Welcome to Foreign PolicyOverview of Africa.
Highlights this week: Protesters take to the streets Tunisia and LibyaChad withdraws from the International Criminal Court amid pressure from the United States, and a new political party is launched amid a power struggle Senegal.
Anti-government protests erupted in Tunisia and Libya over the weekend in response to power cuts amid a massive heat wave. These are the latest in trends youth-led mobilization against systemic mismanagement of governments across the continent.
Since Sunday, hundreds of protesters have blocked highways in the Libyan capital Tripoli to protest rising fuel prices and 14-hour power cuts every day as temperatures in some parts of the country soar to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
Although a petroleum country, Libya is facing an electricity crisis resulting from years of underinvestment in critical infrastructure. Countries often use load shedding to deal with aging infrastructure, but frequent blackouts it increased in June. Public frustration over the cuts has fed into broader anti-government sentiment.
The demonstration just happened west of Libyabut the protesters to be called by the removal of both the rival governments of the east and the west, singing“People want justice that punishes those who waste people’s money,” and “Electricity—where have the billions gone?”
Libyan protesters closed branches of the country’s central bank and forced the Mellitah oil and gas station in western Tripoli to temporarily suspend its operations. According to Libyan Heraldthey also pointed to trucks full of soil and debris blocking the entrances to government buildings as well as a government television station and a government telecommunications company.
Meanwhile, thousands of Tunisians is shown in the capital of Tunis on Saturday to celebrate five years since President Kais Saied seized power and suspended parliament. On July 25, 2021, Saied declared a national emergency and began ruling by decree, apparently to fight “hypocrisy, deceit, and theft” of other politicians.
The protests followed several demonstrations in Tunisian cities last week amid power outages and water cuts, with temperatures also reaching more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Between 150 and 200 people have been reported dead since the power cut began on July 12, according to the Organization of Young Doctors in Tunisia. The heat was stirring at least 900 wildfires throughout the country in a period of three days last week.
Protesters over the weekend he demanded Saied’s resignation and the release of political prisoners after Haifa Chebbi, the daughter of jailed opposition leader Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, published Facebook video last week saying that the prison conditions have been difficult for his father, his uncle, and other prisoners. “This is the fourth season they have been in prison. This is the fourth season like this,” he said he said.
Rached Ghannouchi, an 85-year-old opposition leader who is being held in the same prison, collapsed in custody due to the extreme heat, Chebbi added. On July 24, the Committee to Respect Freedom and Human Rights in Tunisia he warned that the cells had “turned into an oven” where “most of the prisoners are elderly.”
Libya and Tunisia have witnessed several anti-government protests in recent years. Libya has faced an economic crisis since the civil war broke out in 2011, and mismanagement of oil revenuesthe rise in the cost of living, and the increase in the public debt. Tunisia’s economy, meanwhile, has collapsed under Saied, with high youth unemployment and fair GDP growth. 2.5 percent last year, compared to the African average of 4.4 percent.
The protests have not led to major political changes in either country. “The failure that continues this summer shows that the concentrated executive regime has not been able, and is structurally unable to fix Tunisia’s basic services,” Ikram Ben Said. he argued in an independent store in Tunisia I promise.
As the war in Iran continues to raise the price of oil and basic goods, there may be more protests in Africa. But some countries are crack downeven before the protesters took to the streets. The government of Tanzania, for example, banned the demonstration that was planned for July 7; when it has not been done, almost 200 people have been arrested for organized protests, including 51 resistance members.
Thursday, July 30: Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube launches the mid-term budget.
Chad is leaving the ICC. Chad has become the latest country in Africa to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) following Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger announcing their withdrawal in September.
Chad said the decision followed a call on Thursday from Frank Garcia, US President Donald Trump’s new assistant secretary of state for African affairs. “The American side expressed its concern about the functioning of this institution and asked Chad to reconsider its accession to the Rome Convention,” Chad’s foreign ministry said in a statement. statement.
Chadian authorities too he said that the investigation of the ICC has unfairly targeted African countries, mentioning that nine of the 13 cases of the court since its inception concerned African countries.
The US is not a member of the ICC, which Trump has long regarded as an adversary. He first imposed sanctions on ICC officials during his first term following his investigation into alleged war crimes by US troops in Afghanistan. Tensions escalated in 2024 after the ICC gave its verdict arrest warrant to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of committing war crimes in Gaza. Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio he swore demolishing the court “brick by brick.”
