Of any region in the world, the Horn of Africa is home to some of the oldest, richest, and varied religious traditions, featuring sites such as the Masjid al-Qiblatayn in Zeila and artefacts from the ancient Axumite kingdom in Tigray. For centuries, faith has and continues to play an integral part in the daily lives of most within the region, with Islam and Christianity the two dominant religions today. And in turn, spiritual life has naturally shaped the politics of the Horn, with elites having long grappled with how best to accommodate, co-opt, or suppress religious movements and identities. Over the centuries, this has encompassed Muslim leaders couching their fight in the rhetoric of jihad as well as the 'civilising' expansion of the Orthodox Christian Ethiopian Emperors into neighbouring regions in the 19th century.
As Sudan experiences its third lean season since the start of the civil war, the humanitarian crisis continues to rapidly deteriorate. First officially declared in August 2024, famine continues to sweep across the country as fighting intensifies in Darfur and Kordofan. The latest UN Integrated Food Security Phase Classification update warns that Phase 5 (Famine) could spread to 17 additional areas, with 8.5 million people in Phase 4 (Emergency) and over 756,000 in Phase 5 (Famine). The scale of hunger is unprecedented in Sudan’s history, with nearly half of Sudan’s 50 million people now acutely food insecure and 637,000 facing “catastrophic” hunger – the highest figure globally, according to WFP. This is not just a by-product of war, but a deliberate tactic used to weaken and manipulate vulnerable populations. Both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have weaponised starvation through systematic obstruction, looting, and destruction of food systems.
Facing its bleakest nadir in decades, every country in the Horn of Africa is currently grappling with some form of constitutional or succession crisis. Over several years, the region has gradually slid into a state of near-permanent emergency, with armed conflict, major humanitarian disasters, and political instability all rife. In turn, the legitimacy and presence of the 'state' is contracting across the board, driving nearly every debt-saddled regional government to the Gulf for discreet patronage to prop up their fragile ruling coalitions. This combination of state capture and broad insecurity is both compounding and undermining attempts at a coherent regional response to issues such as the war in Sudan.
With political insecurity and conflict simmering across nearly every country in the Horn of Africa, Nairobi's relative stability —barring the fitful Gen Z protests —is a welcome and necessary change for regional elites, compared to the ruins of Khartoum and the insecurity of Juba and Mogadishu. In prominent hotel bars and restaurants across the Kenyan capital, exiled opposition figures routinely gather to discuss their next moves or commiserate about the state of their country and region. The political elites of Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and others have long maintained families and properties in Nairobi's lush neighbourhoods, aware of the need for a potential haven amidst the mercurial politics of their own countries. But with insecurity and political repression rising across much of the Horn, so is the capital flow increasing into Nairobi as growing numbers relocate their wealth-- often illicitly.
On 11 June, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized a strategic tri-border zone between Sudan, Libya, and Egypt, known as Jebel Uweinat. Declaring the area "liberated" from a small Sudanese army border garrison, the capture of remote Jebel Uweinat will provide the paramilitaries with further access to Libya's porous southern frontier and their ally, the Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar, as well as Sudan's northern states. Amidst this flashpoint, which will allow the RSF to continue to funnel in weapons and supplies, the broader, destructive armed conflict remains intractable, with no credible political or peace process in sight.
On 28 May, Kenyan author and academic titan Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o passed away in the United States at the age of 87. A fierce critic of colonialism and post-independence authoritarianism, Ngũgĩ redefined the role of literature in the fight for liberation and the broader intellectual struggle for decolonisation. Regarded as one of the greats of 20th-century African literature, his death has been mourned widely and comes at a moment when the topics he grappled with, including police brutality, corruption and state overreach, are prominent in the public eye once again.
On 28 May, Kenyan author and academic titan Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o passed away in the United States at the age of 87. A fierce critic of colonialism and post-independence authoritarianism, Ngũgĩ redefined the role of literature in the fight for liberation and the broader intellectual struggle for decolonisation. Regarded as one of the greats of 20th-century African literature, his death has been mourned widely and comes at a moment when the topics he grappled with, including police brutality, corruption and state overreach, are prominent in the public eye once again.
