Despite Africa’s immense potential, the pace of development is not keeping up with Africans’ needs. This deficit has helped fuel a troubling rise in poverty, conflict and coups across the continent, all while global issues like climate change and strategic competition begin to take their own toll. USIP spoke with Afrobarometer’s Joe Asunka, Open Society Foundations’ Mooya Nyaundi and the Institute for Security Studies’ Jakkie Cillers at the Africa Futures Summit about the challenges facing the African continent — and how the international community can partner with African leaders to harness Africa’s development potential and promote stable, democratic governance.

Type: Blog

Democracy & Governance;  Economics

Organized crime is a significant driver of conflict globally. It preys on weak governance, slack law enforcement, and inadequate regulation. It tears at the fabric of societies by empowering and enriching armed actors and fueling violent conflict. In Asia, criminal groups prop up corrupt and dangerous regimes from Myanmar to North Korea, posing a direct threat to regional stability.

Type: Report

Democracy & Governance;  Economics;  Global Policy;  Human Rights

As coups and other setbacks have stymied military-led efforts to stem upheavals in West Africa and the Sahel, a potent new constituency of leaders has just gathered to plan nonviolent strategies to stabilize their own core area of the region: northern Nigeria. In West Africa’s demographic giant, economic crisis is exacerbating intercommunal conflicts, crime and other violence — and Nigeria’s federalism gives vital roles to its states in addressing roots of these problems. Ten recently elected state governors gathered in Washington last month with peacebuilding and development experts, business leaders and senior U.S. officials; they resolved to strengthen and coordinate state-level stabilization strategies — an initiative that international partners should support.

Type: Analysis

Democracy & Governance

Despite boasting one of the highest GDPs per capita in Africa, nearly two in five Gabonese live in poverty. That inequality — combined with decades of monolithic rule under the Bongo family — were contributing factors to Gabon’s military coup last August. USIP spoke with Charles M'bah, Gabon’s minister of public accounts, about what the people of Gabon expect from the current political transition and how the international community can help bolster Gabon’s democratic and economic development.

Type: Blog

Democracy & Governance;  Economics