The US’ West Africa And Sahel Challenge

 

BY LIAM KARR

Washington needs to counter Russian propaganda in the region, and highlight that a US partnership is a win-win for the Sahel and West Africa.

The Trump administration’s push for greater US engagement with West Africa is a smart move. The region is a focal point for geopolitical competition with China and Russia, counterterrorism efforts that bolster US security, and business potential for American investors.

However, the United States will face obstacles from within and without as it works to grow partnerships in the Gulf of Guinea, which lies along Africa’s western coast, and the Sahel, which includes neighboring landlocked countries in the lower reaches of the Sahara Desert. American officials should develop a framework that balances competing US priorities on defense, democracy, human rights, and immigration with the needs of regional partners.

To address counterterrorism interests, US officials have traveled to the Sahel to re-engage with the Alliance of Sahel States, comprising Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. In this region, defense is a top priority, as the United States and African partners seek to degrade rapidly strengthening Al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates. American military officials describe the Sahel as the “epicenter” of global terrorism and warn that these groups could develop the ability to attack the US homeland.

The military juntas that control the three countries distanced themselves from the West after taking power and turned to Russia for support. Niger’s junta kicked out 1,000 US troops who were helping fight the terror groups and assumed control over a $110 million US-built drone base in 2024. Russian private military corporation Wagner Group has troops in all three countries.

Russia’s failures have left these countries in need, but the military regimes’ poor democratic and human rights track records limit possible US assistance. US law restricts most foreign and military aid to coup governments until a democratically elected government retakes office. US law also prohibits government assistance to foreign security forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations. These laws exist to align US aid with American strategic interests by avoiding American support for abusive security forces that can create anti-American sentiment and agitate insurgencies.

To bridge this gap, US officials should encourage their Sahelian counterparts to take credible steps to address these issues, thereby qualifying for waivers that would enable greater US aid. This will be a challenge, as Burkinabe and Malian security forces have perpetrated several atrocities that violate US laws, and all three junta leaders have repeatedly extended their stay in power.

How American officials frame the issue will be critical. US officials should focus on discussing human rights abuses as a shared security concern, given their counterproductive nature, instead of overemphasizing US values. Until then, US officials should focus on providing non-lethal assistance and intelligence sharing as legally allowed. This cooperation will facilitate more effective counterinsurgency operations, save lives, and rebuild trust with these partners.

Greater cooperation could unlock future opportunities for critical mineral access, although this is highly unlikely in the short term. While gold, lithium, and uranium deposits can be found across the Sahel, US companies are highly unlikely to invest given the precarious security situation. This authoritarian shift has also created a hostile business environment, further limiting US private investment.

Counterterrorism is also on the agenda in the Gulf of Guinea. Countries like Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo have sought to grow defense ties with the United States to help confront insurgents. They are seeking to distance themselves from France, and the United States can help ensure Russia does not further fill the void. All three countries receive funding from America’s Global Fragility Act and are becoming increasingly important US defense partners. Congress and the administration should ensure this trajectory continues.

Through strengthened ties, the United States can also open economic opportunities. The Togolese port of Lomé—partially owned by a multinational shipping company with US stakeholders—is poised to become a regional shipping hub and gateway. Côte d’Ivoire ranks among the top ten countries on the continent in terms of GDP and GDP growth, and can serve as a conduit for American investment across the region.

A clear approach is key to preventing Russia, which is playing a zero-sum game and seeks to lock the United States out, from playing spoiler. The Kremlin views its Sahel alliance as a strategic project to help strengthen Russian influence on the continent. Russia’s position in Libya and the Sahel creates a suite of opportunities—ranging from conventional threats to irregular tools, such as weaponizing migration—for Russia to destabilize Europe. The Kremlin’s growing inroads into coastal West Africa threaten US partnerships and strengthen Russia’s ability to project power into the Atlantic, posing a long-term risk for NATO and ultimately the United States.

Moscow’s favored strategy is to use pro-Russian politicians, civil society actors, and media to falsely portray America as an exploitative power—a tactic that consistent messaging and engagement from the United States can stymie. The Trump administration is well-positioned to speak the sovereigntist, “Africa First” language prevalent in West Africa, and capitalize on it by highlighting how a US partnership is a win-win for all involved. This framing can make clear—to African officials and the public—that any anti-US Russian activities are for Moscow’s benefit, not the region’s gain.

The United States will have to balance its immigration priorities as it works with these countries, having already restricted the entry of Nigerien and Togolese citizens due to high visa overstay rates. Benin, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire could also face a travel ban—a move that has recently drawn backlash from African leaders.

The opportunities for the Trump administration in West Africa are numerous and go beyond efforts in the Gulf of Guinea and Sahel to include Trump’s summit with leaders of five other coastal West African countries in early July. However, the challenges in the Gulf of Guinea and Sahel are unique, and US officials must be prepared to deftly navigate internal obstacles while standing strong against Russia to make serious headway.

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American Capitalism Is Being Remade By State Power

BY H. SAMI KARACA

PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS ANALYTICS,

QUESTROM SCHOOL OF BUSINESS,

BOSTON UNIVERSITY

Is the Trump administration trying to reshape American capitalism? Recent moves by Washington, such as taking a 10% share of semiconductor maker Intel, point to a shift in that direction. For decades, Washington has supported free-market capitalism. Today, the government appears to be supporting a new direction – state-directed capitalism.

As a professor at the Questrom School of Business who studies different economic systems, I find this reversal striking. My research is supported by the Ravi K. Mehrotra Institute, which is trying to understand how business, markets and society interact. My previous research – finding, for example, that U.S. news coverage of capitalism was far more negative in the 1940s than it is now – suggests capitalism isn’t in retreat but is rather evolving.

