreement with the United States, according to a CNN report. A letter sent by the Chadian air staff chief Idriss Amine, to the U.S. defense attaché said that all U.S. troops would have to leave the French base in the capital city of N’Djamena in what sources told CNN were an attempt to gain concessions from Washington. Chad will soon hold presidential elections on May 6,  which military leader Gen. Mahamat Idriss Déby is expected to win.

Togo power grab. Togo’s parliament approved a new constitution that would scrap direct presidential elections. Opposition members argue that it is a coup d’etat that keeps President Faure Gnassingbé in power after almost 20 years in office. Following public backlash, Gnassingbé ostensibly sent the changes back to parliament for consultations, but the reforms were approved without amendments. The U.S. State Department’s Africa Bureau said it was deeply concerned that significant constitutional changes were approved “without releasing the text to the Togolese people.”

The government banned protests against the reforms, claiming that they would “disturb public order” after opposition parties called for mass demonstrations. A press conference against the change was broken up by police officers, and at least five members of the opposition were arrested. The approval comes after legislative elections that should have taken place on April 20 were delayed to April 29, reportedly due to public anger over the changes.

Gnassingbé’s party currently dominates parliament, and if the opposition parties had won enough seats, they might have been able to block what critics regard as a constitutional coup. Instead, with the constitutional change approved, even an opposition-led parliament would be powerless to stop Gnassingbé from remaining in power.

Ethiopia’s Amhara conflict. Fighting between Ethiopia’s Tigray and Amhara forces over contested lands has displaced almost 29,000 people, according to the United Nations. Armed clashes occurred in Wolkayt and Raya, southern areas of Tigray claimed by both groups. Raya had been under Tigrayan control but was seized by Amhara forces when civil war broke out in 2020. The Pretoria agreement signed in 2022 ended the conflict between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the federal government, but it has caused a deterioration in relations between President Abiy Ahmed’s administration and once-allied Amhara forces over returning territories to pre-civil war status. The Ethiopian government announced plans last November for a referendum on contested lands across the country but has not set a date.

Kenya TikTok ban? TikTok’s director of government and public policy for Sub-Saharan Africa, Fortune Mgwili-Sibanda, appeared before Kenya’s parliament last week as lawmakers considered banning the social media platform over concerns about online safety and harmful content. Mgwili-Sibanda proposed ongoing capacity-building workshops for policymakers to mitigate potential concerns. Kenya’s communications ministry suggested stricter regulation of the platform instead of a total ban.

Kenya has one of the world’s highest rates of TikTok usage for accessing news, and in August 2023, when a petition to ban the site was initially put forward, the platform proposed opening a Kenyan office. Social media giants have often brushed up against Kenyan authorities over safety concerns amid an ongoing lawsuit in Nairobi over the alleged exploitation of Meta’s African content moderators. Last month, TikTok and the African Union announced an online safety education partnership. But the platform was banned in Senegal and Somalia last year. Somalia’s government cited its reasoning as the use of the app by militant group al-Shabab “to spread constant horrific images and misinformation.”

Nigeria’s AI strategy. The Nigerian government on Friday launched a multilingual large language model, an artificial intelligence program that can generate conversational voice and text, trained on mass data sets. Nigeria’s model will be trained on five as-yet-unspecified under-resourced languages in the country and accented English (dialects that have few data available for training AI systems). The data will be input using around 7,000 fellows drawn from the government’s technology program. It’s part of the Nigerian government’s plan to ensure that African nations are represented in AI systems as it drafts a national AI strategy.

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Bretton Woods lending. In Foreign Policy, Hannah Ryder calls for a fundamental overhaul to World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending practices, under which loans offered to African nations are considerably smaller than what governments need to successfully stimulate growth. “The typical African country has worked hard and accepted significant policy changes to borrow about $1.5 billion on average from the IMF over the institution’s lifetime, compared to a global average of $8 billion,” she writes.

Cameroon’s separatist conflict. In HumAngle, Adejumo Kabir reports that a community displaced in December from Belegete, located in southern Nigeria, are still unable to return home. Cameroonian separatists abducted around 30 people from the village while hunting refugees, including former fighters who’d fled the now seven-year Anglophone crisis. Communities have demanded that the Nigerian government toughen border security.

Writing off Sudan. It has been one year since war broke out between Sudan’s rival armies. In Foreign Policy, Suha Musa writes that the language used to describe the ongoing conflict has been fatalistic. “Preemptive treatment of Sudan as a deserted nation of no hope continues to permit international entities to absolve themselves of blame or attachment to the conflict,” she argues.