Africa

The new cases in Uganda include a driver who transported the country’s first ⁠confirmed patient and a ​health worker.

Uganda has confirmed three new ⁠cases of Ebola, bringing ⁠the total number of infections in the country in this outbreak to five, as authorities stepped up contact tracing to try to contain the spread.

The update from Uganda’s Ministry of Health on Saturday came a day after World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the risk assessment for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola was being revised to “very high at the national level, high at the regional level, and low at global level”.

Nearly 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths ‌have been recorded in Uganda’s neighbouring country, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the centre of the outbreak.

First responders in the DRC say they lack basic supplies, which some have attributed to foreign aid cuts by major international donors, particularly the United States.

The WHO has said late detection, the absence of a vaccine or virus-specific therapeutics, widespread armed violence and high mobility among the population make the DRC especially vulnerable.

Uganda suspended all public transport to the DRC on Thursday after confirming two cases of Ebola – one infection and one death – involving Congolese nationals who crossed the border.

The new cases in Uganda reported on Saturday include a driver who transported the country’s first ⁠confirmed patient and a health worker ⁠exposed while caring for that patient.

Both are receiving treatment and were identified among known contacts, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

The third case is a woman ⁠from DRC who entered Uganda with mild abdominal symptoms and later travelled from Arua, close ⁠to the border, to Entebbe before seeking ⁠care at a private hospital in the capital, Kampala.

The patient initially improved and returned to DRC but later tested positive for Ebola after a follow-up prompted ‌by a tip-off from a pilot involved in transporting her.

All identified contacts linked to the confirmed cases are being closely monitored, ‌the ‌ministry said, urging the public to remain vigilant and report suspected symptoms.

“At this critical moment in the outbreak response, it is vital that authorities maintain high vigilance to control expansion of the virus,” Tedros said on Saturday.

“The WHO is working side by side with Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and partners in the DRC and Uganda, to contain the outbreak, support affected people, and bolster a coordinated response.”

The renewed instability could complicate bailout negotiations with the International Monetary Fund.

Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye has dismissed Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko and dissolved the government, a move that risks deepening uncertainty in a country grappling with a debt crisis and ⁠ongoing talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

A statement read out by a presidential aide on state media on Friday informed the nation that all ministers were dismissed, with the outgoing government tasked with handling day-to-day affairs.

The decision follows months of growing tensions between Faye and Sonko. Sonko, a charismatic figure with a strong youth following, had backed Faye in the 2024 election after being barred from running himself due to a defamation conviction, but the two allies became increasingly estranged.

The split comes as Senegal faces mounting economic pressure. The IMF froze a $1.8bn lending programme following ‌the discovery of misreported debt hidden by the previous government, pushing the country’s end-2024 debt level to 132 percent of its economic output.

Faye’s move raises the risk of further delays in reaching a new agreement with the IMF.

Earlier on Friday, before Sonko’s dismissal, Finance Minister Cheikh Diba told parliament that the government expects to resume talks with the IMF in the week of June 8 and hopes to reach an agreement on key points by June 30.

Sonko was a popular opposition leader under the previous administration of President Macky Sall, whose decision to delay the 2024 election spurred unrest.

Both Faye and Sonko are former tax officials who ⁠were jailed ahead of the 2024 election. They were released 10 days before the rescheduled contest, which Faye went on to win with 54 percent of the vote.

Faye then appointed Sonko as prime minister.

Now that ⁠Sonko is out of that job, it is unclear what his next steps will ⁠be. In March, he said he would be willing to take his Pastef party out of the government and return to opposition if Faye departed from the party’s agenda.

Pastef dominates the National Assembly, meaning it could complicate governance and the passage of reforms needed to secure IMF support. Last ‌month, politicians overwhelmingly approved electoral code changes that could pave the way for Sonko to run for president in 2029.

Parts of the Puebla stadium for high-profile warm-up for 2026 edition were closed to spectators due to FIFA sanctions.

Mexico have beaten Ghana 2-0 ⁠in Puebla in a World Cup warm-up that offered a glimpse of the excitement building less than three weeks before the country opens ⁠the tournament.

While Puebla is not among Mexico’s World Cup host cities, fans in green shirts at Cuauhtemoc Stadium created an electric atmosphere throughout the night on Friday.

Repeated Mexican waves rolled ⁠around the stadium despite visible empty sections closed under FIFA sanctions linked to discriminatory chants at previous national team matches.

Brian Gutierrez set the tone immediately, curling home from the edge of the box after two minutes.

Teenage Liga MX ‌sensation Gil Mora struck the post in the first half, and Alexis Vega had a header ruled out for offside before the break.

“He’s a different player, we’ve always said that,” Mexico coach Javier Aguirre said of Mora, who made his first appearance for Mexico since November after returning from injury.

“He’s brave, direct, vertical … he gives us great joy because he’s Mexican and ⁠because he’s back without pain.”

Ghana, with recently appointed coach ⁠Carlos Queiroz absent and assistants leading from the bench, threatened an equaliser early in the second half after forcing a pair of saves from the Mexican goalkeeper and hitting the crossbar.

But substitute ⁠Guillermo Martinez ended the visitors’ hopes in the 54th minute, finishing off a counterattack to double Mexico’s lead.

Coach Aguirre ⁠used the friendly to continue evaluating players ahead ⁠of naming Mexico’s final World Cup squad on June 1, with Europe-based players Luis Chavez, Edson Alvarez and Jorge Sanchez making second-half appearances after recently joining training camp.

The coach praised the effort shown by ‌players battling for places in the final squad, saying: “The fact they tried and gave their best effort, for me, that’s already worthwhile.

“It’s not easy (to pick the ‌team), ‌it’s the most complex part of my job … It’s a bit about trying to see all the possible scenarios with my coaching staff.”

Nouakchott, Mauritania – Across a vast stretch of the Sahel and West Africa, armed groups are expanding their reach, military governments are replacing fragile democracies, and “counterterrorism” efforts continue to contend with armed violence, often rooted in poverty and challenging living conditions.

While the Sahel has become synonymous with instability, tucked between the region and the Atlantic coast sits Mauritania, a country that has somehow managed to douse the flame. The explanation for this resilience often begins with a woman in a headscarf sitting across from a young man or a woman in a prison cell, talking about God.

Mauritania’s mourchidates are female Islamic spiritual guides, trained, certified, and deployed by the state under the Ministry of Islamic Affairs since 2021. They are not a new phenomenon, as the programme has its roots in Morocco.

Morocco’s mourchidates were introduced after the 2003 Casablanca bombings, a series of coordinated attacks in the Moroccan city that killed dozens and injured hundreds, as part of a broader religious reform.

Youssra Biare, a Moroccan researcher, states: “Morocco’s mourchidates offer one of the most established examples of women’s religious leadership as a tool for peace-building and preventing violent ‘extremism’.”

Since the programme’s launch in 2006, Morocco’s mourchidates have received formal theological and social training, which enables them to provide religious guidance and family counselling.

“Beyond their role in countering extremist narratives, they address the social and emotional factors that can make young people vulnerable to radicalisation,” Biare told Al Jazeera.

“For countries such as Mauritania, the Moroccan model demonstrates how investing in well-trained female religious leaders can strengthen community trust, promote moderate religious discourse, and create culturally grounded approaches to youth de-radicalisation and social cohesion.”

The mourchidates operate across schools, youth centres, mosques, hospitals, and, critically, prisons. They provide religious counsel grounded in mainstream Islamic scholarship, challenge the theological justifications that armed groups use, and offer a credible alternative to their narratives.

What makes the programme distinctive is the involvement of women with dedicated religious scholarship. More than social workers with a passing familiarity with Islamic texts, the mourchidates are trained in Quranic interpretation, Islamic jurisprudence, and the history of theological thought.

