Twenty-five elections were scheduled for 2020 in Africa. While some states chose to postpone their elections, citing COVID-19, others opted to continue. Holding elections during a pandemic has resulted in a number of new challenges. Some states have exhibited resilience by managing to conduct well-run elections, despite COVID-19. However, in other cases, attempts to conduct elections during the COVID-19 pandemic have increased tensions, undermined trust in democracy and contributed to election-related violence.
In the first week of December 2020, two key meetings were held that will impact significantly on the coming year’s peace and security agenda in Africa. The first was the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) High-Level Debate on the cooperation between the UN and regional and sub-regional organisations. The second noteworthy meeting was the African Union’s (AU) 14th Extraordinary Session on Silencing the Guns in Africa. While held separately, both meetings have informed and will direct the priorities and activities of peace actors across the African continent. The departure point dictating the synergies between the two meetings is how to leverage the partnerships among the UN, AU and regional and sub-regional organisations to silence the guns in Africa. This multi-stakeholder approach offered through institutional cooperation to silence the guns is increasingly important in a context where COVID-19 has acted as a force multiplier in several existing conflicts on the continent.
The African Union Heads of State and Government had marked the year 2020 with the theme “Silencing the Guns: Creating Conducive Conditions for Africa’s Development”. As a flagship project of Agenda 2063, Silencing the Guns by 2020 was adopted in 2013 during the Organisation of African Unity/African Union 50th Commemorative Anniversary Summit of African Heads of State. The vision of the 2013 Solemn Declaration was to achieve the goal of a conflict-free Africa, to make peace a reality for all our people and to rid the continent of wars and civil conflicts.
The human toll of the COVID-19 pandemic has been more limited in Africa than elsewhere. At the same time, the pandemic has exacerbated existing threats, fragilities and vulnerabilities – including in North Africa, the second-worst affected region of the continent – hindering international efforts to sustain peace, especially in conflict-affected settings such as Libya. The socio-economic impact of COVID-19 has also been significant, leading countries in the region to adopt a range of response measures with a view towards strengthening the resilience of societies and economies in the face of the pandemic.
Tensions between the Ethiopian government and regional government of Tigray came to a head on 3–4 November, after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) attacked a federal government position in Mekelle, Tigray’s capital. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed responded immediately with air strikes and ground attacks. While the underlying causes of the conflict relate to competing visions over the nature of the Ethiopian state, the immediate cause of the fighting was the National Election Board of Ethiopia’s (NEBE) decision in March to indefinitely postpone the elections that were scheduled for August 2020, due to COVID-19.
COVID-19 has significantly impacted peace processes in Africa, but it has also offered opportunities, however small, for peace. On 23 March 2020, United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) António Guterres made an appeal, echoed by African Union (AU) Chairperson Cyril Ramaphosa, for a global ceasefire in an effort to redirect attention and resources to fighting COVID-19. In the context of the AU’s campaign to “Silence the Guns”, the UNSG explained that ceasefires would create more space for humanitarian services and diplomatic intervention in conflict areas. While experiences of conflict on the African continent may have presented conditions that are highly unlikely to result in any immediate ceasefires, some African cases have presented significant and interesting responses to the UNSG’s call. This piece briefly examines the trajectory of the seven African cases of ceasefires in relation to COVID-19, and looks at the implications for silencing of the guns.
Climate change is contributing to shaping the security and development context around the Lake Chad Basin. The governance deficits, underdevelopment and socio-economic plight of communities living in the Lake Chad Basin have been further exacerbated by environmental stresses and, most recently, also by the COVID-19 pandemic. Climate-related droughts exacerbate water shortages and related stresses, aggravate existing social vulnerabilities and impair the abilities of communities to adapt to changes in their social-ecological systems.
A blended approach to stabilisation is emerging in Africa. It is characterised by a response to crisis-affected settings, which combines the predominance and sometimes necessary means of hard-security interventions and soft-security measures associated with political and development responses. The Lake Chad Basin experience represents a model that could create prospects for enduring stability in the region. It could also resonate in other parts of Africa, especially in the Horn, where there is a growing policy debate by the African Union (AU) and partners for reimagining regional and international support to the security environment in Somalia and the region.