In what direction is the Trump administration pushing it?

Types of capitalism

While many people bandy around the term “capitalism,” it actually comes in many different forms. The most basic definition of capitalism is when the means of production – such as factories, farms and offices – are owned by private individuals.

Capitalism is driven by profit. Some of the earliest descriptions of the profit motive that drives the whole system come from Adam Smith. As he wrote in 1776, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

Who gets the profits and who controls the means of production determine the specific forms of capitalism. While there are many types, I want to focus on three of the most important.

Free-market capitalism, also called laissez-faire capitalism, is when the government takes a hands-off approach to the economy. The U.S. after the Civil War is a good example of free-market capitalism. During the late 1800s, the federal government imposed few regulations on businesses.

State-guided capitalism is when the government chooses industries or companies to support. Favored sectors are given money and face looser regulations than nonfavored sectors. China today is an example of state-guided capitalism, where the state provides support for industries such as shipbuilding, steel and AI.

Oligarchic capitalism is when a very small part of the population owns key industries and controls the economy. Russia today is an example of this type of capitalism.

Each form of capitalism has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, free-market capitalism provides the most incentives to grow the economy, but the lack of rules often leads businesses to run roughshod over consumers. U.S. historians describe the late 1800s as the era of robber barons.

State-guided capitalism can dramatically boost the output of favored industries. However, if the government invests in the wrong industries, huge amounts of money can be wasted propping up dying firms.

Oligarchic capitalism can rapidly invest in new areas and shift resources, but the profits enrich only a tiny elite.

Recent changes

The U.S. currently appears to be operating under a hybrid model of capitalism, blending free-market principles with elements of state capitalism.

One of the most recent changes is the Trump administration’s decision to take a 10% stake in Intel. Congress passed the multibillion-dollar CHIPS and Science Act in 2022 to bolster U.S. computer chipmakers. Intel is slated to receive US$11.1 billion in grants from the program and other government funding. The current administration has converted that public support into a 10% ownership of the semiconductor maker.

Intel isn’t alone. The government has recently become a shareholder in other companies it views as strategically important – a trend that seems likely to continue and possibly result in the creation of a “sovereign wealth fund.” In July 2025, the Department of Defense agreed to buy $400 million of convertible preferred stock in MP Materials. MP Materials is the only U.S. rare-earth minerals mine with integrated production capacity. The company said the Department of Defense would be positioned to become its largest shareholder.

The government is also requiring a share of revenue from large computer chip manufacturers. Nvidia and AMD will have to remit 15% of revenue from certain chip sales to China as a condition for export licenses.

Why the US change is important

The CHIPS and Science Act has already funneled billions into U.S. semiconductor manufacturing via grants, tax credits and R&D support. MP Materials and Intel could serve as pilot models for further strategic intervention. However, the U.S. government spends trillions each year, and the amounts invested in American industries and companies represent only a small percentage of total spending.

While the CHIPS and Science Act was passed in 2022 under the Biden administration, the implementation relied on traditional tools of industrial policy such as grants, tax credits and milestone-based funding. In contrast, the Trump administration has converted these grants into equity arrangements, with officials stating the government should get a return on its investment.

This shift from an incentive-based approach to a direct ownership model represents one of the most fascinating experiments in modern American capitalism. The real question is what happens if – or when – this strategy expands. The government could become more involved in energy, biotech and AI, or any place where markets show signs of lagging or supply chains are geopolitically fragile.

The U.S. isn’t rejecting capitalism but recalibrating its boundaries. The next few years will show exactly how Washington’s interventions will reshape U.S. capitalism.

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How The Conservative Federalist Society Will Affect The Supreme Court For Decades To Come

Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas look on during the 60th presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, in the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Chip Somodevilla/Pool Photo via AP

AUTHORS:

PAUL M. COLLINS JR.

PROFESSOR OF LEGAL STUDIES AND

POLITICAL SCIENCE, UMASS AMHERST

TIM KOMATSU

PH.D STUDENT IN POLITICAL SCIENCE,

UMASS AMHERST

During the 2016 presidential election campaign, candidate Donald Trump took the unprecedented move of releasing a list of his potential Supreme Court nominees.

But Trump didn’t assemble this list himself. Instead, he outsourced the selection of his judicial appointments to leaders of the Federalist Society, an organization in the conservative legal movement.

As Trump explained in a 2016 interview, “We’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society.”

This was a strategic decision by Trump. By turning to the Federalist Society, he was able to court conservative and evangelical voters who may have been otherwise uneasy with supporting the former New York City real estate mogul.

In his first presidential term, Trump appointed three justices affiliated with the Federalist Society – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett – in addition to hundreds of lower federal court judges. Federalist Society affiliates are current or former members of the organization, as well as individuals who interact with the group, such as by attending Federalist Society events, but who may not claim membership.

We are political science scholars who recently published research in a peer-reviewed journal showing that Supreme Court justices affiliated with the Federalist Society are more conservative and more consistently conservative than other justices, meaning they seldom deviate from their conservative voting behavior.

Our research suggests that, despite Trump’s recent criticism of the organization and its leadership, justices affiliated with the Federalist Society will advance the conservative legal agenda decades into the future. But this won’t always involve supporting Trump’s agenda.

Here’s what you should know, and why it matters.

The Federalist Society

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies was founded in 1982 with the goal of providing intellectual spaces for conservative law students who felt their views were dismissed by the legal field. It has grown tremendously over the past 40 years. Today, it boasts more than 200 chapters and over 70,000 members.

Unlike other conservative public interest groups, it does not advocate for specific issue positions. Instead, it promotes its goals primarily through education and networking.

