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CSIS | Center for Strategic and International Studies

Fearless music activists. Savvy tech entrepreneurs. Social disrupters. Into Africa shatters narratives that dominate U.S. perceptions of Africa. With the world’s youngest population, the decisions made across Africa today—good or bad—will shape the world’s future. Featuring in-depth interviews, the CSIS Africa Program sits down with policymakers, journalists, academics, and other trailblazers in African affairs to shine a spotlight on the people and stories shaping cultural, political, and economic trends across the continent today and for decades to come.

Into Africa

As Nigeria prepares for its 2027 elections, the country faces a critical test. Trust in electoral institutions is weakening, young voters are increasingly disillusioned, and demands for accountability are growing louder. These challenges extend beyond Nigeria, as countries across Africa grapple with questions of democratic credibility, governance, and public trust amid declining funding for democracy and governance programs. Despite these challenges, citizens and civil society across the continent continue to push for more accountable and responsive governance. On this episode of Into Africa, Oge Onubogu is joined by Samson Itodo, Executive Director of YIAGA Africa, to discuss Nigeria’s electoral landscape and the governance deficit at the heart of many of its challenges. Can Nigerians trust the 2027 elections, and what will it take to rebuild public confidence in the institutions that underpin democratic governance?

Nigeria 2027: Can Nigerians Trust the 2027 Election?

Africa’s economic future will be shaped in part by the movement of people, skills, and labor across the continent. Yet migration remains one of the most debated and politically sensitive issues in Africa and around the world, raising questions about jobs, borders, demographics, and social cohesion. Recent attacks against migrants in South Africa have brought these debates back into sharp focus, even as the African Union and the African Continental Free Trade Area push for deeper regional integration.

In this episode of Into Africa, Oge Onubogu speaks with Amanda Bisong, a policy expert and researcher on migration and labor mobility, and Daniel Yu, founding partner of the Africa Jobs Fund and co-founder and former CEO of Wasoko, about the realities of migration across Africa, the gap between political rhetoric and economic evidence, and what greater labor mobility could mean for the continent’s growth and integration.

Africa on the Move: Migration, Labor Mobility, and Integration

The 2026 men's World Cup was a landmark for African football. Nine of ten African sides cleared the group stage, a continental record, yet only Morocco and Egypt reached the round of 16. In this Youth Roundtable, Catherine Nzuki is joined by Janine Anthony, an award-winning broadcaster who founded LadiesMarch, Africa's first all-women women's soccer network, and was the BBC World Service's first African female commentator to run lead commentaries at a major men's football tournament (the Africa Cup of Nations); and Chibuogwu Nnadiegbulam, a journalist with the International Sport Press Association and an editor with LadiesMarch.

 

Together they unpack what drove the group-stage surge, from expanded participation fees to the competitive edge of AFCON, and why so many campaigns unraveled after the 80th minute. They discuss game management and investment African football needs before 2030. They also discuss WAFCON 2026, where early upsets have already reshaped expectations. Janine and Chibuogwu make the case for why the women's game, long under-resourced and under-covered, deserves the same investment as the men's, with four tickets to the 2027 World Cup in Brazil on the line.

It's More Than Just A Game: Africa at the Men’s World Cup and the Women’s AFCON

This week on Into Africa, we are sharing an episode from the CSIS podcast, CommonHealth, hosted by CSIS Senior Vice President and Director of Global Health Policy Center Stephen Morrison. Stephen is joined by Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme. Dr. Ihekweazu spent several weeks in the hot zone in eastern Congo, mobilizing the international response to the late-discovered Ebola outbreak. Establishing community trust and confidence is the single most urgent challenge across all activities. At the six-week point, the response is scaling. However, "We have to be humble." "We are nowhere yet where we want to be." There is now a high-level UN figure in eastern Congo charged with addressing the complex security challenges. The absence of advanced US technical expertise in the deliberations and response, following the US withdrawal from WHO, is "strange." "Everyone pays a price."

Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme: Ebola outbreak in Ituri, Congo "a perfect storm."

As global power shifts and competition intensifies, Africa is moving from the margins toward the center of the global strategic stage. The question is whether the continent will become a decisive global actor—and whether its partners are prepared for that repositioning. Too often, policymakers consumed by immediate crises overlook the deeper structural forces reshaping Africa’s trajectory. Trade integration, demographic shifts, and greater African agency will shape the continent's role in the changing global order.

Drawing on decades of forecasting data and scenario modeling, Jakkie Cilliers, Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Security Studies and Director of the Africa Futures program, joins Oge to unpack the structural forces shaping the continent's future. Together, they explore the slow-moving but transformative trends shaping Africa's future.