When they sit with detainees convinced that violence is a religious obligation, they can engage on their own terms and dismantle those arguments point by point.

Prison as a battleground for ideas

Prisons have long been recognised globally as sites of radicalisation, where recruitment networks operate. Mauritania, however, has pursued a different approach. Inside its prisons, mourchidates engage detainees linked to armed groups operating in the Sahel region, including those convicted of planning or participating in attacks across Mauritania, as well as those joining radicalised groups in neighbouring countries.

Their work goes beyond pastoral care to critically engage prison populations on an ideological level. They sit with these people over extended periods, building trust and addressing the theological arguments that justified violence, such as the belief that attacks on civilians could be sanctioned in the name of religion.

By patiently challenging these interpretations and offering alternative readings of Islamic texts, the mourchidates gradually open space for detainees to reconsider their choices.

De-radicalisation, when it works, tends to be built on relationships. The mourchidates, through their close ties to communities, are often well-placed to build these relationships in ways that male guards, military officials, or even male religious scholars are not always able to.

A significant portion of what mourchidates do is preventive, operating in community spaces to reach young people before they become vulnerable to recruitment. Armed groups exploit unemployment, marginalisation, and legitimate grievances to draw young men and women to their cause, often using the language of faith.

Countering this radicalisation requires a coherent narrative more than a militaristic approach, and that is precisely what the mourchidates provide.

“One of the strengths of the Mauritanian model is that it understood early on that violent extremism cannot be addressed through security responses alone,” Aminata Dia, a Mauritanian founding member of Elles Du Sahel Network and the executive director of the nonprofit Malaama, told Al Jazeera.

“The country invested in prevention, religious dialogue and community trust-building, particularly through the mourchidates programme,” she said.

Yahia Elhoussein, a scholar who runs a maourchidate school in Nouakchott, told Al Jazeera that this approach works due to its credibility.

“The mourchidates were deployed by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs to different parts of the country, where they educated young people on the true teachings of Islam, such as tolerance, charity, and accountability, playing an important role in de-radicalisation without any use of force,” Elhoussein said.

Why Mauritania stands apart

The results, while difficult to quantify, are reflected in Mauritania’s regional trajectory. The country has not been immune to threats from armed groups, enduring attacks in the mid-to-late 2000s that pushed it to reassess its approach.

What followed was a comprehensive strategy combining intelligence, community engagement, religious reform, and programmes like the mourchidates. Since then, Mauritania has largely avoided the scale of attacks that have devastated its neighbours, such as Mali and Burkina Faso.

Security analysts point to Mauritania as a case study for a preventive model, investing in conditions that make radicalisation less likely rather than responding solely to violence. The mourchidates are central to that model.

None of this suggests that Mauritania has solved the problem, or that its approach is without limitations. The country faces governance challenges, while the broader Sahel region continues to experience expanding armed violence, poverty, displacement, and weak state presence, pressures that no single programme can fully address.

Critics note that the reach of the mourchidates, while meaningful, remains constrained by resources and scale.

There are also questions about how replicable this model is elsewhere. Morocco’s version has been partially adapted in other Muslim-majority countries, but conditions in Mauritania, a deeply religious society, such as respected female scholarship, credible state authority, and political will, make it unique.

In Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, replicating this model would require rebuilding trust between the state and the community, which appears to have eroded.

At a time when international counterterrorism policy in the Sahel is dominated by military presence, drone strikes, and external interventions, Mauritania’s experience offers a different lesson. Some of the most effective tools for preventing violent activism are not found in special forces and military operations but in trained women, armed with knowledge and patience.

“Mauritania’s mourchidates prove that community-based approaches can be more effective than any other approach,” said Elhoussein.

DRC’s public sendoff in the capital was also cancelled before their departure for the FIFA World Cup.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) football team have cancelled a three-day World Cup preparation training camp and a planned public farewell to fans in the capital, Kinshasa, because of an Ebola outbreak in the east of the country.

DRC are scheduled to play World Cup warm-up games against Denmark in Liege, Belgium, on June 3, and Chile in southern Spain on June 9. Both matches are going ahead as planned, team spokesman Jerry Kalemo told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

“There were three stages of preparation: In Kinshasa to say goodbye to the public, Belgium and Spain with two friendly matches against Denmark in Liege and Chile in Spain, and the third stage from June 11 in Houston, United States. Only one stage was canceled – the one in Kinshasa,” Kalemo said.

The team’s pre-tournament preparations will now take place elsewhere after an outbreak of a rare type of Ebola known as Bundibugyo, which is thought to have killed more than 130 people and caused nearly 600 suspected cases.

The World Health Organization has declared it a public health emergency of international concern.

All of the DRC players and the team’s French coach, Sebastien Desabre, are based outside of the central African country, with most of them playing in France.

A number of team staff who are based in DRC “are leaving in the next hours”, Kalemo said.

Football’s governing body FIFA issued a statement that “it is aware of and monitoring the situation regarding an Ebola outbreak and is in close communication with the DRC Football Association to ensure that the team are made aware of all medical and security guidance.”

The American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week that the US would ban the entry of all foreign nationals who had been in DRC, Uganda and South Sudan within the past three weeks. The ban lasts for 30 days.

A US official said the Congolese World Cup team would not be affected by the CDC entry ban because they had been training in Europe for the past several weeks. That means team members, coaches and other officials who have not returned to DRC in the past three weeks would not be subject to the entry ban, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the policy has not been publicly announced.

Those members of the Congolese World Cup delegation who did return to DRC during the 21 days will be subject to the same quarantine requirements as US citizens seeking to return from affected countries, according to the official. That exception will not apply to Congolese fans who want to attend the World Cup, the official said.

The White House World Cup Task Force, housed under the Department of Homeland Security, stressed that it is “coordinating closely” with various agencies on health and security matters and that the government is “closely monitoring” the outbreak.

DRC, who qualified for the World Cup after winning a playoff tournament in Mexico, have been drawn in Group K. They face Portugal in their opening game in Houston on June 17.

The Leopards then face Colombia in Guadalajara on June 23 before playing Uzbekistan in Atlanta for their final group game on June 27.

DRC’s first World Cup qualification since 1974, when the country was called Zaire, led to scenes of jubilation across the nation, which has been battered by decades of conflict.

A nationwide transport strike in Kenya over surging fuel prices, blamed on the United States-Israeli war on Iran, has been suspended for a week after four people were killed in mass protests against the increases.

Kenya, one of many African countries heavily reliant on fuel imports from the Gulf, has raised petrol prices by 20 percent and diesel by almost 40 percent since Iran in effect blocked traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint that normally handles about a fifth of the world’s oil.

The strike was launched on Monday by transport operators, particularly the “matatu” bus operators who provide most of Kenya’s public transport, in response to the latest sharp fuel price hike.

“The strike that is going on is suspended for a period of one week to provide an avenue for consultations and negotiations between the government and stakeholders,” interior minister Kipchumba Murkomen told reporters on Tuesday.

Albert Karakacha, the president of Matatu Owners Association, confirmed the suspension.

Authorities said four people were killed and more than 30 were injured nationwide on Monday. Police said on Tuesday that more than 700 people had been arrested in connection with the protests over fuel price increases.

Rights groups condemned the use of lethal force by security forces, with Amnesty International calling for “maximum restraint”.

The unrest also disrupted Kenya’s main trade corridor, with local media reporting that truck drivers had refused to move cargo amid fears their vehicles could be attacked and set alight by demonstrators.

The national energy regulator said last week the government had spent $38.5m to cushion consumers from rising diesel and kerosene costs.

In a further emergency measure, Kenyan authorities last month temporarily suspended fuel quality standards in a bid to maintain supplies amid growing shortages.

Despite being one of East Africa’s most dynamic economies, Kenya still has deep structural inequalities: about a third of its roughly 50 million people live in poverty and unemployment remains high.

