The Year in News
Matters escalated and escalated, and we tried our hardest to breathe through the smoke of everything burning around us.
Christine Mungai – news editor
Lydia Namubiru – editor-in-chief
Kiri Rupiah – communities editor
What was the most significant African news story of the year?
CM: The Tanzanian election in October. It’s likely thousands of people were killed indiscriminately by security forces. Hundreds more were abducted, forcibly disappeared, or tortured – even before voting day. That level of violence did not emerge from nowhere.
Tanzania was already a repressive state, but this year’s brutality feels rooted in something larger: the collapse of international norms that once constrained political excess on the continent. There used to be a real brake on behaviour like this – leaders knew that certain lines, if crossed, would trigger aid cuts or diplomatic isolation. Now, with global attention fractured and donor funding in decline, that restraint has vanished. What we saw in Tanzania is, in some ways, the product of that vacuum.
LN: The “end of aid”, particularly with the dramatic contraction coming at a time when countries are so indebted and still struggling to recover from the pandemic or Russia’s war in Ukraine. Countries are increasingly borrowing to make up for shortfalls and more of that borrowing is coming from private capital with higher interest rates. This does not end well, as citizen movements want different things from the domestic and international lenders who will be ever-more invested in the survival of regimes that owe them money.
KR: The massacre of El Fasher in 2025 stands as one of the darkest chapters of Sudan’s ongoing war. After months of siege, Rapid Support Forces fighters and aligned militias overran key districts of the North Darfur capital, unleashing widespread killings and looting, burning entire neighbourhoods. Hospitals, markets, and displacement camps were attacked, leaving civilians with no safe refuge. Humanitarian agencies reported hundreds of people were killed in a matter of days, although the true toll is feared to be far higher due to mass graves and bodies left in the streets. The bloodbath was so extensive, it could be seen from space.
The assault targeted non-Arab communities, echoing the grim patterns of the 2003 to 2005 Darfur genocide. With aid routes cut and communications cut off, survivors described it as a deliberate attempt to erase the city’s remaining population. International condemnation followed, but no effective intervention came.
El Fasher’s massacre has become a symbol of Sudan’s spiralling, unrestrained violence.
What story should have received more attention?
CM: The abrupt dismantling of USAID, particularly of the HIV and Aids control programmes supported by Pepfar. Some African countries have managed to continue their HIV prevention and treatment programmes, but many have not. UNAIDS estimates that if no other funding fills the gap, Aids deaths could rise fivefold globally. Over the next 10 years, adult incidence rates could triple in Africa.
LN: What bedevils trade in Africa. Why isn’t it growing enough between African countries? Beyond high-level analyses, we ought to have stories that get into the nuts and bolts of it. Why is Africa’s share of international trade contracting? If there’s a rising tide that’s lifting other boats, why not ours?
KR: The quiet crackdown on political freedom across the Sahel and West Africa. Coups in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso made headlines and, in some respects, attracted praise. But behind the scenes, military governments were also locking up opposition leaders, activists, journalists, and ordinary citizens without trial, closing down media outlets, and using the law to silence dissent. Thousands of people have simply disappeared into detention. This erosion of rights barely made the news compared to dramatic events like protests or border clashes. It’s a story that will shape the region’s future, even if most of the world hasn’t noticed.
What was the biggest international story of the year?
CM: The Gaza war and the global crisis of moral authority. The world’s response – or non-response – has revealed the collapse of the international system more starkly than any event this decade. It has crumbled the shared narratives that are supposed to help us to make sense of right and wrong. What Israel has done in Gaza has made a mockery of the very concept of “human rights” and has ushered in a new era that is harder to interpret, more difficult to navigate, and far more morally disorienting. And it has inevitably radicalised a generation watching the world fail, publicly and in real time.
LN: Donald Trump’s second coming and its disruption of multilateralism. His movement is certainly doing what it can to kill multilateral politics – except as unadulterated transactionalism.
KR: The world saw the United States slip into full democratic backsliding, with executive overreach, attacks on independent institutions, and harsh limits on civic freedoms. Once a global “standard bearer” for democracy, exporting destabilisation, this decline and the speed with which it happened emboldened extremist groups and showed that even long-standing democracies can falter. It also revealed Europe’s limits: once quick to lecture on governance, European Union leaders largely failed to respond to the US’s erosion of norms or stop Israel’s war in Gaza, exposing a gap between talk and action.
Who was the biggest villain this year?
CM: The Kenyan officials in the Saudi Embassy in Riyadh, who demanded sex and money from women desperate to get away from their abusive employers. Kenyan diplomats even pressured the women to become sex workers to pay for their tickets home, The New York Times reports. There are stories like this everywhere in the Middle East, but the Times reporting brought it all home in harrowing detail – including identifying Kenyan President William Ruto as personally benefitting from the labour. A (dis)honourable mention must go to Sean “Diddy” Combs. The man is diabolical.
LN: The warlords whose militias executed the El Fasher massacres in late October: Al-Tahir Hajar, Al-Hadi Idris, and Suleiman Sandal.
KR: Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan cemented her reputation as one of Africa’s most repressive leaders. Ahead of and after the October elections, her government disqualified opposition parties and jailed political opponents. After the elections her administration meted out extraordinary violence against ordinary Tanzanians to shut down protests. The death toll is still disputed. The treatment of activists Boniface Mwangi and Agather Atuhaire at the hands of state security agents while monitoring opposition trials is a testament to Tanzania’s decline under her leadership. Unfortunately, this is likely just the beginning.
What story gave you hope for 2026?
CM: The mass anti-government, youth-led protests in Nepal in September. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli resigned, and four days later former chief justice Sushila Karki assumed office as the interim prime minister, with the poll decided on the Discord community platform. As a Kenyan, it was hugely inspiring to watch young people force political accountability and then help to shape the transition process itself. It showed, in real time, how citizen power can rewrite the rules.
LN: South Africa’s valiant attempt to step up and become the glue that keeps multilateralism going. For all the shortcomings, contradictions, and inequality that bedevil it, it’s hard to imagine that a purely transactional and fragmented world order would be better than attempting to work together towards a global human union.
KR: South Africa’s president, Cyril “Cupcake” Ramaphosa, distinguished himself by not bowing and scraping to US President Donald Trump over his unfounded claims of white genocide. Whereas his counterparts showed up to Washington to be praised for speaking English well, Ramaphosa’s measured response was emblematic of his status as the leader of a sovereign nation. Pity about his banking habits though.
Wonderful article. Tanzania has become such a sad bad case of governance in Africa. Sudan is such a stunning tale of hubris by the 2 armed groups: neither of whom care about the general population
Seeing the blood from the massacre of the people of El Fasher from space will never leave my mind. Darfurians were warning us that this would happen, begging us for help. They were under siege for so long and telling us what was coming. Yet we let it happen.