This is a guest post by Laura Dimon. Laura is the Africa program intern at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Earlier this week, the New York Times detailed the impact of Niger’s desertification on children, who must trek longer and longer distances to collect water. This is only one of the negative consequences of climate change that has hastened the drying up of the Lake Chad water basin. Over the last forty years, the water basin, which has supported up to thirty million beneficiaries across Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and Niger, has shrunk by 95 percent. The lake’s shrinkage is the result of a myriad of factors: decreased rainfall resulting from climate change, increased demand for water caused by population growth and agriculture, an explosion of parasitic vegetation, and weak institutions managing competing demands.

The water shortage strains inhabitants of the region and promotes interstate and intrastate conflict. In northeastern Nigeria, the region adjacent to Lake Chad, Fulani herders have been forced further south in search of new pastures. This has put them into conflict with farmers facing similar resource limitations, and fisherman, too, who are competing with both farmers and herders over water diversion.

The conflict extends past national borders. Starting in the 1980s, the rapid recession of the lake drew Nigerian fisherman further into Cameroonian territory, leading to several military encounters. By the 1990s, more than thirty Lake Chad villages founded by Nigerians were counted in Cameroon. In 2002, the resulting border dispute went to the International Court of Justice, which settled in Cameroon’s favor. But the real problem still remains: there is not enough water to go around and only weak institutions to protect what is left.

Recently, President Goodluck Jonathan and his Water Resources Minister Sarah Reng Ochekpe called for concerted efforts to save the lake, while marking May 22 “Lake Chad Day” in Abuja. But it remains to be seen if these declarations will translate into action.

As it stands, farmers and herders competing for water sounds uncomfortably reminiscent of the crisis in Darfur.

Asch Harwood coauthored this post. Asch is the Africa research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A group of Nigeria watchers, including myself, has sent the secretary of state a letter urging that northeastern Nigeria’s “Boko Haram” not be given a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) designation.

Boko Haram is different from other FTOs, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Tamil Tigers, which have an organizational structure and a unified goal. Boko Haram is a highly diffuse movement with little, if any, central organization. In fact, the name “Boko Haram” is a label applied only by the Nigerian government, press, and security services, usually to describe the violence occurring (daily) in the north of the country. Most watchers agree that this violence is perpetrated by a myriad of actors, including former followers of the murdered preacher Mohammed Yusuf as well as criminal and other elements.

The uniting feature of Boko Haram is its focus on Nigeria. Its rhetoric does not include international jihadist themes. With the isolated exception of the UN headquarters bombing in Abuja, which is viewed in Nigeria as a collaborator with the Nigerian government, its targets have all been Nigerian, usually police, military, places of worship, and drinking establishments. Notably, most of Boko Haram’s victims have been Muslim.

An FTO designation potentially discourages political solutions, which are needed most. Given the current animosity between the government and the north, third party intermediaries—such as Nigerian or international NGOS—are likely to be necessary. An FTO designation would inhibit their involvement.

The financial implications of designations could also impact on foreign remittances, which accounted for almost $10 billion in foreign exchange in 2009. In the words of our recently published letter, “thousands of Nigerian-Americans would face fear of prosecution for sending money home and, as a result, many transactions would be at best delayed or, worse, ended, compounding the suffering of their Nigerian families.”

Conversely, it may encourage the Nigerian government’s current, unsuccessful security-centric approach, which has included the arbitrary arrest and occasional killing of Nigerians, and progressively alienated the northern population.

FTO designation could also have the perverse consequences of enhancing the prestige of Boko Haram and promoting its consolidation. For example, it could lead to, in the minds of northern Nigerians, a closer association between Washington and Abuja, making the United States a legitimate target. It could also increase the incentives for globally focused terrorist groups to seek deeper linkages with groups in the North.

The New York Times reports that an exhibition at a Johannesburg art gallery is pushing contemporary hot buttons. On exhibit is a large painting of a figure resembling President Zuma with his genitals exposed. The governing African National Congress (ANC) is suing to have the painting removed. The gallery and its supporters from civil society are claiming the right to free speech, which the constitution guarantees.

There are several special South African dimensions to this episode.

The ANC is using the courts. It is seeking the removal of the painting through the rule of law, rather than by other means. (The painting has subsequently been defaced, and, as a result, the gallery temporarily closed, but I have seen no evidence of ANC complicity in the vandalism.)

Zuma is black, while the artist and those associated with the art gallery appear to me to be white. Hence, for Zuma’s supporters there is probably a racial dimension. One of his supporters claims publicly that the painting feeds white prejudice that blacks are “over-sexualized.”