“I am afraid of dying.” From Bukavu to Kinshasa, concern is spreading among residents and street vendors as Ebola cases rise. In cities hundreds of miles apart, people are wearing face masks and calling for stronger protections from the latest outbreak in DR Congo.

The US has banned non-Americans who have visited DR Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the last 21 days from entry.

The United States will ensure that the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) football team can enter the country to play in the World Cup, making an exemption to an Ebola-related entry ban, according to a senior Department of State official.

“We expect the DRC team to be able to attend the World Cup,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

The US has banned non-Americans who have been in the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan in the previous 21 days from visiting the country due to a deadly outbreak of Ebola.

The US official said the DRC team, the only one among the three countries to have qualified for football’s premier event, had already been training in Europe, so they may not have been subject to the ban in any case.

But if they had, in fact, been in the DRC over the last 21 days, they would be subject to the sort of strict screening required for returning US citizens.

“We’re working to get them into the same protocol for testing in isolation that American citizens returning and permanent residents would be,” the official said.

The official said the exemption would not apply to everyday fans from the DRC looking to come to cheer on the team.

The DRC begin their World Cup campaign in Texas against Portugal on June 17.

The World Health Organization is getting health experts and supplies to DR Congo to battle the Ebola outbreak. WHO representative Anne Ancia says the situation in Bunia, the epicentre of the outbreak, is complex and difficult.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that an Ebola outbreak in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a “public health emergency of international concern”, setting off alarm bells around the world.

The WHO’s announcement on Sunday came as several countries are battling to contain a hantavirus outbreak linked to a cruise ship trip to South America.

While the cause and treatment for the two viruses differ, news of their outbreaks has caused world leaders and health agencies to question what this means for international travel and cross-border coordination in containing them. These questions are particularly pertinent following the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in global lockdowns due to the lack of preparedness for the spread of the coronavirus.

But as the WHO faces a funding crisis, is the world better prepared now if another pandemic occurs – or could it be even less so?

Here’s what we know:

Why is the WHO facing a funding crisis?

Every time a health emergency occurs anywhere in the world, the first response of the WHO is to determine the danger the disease poses and then implement a plan to respond to it.

But since 2025, the United Nations health agency has been struggling financially due to a lack of funding from donors.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned in May 2025 that global health would be at serious risk without enough donor support and that the agency was facing “the greatest disruption to global health financing in memory”.

The crisis deepened after the United States, which had previously covered nearly one-fifth of the WHO’s budget, officially withdrew from the organisation in January this year. US President Donald Trump announced the decision in January 2025, alleging the WHO had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and other international health crises.

As a result, the programme budget for the agency’s 2026-27 projects has been set at more than $6.2bn, a 9 percent decrease from the previous year.

In response, the WHO revised its financial plans and scaled back spending by cutting back some of its critical programmes, which has significantly curtailed pandemic preparedness, health experts told Al Jazeera.

“Funding cuts to the WHO have directly weakened disease surveillance efforts, which in turn affect the readiness and preparedness to deliver an effective response to epidemics and pandemics,” Kaja Abbas, associate professor of infectious disease epidemiology and dynamics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Nagasaki University, said.

Following the recent hantavirus outbreak, passengers and crew members from more than 20 countries on the affected cruise ship, MV Hondius, required coordinated monitoring, contact tracing, medical evacuation, and public health guidance across borders.

Under the International Health Regulations (IHR), the WHO helps to facilitate communication and response efforts among countries, deploys experts, supports laboratory testing and organises emergency responses in case of an outbreak.

Following the Ebola outbreak in the DRC and Uganda, the WHO has deployed experts, personal protective equipment (PPE), laboratory support and emergency funding while coordinating regional preparedness efforts.

But these sorts of efforts are at risk with the current funding crisis, Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious diseases physician in Dallas, in the US state of Texas, with expertise in emerging pathogens, global health and outbreak response, told Al Jazeera.

As infectious diseases do not respect borders, rapid international coordination is essential, she added.

“Weakening WHO through funding cuts risks delaying outbreak detection, slowing response times, and reducing the world’s ability to contain emerging threats before they spread globally.”

In a statement to Al Jazeera, the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat (IPPS), an independent entity which helps world leaders prepare and respond to pandemics, highlighted that preparedness relies on consistent funding.

“Sustained investment and strong multilateral coordination are essential to maintain the systems, partnerships, and scientific capabilities needed before the next pandemic threat emerges,” IPPS said.

What else is hampering a global response to another pandemic?

Besides funding issues, the WHO has been struggling to get world leaders to agree on a pandemic treaty for 2026 amid a pathogen-sharing dispute.

In May 2025, it adopted a Pandemic Agreement, which sets out what it describes as a “comprehensive approach to pandemic prevention, preparedness and response that improves both global health security and global health equity”.

But UN member nations have not been able to reach a consensus on the Pathogen Access and ⁠Benefit-Sharing (PABS) aspect of the agreement – or “annex” – due to differences over ensuring every country receives equitable access to vaccines and treatment after data on disease samples have been shared.

Talks on PABS mainly focus on setting up a system to ensure countries can quickly share pathogens that could cause pandemics while receiving fair access to vaccines, tests and treatments that result from their use.

Following talks on PABS in May this year, the WHO chief urged countries to keep working with urgency and said the next pandemic was “a matter ⁠of when, not if”.

“The PABS annex is the last piece of the puzzle not only for the Pandemic Agreement,” he added.

Kuppalli told Al Jazeera that getting agreement on this is crucial, as international cooperation is essential during emerging outbreaks.

“Countries must rapidly share pathogen samples, genomic sequencing data, and epidemiologic information so diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics can be developed quickly,” she said.

“Delays or political disputes over information sharing can cost valuable time in the early stages of an outbreak, when containment is most possible,” she warned.

Why is antivaccine sentiment growing?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the US and a handful of other countries began rolling out coronavirus vaccines, many people resisted the vaccines, fearing adverse reactions as social media was flooded with misinformation about their safety and purpose.

According to a July 2025 report in The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), antivaccine sentiment among the leadership of US health agencies has also been on the rise. Robert F Kennedy Jr, US health secretary, is among those leaders who often promotes unverified claims about the dangers of vaccines and also opposed the COVID vaccine.

In the report for the BMJ, authors Anna Kirkland and Scott Greer argued that if health agencies are led by such people, it will “likely mean that vaccination information campaigns are reduced, vaccine hesitancy increases, insurance coverage for vaccinations is limited, and public sector capacity to vaccinate is reduced”.

“Research money will be wasted on investigating already debunked links between autism and vaccination, while vaccination infrastructure, such as vaccination programmes run by local governments, will be eroded,” they added.

This is a major issue because public trust is critical during outbreaks, Kuppalli said.

“If large portions of the population reject vaccines or public health guidance, it becomes much harder to control transmission, protect healthcare systems, and reduce deaths,” she said.

“Equally concerning are funding cuts to vaccine research and development. Pandemic preparedness depends on investing in vaccines before a crisis occurs, not after,” she added.

Last August, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cancelled about $500 million in contracts and grants dedicated to mRNA vaccine development. These cuts affected 22 research initiatives and clinical trials focused on emerging pathogens, pandemic flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and COVID-19 boosters, according to Harvard University’s TH Chan School of Public Health.

Kuppalli said the development of mRNA vaccines targeting H5N1 avian influenza is an important effort in preparing for the possibility of a pandemic.

“Reductions in funding for these types of programmes risk slowing scientific progress, limiting manufacturing readiness, and leaving the world less prepared when the next outbreak emerges,” she said.

Is the world economically prepared for a pandemic?

Amid antivaccine movements and funding cuts, the current state of the world economy is also making it challenging for world leaders to prepare a pandemic response.

