An internal memo reported by the Associated Press and US court disclosures has revealed the scale of the Trump administration's intended evisceration of USAID. Last month, Washington ordered a 90-day suspension for all USAID programmes, sending the established aid and development sectors into a tailspin and immediately severing thousands of programmes across the world. Waivers could be nominally applied for, but it appears that the depth of the cuts will be permanent, with the Trump government apparently seeking to eliminate 5,800 of the 6,200 multi-year USAID foreign aid contracts, an equivalent of USD 54 billion in assistance.
This week, dozens of senior Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanders, Sudanese politicians aligned with the paramilitaries, and foreign officials gathered at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) in central Nairobi. The widely publicised and controversial ceremony—backed by Kenya, Ethiopia, and the UAE—marks the launch of a "parallel government" intended to challenge the authority of the UN-recognised military administration currently based in Port Sudan.
Political jockeying ahead of the 2027 presidential elections in Kenya is already underway. With the William Ruto administration nearing its third year and its approval ratings remaining slumped, the president appears to have shifted into campaign mode. In early February, accompanied by senior Cabinet officials, President Ruto embarked on a significant tour of North Eastern Kenya, offering several incentives to the long-marginalised border region that backed Raila Odinga in the 2022 polls. Among these was the pledge to abolish ID vetting, the reopening of the Garrissa passports office, and promising livestock vaccinations to open up market access. With support for the central government dwindling in the vote-rich Mt Kenya region and elsewhere, President Ruto's northern charm offensive is no coincidence—it's a political insurance policy.
The military balance in Sudan continued to shift in 2025, with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) making significant territorial gains against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Since capturing Wad Maddani on 11 January, the Sudanese army has steadily advanced along the Blue Nile and to the north, east and south in Khartoum. And in late January, for the first time since the war began, the Sudanese army was able to break through to its besieged General Command headquarters. These advances have now allowed SAF to position itself to assert near-full control of the capital in the coming days. The RSF, meanwhile, has preferred to fight only minor rearguard actions, as it transfers fighters, vehicles, and material from central Sudan towards its western heartlands in Darfur. With the RSF's renewed devastating assault on El Fasher in North Darfur ongoing, the 'Libya-style' split of the country appears only a matter of time.
The sudden suspension of US foreign aid is already having major reverberations around the Horn of Africa. Just days after Donald Trump's inauguration for his second non-consecutive term, a sweeping 90-day pause to foreign assistance was announced by the State Department– now led by Marco Rubio.
On 6 January, South Sudan's First Vice President, Riek Machar, received a report from the Administrative Assembly of Abyei. The report-- presented by the region's Chief Administrator Dr Chol Deng Alak-- was an endorsement of a boycotted referendum in 2013, which showed overwhelming support by the Ngok Dinka majority for Abyei's integration into South Sudan.
No observer of the latest round of civil war in Sudan expected a quiet festive period. Millions of Sudanese civilians knew perfectly well that they would spend New Year's Eve on the run, in makeshift displacement camps or overcrowded homes away from the front lines. The comparatively lucky members of the Sudanese elite, able to take refuge in Nairobi, Cairo, one of the Gulf countries or further afield, saw 2024 change to 2025 in the knowledge of having lost family, friends, homes and much else back home in Sudan
Mediation in the Sudan war may soon become the latest theatre in which an increasingly assertive and independent Türkiye inserts itself. Fresh from its major geopolitical coup in Syria, with its allied Islamist rebel forces toppling Iranian-backed dictator Bashar al-Assad, as well as the negotiated Somalia-Ethiopia 'Ankara Declaration,' Türkiye then offered to reconcile the "differences between Sudan and the UAE" in December.
In an infamous episode in July 1897, in Al-Matama on the banks of the River Nile, a number of Sudanese women tied their bodies together and threw themselves into the water to escape sexual violence from Mahdist soldiers.