Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to Nigeria highlight the country’s internal rifts, Tanzania’s government charges protesters with treason, and the African Union sounds the alarm in Mali.
Over the weekend, protests against U.S. military intervention popped up in the Nigerian cities of Lagos and Kano following U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent threat to go “guns-a-blazing” into Africa’s most populous country over false claims of Christian persecution.
Demonstrators chanted “America, leave us alone.” They held placards that read, “Nigerians united against U.S. threat of military invasion” and “America wants to control our resources.” The protests may have been modest, but they reflect rising concern among Nigerians as their patience wanes for their government to respond decisively to Trump’s threats.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s administration has urged the public to stay calm while it pursues diplomacy with Washington. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s newly appointed army chief , Lt. Gen. Waidi Shaibu, has vowed to intensify operations in the country’s north, which has been under attack by Islamists for decades.
So far, the government’s mixed and uncoordinated response to Trump has angered many Nigerians. For instance, while Senate President Godswill Akpabio has been hesitant to criticize Trump’s actions, his deputy, Barau Jibrin, has been blunter.
“I am not scared of Trump,” Jibrin said last week. “He is saying lies about our country, and we have the right to dispute it.” Akpabio then told the Senate clerk to delete Jibrin’s comments from the official record, arguing that Jibrin had “spoken out of tune.”
U.S.-Nigerian ties have weakened this year over trade and immigration disputes. In the face of an unpredictable Trump administration, Abuja has sought to diversify its economy, increasing exports to China; India; South Africa; and its largest foreign investor, the United Kingdom.
“If non-oil revenue is doing well, then have no fear of whatever Trump is doing on the other side,” Tinubu said in September. He has not visited the United States since Trump reentered office.
Bilateral relations deteriorated precipitously on Oct. 31, when Trump redesignated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern”—a label for nations that Washington deems to have severely violated religious freedoms—and claimed on Truth Social that Christianity was “facing an existential threat in Nigeria.”
The following day, Trump ordered the U.S. Defense Department to prepare for potential military action and threatened to cut all aid to Nigeria if its government continued to allow “Islamic Terrorists” to “attack our CHERISHED CHRISTIANS.”
Claims of a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria have circulated among Republicans and the U.S. evangelical community for years, despite limited data for this. (Washington also named Nigeria as a country of particular concern during Trump’s first term.) But in recent months, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. evangelical leaders had been ramping up pressure on Trump to act.
Nigeria’s population of 230 million is roughly split between Christians and Muslims. Interfaith marriages are common; Tinubu is a Muslim, while his wife, former Sen. Oluremi Tinubu, is an ordained pastor. As insecurity has risen in the country, Nigerians of all faiths have experienced increased violence.
Over the past year, Islamist groups—such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province—have ramped up operations in the northeast, a predominantly Muslim region. In northwest, central, and southeast Nigeria, armed gangs that are not ideologically driven have increased kidnapping-for-ransom operations and taxed farmers to access their lands, according to data from ACLED, an independent monitoring service.
Meanwhile, climate change and the Islamist insurgency have pushed Fulani herding communities, which are primarily Muslim, into areas that are mainly Christian, leading to deadly clashes over land and water access.
Given that Nigeria is a fragile state with complex social divisions, some Nigerians fear that Trump’s latest moves could worsen domestic tensions.
“Religion, money, regional divisions, and volatile politics have produced a combustible situation—one that could turn into a roaring fire. U.S. action would add fuel to this conflagration, not quench it,” Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún wrote last week in Foreign Policy.
Tinubu’s administration is feeling the heat. He is under increased pressure to swiftly appoint an ambassador to the United States—after recalling all Nigerian ambassadors worldwide when he took office in 2023—and tackle the insecurity that has festered for decades. Several opposition politicians have even welcomed U.S. help to address insecurity or called on Tinubu to either end the violence or resign.
Wednesday, Nov. 12, to Thursday, Nov. 13: The European Union-Zambian Business Forum is held in Lusaka, Zambia.
Thursday, Nov. 13: The United Nations Security Council meets to extend its peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic, whose mandate is set to expire on Nov. 15.
Tuesday, Nov. 18: The U.N. Security Council holds an open briefing on peace consolidation in West Africa.