The Federalist Society’s educational mission is pursued chiefly in law schools. That’s where it trains the next generation of lawyers in the approaches and goals of the conservative legal movement. This includes promoting the judicial philosophy of originalism – the idea that the best way to interpret the U.S. Constitution is according to how it was understood at the time of its adoption.

Originalism is often used to justify conservative outcomes.

For example, Justice Clarence Thomas, a prominent member of the Federalist Society, has called for using originalism to reconsider Supreme Court precedents involving the right to contraception, same-sex marriage and same-sex consensual relations.

The Federalist Society network also connects junior members with more senior members, helping young lawyers obtain prestigious clerkships and positions in government and the legal profession. These lawyers tend to associate with the Federalist Society throughout their careers.

Federalist Society affiliates learn that promoting the group’s interest is also a way of promoting their self-interests as they move up in the legal world.

For Supreme Court justices, this networking has tangible benefits. For instance, Justice Samuel Alito accepted a luxury fishing vacation in 2008 organized by Leonard Leo, the former executive vice president and current co-chair of the Federalist Society. The estimated cost of the fishing trip was more than $100,000.

And Thomas was treated to decades of high-end vacations and private school tuition for his grandnephew – whom he raised as a son – by billionaire businessman Harlan Crow, a Federalist Society donor.

In short, the Federalist Society is a network of lawyers and judges who share a conservative outlook on the world and aspire to etch the conservative agenda into law through judicial decisions.

Our research

Our research sought to answer two interrelated questions. Are justices affiliated with the Federalist Society more conservative than nonaffiliated justices, and are they more consistently conservative?

To illustrate this, consider former Justice David Souter, whom President George H.W. Bush appointed in 1990 and who had no connections to the Federalist Society. Despite being a Republican appointee, Souter often voted with the court’s liberal members, such as upholding abortion rights in 1992. In 2005, he wrote the majority opinion in a ruling that prevented the Ten Commandments from being displayed in courthouses and public schools.

To determine whether justices affiliated with the Federalist Society are different from even other judges appointed by Republican presidents, we examined almost 25,000 votes cast by Supreme Court justices between 1986 and 2023. We started with 1986 because that’s when the first justice affiliated with the Federalist Society – Antonin Scalia – joined the high court.

We classified votes as conservative or liberal according to a well-established methodology. For example, conservative votes support the restriction of reproductive freedom, are anti-business regulation and generally disfavor policies that promote the rights of vulnerable populations, such as the LGBTQ+ community. Liberal votes do the opposite.

We found that justices connected to the Federalist Society are about 10 percentage points more likely to cast a conservative vote than other justices, even other justices appointed by Republican presidents. And they are more consistent in their voting behavior, seldom casting votes that go against their conservative values.

The Federalist Society’s lasting impact

These findings have important implications. Justices on the modern Supreme Court serve for about a quarter century on average. And every current Republican-appointed member of the court is affiliated with the Federalist Society.

This means that Americans are likely to see justices affiliated with the Federalist Society advance the agenda of the conservative legal movement for decades to come. This has already happened in recent decisions that curtailed reproductive freedom, eliminated affirmative action in college admissions and expanded the powers of the president, including immunizing the president from criminal prosecution.

President Trump has recently had a high-profile breakup with the Federalist Society, calling Leo a “sleazebag” and expressing his disappointment with the organization.

Trump’s outburst followed a ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade that blocked his sweeping tariff program against China and other nations. This happened despite one of Trump’s first-term judicial appointees sitting on the panel.

Notwithstanding this acrimony, this term will give justices affiliated with the Federalist Society the opportunity to further solidify the conservative agenda. Cases involving LGBTQ+ rights and federal elections are on the docket. And the court will be adding other important issue areas as it fills out its caseload for the 2025-26 term, which starts on the first Monday in October.

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Trump’s Push To Fire Fed Governor Threatens Central Bank Independence − And That Isn’t Good News For Sound Economic Stewardship (Or Battling Inflation)

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell talks with Board of Governors member Lisa Cook on June 25, 2025. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

BY ANA CAROLINA GARRIGA AND CRISTINA BODEA

The fate of Lisa Cook, who is fighting attempts by President Donald Trump to remove her from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, has huge implications for a keystone of good economic policy: central bank independence.

At the heart of her firing attempt – and other moves to undermine the Fed by the Trump administration – is a power struggle. Central banks, which are public institutions that manage a country’s currency and its monetary policy, have an extraordinary amount of power. By controlling the flow of money and credit in a country, they can affect economic growth, inflation, employment and financial stability.

These are powers that many politicians would like to control or at least manipulate. That’s because monetary policy can provide governments with economic boosts at key times, such as around elections or during periods of falling popularity.

The problem is that short-lived, politically motivated moves may be detrimental to the long-term economic well-being of a nation. They may, in other words, saddle the economy with problems further down the line.

That is why central banks across the globe tend to receive significant leeway to set interest rates independently and free from the electoral wishes of politicians.

In fact, monetary policymaking that is data-driven and technocratic, rather than politically motivated, has since the early 1990s been seen as the gold standard of governance of national finances and has largely achieved its main purpose of keeping inflation relatively low and stable.

But despite independence being seen to work, central banks over the past decade have come under increased pressure from politicians.

Trump is one recent example. In his first term as president, he criticized his own choice to head the U.S. Federal Reserve and demanded lower interest rates.

Attacks on the Fed have accelerated in Trump’s second administration. In April 2025, Trump lashed out at Fed Chair Jerome Powell in an online post accusing him of being “TOO LATE AND WRONG” on interest rate cuts, while suggesting that the central banker’s “termination cannot come fast enough!” Unable to force Powell out, Trump has now brought the power struggle to a head with his firing of Cook, nominally over allegations that the Fed governor falsified records in a mortgage application. Cook has said that the president does not have the grounds or authority to fire her.

