Africa & Global Power

M obile money transformed how Africans transact. It has not yet transformed African poverty. Africa’s fintech story is one of the most genuinely impressive in global technology. A continent that once lagged in banking infrastructure has, in the space of two decades, become the undisputed world leader in mobile money. The numbers are staggering: over 500 million active mobile money accounts, processing more than $830 billion in transactions annually. [1] By 2024, 40 percent of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa had a mobile money account — up from just 27 percent in 2021, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 report. [2] But a revolution in transaction volume is not automatically a revolution in human welfare. Africa’s fintech sector has a reach problem, an equity problem, and a depth problem — and the continent’s growing class of boosters tends to gloss over all three. The Numbers Tell Two Stories The optimistic story is real. Mobile money has brought millions of prev...

  W hen the rules only apply to some, calling it an ‘order’ becomes an act of political theatre. The phrase “rules-based international order” is among the most repeated in the vocabulary of Western diplomacy. It appears in summit communiqués, foreign ministry speeches, and think-tank reports with the regularity of a liturgical refrain. It is invoked to condemn Russian aggression in Ukraine, to justify sanctions against authoritarian governments, and to defend the architecture of post-World War II multilateral institutions. From the vantage point of the Global South — and particularly from Africa — the phrase lands differently. Not as a description of how the world actually works, but as a description of how its architects wish others to believe it works. The gap between those two things is widening. And the diplomatic consequences of that gap are reshaping the international system. What the ‘Order’ Actually Is The rules-based international order (RIO) refers broadly to ...

  R emoving the fuel subsidy was the easy part. Fixing what came after is where Tinubu’s presidency will be judged. On May 29, 2023, in the first sentence of his inaugural speech, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared: “fuel subsidy is gone.” Four words that ended a policy Nigeria had maintained for over five decades. They were also the opening shot of the most consequential — and most contested — economic reform programme in the country’s democratic history. Two years on, the results are deeply contradictory. The macroeconomic indicators have moved, some impressively. The lived reality of ordinary Nigerians remains, for many, worse than it was the day Tinubu took office. Both things are true. And holding both things simultaneously is the only honest way to assess where Nigeria stands. What the Numbers Say: Macro Gains Are Real The fiscal logic behind the reforms was always sound. The fuel subsidy was consuming between N3 trillion and N4 trillion annually — funds the gov...

A frica is no longer a passive recipient of foreign interest — it is the arena where 21st-century great power competition is being decided. The original Scramble for Africa, formalised at the 1884 Berlin Conference, took less than two decades to partition an entire continent among European powers. Today’s competition is less cartographic but no less consequential. It is being fought across port concessions, military basing agreements, debt instruments, and diplomatic votes in multilateral institutions. The actors have multiplied. The stakes — for Africa’s sovereignty, development, and strategic autonomy — are higher than they have been in generations. This piece is the first in a 30-day series examining the forces shaping Africa and the world. There is no better place to begin than the question that underlies almost every other: who wants what from Africa, and what are Africans doing about it? China: Infrastructure as Influence China’s engagement with Africa over the past t...