The US-Israel war on Iran has resulted in a sharp rise in oil and gas prices, which has in turn upended the world economy. High fuel costs have disrupted supply chains and international travel, resulting in a spike in the cost of medicines. In the United Kingdom, for example, pharmacies are charging 20 to 30 percent more for over-the-counter medicines. In India, chemists are reporting price rises of common painkillers of as much as 96 percent.

“Wars and economic pressures also strain supply chains, divert government resources, displace populations and weaken already fragile health systems. These all increase the risk of outbreaks spreading unchecked,” Kuppalli warned.

“Emerging infectious diseases are becoming more frequent and more complex, yet many countries are reducing investments in preparedness rather than strengthening them. The result is a growing mismatch between the scale of the threat and the resources available to respond,” she said.

IPPS told Al Jazeera that pandemics and disease outbreaks have devastating economic consequences. “In 2020 alone, the global economy contracted by around 3 percent of GDP, representing trillions of dollars in lost output, alongside widespread job losses and trade disruption.”

“Sustained investment in pandemic preparedness and response (PPR) can help prevent such losses by ensuring that vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics are ready to deploy rapidly when new threats emerge,” IPPS said.

Investing in research and development during peacetime ensures that when the next pandemic threat arises, the world has products and systems in place to respond quickly, protect lives, and avoid the economic losses experienced during COVID-19, it added.

“Sustained and diversified funding for pandemic preparedness is not just a health priority; it is also an economic safeguard.”

Has there been any progress at all since COVID-19?

“The pandemic taught all of us many lessons, especially that global threats demand a global response,” Ghebreyesus said in February, six years after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “Solidarity is the best immunity,” he added.

Besides adopting a Pandemic Agreement last May, in 2022, the WHO launched a fund in collaboration with the World Bank. As of February this year, the fund has “provided grant funding” totalling more than $1.2bn, the WHO says. It has “helped catalyse an additional $11bn that has so far supported 67 projects in 98 countries across six regions, to expand surveillance, lab networks, workforce training and multi sectoral coordination”, it adds.

In 2023, the WHO also set up the Global Health Emergency Corps “in response to the gaps and challenges identified during the COVID-19 response”. The Corps mainly supports countries experiencing public health emergencies “by assessing emergency workforce capacities, rapidly deploying surge support, and creating a network of emergency leaders from multiple countries to share best practices and coordinate responses”.

As a result of all this, Kuppalli said, there are reasons to be hopeful.

“One of the clearest lessons from recent outbreaks is that the global scientific and public health community can collaborate remarkably quickly when faced with an urgent threat,” she said.

She noted how during COVID-19, scientists around the world rapidly shared genomic sequences, clinical data and research findings in real time.

“The development of highly effective COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year was a historic scientific achievement and demonstrated what is possible when there is political will, funding, international cooperation, and regulatory flexibility,” she said.

“In addition, advances in vaccine platforms, particularly mRNA technology, mean we now have the capability to design and begin producing candidate vaccines much faster than in the past,” she explained.

“While many challenges remain, including funding, misinformation, and geopolitical tensions, the scientific progress made over the last several years has unquestionably improved our ability to detect emerging threats and develop medical countermeasures more rapidly than ever before,” she added.

It’s a global health crisis – not a pandemic.

But the World Health Organization is warning that the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighbouring Uganda could be much larger than what has been detected so far.

The global health body is advising countries to activate national disaster mechanisms and introduce cross-border and internal screening.

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Ariel Kestens – Head of the Kinshasa delegation, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

Dr Margaret Harris – Lecturer at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research

Dr Ahmed Ogwell Ouma – Former deputy director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention

The Democratic Republic of Congo has faced repeated Ebola outbreaks, but insecurity in the eastern part of the country is making this most recent outbreak difficult to control.

Neighbouring countries have already reported some cases, and the World Health Organization has said the outbreak’s real impact is yet to be seen.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has faced repeated Ebola outbreaks, but insecurity in the eastern part of the country is making this most recent outbreak difficult to control.

Neighbouring countries have already reported some cases, and the World Health Organization has said the outbreak’s real impact is yet to be seen.
Al Jazeera’s Hamza Mohamed explains.

An Ebola outbreak caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain has killed dozens in Democratic Republic of the Congo and is spreading into Uganda, raising fears of regional transmission. Health officials say instability and shared borders are complicating containment efforts as the World Health Organization declares a global health emergency.

The presidents of Nigeria and the United States have announced the killing of Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, described as the second-in-command of ISIL (ISIS).

Donald Trump first made the announcement in a social media post on Friday, without disclosing when or where the joint Nigerian-US military operation happened.

On Saturday, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said in a statement that al-Minuki, also known as Abu-Mainok, was killed “along with several of his lieutenants” during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.

The Nigerian army described it as “a meticulously planned and highly complex precision air-land operation” carried out on Saturday between midnight and 4am (23:00 to 03:00 GMT) in Metele, in Borno state in northeast Nigeria.

Borno has been the epicentre of a long-running campaign by the Boko Haram armed group and its splinter faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), which is linked to ISIL.

Who was al-Minuki?

Little is publicly known about al-Minuki, who had been under US sanctions since 2023.

Before pledging allegiance to ISIL in 2015, al-Minuki was a prominent Boko Haram leader, according to the Nigerian army.

An army statement described him as a “key” operational and strategic figure who provided guidance to ISIL entities outside Nigeria on media operations, economic warfare and weapons manufacturing.

“His death removes a critical node through which ISIS coordinated and directed operations across different regions of the world,” the army said.

It added that al-Minuki oversaw ISIL-linked operations across the Sahel and West Africa, including attacks against “ethnic and religious minority communities”. In 2018, he was linked to the kidnapping of more than 100 schoolgirls in Dapchi, in northeastern Nigeria’s Yobe state.

Emerging power

Al-Minuki is believed to have risen through the ranks of ISWAP following the disappearance of veteran commander Mamman Nur in 2018.

His reported ability to operate discreetly and avoid public attention helped him maintain influence over operations, while evading detection by regional and international security forces.

Cheta Nwanze, chief executive of the Lagos-based advisory group, SBM Intelligence, said al-Minuki had previously been declared killed in 2024 after a military operation in Kaduna state.

“That earlier announcement did not produce a lasting degradation of ISWAP’s capabilities,” he told Al Jazeera, warning that eliminating a single commander may have a limited impact.

Nwanze said the group will be able to recover as long as a growing “ransom economy” in Nigeria – which raised some $1.66m between July 2024 and June 2025, according to an SBM intelligence report – “remains intact”.

“The ultimate tool for control is the man on the ground with a gun, and the ultimate backing for that man is a functional social contract, which sadly Nigeria does not have,” he said. “Until the economic logic that feeds these groups is disrupted, the cycle will continue.”

Experts say leaders such as al-Minuki have been central to coordination between local fighters and ISIL’s broader network, but are not irreplaceable due to the group’s decentralised command structure.

“The killing of al-Minuki will disrupt ISWAP operationally in the short term,” Alex Vines, the Africa programme director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Al Jazeera.

“ISWAP has proven resilient to leadership losses, suggesting this killing will not be strategically decisive on its own.”

‘Inclusive governance reforms’

ISWAP has recently intensified attacks along the Nigeria-Cameroon border, targeting military outposts and humanitarian convoys.

These operations are seen as part of a deliberate effort to consolidate territory and demonstrate the group’s continued relevance despite ongoing pressure, including after Trump accused Nigeria of not doing enough to protect Christians in the country’s north from attacks.

The Nigerian government has rejected the claim, insisting that Muslims are also being targeted by armed groups. In recent months, dozens of US troops have been deployed to Nigeria to help in the fight against armed groups by providing intelligence sharing and technical support.

Tinubu said Nigeria “appreciates” the partnership with the US “in advancing our shared security objectives,” adding that he looked forward “to more decisive strikes against all terrorist enclaves across the nation”.