Africa at the Center: Power, Partnership, and the Future Global Order

Across Africa, the security landscape is shifting. Extremist groups are becoming more mobile, more digitally savvy, and more deeply rooted in local grievances, even in cases where they lose physical territory. From northern Mozambique to the Sahel, the old playbooks for counterterrorism and conflict response are struggling to keep pace with threats that operate more like adaptive ecosystems than traditional insurgencies. 

In the season two premiere of Into Africa, Dr. Olajumoke Ayandele, Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University, and Peter Bofin, Senior Analyst, Southeast Africa at ACLED, join Oge to unpack this evolving threat landscape. Together, they examine how technology is reshaping how armed groups recruit, finance, and operate.

Old Playbooks, New Threats: Africa’s Evolving Security Landscape

In this season finale, we revisit our guests’ reflections on what continues to inspire hope for them. Into Africa will be back on June 18th for its second season. Thank you for listening.

Into Africa: Season One Reflections

The international development and humanitarian landscape in Africa is at an inflection point, driven by a convergence of severe funding cuts, escalated climate and conflict-related crisis, and a necessary, but challenging shift from donor-led relief to locally led, long-term development. The current aid architecture was built for a different era, and this moment of disruption presents an opportunity to reimagine a system that is more effective, sustainable, and built on local partnerships and resilience.

Tjada D'Oyen McKenna, CEO of Mercy Corps, and Noam Unger, Vice-President of the Global Development department at CSIS, join Oge to assess the current state of the international development and humanitarian assistance landscape and explore what challenges and opportunities this moment presents for Africa’s future.

Note: Into Africa will be taking a short break and will return in the next few months!

Beyond Aid: Redefining Africa’s Development

In this youth roundtable, Catherine Nzuki, Associate Fellow with the CSIS Africa Program, is joined by two Sudanese scholars to discuss Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms, a grassroots network of young volunteers delivering food, medicine, and essential services across all eighteen states in Sudan. Noaman Mousa is a political science PhD student at UCLA, where his research focuses on civil wars and state-building in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yasir Zaidan is an adjunct lecturer at Seattle University and a PhD student at the University of Washington, where his research examines the expanding influence of Middle Eastern states in the Horn of Africa. Together, they trace the ERRs' origins in the neighborhood resistance committees that drove Sudan's 2019 revolution and explore what a day in the life of an ERR volunteer looks like across different regions and frontlines. Yasir and Noaman also reflect on the deepening of ethnic and tribal cleavages in Sudan since the outbreak of war in April 2023, the role of Gulf states in prolonging the conflict, and the difficult question of what a path to peace might look like.

Reading Recommendations from Noaman Mousa:

 
The Coup-Civil War Trap, Phil Roessler

 
Ethnic Armies, Kristen Harkness

 
Warlord Politics and African States, Will Reno

 
Sudan: The Historical Predicament and the Horizons of the Future, Muhammad Abu al-Qasim Hajj Hamad (in Arabic, currently under translation by Prof. Alden Young).

Reading Recommendations from Yasir Zaidan:

 
Sudan: The Historical Predicament and the Horizons of the Future, Muhammad Abu al-Qasim Hajj Hamad (in Arabic, currently under translation by Prof. Alden Young).

Emergency Response Rooms and Collective Action in Sudan

As the U.S.-Israel-Iran war intensifies, global attention is focused on the Middle East, but a profound geopolitical restructuring is unfolding along the Red Sea. For years, the Horn of Africa has been a critical arena for understanding global geopolitical competition and shifts, and the Iran war is exposing the risks and gaps that analysts had foreshadowed. As international attention and diplomatic bandwidth for the Horn’s overlapping crises decline, the region is undergoing rapid political repositioning and transformation as the attention of Gulf states turns inward.

In this special episode of Into Africa, Samira Gaid, founding director of Balqiis Insights, rejoins the Into Africa podcast to dive deeper into the geopolitics of the Horn and unpack how the Iran war is reverberating across the region.

In the Shadows of the Iran War: The Horn of Africa

In several countries, gangs, militias, and self-defense forces have become part of the security landscape. What’s behind this trend and what are the consequences? Judd Devermont sits down with Comfort Ero (International Crisis Group), Leanne Erdberg Steadman (U.S. Institute of Peace), and David Africa (former South African intelligence officer) to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of “dirty deals” and the challenge of accountability involved in dealing with these groups. Guests also cover President Farmajo’s failed term extension bid in Somalia and the insurgency in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado region.

Background Readings

Double-edged Sword: Vigilantes in African Counter-insurgencies- International Crisis Group

A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security- Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld

From Self Defense to Vigilantism: A Typology Framework of Community-Based Armed Groups- Dr. Lauren Van Metre (Resolve Network)

Disengagement and Reconciliation in Conflict-Affected Settings- Leanne Erdberg Steadman

The Gangs of Africa

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