Cape Town – Troubling undercurrents in 2021 – from the US to Afghanistan, Ethiopia or the climate emergency – didn’t send battle deaths soaring or set the world ablaze. But as 2022 gains ground, the International Crisis Group Crisis says many bad situations around the world could easily get worse, especially on the African continent.
As for Covid-19, the pandemic has exacerbated the world’s worst humanitarian disasters and propelled the impoverishment, rising living costs, inequality, and joblessness that fuel popular anger.
It had a hand this past year in a power grab in Tunisia, Sudan’s coup, and protests in Colombia.
The economic hurt Covid-19 is unleashing could strain some countries to a breaking point, say researchers.
Although it’s a leap from discontent to protest, from protest to crisis, and from crisis to conflict, the pandemic’s worst symptoms may yet lie ahead.
According to an International Crisis Group report, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appeared to be turning the page on decades of repressive rule.
Instead, more than a year of fighting between Abiy’s federal army and forces from the northern Tigray region has torn the country apart.
Fighting has already killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted millions of Ethiopians from their homes.
The second conflict to focus on in Africa in 2022 according to International Crisis Group is, growing Islamist militancy in Africa.
Islamist militancy on the continent is nothing new, but revolts linked to the Islamic State and al Qaeda have surged in recent years, says the group.
Parts of the Sahel have seen spiraling bloodshed, mostly due to fighting involving jihadis, whose reach has extended from northern Mali to the country’s centre, into Niger, and across rural Burkina Faso, says the International group.
ANA