As political economists, we are not surprised to see politicians try to exert influence on central banks. For one thing, central banks remain part of the government bureaucracy, and independence granted to them can always be reversed – either by changing laws or backtracking on established practices.

Moreover, the reason politicians may want to interfere in monetary policy is that low interest rates remain a potent, quick method to boost an economy. And while politicians know that there are costs to besieging an independent central bank – financial markets may react negatively or inflation may flare up – short-term control of a powerful policy tool can prove irresistible.

Legislating independence

If monetary policy is such a coveted policy tool, how have central banks held off politicians and stayed independent? And is this independence being eroded?

Broadly, central banks are protected by laws that offer long tenures to their leadership, allow them to focus policy primarily on inflation, and severely limit lending to the rest of the government.

Of course, such legislation cannot anticipate all future contingencies, which may open the door for political interference or for practices that break the law. And sometimes central bankers are unceremoniously fired.

However, laws do keep politicians in line. For example, even in authoritarian countries, laws protecting central banks from political interference have helped reduce inflation and restricted central bank lending to the government.

In our own research, we have detailed the ways that laws have insulated central banks from the rest of the government, but also the recent trend of eroding this legal independence.

Politicizing appointees

Around the world, appointments to central bank leadership are political – elected politicians select candidates based on career credentials, political affiliation and, importantly, their dislike or tolerance of inflation.

But lawmakers in different countries exercise different degrees of political control.

A 2025 study shows that the large majority of central bank leaders – about 70% – are appointed by the head of government alone or with the intervention of other members of the executive branch. This ensures that the preferences of the central bank are closer to the government’s, which can boost the central bank’s legitimacy in democratic countries, but at the risk of permeability to political influence.

Alternatively, appointments can involve the legislative power or even the central bank’s own board. In the U.S., while the president nominates members of the Federal Reserve Board, the Senate can and has rejected unconventional or incompetent candidates.

Moreover, even if appointments are political, many central bankers stay in office long after the people who appointed them have been voted out. By the end of 2023, the most common length of the governors’ appointment is five years, and in 41 countries the legal mandate was six years or longer. Powell is set to stay on as Fed chair until his term expires in 2026. The Fed chair position has traditionally been protected by law, as Powell himself acknowledged in November 2024: “We’re not removable except for cause. We serve very long terms, seemingly endless terms. So we’re protected into law. Congress could change that law, but I don’t think there’s any danger of that.”

In the 2000s, several countries shortened the tenure of their central banks’ governors to four or five years. Sometimes, this was part of broader restrictions in central bank independence, as was the case in Iceland in 2001, Ghana in 2002 and Romania in 2004.

The low inflation objective

As of 2023, all but six central banks globally had low inflation as their main goal. Yet many central banks are required by law to try to achieve additional and sometimes conflicting goals, such as financial stability, full employment or support for the government’s policies.

This is the case for 38 central banks that either have the explicit dual mandate of price stability and employment or more complex goals. In Argentina, for example, the central bank’s mandate is to provide “employment and economic development with social equity.”

Conflicting objectives can open central banks to politicization. In the U.S. the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate of stable prices and maximum sustainable employment. These goals are often complementary, and economists have argued that low inflation is a prerequisite for sustainable high levels of employment.

But in times of overlapping high inflation and high unemployment, such as in the late 1970s or when the COVID-19 crisis was winding down in 2022, the Fed’s dual mandate has become active territory for political wrangling.

Since 2000, at least 23 countries have expanded the focus of their central banks beyond just inflation.
Limits on government lending

The first central banks were created to help secure finance for governments fighting wars. But today, limiting lending to governments is at the core of protecting price stability from unsustainable fiscal spending.

History is dotted with the consequences of not doing so. In the 1960s and 1970s, for example, central banks in Latin America printed money to support their governments’ spending goals. But it resulted in massive inflation while not securing growth or political stability.

Today, limits on lending are strongly associated with lower inflation in the developing world. And central banks with high levels of independence can reject a government’s financing requests or dictate the terms of loans.

Yet over the past two decades, almost 40 countries have made their central banks less able to limit central government funding. In the more extreme examples – such as in Belarus, Ecuador or even New Zealand – they have turned the central bank into a potential financier for the government.

Scapegoating central bankers

In recent years, governments have tried to influence central banks by pushing for lower interest rates, making statements criticizing bank policy or calling for meetings with central bank leadership.

At the same time, politicians have blamed the same central bankers for a number of perceived failings: not anticipating economic shocks such as the 2007-09 financial crisis; exceeding their authority with quantitative easing; or creating massive inequality or instability while trying to save the financial sector.

And since mid-2021, major central banks have struggled to keep inflation low, raising questions from populist and antidemocratic politicians about the merits of an arm’s-length relationship.

But chipping away at central bank independence, as Trump appears to be doing with his open criticism of the Fed chair and his removal of a member of the bank’s Board of Governors, is a historically sure way to high inflation.

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The Gambia’s New Constitution Has Stalled Again – 5 Reasons Why And What That Means For Democracy

Election officials and volunteers carry drums of marbles representing votes, prior to the count in Banjul on 4 December 2021. John Wessels/AFP via Getty Images

BY SATANG NABANEH

DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS, HUMAN RIGHTS

CENTER, RESEARCH PROFESSOR OF LAW,

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON SCHOOL OF LAW,

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

The Gambia’s post-dictatorship democratic transition recently suffered a setback. The Constitution of the Republic of The Gambia (Promulgation) Bill, 2024 failed to pass its second reading in the national assembly.

Passing the bill required the support of at least 75% of The Gambia’s 58-member parliament, including the speaker. Now, there’s uncertainty over the country’s democratic reforms.