Vines said al-Minuki’s killing was “a tactical win” for the Tinubu administration, but ISWAP remains a “serious security concern”.

As for the US, eliminating al-Minuki is likely to be framed as a victory against ISIL’s Africa network. It will also reinforce Nigeria’s importance “as a key security partner and a reminder that bilateral relations are much better than a year ago”, Vines told Al Jazeera.

Nwanze said the joint nature of the strike signalled a deepening of US‑Nigeria security cooperation, but the collaboration “will face limits”.

“Washington’s willingness to engage is likely contingent on narrow counter‑terrorism objectives, not on a wholesale commitment to rebuilding Nigeria’s fractured security architecture,” he added.

Mubarak Aliyu, a political and security risk analyst, called the elimination of al-Minuki “a remarkable operational success”. He stressed, however, that “broader, inclusive governance reforms remain fundamental to solving the long-term security challenges in the wider region”.

Harare, Zimbabwe – Zimbabwe’s real estate and farming sectors are seeing a surge in diaspora-driven investment, with two young content creators quietly emerging as unexpected influencers shaping the trend.

Kundai Chitima, 31, and Kelvin Birioti, 20, each running their own social media channel, have built followings that seem to influence a growing number of Zimbabweans abroad considering return or investment.

On YouTube and Instagram, they share short videos and posts highlighting opportunities in Zimbabwe. Their popular content ranges from property tours and agricultural tips to market trend analysis.

For some in the diaspora, decisions about returning or investing increasingly appear to be shaped less by official narratives and more by social media content offering on-the-ground perspectives of life in Zimbabwe.

One of those influenced is Catherine Mutisi, who spent 17 years living in the United Kingdom working as an accountant. During that time, she had already begun investing in Zimbabwe, building two houses, buying a small plot and starting a business.

She said her thinking shifted after coming across Birioti’s content during construction.

“Gradually, my mind and plans shifted from just visiting Zimbabwe towards wanting to permanently relocate,” she said.

Mutisi said earlier narratives about Zimbabwe had made her cautious, but online content presented a different perspective.

“Previously, I was just building my houses for my family to get some money. But after watching the videos, my eyes opened,” she told Al Jazeera.

Her experience is not isolated. Both Chitima and Birioti say they hear similar accounts from the Zimbabwean diaspora reassessing their long-term plans.

UK-based Zimbabwean Nyashadzashe Nguwo, an Africa market entry and global expansion adviser, said many people like Mutisi are relocating to Zimbabwe due to what he described as a combination of emotional and lifestyle-driven factors.

“There’s a strong desire among many in the diaspora to reconnect with their roots and contribute meaningfully to national development. For some, the lower cost of living and the opportunity to build something impactful at home outweigh concerns about economic instability,” Nguwo told Al Jazeera.

Two influencers

After growing up in Chinhoyi, a town in northern Zimbabwe about 120km (75 miles) northwest of the capital, Harare, Birioti sought a new start and enrolled at Zimbabwe Ezekiel Guti University (ZEGU) in Bindura. He dropped out, however, due to financial challenges and decided to move to Harare.

There, he met Chitima and began learning content creation. From the outset, he said he avoided entertainment-style content, instead focusing on what he saw as an information gap.

“I saw a gap: the diaspora community was being scammed.”

He built his platform about real estate, rural development and farming projects, often working with diaspora Zimbabweans who granted access to their properties for documentation.

On the other hand, Chitima worked as a teacher in South Africa before returning to Zimbabwe in 2015.

He said workplace inequality influenced his choice: “We were earning lower than my South African colleagues. I thought of my dignity and made a decision to return home.”

Chitima returned to Zimbabwe with limited resources and a pregnant wife, entering a very different economic environment from the one he had left.

Before his time in South Africa, he had worked as a civil servant. After returning, he gradually moved into content creation, beginning in 2015 and later training younger creators who went on to build large audiences.

Today, he reflects on his platform as both educational and protective for diaspora audiences.

“I receive calls from people crying … they have been scammed.”

He says his content aims to replace uncertainty with grounded information about the realities and opportunities in Zimbabwe.

Economic pressure and unemployment

While no official figures are publicly available on the exact number of Zimbabweans leaving the country or their reasons for doing so, reports from the International Organization for Migration and independent migration studies indicate consistent migration.

The Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) reported a 21.8 percent unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2024, based on strict International Labour Organization definitions.

Between 76 percent and 80 percent of workers are in the informal sector, relying on subsistence or unregulated employment. Youth unemployment is particularly acute: a 2025 World Bank report estimates it at 76.8 percent.

For many young people, stable employment is increasingly difficult to secure.

Susan Sibanda, 26, describes moving between short-term and informal work.

“I have been switching from one casual job to the next,” Sibanda said.

Her experience reflects a wider labour market where formal employment continues to shrink. In recent years, several big retailers, including Choppies, Truworths, OK Zimbabwe, and N Richards, have downsized or closed operations.

Emigration pressures remain strong

Against that backdrop, migration still features heavily in the decisions of young Zimbabweans.

Sibanda said she now considers that “leaving Zimbabwe is in my best interest”.

Economist Tashinga Kajiva said the story of emigration from Zimbabwe has largely remained high, driven by a combination of push and pull factors that encourage people to seek what they see as greener pastures.

“Zimbabwe’s economy is marked by complex and, some would say, difficult dynamics. For ordinary citizens, disposable income remains low while the cost of living continues to rise. The marginal propensity to save among working-class citizens is also low, as many are living hand to mouth,” he told Al Jazeera.

Zimbabwe’s diaspora is concentrated in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, according to government figures.

Keeping ties alive from abroad

The economic link between Zimbabwe and its diaspora remains strong.

According to real estate agents, diaspora buyers now account for a significant share

They state that up to 50 percent of high-end residential properties sold were purchased by Zimbabweans living abroad in recent years. In some regions, land prices have risen by 20–30 percent year-on-year, a surge partly attributed to diaspora buyers.

Diaspora investment is also noticeable in agriculture. Reports from the Zimbabwe Farmers Union indicate that about 10-15 percent of new farm leases over the past two to three years involve diaspora investors, with activity concentrated in Mashonaland Central and Matabeleland regions.

Remittances reached $1.7bn in 2023 and continue to rise. In 2025, Zimbabweans abroad sent $2.45bn home, with the UK and South Africa the largest sources, according to government data. A significant portion of these funds is reportedly invested in real estate, agriculture, and small businesses.

This reflects both practical necessity and emotional attachment to home, as well as a preference for investing in familiar environments, according to economists.

Still, return seems to generate mixed reactions.

Some diaspora Zimbabweans appear cautious, citing political developments and recent protests abroad over governance concerns.

For them, financial ties to Zimbabwe are still strong, but physical return remains uncertain.

With social media reshaping perceptions of life in Zimbabwe, many in the diaspora remain caught between investment opportunities and the country’s economic realities.

As content creators like Chitima and Birioti reshape how some see opportunity in Zimbabwe, domestic economic pressures appear to be pushing others away, leaving the country’s relationship with its diaspora open-ended and still evolving.

“For many Zimbabweans living abroad, investing back home is not just about profit – it’s about staying connected to their roots and shaping the future of their communities,” said Chitima.

Istanbul, Turkiye – When investigations by Al Jazeera and other media outlets in 2024 revealed that Israeli-linked artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as Lavender and Gospel had helped generate thousands of military targets in Gaza, critics warned that warfare was entering a new era – one driven not only by soldiers and bombs, but by algorithms, data, and surveillance technology.

Then, in September 2024, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by members of Hezbollah exploded in coordinated attacks in Lebanon, widely attributed to Israeli intelligence operations that had turned ordinary communication devices into weapons.

And, last year, reporting by Al Jazeera also raised concerns about the use of cloud and data infrastructure linked to major US technology companies in Israeli surveillance operations involving Palestinians.