Tanzanian protest aftermath. Tanzania has charged more than 100 people with treason following protests sparked by the country’s Oct. 29 presidential election. Incumbent President Samia Suluhu Hassan claims that she won with nearly 98 percent of the vote in what political observers have described as a “staged” and “violent” election.
Hassan’s ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party and its predecessor have maintained an iron grip on power since independence in 1961. She effectively ran unopposed, as her two main opponents were struck off the ballot. Main opposition party Chadema and rights activists have said that at least 1,000 protesters were shot dead during the demonstrations—a figure disputed by the government.
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of Canada, Norway, and the United Kingdom cited “credible reports of a large number of fatalities and significant injuries.” Several videos have emerged online showing security forces firing live rounds at unarmed civilians. For now, the state’s use of deadly force has silenced opposition in the country.
AU sounds alarm in Mali. The African Union on Sunday called for urgent international intervention in Mali over an ongoing fuel blockade in the capital of Bamako by al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). The blockade has led to the temporary closure of schools and businesses, as well as shortages of essential supplies.
In a statement, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, the chairperson of the African Union Commission, called for “enhanced cooperation, intelligence sharing, and sustained support” across Sahel nations affected by insurgency.
JNIM emerged in 2017 as a coalition of several jihadi groups that the French military had pushed back in northern Mali in 2012. In recent years, its attacks across the Sahel have surged. On Monday, Malian authorities said that suspected jihadis had executed a pro-army TikTok influencer in front of a crowd in northern Timbuktu.
Uganda’s $4 billion refinery. The Ugandan government has said it is on target to open a $4 billion oil refinery within five years. The facility, which is partly financed by the Dubai-based Alpha MBM Investments, will be designed for a 60,000-barrel-per-day capacity and is expected to supply refined oil to Uganda’s neighbors.
In recent years, several African nations, including Nigeria, have faced fuel shortages due to the cost of importing refined oil, despite being resource-rich in crude oil.
Now, more African countries are looking to develop their own refineries, including Ethiopia and Niger, which are partnering with Chinese and Canadian firms, respectively. Nigeria’s $20 billion Dangote Refinery, which opened in 2023, has already cut the country’s fuel imports by half.
The United Kingdom recently selected British-Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr.’s semi-autobiographical directorial debut, My Father’s Shadow, as its Oscar submission for best international feature film at the 2026 Academy Awards.
The film is set in Lagos and Ibadan during Nigeria’s 1993 coup, when the military annulled the results of the presidential election and Gen. Sani Abacha seized power. It was the first Nigerian movie in the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, where it won a Caméra d’Or special mention in the “un certain regard” category in May.
As a Nigerian and British co-production, it was eligible for Oscar submission by either country. (The Nigerian Official Selection Committee declined to submit a film this year.)
It is unclear whether the academy will approve the submission. The Nigerian film industry, known as Nollywood, is underrepresented in foreign film award categories with language requirements because, as a former British colony, its official language is English.
In 2019, Nigeria’s first-ever Oscar submission, Lionheart, was disqualified because it did not have “predominantly non-English dialogue.” My Father’s Shadow features a mix of spoken Nigerian pidgin and Yoruba, but most of the dialogue is also in English.
Regardless of whether the film is accepted, its selection by the United Kingdom speaks to the country’s close relationship with Nigeria, as both nations continue to influence each other culturally decades after the end of colonialism.
Why the AU lacks teeth. In Foreign Policy, columnist Howard French argues that the African Union has been missing in action when it comes to the continent’s most important issues, including Sudan’s civil war, the conflict in eastern Congo, numerous disputed elections, and the U.S. threat of military action in Nigeria.
“Instead of defending African interests on the world stage … the AU instead became a back-scratching club of heads of state,” he writes.
Africa’s largest investor. For the first time since 2012, the United States was Africa’s largest foreign direct investor in 2023, according to the latest annual data, Egon Cossou reports for the BBC.
The United States invested $7.8 billion in Africa that year, compared with China’s $4 billion, according to the China Africa Research Initiative of Johns Hopkins University. The top beneficiaries in 2023 were Egypt, South Africa, and Nigeria.
