Sasha Polakow-Suransky
Throughout 2024, many of Africa’s crises worsened: Sudan’s civil war escalated, tensions between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo grew, and militants in the Sahel continued to spread south toward coastal states.
In Sudan, fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the rebel Rapid Support Forces has not abated. Sudanese writers have contributed hard-hitting arguments to FP since the war began in April 2023, and this year, the conflict continued to take a horrendous toll on civilians, exacerbating the mass refugee crisis.
In eastern Congo, near the border with Rwanda, clashes between Congolese troops and M23 rebels—widely considered to be a Rwandan proxy—have escalated, leading some to call on the United States to intervene before it’s too late. This is a war that is not only being fought on the battlefield; increasingly, disinformation on social media is fomenting violence in Congo and further afield.
Hatred-filled Facebook posts have been linked to violence in Ethiopia’s civil war, and advances in artificial intelligence could make social media much more dangerous in conflicts across the continent—especially because of the dearth of content moderation in African languages in which hate speech and disinformation are spread.
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