There is at least one additional geopolitical reason that Chad may want to avoid the ICC. United Nations experts have discovered that Chad can help facilitate the transfer of weapons from the United Arab Emirates to the Rapid Support Force of Sudan (RSF). Earlier this month, the ICC announced a success in its investigation into the RSF’s attacks on the towns of El Geneina and El Fasher, which the United Nations said had “marks of genocide” against non-Arabs.
The new party of Senegal. President of Senegal Bassirou Diomaye Faye was launched his political party on Saturday amid a power struggle with rival rival Ousmane Sonko, who heads the ruling Pastef party. Several officials have resigned from the Pastef party to join Faye’s new party, the Republican Patriots.
Sonko supported Faye to run in the 2024 presidential election as a Pastef candidate after his own efforts disqualification after being convicted of libel and “corrupt youth.” Faye then appointed him prime minister, but the two have clashed in recent months over debt negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Faye fired Sonko as prime minister in May, but Pastef has a majority in parliament, and was elected president of the National Assembly soon after his removal. Sonko then he said that his party will not participate in the new government inaugurated in June, jeopardizing the IMF plan.
The possibility of prosecution. The South African court has done so temporarily suspended a parliamentary inquiry into whether President Cyril Ramaphosa should be charged over the undisclosed theft of $580,000 stored in a sofa at his Phala Phala animal farm in 2020. Ramaphosa has been accused of concealing the theft and money from the police and tax authorities; he maintains that the money was legitimate income from selling buffaloes.
The decision stops the work of the committee of 31 MPs to remove them until the review is completed of the preliminary report of the 2022 independent panel which confirmed that Ramaphosa should be impeached. Even if the charges are ongoing, it is it is impossible that Ramaphosa will be voted out of office.
Is the United States attacking Mali? Last week, a Washington Post article suggested that the Trump administration was considering military action against Islamic militants in Mali, similar to recent air strikes in Nigeria.
However, the Malian government, which cooperates with Russia’s African Force, has said it was not informed about it, adding that any such intervention must respect “the choice of a sovereign country.” They have not received “any confirmation and no official information,” said Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop he told it journalists at a military meeting in Bamako.
Africa is once again China’s main hub for major projects. In the first half of 2026, the Chinese Belt and Road Investment in the continent nearly tripled from the previous year, reaching a historic $33.5 billion, according to a report by the China-based Center for Green Finance and Development and the University of Queensland. The authors suggest that Chinese producers are interested in Africa’s trade preferences in the US and European Union markets.
Big ticket projects include approx 15 billion dollars a renewable energy and ammonia project in Ethiopia, a $10 billion steel mill in Egypt, and 1.4 billion dollars towards grid expansion and logistics through the Tazara railway in Zambia—a rival to the US-backed Lobito Corridor.
At the same time, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development annual report shows that Chinese companies were the biggest investors in green field projects in Africa last year. These include China’s $2.5 billion crude oil oil refinery in Ethiopiaanother 1.1 billion dollars oil refinery in Zambiaand $1.1 billion to expand a copper mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Little ones would say? Togo’s government has spent years torturing pro-democracy protesters in military prisons, and last year, constitutional changes cleared the way for President Faure Gnassingbé’s unlimited rule, Hannah Uguru. report in continent.
Prisoners giving details of being beaten and humiliated by Togolese soldiers. One victim told Amnesty International, “They poured water on us and beat us on the heels with ropes. They hit the soles of our feet and asked us, ‘Are you going to go out and protest again?’
Telegraph Survey. A large network of Hausa language accounts on Telegram are selling access to child sexual abuse material, according to investigation by Alamin Umar and Mansir Muhammed at HumAngle.
Hausa is spoken in West and Central Africa, especially Nigeria and Niger. Until now, the Nigerian government has failed to regulate, and social media platforms do not employ enough administrators who speak African languages, the authors write. “Over three months of monitoring, HumAngle found no public record of investigations or charges targeting the Hausa-language Telegraph system.”
In a statement to HumAngle, Telegram said it has removed more than 305,000 accounts associated with child sexual abuse material in 2026 alone.