This leaves The Gambia governed by the 1997 constitution drafted under Yahya Jammeh’s military junta. The 1997 constitution was widely seen as a tool for executive overreach. It didn’t have term limits, stalled key democratic reforms and lacked sufficient protection for human rights and democratic principles.

Failure to pass the new constitution is a setback to the “New Gambia” agenda, a campaign promise of the 2016 ruling coalition, which included the drafting of a new constitution and ensuring accountability for past human rights violations, and could lead to renewed political tension.

Proponents hailed the proposed new constitution as a step towards institutionalising checks and balances and strengthening civil liberties. Critics pointed to a lack of transparency, the absence of broad stakeholder consultation, and specific controversial clauses.

Those clauses included the removal of a retroactive presidential term limit, the weakening of checks and balances by reducing parliamentary oversight on appointments, and the potential erosion of judicial independence.

I am a Gambian legal scholar, researcher and human rights practitioner and I have been tracking The Gambia’s journey to solidify its democracy since the dictatorship of Jammeh. In this article, I present five of the most important things to know about this constitutional reform effort and why it failed to advance.

New constitution triggers and why it failed

1. Unfulfilled search for a new foundation:

A truly democratic constitution has been a central promise since the ousting of former president Jammeh in 2017.

An initial 2020 draft, the product of extensive nationwide consultations, also failed to pass. There were disagreements over provisions like retroactive presidential term limits. But the 2024 bill continues to face political and social hurdles.

The 1997 constitution presents a paradoxical approach to democratic governance, particularly in its mechanisms for political transition and constitutional amendment. For example, it has stringent requirements for constitutional change: a three-quarters majority vote from all national assembly members across two readings.

It also requires a national referendum, with 50% voter participation and 75% approval.

A high bar for constitution amendments can protect against impulsive alterations. But it also puts disproportionate power in the hands of a parliamentary super majority. This politicises constitutional reform, making it contingent on party allegiance and strategic manoeuvring rather than a broad national consensus.

An arrangement like the one in The Gambia could hinder the natural evolution of democratic governance and limit the nation’s capacity to adapt its basic law to the changing will of the people.

2. Unresolved concerns over presidential powers:

A key reason the 2024 draft faced such strong opposition related to presidential powers. The 2020 draft sought a two-term limit with a retroactive clause (meaning President Adama Barrow would not be able to run in the 2026 election). But the 2024 draft removed this retroactive counting.

This remained a point of contention, fuelling fears of potential term limit manipulation. More broadly, the bill proposed removing parliamentary oversight for all appointments, including ministers, the Independent Electoral Commission and independent institutions.

It also sought to grant the president more power over national assembly members. These proposals were viewed as undue centralisation of authority and a regression from the 1997 constitution.

3. Unaddressed threats to judicial independence:

The bill’s stated goal of judicial independence was undermined by certain provisions. The 2024 draft removed the requirement that the national assembly confirm the appointment of the chief justice and Supreme Court judges.

It also removed the citizenship requirement for the chief justice. Given The Gambia’s recent history where foreign judges on politically appointed, renewable contracts served as a tool of repression and eroded public trust, these changes therefore raised alarm about judicial impartiality and the erosion of oversight.

The bill left out Chapter V on “Leadership and Integrity” which was in the 2020 draft. This chapter, which outlined a framework for public officer conduct and aimed at combating corruption, was seen as vital for accountability.

4. Contentious provisions on human rights and civil liberties:

While the 2024 draft generally aimed to modernise fundamental rights and introduce additional socio-economic protections, it also contained specific restrictions that human rights advocates criticised. These included an increase in police detention periods from 48 to 72 hours, and perceived limitations on the rights to education, to petition public officials, and to freedom of assembly.

Provisions affecting citizenship by marriage (doubling the waiting period for foreign spouses to gain citizenship) and limiting media ownership and operation to Gambian citizens sparked debates over inclusivity and media freedoms.

These clauses likely contributed to the insufficient votes for the bill to pass.

5. Public fatigue amid the bill’s failure:

The failure of the 2024 constitution draft bill to pass second reading reflects a complex and polarised public discourse. While the government championed the bill as essential for stability and a modern republic, the main opposition, the United Democratic Party, opposed it.

Numerous civil society organisations expressed concerns about the diluted democratic safeguards and expanded presidential powers. In the end, a perceived lack of genuine public participation prevented its advancement.

The way forward

This outcome shows a division among the public. Some are tired of the drawn-out constitutional reform process. They want stability now. Others want to keep pursuing a genuinely transformative constitution.

This division is made worse by widespread disillusionment due to economic hardships and slow progress with various reforms since the post-dictatorship transition began.

The failure of the 2024 bill leaves The Gambia in a state of uncertainty about its foundational legal framework.

As I have noted elsewhere, it’s time for all to commit to an inclusive reform process.

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Namibia Celebrates Independence Heroes, But Glosses Over A Painful History

Propaganda poster for the South West African People’s Organization, 1966. Photo by: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

BY HENNING MELBER

Namibia celebrates 26 August as Heroes’ Day. It recalls the first military encounter between the South African army and members of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo), Namibia’s liberation movement, in 1966. Initially a German colony (1884-1915), the country was then administered by South Africa, which refused to give up the occupation.

Since independence in 1990, the heroic Swapo liberation narrative has also been inscribed in Heroes’ Acre, a monument built by North Korea.

The institutionalised public commemoration in Namibia today – rightly – recalls the sacrifices of those who were willing to fight for self determination. At the same time, it glosses over the toxic impact of the way warfare was conducted. Those involved in the struggle for independence were far from innocent in the execution of the military resistance. Yet their violations of human rights were never addressed.

This ambiguity was visible in 2025 in a public controversy when tribute poured out to the late Solomon Hawala, whose combat name was Jesus. He was a leading fighter in Swapo’s military wing, known as PLAN.