Zuma is likely to face a challenge to his ANC leadership at the party convention in December. He is a polygamist with four wives, at least twenty children, and was acquitted in a notorious rape trial where he argued that the unprotected sex – with an HIV-positive woman–was consensual. Hence, the painting hardly helps his image.

In addition, the painting is almost certainly deeply offensive to the evangelical and Pentecostal communities, which are growing fast among black South Africans. Zuma of late has been reaching out to both communities as he looks toward the December party conference.

So, it is about art that is offensive to many South Africans. It is also about Jacob Zuma. But, the context for its resolution remains the rule of law.

On May 21, demonstrators in Mali’s capital of Bamako stormed the office of interim president Dioncounda Traore, seventy, and beat him unconscious.  He was hospitalized and has subsequently been released, according to press reports.  The mob, numbering several hundred, traversed the city with no interference from the army—or anybody else.

The mob attack appears to reflect popular opposition to a deal brokered by the relevant regional organization, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), whereby Gen. Amadou Sanogo, thirty-nine—the  leader of the coup that overthrew the ostensibly democratic government of President Amadou Toure—would step aside and Traore would serve as interim president for a year rather than for just forty days as prescribed by the constitution.  That would give him sufficient time to organize new elections, while forty days is too short. Sanogo would receive the trappings – and the pension – of a former head of state. The mob beat Traore, who has been acting president since the coup, apparently because he supported the deal.

The mob, the army, and much of the local population appear to want Sanogo to become interim president when Traore’s forty-day term expires.  This is unacceptable to ECOWAS, which has threatened sanctions.  The United States is supportive of the ECOWAS position.

Meanwhile, the northern half of Mali is controlled by fundamentalist Islamic Tuareg rebels and the country as a whole faces a potential catastrophe because of drought.

In a May 17, 2012, guest post on this site, Jim Sanders raised the question of the extent to which the military could be a vehicle for popular discontent against the old elites in Africa—and elsewhere.  Traore, a former president of parliament,   is certainly a member of the traditional elites, while Sanogo is not. Mali had the forms of democracy for twenty-one years, including regular, credible elections. The mob attack on May 21, and the apparent army support in Bamako, raise the question of how meaningful democratic forms were to a population increasingly in crisis outside the elite circle.

That could be what is happening in Mali.

Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity are powerful forces in sub-Saharan politics. So, too, is the belief in prophecy and sorcery.

In Zimbabwe, it is tense times, with uncertainty about President Robert Mugabe’s health, the dates of the next election, and whether constitutional and other reforms will be achieved. Taken together, faith and politics are the context for the Zimbabwean partisan wrangling over a Nigerian Pentecostal preacher.

Zimbabwean prime minister and opposition presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai has allegedly invited the Nigerian televangelist and faith healer Temitope Balogun (‘TB’) Joshua to Harare to be the guest speaker on Africa Day, May 25, a “National Day of Prayer.” In response, the police, dominated by President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, are pulling out all of the stops to prevent the visit. A senior police officer accuses Joshua of being a “false prophet,” and screened at the Harare police headquarters a video that dwells on Joshua’s alleged womanizing, titled “T.B. Joshua’s Evil Doings Finally Revealed.” Close Mugabe ally, the schismatic Anglican bishop Nolbert Kunonga, accuses Joshua of “Satanism” and of being “diabolical.” Previously, other pro ZANU-PF clergy have claimed on state-controlled media that Joshua’s preaching is “judgmental, partisan, and unorthodox.” The apparent anger of Mugabe’s supporters also reflects that many Zimbabweans, like others in sub-Sahara Africa, treat prophesy, “Satanism,” and the “diabolical” with deadly seriousness. Hence, the denunciation of Joshua as a “false” prophet.

Joshua earlier prophesized that “an African leader” would die in sixty days. In fact, the president of Malawi died shortly thereafter. More recently, he has prophesied that another “African leader” will fall “critically ill’ and be hospitalized soon.

For Mugabe, who reportedly suffers from prostate cancer and seeks medical treatment in Singapore regularly, this “prophecy” is probably too close to home. It doesn’t help that Joshua has apparently been invited to Zimbabwe by Tsvangirai who might somehow benefit from Joshua’s charismatic preaching whenever the elections are held.

An estimated 15,000 attend Joshua’s Nigerian services on Sundays, at his Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN). He also runs Emanuel TV, which broadcasts via satellite and Internet. He has affiliated congregations in Ghana, the UK, South Africa, and Greece. Zimbabwe police are reportedly investigating a “fraudster” church in Harare allegedly linked to Joshua. His faith healing ministrations have included South African rugby players.

In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala reviewed Nigerian economic issues, notably, that the anticipated sovereign wealth fund would start operating during the next few months, with U.S. $1 billion from the Excess Crude Account to start. She promised a governing council including representatives from civil society, media, and academics would oversee the account “to ensure that the money is transparently invested.”