For a growing number of scholars, economists and political thinkers, such developments reflect more than just the changing nature of conflict. They show how power in the modern world is increasingly exercised not just through military force, but through technology, finance and control over information.

That argument has revived broader debates around decolonisation – a term historically associated with the dismantling of European empires after World War II, when countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle East gained formal independence.

But many proponents of what is termed “decolonial theory” – a school of thought arguing that colonial-era systems of power and hierarchy still shape modern politics, economics and knowledge – argue that colonial power structures never fully disappeared. Instead, they evolved, embedding themselves in global financial systems, technology platforms, media networks and even the production of knowledge itself.

Dependence of Global South countries on Western technology, digital infrastructure and global markets can create new forms of political and economic vulnerability, particularly across the Global South.

“A generation may have grown up believing they had never experienced colonialism or exploitation,” Esra Albayrak, board chair of the NUN Foundation for Education and Culture and daughter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told Al Jazeera during the World Decolonization Forum in Istanbul on May 11-12.

“Yet, mentally, they may still be living under colonial influence.”

The war in Gaza marked a turning point, Albayrak says, shining a spotlight on how international principles are not applied equally. Global institutions have so far failed to stop what many countries and rights groups have described as genocide against Palestinians.

“The world is sounding an alarm, and we can no longer afford to remain indifferent to it,” she said.

A techno-feudal era

Albayrak argues that a handful of technology companies are emerging as new, invisible centres of power, shaping how information is produced, circulated and consumed in the digital age.

She describes the digital sphere as the realm of what she calls “future colonialism”, warning that AI systems trained largely on Western-centric data risk reinforcing existing global inequalities.

“When AI systems are run by those tech companies and trained on Western sources, they risk carrying the hierarchies of the past into tomorrow’s digital world, as they now have personalised data, suppressing identity,” Albayrak said.

By this, she means that most major AI models are still trained largely on English-language and Western-produced data – a pattern critics say risks sidelining non-Western languages, cultures and perspectives.

On social media platforms, algorithms tend to amplify some conflicts while rendering others nearly invisible, effectively shaping what billions of users see, discuss and remember online.

Walter D Mignolo, professor at Duke University, argues that while what we historically see as “formal colonialism” may have largely ended, systems of Western dominance continue through economics, culture, technology and knowledge production.

“Coloniality is not over. It is all over the world,” Mignolo said, arguing that modern ideas of development and progress often have the effect of pressuring societies to conform to Western norms.

Rather than simply resisting those systems, he said, societies must find a way to “re-exist” by rebuilding intellectual and cultural autonomy outside dominant global frameworks.

Colonisers in the financial age

The March 2026 Global Debt Report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reveals that 44 countries face severe debt burdens, often aggravated by global conflicts, forcing some governments to spend more on interest payments than on health or education.

This is not a new phenomenon, as developing countries have been labouring under the weight of foreign debt for decades.

But British political economist and author Ann Pettifor told Al Jazeera that modern forms of domination are now increasingly embedded not in empires or nation-states, but in financial systems operating beyond democratic oversight.

Pettifor points to the growing influence of “shadow” banking networks – financial institutions operating largely outside traditional banking regulations – and giant asset managers such as BlackRock, which manages $13 trillion in assets.

Much of the global financial architecture now functions largely outside the regulatory control of governments, she says, including that of Western states themselves.

“This is not a state colonising other states,” Pettifor said. “This is the financial system colonising the whole world, including my country and the US.”

She argues that elected governments increasingly struggle to control key economic realities – from energy prices to commodity markets – because those systems are dictated by global financial actors operating far beyond public accountability.

In Nigeria, for example, Pettifor says, efforts to expand domestic refining capacity continue to face pressure from international financial institutions and global energy markets to keep fuel prices tied to global markets and maintain reliance on imported refined oil products, despite its vast oil reserves.

Coordinated cooperation between developing nations may be necessary to challenge the dominance of Western-centred financial systems, Pettifor says, pointing to growing efforts across parts of West Africa to expand regional refining capacity and reduce dependence on imported fuel. Yet such ambitions can also leave critical sectors dependent on the decisions and influence of a small number of powerful private actors.

Global financial markets, algorithm-driven platforms, and foreign-controlled digital infrastructure increasingly define everyday life – from fuel and food prices to the information people consume online and the technologies governments and societies depend on, observers say.

A ‘mastery complex’

As wars become increasingly influenced by AI, digital infrastructure and financial dependency, debates around colonisation are focusing less on territorial control and more on who influences energy prices, lending systems, access to technology and the flow of information across borders, observers say.

Albayrak draws a parallel between today’s debates around technology and global power and Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden”, published as the US took control of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. The poem framed colonial expansion as a moral obligation to “civilise” other societies rather than an exercise of domination.

Albayrak said such traces of “mastery complex” still survive today, though in different forms – not necessarily through military occupation, but through technological, financial and informational influence.

But what the world really needs, she argues, is a global order built not on hierarchy, but on shared responsibility.

“The burden should belong to humanity collectively.”

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has refused to resign over a “cash-in-sofa scandal” that continues to haunt his presidency.

Ramaphosa, who addressed the nation on Monday to declare his intention to remain in his post, is set to face a multi-party impeachment committee, which will investigate allegations that he covered up a 2020 break-in at his private ranch and the theft of more than $500,000, concealing the incident from police and tax authorities.

The committee’s findings could spell his impeachment; however, parliament has not provided a timeframe for the investigation, which has yet to commence.

Analysts say the scandal, which has been dubbed “Farmgate”, has been particularly damaging for a president who rode to power in 2018 on an anticorruption mandate, after the much-criticised presidency of Jacob Zuma. Now, eight years later, the case of the cash found stuffed in a sofa at his game ranch could be what takes Ramaphosa down.

Can the South African president survive? Here is what we know.

What’s the scandal all about?

In February 2020, burglars allegedly broke into Ramaphosa’s luxury private ranch, Phala Phala, in Limpopo province, South Africa, and stole $580,000. The cash was said to have been hidden inside furniture at the farm – hence the “Farmgate” label.

Ramaphosa has been accused of covering up the theft and keeping private efforts to trace the burglars a secret to avoid an investigation into where the money had come from – and why it was hidden in a sofa.

Corruption allegations surfaced when a former head of South Africa’s state security agency walked into a police station in 2022 and accused the president of money laundering in relation to the stolen cash.

Later that year, an independent parliamentary committee found that Ramaphosa “may have committed” serious violations and misconduct. In particular, the panel found he had failed to properly report a theft to police as required under anticorruption laws and “acted in a manner inconsistent with his office”.

At the time, the African National Congress (ANC) had a strong majority in parliament – with 230 seats out of 400. It was therefore able to reject the report and refused to open impeachment proceedings.

But the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) challenged this at the Constitutional Court in Cape Town, which, last week, overturned the government’s rejection of the 2022 parliamentary report and referred it to a multi-party impeachment committee for a full investigation.

What has Ramaphosa said?

Ramaphosa has always denied allegations of corruption and maintains that the stolen cash came from selling buffalo.

Since the constitutional court’s ruling last week, Ramaphosa has been facing renewed calls for his resignation, mostly from opposition leaders. In a televised address on Monday, the president refused to step down.

“While there have been calls in some circles that I should resign, nothing in the Constitutional Court judgement compels me to resign my office,” he said.

“Since a criminal complaint was laid against me in June 2022, I have consistently maintained that I have not stolen public money, committed any crime, nor violated my oath of office,” Ramaphosa said in his address, adding that he has cooperated in all investigations.

The president rejected the 2022 report from the independent panel again, saying: “The complaints against me are based on hearsay allegations. No evidence, let alone sufficient evidence, has been presented to prove that I committed any violation, let alone a serious violation of the Constitution or law, or serious misconduct as set out in the Constitution.”