He also had a bloody track record of eliminating fellow Namibians in exile.

The celebration of Hawala finally moved me to resign as a member of Swapo, an organisation I joined when I was 24 years old. I set out my reasons in an interview accessible on YouTube.

Since the late 1970s I have specialised as an academic in Namibian history and politics. Since the early 1990s I have engaged with the traumatic side of so-called liberation. More recently I wrote a book chapter giving voice to the victims.

Patriotic history versus struggle realities

The history of liberation movements displays their authoritarian nature. Their camps in southern Africa forged bonds of comradeship. For Mozambique’s Frelimo, the African National Congress, Swapo, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola and Zimbabwe African People’s Union, Tanzania’s Kongwa camp in the 1960s provided a first operational base in preparation for the armed struggle abroad.

The movements then started to arrange for their own bases in host countries.

In the early to mid 1970s Swapo established the Old Farm outside Lusaka in Zambia. This was followed by Nyango. Finally, a Health and Education Centre was established in Angola’s Kwanza Zul.

The administration and management required strict discipline and reinforced repressive hierarchies.

There were several times in Swapo’s exile history when internal critics were silenced. Testimonies of the early stages in the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s offer insights by those persecuted. These included the former Swapo secretary for information Andreas Shipanga, the first generation Swapo member Hans Beukes, the former Swapo Youth League activist Keshii Nathanael and one of the first PLAN cadres, Samson Ndeikwila.

Speaking out and thereby disclosing the crimes, the Namibian chaplain in exile Salatiel Ailonga and his wife Anita were forced to seek refuge elsewhere.

Some scholars have drawn attention to the plight of the dissidents. The first waves of repression triggered two of those academics in solidarity with the liberation struggles to ask questions about liberation and democracy.

These earlier events were only a prelude to the “spy drama” in the 1980s. This was a chapter of horrendous crimes, mainly committed by a group of PLAN members at the camp in Lubango in southern Angola.

Over 1,000 Swapo members were incarcerated in dungeons. Their fate was most likely triggered by setbacks in the border war in southern Angola between the South African army and PLAN units backed by Cuban forces. In 1978, the South African army had attacked a Swapo camp at Cassinga in Angola, killing hundreds of women and children.

Members of the higher ranking Swapo military, the so-called securocrats, blamed spies for the disaster and other military setbacks. They tortured the accused to extract confessions and to implicate others. With no proof of guilt, people were often executed, disappeared or died of neglect in the dungeons. Numbers of the missing with no traces were estimated by the surviving victims at around 2,000.

Victims were, in the main, rank and file Swapo members. That South African spies had most likely penetrated the higher echelons of the movement was ignored.

Some of the victims, like Oiva Angula, have published accounts of their suffering.

Those who pointed out the unfolding terror were dismissed by the international solidarity movement as anti-Swapo propaganda. This included the early revelations by Siegfried Groth, a pastor for the refugees in Zambia. He was blamed for besmirching the image of the freedom fighters.

Glorification of the perpetrators

With the passing on of the first generation of struggle stalwarts, the number of posthumously celebrated heroes increased. Many of the veterans were put to rest in full honour by state funerals.

Hawala passed away aged 89 on 11 August 2025. Until his retirement in 2006 he had been the chief of the defence force.

President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah recognised his distinguished military service, steadfast leadership and unwavering dedication to the cause of Namibia’s liberation and nation-building. His legacy remains a symbol of courage, patriotism, and commitment to the ideals of freedom and independence.

This triggered a public debate. It brought back memories of heinous crimes in which he played a crucial role. Named the “Butcher of Lubango” by those who survived the ordeal, he was the personification of a brutal and ruthless system targeting those accused of spying and those who dissented with the leadership.

In his defence, a former Swapo MP pointed out that he was merely acting on Swapo’s instructions. People, he argued, “were killed with the knowledge of senior Swapo leaders”, and some of these were already buried at Heroes’ Acre.

Unheroic heroism

The survivors of the dungeons who are still alive were in shock over celebrating Hawala. But as they also pointed out, he personified a system.

I argued along similar lines when I was interviewed about my resignation from Swapo after more than 50 years as a member. Before the announcement that Hawala would get a state funeral I had urged in an article that his death should be an opportunity to finally address the plight of his victims. Instead the blinkers remained.

This motivated my letter of resignation: I had joined Swapo for believing in its slogan “Solidarity, Freedom, Justice”. Out of loyalty to these values and as a matter of – albeit belated – restoration of moral integrity, I had no choice but to depart.

Praising the perpetrators as heroes adds insult to injury to their surviving victims. Such denialism and amnesia lies like a lead cloak over truth and reconciliation. It shows the limits to liberation when Heroes’ Day is celebrated.

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Nigeria: Africa's War Within A War

BY ALBERTO M. FERNANDEZ

There is a continent-wide Jihadist offensive in Africa. From the Sahel region of West Africa down to Ituri and North Kivu Provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the coast of East Africa, stretching from Somalia to Cabo Delgado in Mozambique, a variety of Islamist insurgencies, of varying lethality and size, are active and growing.[1] The continent is global jihad's new epicenter.[2] While some countries are particularly threatened – insurgencies are well advanced in Burkina Faso, Mali and Somalia – no country combines the full range of destabilizing factors as much as Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, with a population exceeding 230 million souls.

Practically every trend or nuance seen in the Islamist insurgencies elsewhere on the continent are at play inside Nigeria, but there is one major difference (aside from the country's sheer size).

There are Jihadist insurgencies in Muslim majority African countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Somalia where terrorists battle governments and militaries mostly made up of Muslim co-religionists. While Christians or animists are targeted in those countries, the fight is between Salafi-Jihadists and pro-government Muslims.