In other issues, she emphasized the importance of diversifying the economy to create more jobs. (Nigeria’s economy is growing at the rate of 7.4 percent; she said that most of the growth took place in the non-oil sectors of the economy.)

She also referred to the success of the overhaul of the banking system and defended Nigeria’s conversion of 10 percent of its foreign currency reserves from U.S. dollars to yuan last year because of the country’s growing trade with China.

On the controversial fuel subsidy, the finance minister said that the government remains committed to ending it completely. She did acknowledge, however, that the fuel subsidy “is a very emotional issue in Nigeria,” and that the Nigerian people had a “trust deficit” because of the government’s historical misuse of resources.

Her comments are promising. Okonjo-Iweala’s discussion of the “trust deficit” was frank, and if implemented in the way she describes, the governance of the sovereign wealth fund would introduce a new level of transparency.

Nevertheless, she said nothing about the growth of dire poverty over the past year or income inequality.

Only a few days after the finance minister’s interview, President Jonathan appealed for popular support in countering the Boko Haram insurgency in the North, and Nigeria’s leading opposition figure, Muhammadu Buhari, raised the specter of mayhem if the elections of 2015 are rigged, prompting calls for his arrest which would only further inflame his supporters.

The question remains: how long can the formal economy–as described by the finance minister–be seen in isolation from the insurrection in the north, ethnic and religious violence in the middle belt, and the prospect of renewed militant activity in the oil rich Niger delta?

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders, a career, now retired, West Africa watcher for various federal agencies. The views expressed below are his personal views and do not reflect those of his former employers. In Jim’s post, he discusses recent events in Mali, and how they may point towards a possible democratic renewal.

Last Friday, AFP reported that while Bamako’s political class and ECOWAS want Dioncounda Traore to continue as interim president, the group of low-ranking soldiers led by Amadou Sanogo, who carried out the March 22 coup against President Amadou Toumani Toure, don’t. Nor does the international community want soldiers leading a transition back to civilian rule in the country.  But Sanogo, reportedly, “wants to take back power once Traore’s 40-day mandate is up.”

Having served as an analyst of West African militaries for many years, I cannot say that Sanogo’s desire to hang on to power is unusual.  However, the extent to which the military has become, or could become, a vehicle for the expression of popular dissatisfaction with old elites–a form of grassroots assertion–must also be considered.  As John Voll observed in his February 13 Wilson Center lecture, we have moved into a new era in which the modes of protest have changed.

We now live in a time of grassroots ascendancy, a fact which is being recognized across a spectrum of informed opinion. In her April 16th article in USA Today titled “When Spirituality and Religion Collide,” Diana Butler Bass discusses the phenomenon in the religious realm, but observes that the “shift to the grassroots” is a problem for a broad range of organizations and is discernible in many contexts.  Not the least of these contexts, of course, is Europe.  Financial Times editorialized in its weekend edition about Europe’s “painful democratic renewal,” saying that, “Voters in Greece, Italy and, to a lesser extent, France, are understandably turning away from a disconnected political class and looking for those offering new ideas and solutions.”

The expression of discontent with an old, entrenched, and non-performing political class via a coup from below should not be surprising in states where institutions are weak and such discontent cannot be expressed through conventional political channels.  In this connection, Nigeria bears watching, since Major General Sarkin Yaki Bello, coordinator of the Counter Terrorism Center in Nigeria’s presidency, last month told the press that the “army is the greatest employer of labor now in the country,” which would mean it includes a large number of young men, an element of society often prone to express discontent.

Policymakers see recent events in Mali as a threat to democracy, but democratic roots there were very shallow to begin with.  Given that in a system where, despite elections viewed internationally as positive, those at the grassroots (including the lower ranks of the military) feel their voice in the government is inadequate, could Mali’s coup be regarded as an effort at democratic renewal?  Just like Sheriff Bell in the Coen brothers’ popular film “No Country for Old Men,” policymakers may sense that a new form of disorder is on the loose, and they are unsure how to handle it.

An “urban legend” widely believed in Nigeria is that the United States government predicts that the country will breakup in 2015. Tokunbo Adedoja in a May 15 article in ThisDay, a widely circulated daily, puts this legend to rest. He has taken another look at the March 5, 2005, discussion paper issued by the National Intelligence council titled “Mapping Sub-Saharan Africa’s Future,” (PDF) from which this rumor emanated.