If the committee does find enough evidence against him, it could direct him to be impeached.

It is unclear how long this will take, however. Ramaphosa has pledged to seek a judicial review of the report’s contents, which, in turn, could delay the investigation of the impeachment committee.

What is the process for impeachment?

If a president is found to have violated the constitution or the law, or is unable to perform the duties of office, South Africa’s National Assembly has the constitutional authority to remove him or her.

Beyond the parliamentary investigation that will now begin into the Farmgate scandal, and which can trigger a vote on impeachment, as well, any member of parliament may introduce a motion seeking the president’s removal. The speaker of the National Assembly would then refer the motion to an independent panel of legal experts to determine whether sufficient evidence exists to proceed.

If this panel decides there is a case against the president, lawmakers must vote on whether to begin impeachment proceedings. After this, a specially constituted impeachment committee is established to carry out a detailed investigation into the allegations. This is separate from the investigation beginning now and could take several months.

Once that committee recommends the removal of the president, parliament holds a final vote to impeach the president. Under Section 89 of the constitution, a two-thirds majority is required – meaning at least 267 lawmakers must vote in favour of removal in the 400-seat National Assembly.

Are there other ways to remove Ramaphosa?

Yes, the South African president can be removed from his job via a no-confidence vote in parliament.

Any member of the assembly can propose the no-confidence motion, and it only requires a simple majority of more than 50 percent.

Ramaphosa would need support from coalition partners to survive a no-confidence vote, however. This has already been proposed by at least two opposition parties in parliament.

Another way could be if his ANC party turns against him, as it did with the last president, Zuma, who came in for years of corruption allegations and was finally forced to resign in 2018.

How strong is Ramaphosa’s position?

Ramaphosa is not only the president of South Africa, but also the leader of its most popular party, the ANC. Nelson Mandela was the ANC’s first Black president after apartheid ended in 1994.

In 2024, the ANC stunningly lost its majority in parliament for the first time following more than three decades in power. Today, the ANC holds 159 of 400 seats in the national assembly, or about 40 percent of seats – and Ramaphosa is governing in a coalition with the Democratic Alliance, which has 87 seats, along with other smaller parties.

But Chris Ogunmodede, an independent analyst of African politics, security, and international affairs, based in Lagos, Nigeria, said Ramaphosa would likely survive any impeachment attempts, “simply because of the arithmetic”.

“His numbers in the parliament virtually guarantee that impeachment will not happen,” Ogunmodede told Al Jazeera.

“It hasn’t been easy, but there is a government that seems to be functional and is showing some signs of reinvigoration,” Ogunmodede added. “There’s a lot of uncertainty on the part of the other coalition parties that suggests that they would much rather be on the side of caution and go with the devil they know, and preserve the government by keeping Ramaphosa in power.”

Despite this, the cash-in-sofa scandal has been damaging, he said.

And, under Ramaphosa, the ANC’s popularity has continued to slide. The party’s national vote share fell from 57.5 percent in the 2019 election to 40.2 percent in the 2024 election, marking its worst performance since the end of apartheid.

The South African economy has shown some signs of improvement, however, and given the Ramaphosa government “something to show for the time that it’s been in power”, said Ogunmodede.

Yet the South African government still faces long-term structural concerns about the economy, the country’s institutions, corruption, crime and other issues, the analyst added.

On the back of underlying anti-incumbency, Ogunmodede said the top court’s ruling on the cash-in-sofa scandal “has resurrected many concerns that South Africans have had about the president and his party, and the political institutions of the country more broadly”.

After successfully launching Nigeria’s only operational oil refinery in 2024, billionaire businessman Aliko Dangote has set his sights on East Africa as the next location for another mega refinery project, according to recent reports.

It comes as African countries are actively seeking ways to make energy more secure, following huge global disruptions amid the US and Israel’s war on Iran and Tehran’s subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas is shipped.

Dangote, Africa’s richest man, appeared to be one of the winners from this fallout when his newly operational refinery, located in Nigeria’s commercial Lagos State, began selling large volumes of crude oil across the continent as the war on Iran escalated in March and global oil prices soared.

At present, West, South and East Africa rely primarily on importing refined petroleum products from the Middle East, meaning they are highly vulnerable to disruptions there.

Neighbours of Nigeria – Cameroon, Togo, Ghana and even Tanzania, further to the east – are among the countries that have turned to Nigeria as supplies from the Middle East dry up.

By the end of March, the refinery, which has the capacity to produce 650,000 barrels per day (bpd), reported it was also receiving orders from beyond the continent, especially for severely scarce jet fuel as hundreds of flights were cancelled across regions.

Supply from Dangote’s refinery has cushioned the impact of the war in terms of fuel supply for Nigeria and neighbouring countries, analysts say.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer, and the $19bn project in Lagos is currently the world’s largest single-train refinery, meaning it employs a single processing line rather than multiple units. But it hit full production capacity in February 2026, the same month the war with Iran started.

Nigeria has no functional state-owned refinery, so Dangote’s refinery is now positioning the country to be a net exporter of jet fuel and diesel.

Here’s why more refining capacity in Africa matters for the continent:

What is Dangote’s plan for an East Africa refinery?

In April, Kenya’s President William Ruto announced that East African countries were in talks to build a joint oil refinery at Tanzania’s Tanga port, which would have a similar capacity to Dangote’s Lagos operation.

“We do not want to be held hostage any more by the Strait of Hormuz,” Ruto said at a Nairobi business event in April, which Dangote was present at.

“We do not want to be held hostage by wars that are started by other people. We have our resources here, and we are saying we are going to use our African resources to industrialise our region.”

In an interview with the Financial Times on Sunday, however, Dangote said he would prefer to build the new operation in Kenya rather than Tanzania.

“I’m leaning more towards Mombasa because Mombasa has a much larger, deeper port,” the billionaire told the UK newspaper.

“Kenyans consume more. It’s a bigger economy,” he said, adding that “the ball is in the hands of President Ruto … Whatever President Ruto says is what I’ll do.”

He has projected construction costs of between $15bn and $17bn.

But venturing into East Africa, which has a very different commercial landscape from West Africa, could prove a challenge, analyst Dumebi Oluwole of Lagos-based intelligence firm Stears told Al Jazeera.

“Dangote has proven it [his operation] can build at scale,” she said. “The East African test will be whether it can also navigate the political and logistical landscape of a fragmented, multi-country market.”

Why aren’t African countries already producing more oil?

Despite having sizeable crude reserves, African countries only refine about 44 percent of the total oil consumed themselves, with imports making up the rest, according to a 2022 African Union report.

The top producers of refined oil are Algeria, Egypt and South Africa. There are about 21 refineries in North Africa.

Southern Africa has another seven, while West Africa has 14. However, most refineries in the two regions are either not operating or are producing below the capacity they are equipped to.

East Africa’s only existing refinery is in Mombasa, but it stopped operating in 2013 due to a combination of slow government policies and exiting investors, who deemed it commercially unviable as a result.

There is currently no refining capacity at all in East Africa, despite the region having about 4.7 billion barrels of crude reserves, according to the African Union, mainly in Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Kenya imported 40 million barrels of petroleum in 2025. It regularly buys oil from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, India and Oman, all of which have been hampered by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Nigeria itself is Africa’s biggest net crude producer with a 1.5 million to 1.6 million bpd capacity. The country has not refined meaningfully since 2019.

What difference will local refineries make for African countries?

Exporting most of its crude to then import refined products is expensive and puts Africa on the back foot, analyst Oluwole said.

More oil refined on the continent would mean lower petrol pump prices, lower transport costs, and more energy available for people and businesses, in theory. It would also mean greater access to by-products like fertilisers for farmers, for example, or petrochemicals for manufacturers.

“Dangote has demonstrated that a viable, scalable, intra-African energy supply option is possible – that proof of concept matters enormously,” said Oluwole.

