Politics and governance

Kenya's President told the General Assembly that Africa is permanently discussed and permanently excluded. Ethiopia, Namibia, Nigeria and Ghana also asked for permanent seats on the Security Council, the 15-member body that decides on war and peace. Nigeria and Ghana also asked for the veto, the power to block any Council decision alone. Ghana's President John Mahama said reform was needed for "the survival of the United Nations". Yet there is still no text to negotiate, no timetable and no list of the African states that would take the seats.

Three of Africa's four largest economies did not send their head of state to speak. Nigeria sent its Vice-President, South Africa its foreign minister and Egypt its Prime Minister. Africa asked for a bigger voice at the UN while some of its largest countries sent deputies to make the case.

On 29 September the Security Council held its fourth straw poll on candidates for the next UN Secretary-General. Two of the seven candidates are African. Olara Otunnu was put forward by Uganda, and Macky Sall, the former President of Senegal, by Burundi. In March at least 20 African Union members blocked an AU endorsement of Sall. They said his bid had bypassed the AU's rules on candidates, and that this turn belongs to Latin America and the Caribbean. Senegal's government first refused to back him, then changed its mind in July. Africa enters the last stage of the race divided.

Military takeovers have returned. Coups in Madagascar and Guinea-Bissau in 2025, and a failed attempt in Benin, bring the number of successful coups in Africa since 2020 to eleven. Madagascar showed how quickly it can happen. Protests over water and power cuts began on 25 September 2025, and at least 22 people were killed in the first days. On 14 October an army unit led by Colonel Michael Randrianirina took power, and the African Union suspended the country the next day. Anger in the street became military rule in three weeks.

The military governments of the Sahel have closed the ways back. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger formed the Alliance of Sahel States in July 2024 and left ECOWAS, the West African bloc, in January 2025. In September 2025 they said they would leave the International Criminal Court. It is the court of last resort for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Mali dissolved all political parties in May 2025. In July it gave General Assimi Goïta a five-year term, renewable "as many times as necessary" without an election. People in these three countries now have few ways left to check their rulers.

Elected governments also kill protesters, and they rarely answer for it. In Kenya only 3 of the 62 deaths in the 2024 protests have reached court. A group of Kenyan rights organisations, the Missing Voices Coalition, recorded 125 killings by police in 2025. Kenya's national human rights commission counted 38 deaths in the Saba Saba protests of 7 July 2025 alone. The UN reported hundreds killed around Tanzania's election of 29 October 2025. After Mozambique's election in October 2024, more than 300 people were killed, and by April 2025 no one had been arrested. Each unpunished killing tells citizens that elections do not protect them.

Many Africans are losing faith in how democracy works. Afrobarometer, a network that runs surveys across Africa, asked people in 39 countries. Two in three prefer democracy, yet only 37% are satisfied with how it works. More than half, 53%, would accept a military takeover if elected leaders abuse power, and among young people the figure is 56%. Soldiers who seize power can count on some public support where elected leaders fail.

In New York, the talks on who sits on the Security Council have run since 2009 without a text. In July the General Assembly carried them into its new session with no deadline, and asked states for more proposals. The United States supports two permanent African seats without the veto, and France also opposes giving the veto to new members. Africa's demand for the veto is the point where the talks stop.

Kenya votes on 10 August 2027 with most of its protest killings unpunished. Nigeria holds presidential and National Assembly elections on 16 January 2027 under a new electoral law. Both governments speak loudest in New York for Security Council reform, and both face their own voters within a year.

South Sudan is due to vote in December 2026. On 10 September a UN rights commission warned that "the political failures of South Sudan's leaders continue to reproduce the conditions for damaging violence". In Madagascar, the military leader has told France that the transition will last no more than two years, with elections possible from July 2027.

In Guinea-Bissau, soldiers seized power on 26 November 2025. Three days earlier, both President Umaro Sissoco Embaló and his rival Fernando Dias had claimed victory in the presidential election before any results. In Benin, forces loyal to President Patrice Talon put down a mutiny on 7 December. In Togo, at least seven people were found dead in the waterways of Lomé in June 2025. They died after protests against a new constitution that kept Faure Gnassingbé in charge under a new title.

Guinea and Gabon show another path. The African Union let them back in February 2026, once the transitions that followed their coups were complete. It also suspended Madagascar and Guinea-Bissau. In the same month Somalia joined the AU Peace and Security Council for the first time.

Africa's seats on the Security Council change in January 2027, when Zimbabwe replaces Somalia and joins the DRC and Liberia. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will therefore sit on the Council while its own war is on the agenda. That gives it a voice in its own case and a reason for others to doubt that voice.

Africa's shared position on reform, the Ezulwini Consensus, asks for the veto and names no countries for the seats. That spares Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa from competing openly for them. After 17 years of talks, the result is no text. Meanwhile 18 of the 24 binding Council decisions under Chapter VII in 2025 concerned Africa. Who drafts those decisions, and who pays for the missions they create, matters now.

A two-track position would keep the demand for permanent seats and bargain now for gains that need no change to the UN Charter. The first would let African members lead the drafting of Council decisions on African crises. The second would bring steady UN funding for African Union missions, and the third a real say in choosing the Secretary-General.

The African Union already has some of the tools. At its February 2026 summit it agreed that three groups should work more closely. They are its Peace and Security Council, its Committee of Ten leaders on reform and Africa's three Council members. Such plans count only when the three African members draft and vote together. The Sall affair shows the cost of weak rules at home. His bid bypassed the AU's own committee on candidates and split Africa in public, in the one UN appointment where its 54 votes could decide.

The risk least discussed in New York is youth protest turning into military rule. Madagascar showed the sequence in 2025, surveys show that many people would accept it, and Kenya votes in August 2027. Governments that punish police killings make that path less likely.