Africa and the Year 2025: A Stocktaking

Ambassador Abdel Mahmoud Abdel Halim

In a matter of hours, a large ball will drop from a skyscraper in Times Square, New York, at midnight on 31 December, in the presence of a million people and under the watchful eyes of another billion around the world, marking an iconic celebration and a countdown announcing the end of 2025 and the dawn of a new year. Meanwhile, the islands of the Pacific Ocean in Kiribati and Samoa, and areas west of the International Date Line, will have already seen the sun rise on the new year—followed likewise by Australia, with its fireworks over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

In Africa—separated by many years from the advanced countries of the world that see the sun of the new year earlier or later—it may be a luxury in many of its states, cities, and villages to hold similar celebrations or to sing the farewell anthem Auld Lang Syne by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Yet the continent still turns the page on the past year, with all its events, setbacks, and realities, and welcomes the new year with its challenges and aspirations—perhaps echoing the poet’s question: will it return as before, or with something new?

If Africa’s focus at the close of the year centred on a seismic development—the recognition of Somaliland by Israel, with all its potential repercussions—the continent’s concern at the beginning of 2025 lay in the election of new leadership for the African Union to shoulder inherited burdens, address present issues, and confront future challenges. The principal business of the 38th African Union Summit, held on 15 February 2025, was the election of a new Chairperson of the African Union Commission to succeed Chad’s Moussa Faki. In line with geographical rotation, the position moved from West Africa to East Africa.

The elections resulted in the victory of Djibouti’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, who secured 33 votes in the seventh round, defeating former Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga. The third candidate was Madagascar’s former foreign minister, Richard Randriamandrato. Algeria’s Selma Malika Haddadi won the post of Deputy Chairperson, outperforming Moroccan and Egyptian candidates. As for the election of the six commissioners, it was conducted under the supervision of the AU Executive Council on 12 and 13 February, ahead of the summit, resulting in the election of representatives from Eswatini, South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria, with the remaining positions deferred.

Alongside discussions on institutional and structural reforms, reports of the African Peace and Security Council, and developments related to the African Continental Free Trade Area, the central issue before the summit was “Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations”.

The conceptual framework of this item rested on the premise that Africa’s progress and enhanced global role require, first and foremost, the correction of historical wrongs that harmed the continent—through rebuilding trust and addressing the historical injustices created by colonialism, slavery, systemic discrimination, and supremacist mindsets. Remedies include, in addition to historical acknowledgement of injustice, financial reparations, the return of land, and the preservation of African culture. Closely linked to this are Africa’s aspirations to reform the international system and global financial institutions.

These demands were not isolated from calls for Africa to fulfil its own responsibilities—silencing the guns, resolving conflicts, finding solutions to financing its activities so as not to remain vulnerable to external penetration and agendas, strengthening economic integration and institutional governance, and intensifying efforts to achieve “Agenda 2063”, which aims to make the continent a major economic and political power. This roadmap was designed by African experts in 2013 on the occasion of the AU’s golden jubilee.

Warnings were issued that impediments to its implementation include the absence of a peaceful and secure environment, in light of conflicts in eastern Congo and the Great Lakes region, tensions in the Horn of Africa, instability in the Sahel, West Africa, and North Africa, and Africa’s use as an arena for international and regional rivalry, among other problems and crises.

There had been broad hopes that the era following political liberation and independence would usher in a phase of economic liberation and development for Africa’s peoples, within an environment of stability and resolved conflicts.

The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity in 2013 provided an opportunity to adopt the goal of “Silencing the Guns” by 2020 as one of the flagship projects aimed at accelerating economic growth and development, alongside fifteen key projects in science and technology, infrastructure, good governance and accountability, and other vital areas essential to the continent’s prosperity and the strengthening of its capabilities and shared identity. The 33rd African Union Summit in Addis Ababa in 2020 was also held under the slogan of silencing the guns, with the deadline extended to 2030 instead of 2020 in recognition of the difficulty of the task. At the time, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission stated that the period since 2013 had revealed the complexity of Africa’s security challenges more than it had enabled the resolution of conflicts.

According to statistics from the International Committee of the Red Cross, Africa is home to 50 active conflicts, accounting for 40 per cent of armed conflicts worldwide—an increase of 45 per cent in the number of conflicts since 2020—resulting in 35 million displaced persons, or half of the world’s displaced population.

Africa also accounts for 70 per cent of the United Nations Security Council’s agenda, at a time when international funding for humanitarian assistance is declining, following the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development by President Trump and reduced funding from the OECD and the European Union. The absence has mirrored weak humanitarian and development financing—or weakness—of commitments to implement peace settlements. No sooner had African delegations returned to their capitals after attending the White House ceremony with President Trump and the leaders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda on 4 December than accusations of non-compliance and violations of the agreement were exchanged anew between Kinshasa and Kigali. Meanwhile, escalation has intensified in Mali, with rising tensions in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, Sudan, South Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Benin, and even the entry of a new actor long removed from internal conflict—Tanzania—among others.

If Africa’s performance in 2025 was marked by confusion and fell short of aspirations in terms of resolving conflicts, owning solutions to its problems, securing African financing for its programmes and activities, preventing the exploitation of its wealth, and avoiding becoming fuel for others’ wars, the continent enters the new year amid an increasingly complex international and regional environment.

New negative phenomena are taking root, while older ones are repackaged in new forms. The use of mercenaries has returned, from near and far, to participate in the killing of Sudanese citizens, as confirmed by the involvement of Colombian mercenaries, which prompted the US Treasury to impose sanctions on individuals and entities involved. Port diplomacy, once a means of mutual benefit among states and peoples, has now taken a turn towards militarisation and the threat of state sovereignty. The year also witnessed fractures within ECOWAS following the withdrawal of Sahel states.

At the same time, political changes in some regimes reflected the depth of their internal problems and the dysfunction in civil–military relations. Rather than positioning itself as a mediator to heal rifts, the African Union itself has increasingly resorted to suspending memberships, thereby undermining the language of dialogue.

The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe once said: “The only thing we learn from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.” One can only hope that Africa’s elites will prove this adage wrong in the coming year.

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