Ten Biggest Africa Stories of 2010

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Though I’ve lived in and write about the gigantic, endlessly fascinating continent that is Africa, I still find it difficult to keep up with the myriad of elections, celebrations, conflicts, and sporting matches that take place there each year. 2010 was no exception. Among the elating, disturbing, and promising, here’s what caught my eye.

  1. The World Cup, held in South Africa this past summer, unified Africans (soccer fans and casual watchers alike) in a fevered effort to cheer an African team to victory. Even though team rivalries have traditionally put nations like Nigeria and Ghana at odds, even hardened Lagosians were rooting for Ghana’s Black Stars as they neared the prize. And despite fears of crime, South Africa proved it could pull off an international tournament with relative ease.

  2. A gay-rights movement in East Africa, particularly Uganda and Kenya, has strengthened in opposition to anti-homosexuality bills and campaigns that have surfaced in Uganda (which proposed to punish gays with death), Kenya, Rwanda, and Malawi. While Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni appears to be bowing to international pressure to kill his parliament’s bill, Kenya’s government said late last month that it plans to identify and imprison gays living in the country. For activists already at peril because of their sexual orientation, this announcement may be their biggest hurdle yet.

  3. Guinea’s presidential election and consequent runoff this year were carried off with surprisingly little discord, and the poll led to a smooth transition from military to democratic rule that is comparatively unprecedented in the region. The opposition leader Alpha Condé won the vote, which observers deemed the first free race since Guinea’s 1958 independence from France. In an added twist of good faith, the African Union has appointed outgoing junta leader General Sekouba Konate as head of its peacekeeping force—and also helped insure that Konate will keep his word and leave the top office without protest.

  4. Shell’s oil spills in Nigeria may have only been brought to Americans’ attention after a massive spill happened in our own waters, but residents of Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta have been living in the thick toxic liquid for years, as the substance poisons their water, land, and vegetation. The tug-of-war between the Delta’s armed rebel groups—who say they are fighting for their rightful shares of the oil profits so that their state can be developed—and Shell, supported by the Nigerian government, has no end in sight. Rebels kidnap foreign workers and sabotage pipelines, and still Shell pumps millions of barrels of oil out of the Niger Delta per year, as millions more leak into the Delta’s black rivers.

  5. Nigeria’s Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist sect, has become synonymous with the religious violence that has splintered the north between Muslims and Christians. This year alone, the group set a police station ablaze in the northern city of Maiduguri, not long after they successfully orchestrated a mass prison break. Since last year, over two thousand Christians and Muslims have been killed by violence that was ignited by Boko Haram assassinations and state force counterattacks. As Nigerians living in the north face a sense of both being uprooted and unsafe, the Boko Haram (said to be inspired by the Taliban) has only intensified its reign of havoc.

  6. The International Criminal Court’s push for justice in Kenya after the East African nation’s 2007 presidential election is admirable and overdue. In 2008, this is what the crisis looked like: riots, people burned and hacked to death, and flying bullets and bows and arrows. Incumbent President Kibaki, an ethnic Kikuyu, defeated Raila Odinga, a Luo, in a race opposition supporters claimed was rigged. Brutal ethnic clashes began, blocking trade routes, killing over a thousand, displacing half a million, and scaring off tourists, which brought Kenya’s biggest industry to its knees.

When I returned to Kenya earlier this year, after a multiparty coalition was supposed to piece Kenya back together, this is what the crisis looked like: communities dangerously split along ethnic lines and the government refusing to work with the I.C.C. to determine who was responsible for inciting the violence. The I.C.C., whose lead prosecutor was cheered by a crowd when he visited a Nairobi slum, said that it plans to soon release a list of suspects (likely including many government officials), much to the ire of people like William Ruto, an opposition-party minister who was recently suspended for corruption.

  1. South Sudan’s imminent independence has been dissected by several media outlets, along with the country’s potential for conflict, as the Khartoum government attempts to maintain control over oil fields and other natural resources under the south’s domain. But the stakes are indeed high. If next month’s independence referendum does produce the world’s newest nation, many Sudanese won’t be happy, and, with little infrastructure, South Sudan will have to build a country from scratch.

  2. Ivory Coast’s disastrous presidential runoff has thrown the country into turmoil. After the opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara was named the winner this month, incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo wouldn’t accept the decision. A day later, the constitutional council overturned the poll results, naming Gbagbo the winner. Both men refuse to yield, as violent protests erupt, hundreds leave their homes, and the United Nations, United States, and other foreign governments exert pressure on Gbagbo to step down.

  3. Rwanda’s presidential election went off without a hitch, as expected, though in the lead-up to the race, Rwandans witnessed the suppression of independent press and opposition parties (including the murder of an opposition leader), most of which can be traced back to the government. Nevertheless, with American support, President Paul Kagame maintains tight control over the nation.

I am still wondering, though, about Iwawa, a remote Rwandan island featured in the Times earlier this year. Kagame has been shipping street children, beggars, petty criminals, and the mentally ill to Iwawa, supposedly for rehabilitation, but none of the imprisoned have been heard from for months, and reports of abuse float back to the capital.

  1. The summer’s bombings in Uganda, in the capital city of Kampala, have been traced to the Somali militant group the Shabab, which is linked to Al Qaeda. The pair of bombings killed seventy-four people who were watching World Cup games, and they came as a shock to the relatively peaceful country. The Shabab said that the attacks were in retribution for Uganda’s troop presence in Somalia, where Uganda leads the weak African Union peacekeeping force and provides training grounds for the Somali transitional government’s soldiers (with active U.S. support). In defiant response, Uganda said it will increase its troops in Somalia.

Read more from The New Yorker’s 2010: The Year in Review.