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NEED TO KNOW

Forward, March

AFRICA

Voters in more than 17 African countries made up a sizable portion of the estimated 3.7 billion people who cast ballots across the globe in 2024. Now, with the year of elections drawing to a close, many Africans are looking ahead to 2025 as the “year of momentum.”

For starters, Africans across the continent will be marking a slew of landmark occasions as a launch pad for that momentum. Mozambique, Cabo Verde, and São Tomé and Principe will celebrate 50 years of independence from Portuguese colonial rule, while Gambia will commemorate the 60th anniversary of its independence from the United Kingdom. Later in the year, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will turn 50.

Of course, these are just some of the planned events in 2025, many being mainly symbolic in significance, but they can be seen as important junctures to take stock of the progress that African countries have made in recent years. Many Africans are also hoping they will be potential sources of impetus for their governments and regional institutions to address key issues still facing the continent, like lingering economic troubles, longstanding security challenges, and the worsening effects of climate change.

On the economic front, Africa as a whole is projected to grow by more than 4 percent, a modest but firm clip that underlines its economies’ resilience in the face of multiple and overlapping shocks. East Africa is once again expected to lead the charge as the continent’s best-performing region, with the African Development Bank projecting that Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Djibouti will grow at rates of 6 percent or more. Sky-high inflation rates and currency volatility in powerhouses like Nigeria, Angola, and Egypt are expected to ease, while fiscal deficits are projected to stabilize after pandemic-induced spikes.

However, many countries are staring at debt challenges that threaten their efforts to achieve macroeconomic stability, growth, and development. More than half of the continent’s low-income nations are either in debt distress or at high risk of it, underlining the importance of finding and implementing far-reaching solutions. Efforts at industrialization and increasing productivity in agriculture will continue apace, with governments in a broad range of countries – including Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ethiopia – keen to consolidate key reforms and interventions made in recent years.

Overall, Africa’s positive economic outlook must nevertheless be seen through a lens of cautious optimism given the global headwinds that can stall its momentum, including geopolitical tensions, disruptive technologies, and extreme weather conditions. Moreover, Africa’s anticipated growth outlook in 2025 is heterogeneous across different countries, regions, and economic clusters, reflecting variances in the composition of economies and the capacity of governments to craft policy responses to external influences. Raising domestic revenue, particularly from taxes, will remain a pressing challenge facing African governments in financing their transformation agenda. To mitigate the risks of tailwinds, they must demonstrate flexibility with monetary policy and exchange rates, promote more local production while diversifying sources of imports, and implement reforms to strengthen the management of public finances.

Meanwhile, Africa’s peace, security, and governance landscape is challenging and remains fraught with the risk of deterioration, albeit with silver linings. The African Union and other African regional institutions continue to struggle to strike a balance between the expectations of the continent’s citizens, as well as of the international community, and the limited means by which they can enforce institutional norms.

Conflict hot spots in the central Sahel (Mali, Niger, for example), the Horn of Africa (Somalia), the Great Lakes (Eastern Congo), and North Africa (Libya) as well as Sudan showed little signs of abating in 2024, and they will likely remain intractable next year amid shifting local and international dynamics.

Waves of social unrest triggered by disillusionment with the status quo—highlighted by protests that gripped Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania in 2024 – will likely reoccur next year, as the conditions that gave rise to such uprisings have not subsided and governments are either unwilling or unable to credibly respond to them. The perceived boost to democratic rule in 2024 based on the losses suffered by ruling parties in South Africa and Botswana was counterbalanced by sham elections in Chad, repression in Rwanda, and the post-election violence in Mozambique.

While the West Africa region did not see a successful coup attempt for the first time since 2020, the ruling juntas in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso that hold power in several capitals there have further entrenched their authority by cracking down on dissent and successfully resisting calls by ECOWAS to hold elections that would return power to civilians. The odds that they will change course in 2025 are slim, as there is little external pressure on them to do so, and the security crises that they cited as reason for overthrowing civilian leaders in the first place continue to provide them with a useful pretext to hold onto power indefinitely.

The conduct of credible elections in Ghana and Senegal, where opposition candidates defeated rivals from their respective ruling parties, provided a timely injection of optimism for ECOWAS and civil society groups in the region as well as a useful corrective to exaggerated claims of the demise of democracy in West Africa. Still, the positive atmosphere created by those two polls might not carry over into 2025, when incumbent presidents in Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and Cameroon are poised to seek and win reelections that, especially in the latter two, are unlikely to be free and fair.

On the international scene, African governments have responded to the imminent return of US President-elect Donald Trump to the White House with a mixture of pragmatism and cautious optimism. While they have few illusions about Trump’s lack of interest in, and antagonism toward, Africa, many of the continent’s leaders nonetheless believe that his transactionalism, willingness to “compete” for influence with China, and disregard for the international climate agenda could create opportunities for partnerships with Washington that could benefit their countries.

Their optimism seems inflated given that Trump’s administration will likely oppose their positions on many other key African priorities, like debt alleviation and climate finance. But it is useful for African policymakers to identify key areas with which they can attempt to forge positive relations with Washington, as they essentially have no other choice. Trump’s first administration opposed a renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act – an important toolkit of Washington’s engagement with the continent – beyond its sunset in 2025. But there might be scope for African governments to influence other members of his administration as well as lawmakers in the US Congress to back its renewal next year.

African efforts to reform multilateral institutions and the global financial architecture will also hit a snag with Trump’s return to office. He has threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on members of the BRICS organization – which now includes Egypt and Ethiopia, in addition to South Africa – if the group proceeds with its proposal to create a rival currency to the US dollar. Trump’s second administration will also likely withdraw the US once again from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and stand in the way of efforts by countries in the Global South to pressure affluent, industrialized nations into funding their shift to low-carbon economies.

The proposal by outgoing US President Joe Biden’s administration to create two seats for Africa on the United Nations Security Council is unlikely to receive Trump’s enthusiastic support, and his administration will likely block any tangible reform efforts within international financial institutions that would empower Africa. Should that be the case, African governments and regional institutions will need to demonstrate their resolve and a unity of purpose by adopting a common position on key reforms and leveraging their diplomatic partnerships with like-minded nations from the Global South, while showing flexibility where possible.

Meanwhile, relations with China, the most important foreign partner for the continent as a whole, are at a critical juncture.

China’s footprint on the continent is currently shifting away from a focus on heavy infrastructure due to Beijing’s domestic uncertainties as well as mixed returns on its overseas investments. The reduction of its financial commitments in Africa as a result of this evolution has led many Africans to believe that Beijing’s interest is waning. Chinese officials insist that this is not the case, but the sizable declines in loans and other financial investments from the peaks of the 2010s show otherwise.

To be sure, African countries’ relations with Beijing will likely remain strong, but the era of their heavy dependence on Chinese largesse to fund domestic public works is likely over. This realization could – and should – cause African governments to deepen their collaboration with other partners and become more prudent with public resources. Indeed, African voters must play a role in creating the domestic pressure needed for that to happen.

All things considered, 2025 could present key opportunities for African states to achieve economic growth, reduce poverty, and strengthen societal stability despite what is shaping up to be a challenging global environment. To that end, governments should lean into the vitality, ingenuity, and dynamism of the continent’s young people as assets, rather than repressing them. Of course, the challenges faced by African societies will not immediately disappear, and a sense of realism regarding the depth of the difficulties that lie ahead is needed.

Chris Olaoluwa Ògúnmọ́dẹdé is an editor, analyst, and consultant who writes about African politics, security, and foreign relations, with a focus on West Africa.

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