The paper did include a discussion of a possible scenario in which there might be a military coup in Nigeria, which appears to be the basis for the claim that the U.S. government predicts the breakup of Nigeria. But, as Adedoja points out, the first page of the discussion paper carries a disclaimer saying “the views expressed are those of individuals and do not represent official US intelligence or policy positions. The National Intelligence Council routinely sponsors such unclassified conferences with outside experts to gain knowledge and insight to sharpen the level of debate on critical issues.”

The document was made public and posted on the internet. Then president Obasanjo sent copies of the document to members of the Nigerian senate, thereby calling attention to it. However, that the publication did not represent official U.S. policy was a point I made at the time as ambassador during Obasanjo’s tenure, and others have made it since.

I personally have been accused of predicting the breakup of Nigeria. I am innocent of the charge. I have never predicted the breakup of Nigeria because I have never thought it would happen. But, were it to do so, the likely consequence would be a humanitarian disaster. U.S. policy has always been to support a united Nigeria, governed by the rule of law and through democratic institutions.

One of the major unresolved issues from South Sudan’s split from Khartoum has been the citizenship status of Sudanese of southern origin living in the north, and those of northern origin living in the south. Optimists had hoped that the citizenship issue would be amicably resolved and that most people involved would stay in place.

Alas, in the context of the increasingly bitter divorce between Khartoum and Juba, it looks like a folk migration of southern Sudanese back to the south is underway. When South Sudan voted for independence, Khartoum revoked the citizenship of all South Sudanese. In response to concern voiced by the international community, Khartoum allowed a nine-month grace period, which ended in April, for South Sudanese living in the north. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on May 8 stated that 376,226 people have returned home since October 2010. It estimates that half a million South Sudanese remain in Sudan.

Of these, up to fifteen thousand have been stranded in Kosti waiting for barges to take them down the Nile to South Sudan. According to the press, Khartoum is saying they are stranded because the Juba government has diverted the barges for military use. IOM’s response is to return the refugees to Khartoum and then fly them to Juba. IOM negotiated the necessary arrangements with the local authorities and with Juba. On May 14, the flights started, with four hundred people arriving in Juba. The belongings of the returnees are being transported by road, according to the Juba ministry of information. Each returnee is restricted to twenty kilograms of baggage.

IOM is moving the refugees from Kosti to its Khartoum transit camp by bus. At the camp, IOM provides medical checks and prepares the manifests. It then flies the refugees to Juba, where they are housed in a camp operated by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. According to the press, after the returnees arrive in Juba, they will be dispersed to their place of origin.

This episode illustrates the crucial role of IOM, an international organization headquartered in Geneva, in large refugee movements. With 146 member states, and 98 observers, it spent US$1.3 billion in 2011. Its funding comes primarily from member states.

Former South African president F.W. de Klerk’s May 10 CNN interview, in which he comments, inter alia, on apartheid and his relations with Nelson Mandela, has generated widespread outrage. De Klerk’s comments on Mandela were highly favorable and generated little or no public comment.

As for apartheid, however, he offered “profound apologies” only for the “injustices” it caused, but not for apartheid itself. In other words, he regrets the outcomes of apartheid, but does not denounce the fundamental principle of the apartheid system– “separate development” and rigid separation of races that resulted in the de facto subordination of the majority of the population to a small racial minority. Nowhere does he acknowledge that apartheid was fundamentally unethical.

When the interviewer said, “I’m offering you the opportunity … to say whether or not you believed that (apartheid) was also morally repugnant.” President de Klerk replied, “I can only say that in a qualified way. Inasmuch as it trampled human rights, it was…morally indefensible…But the concept of giving…ethnic unities with one culture, with one language, can be happy and can fulfill their democratic aspirations in an own state, that is not repugnant.” However, in the interview he did recognize that apartheid did not work in South Africa and the system had to be ended.

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille’s comments last March about “refugees” from the Eastern Cape seeking better educational opportunities in the Western Cape raised similar ire. While Zille’s comments where qualitatively and quantitatively different—refugee was hyperbole and the statement was expressed in 140 characters, not a ten minute interview– numerous ANC spokespersons denounced her use of the term “refugees” as somehow implying that the Eastern Cape is a separate country and that it reflected a hankering after apartheid. (Helen Zille was an anti-apartheid journalist who exposed the murder of Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness movement.)

De Klerk is a figure from the past with little relevance to contemporary South Africa. Zille, however, is probably the most important opposition politician now active. The seemingly disproportionate reaction to the de Klerk interview and Zille’s word choice reflect an enduring sense of injury, especially among South Africa’s black population. For many black South Africans, the essence of apartheid was that it denied or stripped them of human dignity. Hence, they react strongly against anything that might be construed as sympathetic to apartheid. That said, freedom of speech is absolutely guaranteed in South Africa, and de Klerk’s CNN interview was an honest discussion of the past. He was no more advocating for the return of apartheid than Zille was.