“It reflects a growing continental conviction that Africa can provide for itself, and that this is no longer wishful thinking,” she added.

In Nigeria’s case, Dangote’s refinery is yet to ease pressures, though. Local airlines, for example, have complained about having to pay high prices for jet fuel even with improved local supplies. Analysts say that could be because Nigeria’s government removed fuel subsidies in 2023. Bureaucracy within the state oil company also forced Dangote’s refinery to import crude.

Still, the refinery is contributing to “a more transparent and competitive market”, Oluwole said, adding that results should eventually show.

Other countries are stepping up. Last week, Angola’s $470m Cabinda refinery began supplying domestic as well as foreign markets. The project is owned primarily by the United Kingdom’s Gemcorp Capital and has a capacity of 30,000bpd, with plans to double by the end of 2026.

Dangote’s planned refinery in Kenya, if completed, could also help to reduce East Africa’s reliance on the Middle East.

A separate, government-funded refinery project in Uganda’s Hoima region is also in the works. Authorities expect the project to be able to refine 60,000bpd when it starts operations in 2029. It will be fed by the joint Uganda-Tanzania East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), an ongoing project which will transport crude from Uganda’s Lake Albert to Tanzania’s Tanga Port.

Uganda also plans to produce diesel, jet fuel, kerosene and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).

With big plans in place, Oluwole says it’s now left to African governments to create enabling business environments for the private sector.

“Dangote has opened the door,” she said. “The question now is whether African institutions and governments will walk through it.”

The 2026 Africa France summit in Nairobi marks a significant diplomatic moment in the evolving relationship between Europe and Africa. For the first time, the summit is being held in an African country with no colonial history under France, signaling an intentional shift in symbolism and geopolitical messaging. It is also taking place against a backdrop of deteriorating French influence in parts of West Africa, where countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have sharply reduced engagement with Paris.

The summit reflects a broader attempt to redefine France’s role in Africa under President Emmanuel Macron and to reposition France within a more competitive global environment. At the same time, it highlights Kenya’s growing ambition under President William Ruto to present itself as a continental diplomatic hub and an economic gateway between Africa and global powers.

The convergence of these ambitions has produced a summit agenda focused on innovation, entrepreneurship, climate finance, artificial intelligence, and security cooperation. However, beneath this forward looking framing lies a more complex continuity of historical relationships, economic interests, and strategic recalibration between Africa and Europe.

Macron’s Repositioning of French Africa Policy

The summit reflects the long term evolution of Macron’s Africa strategy, which has sought to move away from traditional post colonial frameworks toward a more diversified and economically oriented engagement model. This approach emphasizes partnerships in innovation, private sector development, and strategic cooperation beyond France’s former colonial sphere.

A central feature of this policy has been an attempt to reduce France’s reliance on its traditional West African alliances while expanding diplomatic and economic ties across the broader African continent. This includes engagement with non Francophone countries and regional institutions, reflecting a recognition that France’s historical influence in West Africa is increasingly contested.

The emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly through small business development and technology partnerships, reflects a shift toward a neoliberal development model. This model prioritizes private sector growth, investment facilitation, and startup ecosystems as drivers of economic transformation.

The Nairobi summit continues this trajectory by framing Africa France relations around innovation and growth rather than historical legacy or development aid dependency.

Kenya’s Strategic Diplomatic Positioning

For Kenya, the summit represents an opportunity to consolidate its position as a leading diplomatic and economic actor in Africa. By hosting a major international summit outside the traditional Francophone sphere, Kenya is signaling its ambition to transcend linguistic and colonial regional divisions and present itself as a neutral platform for continental and global engagement.

Under Ruto’s leadership, Kenya has increasingly adopted a development narrative centered on entrepreneurship and economic empowerment. This aligns with the broader summit theme of innovation driven growth and private sector expansion. Kenya’s domestic economic discourse, often framed around the concept of a “hustler economy,” mirrors the emphasis on small business development and market based solutions promoted in France’s external engagement strategy.

The convergence of these narratives allows both countries to present their partnership as forward looking and economically dynamic, rather than historically constrained.

Shared Policy Frameworks and Economic Priorities

A key reason the Nairobi summit bears the imprint of both Macron and Ruto is the overlap in their policy priorities. Both leaders emphasize climate finance, technological innovation, security cooperation, and private sector led development as central pillars of modern governance and international partnership.

This shared framework is particularly visible in discussions around artificial intelligence, climate initiatives, and industrial development. These sectors are presented as areas of mutual benefit, offering opportunities for investment, technological transfer, and economic growth.

However, this alignment is also strategic. It allows both sides to redefine their relationship in terms of future oriented sectors rather than historically sensitive areas such as colonial legacy or aid dependency. By focusing on emerging industries, both France and Kenya seek to establish a partnership narrative that is less politically contentious and more economically aspirational.

Historical Continuities Behind the New Partnership

Despite its modern framing, the France Kenya relationship is rooted in long standing historical interactions dating back to the post independence period. France’s early engagement with Kenya and the wider East African region was partly motivated by its broader strategy to balance British influence in Africa while expanding its own role within European and global institutions.

Kenya, in turn, has historically sought to diversify its international partnerships beyond the Commonwealth framework. Engagement with European economic structures in the early post independence period reflected a desire for greater autonomy in trade and development policy.

The current summit therefore reflects not a break from history, but a continuation of evolving pragmatic cooperation shaped by shifting global power dynamics.

Tensions Beneath Strategic Alignment

Despite the apparent convergence of interests, significant structural tensions remain between France and Kenya in areas such as climate policy, global security, and technological labor markets.

On climate change, both countries acknowledge the urgency of environmental action, but differ in priorities and implementation strategies. Kenya, highly vulnerable to droughts and environmental stress, seeks substantial climate finance and structural adaptation support. France and the broader European Union, however, often balance climate commitments with domestic energy and industrial policy considerations.

Similarly, in the field of artificial intelligence, cooperation masks underlying asymmetries. Much of the data processing and content moderation work that supports global AI systems is conducted in lower wage labor markets, including Kenya. This raises questions about value distribution and economic equity within the emerging digital economy.

In global security, divisions are also evident. Diverging responses to international conflicts, including voting patterns in global institutions, highlight differences in geopolitical alignment between African states and Western partners.

The Geopolitical Logic of the Summit

The Nairobi summit reflects a broader shift in international relations, where traditional post colonial hierarchies are being replaced by more transactional and issue based partnerships. Europe’s search for reliable global partners amid geopolitical uncertainty, combined with Africa’s growing strategic autonomy, is reshaping diplomatic engagement.

For France, Africa represents both an economic opportunity and a strategic necessity in an increasingly multipolar world. For Kenya, engagement with France offers access to investment, technology, and diplomatic visibility within global governance structures.

The summit therefore functions as both a symbolic and practical platform for redefining bilateral relations in a rapidly changing global order.

Analysis

The Nairobi Africa France summit illustrates the transformation of international partnerships from historically anchored relationships into forward looking economic and strategic arrangements. While the rhetoric emphasizes innovation, climate action, and entrepreneurship, the underlying dynamics remain shaped by long standing patterns of influence, economic asymmetry, and geopolitical repositioning.

The convergence between Macron’s and Ruto’s priorities reflects a pragmatic alignment rather than a fully equal partnership. Both sides benefit from framing cooperation in terms of emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence and green development, which carry fewer historical burdens and greater political flexibility.

However, the sustainability of this model depends on whether it can deliver inclusive economic outcomes rather than concentrating benefits among narrow elite and corporate actors. Without broader distribution of gains, the partnership risks reproducing familiar inequalities under a modern technological and developmental narrative.

Ultimately, the summit represents a transitional moment in Africa Europe relations, where historical legacies, contemporary economic interests, and future oriented strategic ambitions intersect in a rapidly evolving global system.

With information from Reuters.

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