The end of the second decade of the 21st century has been characterised by an increase in the decades-long disruption in the Lake Chad Basin. A trifecta of climate change, conflict and, recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated a humanitarian crisis, whose foundation is embedded in decades of deep neglect, a lack of governance, a proliferation in ungoverned spaces, and the increased boldness and resilience of terrorists groups, including Boko Haram, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and elements of Al-Qaeda. A military campaign, led by a multitude of national, regional and international partners, as well as a growing civilian effort, coordinated by the Lake Chad Basin Commission, the African Union (AU), affected governments and international support, has perhaps been beset by a crisis of imagination. While the terrorists, though currently diminished, have been able to adapt and innovate, the state response is still hesitant and slow.
The Lake Chad Basin is faced with a multidimensional crisis, largely as a result of a complex combination of factors that include terrorist activities, extreme poverty and a changing climate. The combination of these factors has triggered significant insecurity and the displacement of populations. The area has grown into one of the most complicated humanitarian emergencies in the world, with threats to the livelihoods of over 45 million inhabitants. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region has therefore exacerbated existing challenges, making an already dire situation worse. The pandemic has significantly heightened the economic needs in the region and has presented serious challenges to the livelihoods of people in this region. These factors feed into conflict triggers, which contribute to further instability in the Lake Chad Basin.
The impact of COVID-19 on the citizens of the Lake Chad Basin region – and, in particular, the BAY states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe – has been severe. The pandemic came at a time when the states were starting to recover from the devastating effect of the Boko Haram insurgency. COVID-19 has affected the post-insurgency recovery, livelihood support and infrastructure development activities undertaken by the respective state governments, partners and donors in the region.
While Africa has demonstrated a degree of resilience against the COVID-19 pandemic to date, this progress could be affected by a potential second wave of infections. If such a second wave is even worse than the first, which seems to be the pattern in Europe, it will have serious implications for Africa’s health systems, as well as its economy and the growing debt crisis. This situation presents additional challenges for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), which has thus far played a leading role in coordinating prevention measures and promoting a coherent African response.
In the past few days, the dominant debates on COVID-19 have included the development of a vaccine and making it available to a desperate 7.2 billion people worldwide, against the background of an alarming 54.8 million cases of infection and 1.4 million deaths. Three potential vaccines, with promising clinical trial results, have been announced in the last few weeks in the United States (US), Europe and Russia, leaving Africa isolated and marginalised as the developed world engages in highly competitive discoveries.
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted peace processes in Africa. In South Sudan, COVID-19 has not only presented a risk to the health and socio-economic circumstances of the citizenry but has also put a strain on the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS). More efforts will have to be made to minimise the impact of the pandemic on the political processes around power-sharing and security reforms, as well as the preparation for elections at the end of the transitional period.
Some of the key words in the unprecedented era of the COVID-19 pandemic are disruption, damage, change, adaptation, recovery and resilience. Against the background of these words, what is clear is that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the status quo as we knew it. In this change, the pandemic has also challenged the interdependence of economies, leading to the disruption of global and regional supply chains. Some of the countries’ early responses to the pandemic were increased protectionist measures, especially with regard to the supply of personal protective equipment.
COVID-19 has been quite a challenge to the world. It has made us question so many of the things we took for granted. It has changed the outlook and stereotypes we had about the world and humanity. For example, nobody imagined that with the current developments in technology and medicine, a pandemic could bring the world to its knees like this one has. COVID-19 has also questioned the impression we in Africa had that pandemics kill so many of our people, because of our lack of resources in terms of knowledge and facilities. This pandemic has shown that the world realities are more complex than we thought we know and we have mastered.
The 2020 United States of America (USA) elections were held during a deadly COVID-19 pandemic wherein many countries’ economies declined, and civil and human rights were suspended. Globally, the pandemic outbreak seriously questioned the traditions and norms, even in elections management. Many countries’ elections, by-elections, referenda, and all civic matters like meetings in villages, towns or cities were suspended indefinitely following subsequent lockdowns. Similarly, conflict resolution efforts, especially in Africa, were also adversely affected as security was tightened increasingly through lockdowns, and curtailment of inter-state travel.
What will governance and public service be like post COVID-19? We will not and should not revert to “business as usual” after this crisis. We should draw on the maxim from the United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – to “leave no one behind” in achieving a more sustainable, equitable, inclusive and secure/peaceful future. We should start a dialogue about the current and future implications of COVID-19 on governance and public service.