There are also Jihadist insurgencies in Christian majority African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or Mozambique, where terrorists may be based in a Muslim majority region (such as Mozambique's Cabo Delgado) but will face difficulties in advancing because the religious demographics do not work in their favor – the DRC is about 80 percent Christian and two percent Muslim. Mozambique is about 70 percent Christian and 19 percent Muslim. And, of course, in both cases, a minority of the Muslims are likely active violent Jihadist insurgents. These can still be, and are brutal and bloody conflicts, but the sheer weight of the non-Muslim population is an important factor in the government's favor.[3]

Nigeria is different. Unlike the insurgencies in Mali, Burkina Faso, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mozambique (and lesser conflicts elsewhere in the Sahel and the East Coast of Africa), Nigeria is more or less evenly split between Muslim in the North and Christians in the South, with a mixed population in between. While both religious blocs have experienced rapid growth, it seems that the Muslim half of the population has been growing a little faster.[4]

This means that Nigeria's Jihadist insurgency occurs within an already fraught religious context of competition and conflict. The Jihadist phenomenon encompasses not only two rival groups – one (Ansaru) associated with Al-Qaeda and the other (Boko Haram or ISWAP – Islamic State West Africa Province) with the Islamic State[5] – but flourishes side by side with other forms of extreme violence and banditry. Nigerian security forces recently scored a major success in capturing Ansaru's leadership.[6] The fear is that Al-Qaeda-linked Jihadists (JNIM) pushing down from Burkina Faso into Northern Benin would have been able to link up with their Ansaru allies in Northwest Nigeria.

But Jihadism in Nigeria also overlaps with generalized insecurity and banditry, a phenomenon which has been growing in recent years, especially in the North of the country and among the populous, regionally important, Fulani people. One recent study claimed that there are at least 30,000 bandits in Northwest Nigeria, spread among numerous rival groups.[7]

Some of these bandit groups are tiny. Others are like small armies with their leaders functioning as local or regional warlords with an exaggerated public persona. Figures like Bello Turji, Dogo Gidge or Gwaska Dankarami are not actual members of Jihadist groups but in their actions and impact on vulnerable communities, they are little different than the Jihadists.[8] The sole difference may be that the state sometimes negotiates with them.[9]

Both banditry and Jihadism overlap to some extent with existing tension between Fulani pastoralists and non-Fulani farmers (who are either Christian or Muslim). Thousands of Christians have been killed, their farms and villages in Nigeria's Middle Belt burnt out by roving Fulani. All too often these bloody acts are minimized by both the international community and the Nigerian government as mere clashes over land, ignoring the political, ethnic, and sectarian dimension. The sheer scope of the carnage is shocking.[10]

Both Jihadism and the attacks by Fulani militia have raised concerns among Christians (who are mostly unarmed) that the government – particularly certainly Muslim state officials and Fulani army officers – is not just incompetent in fighting insecurity but actually complicit in the violence.[11] Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) kill five times more Christians than Boko Haram in Nigeria.[12]

In 2025 alone, more than 7,000 Nigerian Christians have been slaughtered, while almost 8,000 more have been abducted. That is an average of 32 Christian deaths a day, every day this year. Christian civil society groups claim that the goal is to extirpate Christianity altogether in the country by 2075.[13]

With national elections scheduled for early 2027 and incumbent President Bola Tinubu – a Muslim – running for re-election, the questions of rising insecurity, dysfunctional governance, and the religious dynamic will loom large. Nigeria's Jihadists and Fulani death squads do not seem to be really strong enough by themselves to overthrow the state, as dysfunctional as it sometimes seems, but they are lethal and active enough to turbocharge existing ethnic and religious fissures.[14] With or without government connivance, they function almost as an armed wing in an ongoing ethnic and religious competition that has fateful political, social and economic dimensions whose consequences we do not yet fully understand.[15]

But even if Nigeria is able to persevere as a nation state and does not actually break apart into regionalized civil war, the country is too large and influential for rising internal instability to remain limited to inside the country's borders and not impact the region and even the West. The world is filled with raging conflicts dominating front page coverage. Nigeria is the conflict that is coming tomorrow that approaches while we are distracted elsewhere.

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The Forgotten Victims Of The Conflict In The Western DRC

M23 fighters walk down a street in Bukavu. (Photo: AFP)

BY COLIN DELFOSSE

In western Democratic Republic of Congo, clashes between the Teke and Yaka communities have spiraled into violence carried out by Mobondo militias. Deployed in 2022, the Congolese army is now struggling to protect civilians in a conflict that has largely gone unnoticed.

Along the strip of asphalt stretching 150 kilometers west toward the Congolese capital, the red berets of Colonel Matambwe march through the small town of Bankana with local youth. The health march was organized "against tribalism and to encourage dialogue between civilians and the military," explained the officer from the Republican Guard – the elite unit in charge of protecting President Félix Tshisekedi.

Since March, fighting has lessened in this region, torn apart by three years of violence between the Teke and Yaka communities. The Congolese armed forces, which were deployed in 2022 to contain the attacks, have been ordered to stop pursuing the Mobondo, grassroots militias mainly recruiting from the Yaka community, who are responsible for attacks on civilians. Yet this conflict, fueled by customary disputes and responsible for several hundred deaths, is far from being resolved.

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Friday Essay: The Dangers Of Centrism In A Time Of Crisis

BY RICHARD DENNISS

ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, CRAWFORD

SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, 

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

In the fight against slavery, abolitionists eventually prevailed over slave owners. The long fight was not won in the sensible centre, but by “radical, democratic” absolutists who risked their lives in the fight to save the lives of others. It scares me to think how the ABC, or indeed most of the world’s media, would report on such a debate today.

