Kagame prefers partnership with successful European football clubs to market Rwanda.
Luke Dray/FIFA via Getty Images
With Africa’s solid support and his pro-west military and policy adventures, Kagame is able to take on critics.
Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
epa-efe/Tiago
Dos Santos was a withdrawn president. His silence produced an aura of power and the cult of personality that surrounded him.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir (right) and his deputy Riek Machar shake hands in Addis Ababa to signify a peace deal in September, 2018.
AFP via Getty Images
Kiir and Machar have been pivotal figures in most of South Sudan’s short history as an independent nation.
King Mswati III of eSwatini, Africa’s last absolute monarch, is facing growing demands for democracy and rule of law.
EPA-EFE/Yeshiel Panchia
There is more support for democracy among African people than is often recognised. Yet this can be undermined by election rigging and is lower in countries like Lesotho, Mozambique and South Africa.
Mahamat Idriss Deby, right, greets his brother Zakaria during the state funeral for their father Chadian President Idriss Deby.
Christophe Petit/AFP via Getty Images
The recent spate of military takeovers, most recently in Chad, highlights a developing trend by armed forces in Africa which overtly subvert constitutional governance.
Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno and French President Emmanuel Macron in France. France has been a long-time supporter of the Deby regime.
Chesnot/Getty Images
The resistance during this election cycle is even more passionate than in recent years.
President Paul Biya during a visit to China in 2018.
Lintao Zhang Getty Images
Biya’s long rule has robbed Cameroon of its credibility as a stable and peaceful country.
President Pierre Nkurunziza arrives to inaugurate Burundi’s Chinese-built state house on September 27, 2019.
(Photo by ONESPHORE NibigIra/AFP via Getty Images)
History will judge Nkurunziza as a man who brought unnecessary pain to a nation that had long suffered from political misrule.
Angolan President João Lourenço addressing a meeting of the governing party.
EFE-EPA/Ampe Rogerio
The Dos Santos family and their supporters claim they are the objects of political persecution.
Former Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.
EFE-EPA/Stringer
Crony capitalism became firmly embedded under Ben Ali, benefiting his family and close friends.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa at the funeral of his predecessor, Robert Mugabe.
EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli
It remains to be seen how much longer the ‘old men syndrome’ will persist in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa, despite growing frustration among the politically powerless.
Robert Mugabe, former President of Zimbabwe, addressing media in Harare, in July 2018.
EPA-EFE/Yeshiel Panchia
Robert Mugabe’s years of playing one group off against the other to favour himself finally wore too thin in 2017.
Senegalese women cast their ballots in the presidential elections in February.
EPA-EFE/Nic Bothma
Africa’s democracies have grown stronger during a period in which the world is backsliding on democracy.