For decades, much of Northern Kenya has wrestled with cyclical violence rooted in pastoralist competition over livestock and grazing land. But what was once culturally regulated pastoralist raiding has gradually devolved into a militarised, profit-driven enterprise. Intersecting with both food security and climate change, banditry and cattle rustling are intensifying, with an August 2024 report by the National Crime Research Centre documenting a sharp rise in the past year, resulting in over 300 fatalities and many thousands more displaced or impoverished. The government's attempts to stifle the violence have further struggled in the face of Kenya's cost-of-living crisis, as well as the participation of corrupt, vested political interests in Nairobi.
UNMISS Renewed As Kiir's Offensive Continues On 8 May, the UN Security Council voted to extend the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) for another yea...
Across the Borderlands: Migration Along the Eastern Route Migrants transiting out of the Horn of Africa have historically moved through three distinc...
The Age of Drones Last week, for the first time, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) conducted several drone strikes in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, penetra...
Sudan's Islamist Resurgence Shapes a Fractured War Since last September, when the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) launched its campaign to oust the Rapid...
Kenya’s Haiti Mission Stalls Amid Deepening Crisis On Monday, Kenya's National Security Advisor Monica Juma addressed the UN Security Cou...
Two Years of War in Sudan Tuesday marked two years since war erupted in Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid S...
Collateral Damage in Trump's Tariff War The death of globalisation appears to be on hold-- for now. In an abrupt volte-face yesterday, US President D...
The Plunder of Sudan's National Museum A camera shakily pans around a room in Sudan's National Museum in Khartoum. Except for a few smashed cabinets...
On the night of 26 January 1885, thousands of assembled Sudanese Mahdist forces broke through the defences of the Egyptian garrison in Khartoum, ending a 10-month siege on the capital. The trigger of the Mahdist assault was an advancing British military expedition intended to relieve their besieged Egyptian counterparts, with London having subjugated Cairo in 1882. They arrived two days too late to the capital, however, and subsequently withdrew from the country, ending the Turco-Egyptian rule over Sudan. Subsequently, the fall of Khartoum to the Mahdists, an Islamic political movement, ushered in the 13-year period known as the 'Sudanese Mahdiyya' until its overthrow by Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1898.
Eritrea and Ethiopia are unmistakably preparing for war. Since the Pretoria agreement in 2022 that ended the Tigray war, ties between the allies in the conflict have steadily worsened. From the misleading heights of the 2018 Addis-Asmara rapprochement, bilateral relations today are at their lowest ebb in years. In recent weeks, senior Ethiopian federal officials have increasingly resurfaced forceful historical, anthropological, and economic justifications for restoring 'access' to the Red Sea through Assab. Any Ethiopian attempt to seize the strategic port city, however, would likely come as part of a broader push for regime change in Asmara. In turn, both sides have further begun mobilising significant forces in anticipation of renewed conflict, while Eritrea has also sought to rally support from its allies in Cairo and Riyadh. But with the Horn of Africa and the fragile security of the Red Sea region so unstable, any return to war in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea would be calamitous.
In early November 2020, as Ethiopian federal troops and their allies invaded Tigray, Addis directed the severing of all telecommunications and Internet services to the region. For the next two years, the world's most prolonged Internet blackout was imposed on Tigray, lasting 670 days until its eventual restoration only after the Pretoria agreement in December 2022. The veil thrown over Tigray had numerous damaging consequences, not least the hardships faced by Tigrayans in both documenting the litany of human rights violations against them and revealing these atrocities to the world. While Tigray's blackout is one of the most extreme examples, with conflict and political repression proliferating across the Horn of Africa, government internet shutdowns are becoming far more commonplace.
The seemingly inexorable slide towards widespread conflict in South Sudan continues to gather pace. In recent weeks, escalating violence between government forces, opposition groups, and various militias has destabilised multiple regions while the fragile national ruling coalition looks ready to splinter-- again. Rising tensions between the two principal signatories of the 2018 peace agreement-- President Salva Kiir and First Vice-President Riek Machar-- and their dominant factions threaten to plunge the volatile country back into widespread violence.