The year 2010 witnessed four coups d’état, one of which was successful. In Niger military forces led by Colonel Salou Djibo toppled President Mamadou Tandja on 18 February. In reaction to the illegitimate overthrowing of the government in Niger, the AU suspended the country’s membership the day after the coup. Madagascar experienced two attempted coups against President Andry Rajoelina, who himself had taken power in a military-backed coup in March 2009. Guinea Bissau witnessed the fourth coup attempt in three years

Two areas of interrelated, highly violent and often border-transcending conflicts continue to characterise sub-Saharan Africa (Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research, 2010). In the first area, encompassing the states of Nigeria7, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, most conflicts remained on a highly violent level. The second area of highly violent conflicts include the states of the Great Lakes region: Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this region, the tendency of conflicts to transcend borders increased, as a Burundian rebel group resumed activities in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, while the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army remained highly active in Sudan, as well as in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

 

As in previous years, sub-Saharan Africa was the region with the most (six) UN peacekeeping missions administered by the Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO). The UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) used to be the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission until 2010, when it was renamed the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) and 2 000 troops were withdrawn. The other ongoing peacekeeping missions in Africa are the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI), in progress since 2004; the  UN Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT), in progress since 2007; the UN/AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), in progress since 2007; the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), in progress since 2005; and the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), in progress since 2003.

In addition to peacekeeping missions, in 2010 the international community also applied sanctions with the intent to sustain or restore peace and security. In 2010 the UN maintained six sanction committees concerning sub-Saharan Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan), one less than in previous years. The committee concerning Sierra Leone was closed down. A new arms embargo and travel bans were imposed on Eritrea, however, sanctioning its support for antigovernment militants in Somalia.

In 2010 the African Union was engaged in two active missions: AMISOM in Somalia as well as the hybrid UN-AU mission in Darfur (UNAMID), which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) also supports. The ongoing AMISOM mission brought the conflict in Somalia for the first time to Uganda, one of the major contributors of troops to the mission. The Somali Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for two simultaneous bomb attacks in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, on 11 July, killing more than 80 people.

In addition to its support to UNAMID, NATO runs the counter-piracy operation around the Horn of Africa. Despite NATO’s significant efforts, however, according to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s Maritime Safety Portal, piracy in the region has increased significantly over the last years, from 146 attacks by pirates against maritime vessels in 2008 to 376 such attacks in 2010. The pirates’ radius now stretches from the coasts of Oman to Tanzania and almost reaches the Maldives. The average ransom has increased from US dollars (USD) 150 000 in 2004 to USD 5.4 million in 2010. In 2009 approximately USD 177 million was paid in ransom to Somali pirates. This sum rose to an estimated USD 238 million in 2010 (Bowden, 2010). Bowden (2010) estimates the global annual cost of piracy to be between USD 7 billion and USD 12 billion, including USD 2 billion for international military operations around the Horn of Africa. Although these costs represent less than 0.1% of world trade (Chalk, 2008), some African countries have to bear high costs. Egypt, for example, has been affected by reduced traffic primarily caused by piracy. Revenue from the Suez Canal is expected to fall from USD 5.1 billion in FY08 to USD 3.6 billion in FY10, a 30% decrease in two years (Wasser, 2009). Bowden (2010) estimates the annual cost of Somali piracy to Egypt at USD 642 million and to Kenya at USD 414 million.

Beyond such instances of direct costs of conflicts, many African countries will likely be confronted with the costly consequences of the escalating conflicts in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire. The Libyan civil war has caused an additional increase in oil prices, negatively affecting those countries that have to import oil. Côte d’Ivoire’s conflicts since 2002 have had a negative impact on its landlocked neighbours, such as Mali and Burkina Faso, which have historically depended on the port of Abidjan for their trade. Both countries have been suffering from a significant rise in the prices of imported goods since the recent outbreak of renewed violence in Côte d’Ivoire.