Can you imagine the economic modelling on the jobs that would be lost in the slave-using industries? Or the endless discussion of the impact on the price of clothes if slaves didn’t pick cotton?

And can you imagine the modern debate about the best way to compensate hard-working slave owners whose business model was based on long-accepted rules allowing whipping and branding?

Slavery persists today, and England (the major global slave trader of the 1800s) paid out the equivalent of over £17 billion in compensation to slave owners in 1837, but it’s important to remember that change was driven by abolitionists, not centrists.

The incrementalism on the path to abolition was a consequence of sustained pressure against change, but the incrementalism was never the goal. Unsurprisingly, few mock the extremism of those who fought to end slavery in the US and UK, and few argue abolitionists would have achieved more if they had asked for less.

Leaders such as António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the UN, have long been arguing for immediate and decisive action on climate both for existential and moral reasons. He is not interested in a middle ground. The climate science says time is crucial. For those determined to avoid dangerous climate change the goal isn’t to decarbonise the economy, but to decarbonise it before scientific thresholds are reached.

It is physics that says we will melt the ice caps, raise sea levels radically and warm waters so much that we don’t just kill the Great Barrier Reef, but we will kill whole food systems in our oceans and on our farmlands. You either accept the physics or you don’t but committing to the goal of decarbonising and not committing to the physics-imposed deadlines is like committing to stopping smoking after you have your second heart attack.

The science says we do need to rush. It is now over 30 years since the Australian government first accepted that climate change was real, was primarily caused by fossil fuels, and was an enormous risk to Australia, but centrists like Albanese are still telling us that it’s not yet time to stop building new gas or coal mines.

Saying those who accept climate science are extreme when they call for more ambitious and urgent action is like criticising a drowning man for being impatient about the delay in launching a rescue boat. Timing is critical for some problems and solving them too late isn’t a solution at all.

Evidence matters

Scientific evidence simply doesn’t recognise political pragmatism or positioning, but while many political centrists express support for evidence-based policy, in reality when the evidence and politics clash centrists usually support the politics, often on the basis that something is better than nothing or that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.

António Guterres is clearly an extremist by Australian standards when he says,

We are hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open […] It’s time to wake up and step up […] leave oil, coal and gas in the ground where they belong.

But does anyone think he would change his comments if he knew that Labor had more ambitious household battery policies than the Coalition?

Scientific evidence, cost-benefit analyses, opinion polling and principled leadership all have a role to play in driving reforms.

But while each of these ingredients can play an important role in shaping policy, the ultimate shape of policy, and the public’s reaction to it, will be determined by the judgement and political skill of those in power and their ability to align their priorities with those of the community they wish to serve.

In Australia, centrism means it’s okay to ignore evidence if the other side ignores it too.

Centrism and a captured media

According to some in the legacy Australian media, The Australia Institute is a “left-wing think tank” (we prefer “progressive”) with vested interests and anti-gas views.

According to that same media, the CEOs of foreign-owned companies are simply well-respected captains of industry, business leaders and job creators whose main goal is to grow the Australian economy and pay taxes that support Australian schools and hospitals.

While I personally don’t mind if the media calls me left-wing (I certainly think inequality and climate change are bad, and I certainly think publicly run health and education systems are better than privatised ones) I am confused why some in the media feel obliged to describe me as an “activist” just because I am an economist opposed to public subsidies for foreign-owned companies selling a polluting product.

I’m also confused why they introduce the proponents of those mines and gas wells – paid representatives of companies that receive public funding (sometimes paying zero tax) – as neutral experts. Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of the Australian media.

Of course, the legacy media’s difficulty in navigating Australia’s rapidly changing political landscape goes much deeper than their struggles with who to talk to and how to describe them.

For decades the legacy media has earnestly reported on what the government of the day, and the opposition of the day, thought about the issues that the government or opposition had decided were important. But now that more people vote for crossbenchers than the Coalition, how should the legacy media decide what issues are politically important?

Consider the following: if most Australians think gambling advertising is a big problem, but neither party wants to talk about it, is the lack of response from the government and the opposition proof that gambling is not a story or proof that both major parties are at odds with the vast majority of voters?

Most Australian journalists and their editors follow the agenda set by politicians. This dynamic helps explain why the major political parties’ vote share and the circulation of newspapers are both in steady decline.

While it is the role of the government and opposition to debate their respective parliamentary agendas, it is the role of a well functioning media not only to cover the content of those debates, but also to critique where necessary that debate.

You might think the fact that neither major party wants to unpack AUKUS or how a country that has tripled gas exports in the last ten years could possibly have a shortage of gas should be a big story. Instead, most of the legacy media interpret the refusal of senior politicians to talk about important issues as proof that they are simply not a story.

The ABC is still using an old map which means that while only 318,000 people subscribe to The Australian, The Australian’s editors know that their front pages can set the agenda for the ABC and other outlets.

Likewise, while only 40,000 of Australia’s 15 million voters watch Sky News each night, its producers know their job is to shift the boundaries of public debate which is much easier than shifting the minds of all those participating in it.

This past election showed that, more than ever before, legacy media holds little sway with the voting public, but they still play a major role in deciding which voices and which ideas are sensible and which are extreme.

Bipartisan silence on an issue may be proof that current policy settings are located comfortably in the sensible centre, based on solid evidence and with broad community support. Australia’s continued reliance on 240v electricity, driving on the left side of the road and our ban on privately owned assault rifles would all fit that bill.

But bipartisan refusal to question whether subsidies for private schools have improved Australia’s education system or whether fossil fuel subsidies deliver good value for Australian taxpayers more likely reflect the desire of both major parties to conceal the strength of their support for powerful groups.

And media silence on issues the major parties choose to ignore only further entrenches voter disaffection with the political and commentator class.

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