Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: South Sudan inches closer to being drawn into Sudan’s civil war, African nations react to the United States’ Venezuela operation, and Guinea’s junta leader wins the country’s first postcoup election.
Sudan-South Sudan Tensions
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) captured more than 10 South Sudanese nationals fighting alongside the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in central Sudan’s Kordofan region last week, SAF sources told Al Jazeera. The incident highlights growing tensions between the SAF and South Sudan, which the former has accused of supporting the RSF in Sudan’s civil war.
The ongoing siege in Kordofan risks further drawing South Sudan into the conflict, even as the country is on the cusp of civil war itself, facing an ongoing power struggle between President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar.
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in July 2011, ending decades of civil war. Two years later, another civil war erupted in South Sudan after Kiir sacked Machar, his vice president. The conflict killed around 400,000 people and ended with a 2018 power-sharing deal, which deteriorated last March.
Since late 2024, the SAF has alleged that armed groups from South Sudan are fighting alongside the RSF. Last February, the RSF formed an alliance with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu—an offshoot of South Sudan’s SPLM, which spearheaded the country’s independence push and now runs the government under Kiir.
Last March, then-Sudanese Minerals Minister Mohamed Bashir Abunommo accused South Sudan of allowing the United Arab Emirates—a key RSF backer—to establish an “aggression base” under the guise of a field hospital in Aweil East near the Sudanese border. Abunommo also alleged that the South Sudanese government was ignoring the recruitment of its citizens into the RSF and facilitating Sudanese gold smuggling to the UAE. South Sudan denied the claims.
In July, the RSF and SPLM-N formed a parallel Sudanese government along with other armed supporters. Sudan’s military believes that Kiir is backing this new RSF alliance.
Analysts fear that oil may further drag Juba into Sudan’s conflict. Landlocked South Sudan relies on oil for more than 90 percent of government revenue, and its oil passes through pipelines in Sudan’s bordering Heglig oil field in West Kordofan state.
After the RSF announced that it had seized Heglig on Dec. 8, Juba reached a rare tripartite agreement with the SAF and RSF to allow South Sudanese troops to secure the facility and guarantee exports of oil via Heglig to Port Sudan. The facility processes about 130,000 barrels of South Sudanese oil per day. By deploying its army to Heglig, South Sudan is now directly involved in managing a strategic flashpoint in Sudan’s civil war.
Meanwhile, in Sudan, intense fighting in South Kordofan has driven more than 1,500 civilians into the city of Kosti in neighboring White Nile state. Camps in the city’s outskirts are overcrowded amid mass displacement and an international aid shortage.
The United Nations World Food Program announced last month that it would cut back on food rations in Sudan due to a lack of funding, even as the country is gripped by famine.
In November, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification confirmed famine in the country for the second time in less than a year, noting that an estimated 21.2 million people—nearly half of the population—face acute food insecurity. Around 825,000 children are projected to suffer from severe malnutrition in 2026, according to UNICEF.
U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk has said the Kordofan region could face a wave of atrocities similar to the widespread sexual abuse and killings documented in El Fasher last year.
The Week Ahead
Sunday, Jan. 11: Benin holds national assembly elections.
What We’re Watching
Venezuela reactions. South Africa was the first African nation to issue a firm statement after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro over the weekend.
Pretoria described Washington’s actions as “unlawful, unilateral force” that clearly violated the U.N. Charter. “History has repeatedly demonstrated that military invasions against sovereign states yield only instability and deepening crisis,” it stated.
South Africa’s statement was followed by similar condemnations from Chad, Ghana, and Namibia. The Ghanaian government said U.S. President Donald Trump’s promises to “run” Venezuela and take control of its oil reserves were “reminiscent of the colonial and imperialist era and should have no place in the contemporary global order.”
Meanwhile, the African Union noted that it was following Maduro’s “abduction” with “grave concern.” And although the Economic Community of West African States regional bloc released a statement on Venezuela, it did not directly mention the United States and instead called for the “international community” to “respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other.”
Nigeria attacks. At least 30 people were killed and several others abducted after a night raid by gangs in the village of Kasuwan-Daji in Nigeria’s Niger state on Saturday. This came a day after gangs led a night raid in Bong village in Plateau state, also in North Central Nigeria, which killed at least seven people.
Nigeria’s north has long faced violence from criminal gangs and Islamist extremists raiding farms and kidnapping people for ransom.
According to Nigerian media, attacks in the north have spiked since the U.S. bombing of Islamist targets in northwestern Sokoto state on Dec. 25. Trump has framed the region’s violence as anti-Christian, although Nigerians of all faiths have been affected by rising insecurity.
Guinea election. Gen. Mamady Doumbouya, who seized power in a coup in 2021, has predictably won Guinea’s Dec. 28 presidential election.
Doumbouya secured more than 86 percent of the vote, according to results from an electoral body that his junta created after abolishing the previous independent body. More than 50 political parties were dissolved, and Doumbouya’s main opponents were barred prior to the election.
Guinea’s constitution previously prevented junta members from running in democratic elections, but a constitutional change last September dropped that restriction and extended the presidential term from five to seven years.
Botswana’s Moscow embassy. Botswana is set to open an embassy in Moscow as it seeks to draw Russian investors to its rare-earth minerals and diamonds, according to Russian state news agency TASS.
The diamond industry accounts for around 80 percent of Botswana’s exports and a quarter of its GDP, but the global diamond market has crashed in recent years as consumers increasingly turn to lab-grown diamonds.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- Trump Sets a Devastating Precedent in Venezuela by Michael Hirsh
- 10 Conflicts to Watch in 2026 by Comfort Ero and Richard Atwood
- Trump: ‘We Are Going to Run’ Venezuela by Rishi Iyengar and John Haltiwanger
What We’re Reading
Somaliland stance? Security analysts are keeping a close eye on Ethiopia following Israel’s historic recognition of Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland in December.
According to Ethiopia’s Reporter newspaper, landlocked Ethiopia has a lot at stake in how it chooses to approach Somaliland, its neighbor on the Red Sea, since Addis Ababa considers maritime access an existential issue.
“If Ethiopia intends, eventually, to recognize Somaliland—and all evidence suggests that this is where strategic logic points—it must build the capacity to withstand the pressure that recognition will bring,” the outlet reports.
Soccer success? As the Africa Cup of Nations continues in Morocco, Cherif Sadio analyzes the rise of Senegalese soccer stars despite a lack of domestic funding in Africa Is a Country.
Sadio Mané, for example, scored the winning penalty that beat Egypt and clinched Senegal’s first Africa Cup of Nations trophy in 2022. The former Liverpool and Bayern Munich player is among many Senegalese playing for overseas clubs.
“Behind this façade of success, however, another picture emerges … a contrasting economic reality marked by underfunded clubs, underpaid players, and infrastructure lagging behind the country’s ambitions,” Sadio writes.
Foreign mercenaries. Companies founded by individuals sanctioned by the United States for hiring Colombian mercenaries to fight alongside the RSF in Sudan are registered in London, according to an investigation by Mark Townsend in the Guardian.
“It’s still harder to join a gym in most cases than to set up a UK company,” Mike Lewis, a former member of the U.N. panel of experts on Sudan, told Townsend. “As a result, there is a long, well publicised history of UK shell companies being used to broker weapons and military assistance to embargoed actors in Sudan, South Sudan, Libya, North Korea—even to [the Islamic State].”