Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: Pretoria puts its hopes on an apartheid-era politician to smooth over friction with Washington, coordinated rebel attacks threaten Mali’s military junta, and exports from Africa’s largest refinery surge amid global fuel shortages.
More than a year after the White House expelled South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Pretoria has made a controversial new appointment to fill the post: Roelf Meyer, an apartheid-era government minister who helped negotiate the end of white minority rule.
Bilateral tensions have been high since February 2025, when U.S. President Donald Trump sanctioned South Africa over false claims of a white “genocide” taking place there. The next month, Washington expelled Meyer’s predecessor, Ebrahim Rasool, for describing Trump’s political movement as “white supremacist.” White South Africans are currently the only group offered priority consideration for refugee status by the Trump administration.
The Trump administration, which has taken steps to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the United States, has also condemned Pretoria’s “Black Economic Empowerment” laws, a form of affirmative action intended to redress the legacy of apartheid.
In August, Trump hit South Africa with a 30 percent tariff (though this was later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court). Meanwhile, despite pressure from Washington, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has not severed diplomatic ties with Iran or abandoned his country’s case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
Trump’s appointment of Leo Brent Bozell III—a right-wing activist who in the 1980s opposed U.S. negotiations with the African National Congress (ANC) to end apartheid—as the U.S. ambassador to South Africa has further worsened relations.
Now, Pretoria is hoping that Meyer, an Afrikaner, will be uniquely positioned to help repair the relationship. Meyer is “someone who has got one foot in the past and one foot in the future of South Africa,” political analyst Ralph Mathekga told Foreign Policy.
Meyer was the minister of defense from 1991 to 1992 under South Africa’s white minority government and acted as its chief negotiator during talks to end apartheid. He then served as President Nelson Mandela’s constitutional development minister from 1994 to 1996 and became a parliamentarian before retiring from politics in 2000.
Meyer’s appointment has been described by some analysts as a masterstroke to help fight the White House’s claims of white persecution in South Africa. “Perhaps he can find a way to reset the agenda and be able to knock on the doors,” Mathekga put it. “I think he will not have doors shut on him compared to others that have gone there before.”
Yet the move is not without controversy. Meyer is indeed viewed in South Africa as one of the country’s most experienced negotiators, but, as Mathekga pointed out, “you cannot ignore the optics of this—as if it is only someone who is white who will be accepted” in Washington.
The move has drawn some domestic backlash from both sides of the political spectrum. The left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters party said it was “tone deaf” to appoint a white apartheid-era politician. And for some South Africans, Meyer is a symbol of post-apartheid South Africa’s inability to move beyond its past, as the country is still home to what the World Bank assesses to be the world’s most extreme racial and economic inequality.
Meanwhile, Kallie Kriel, the head of Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, called Meyer an “ANC cadre” whose “history shows that he is someone who is willing to dramatically reposition himself to suit his own personal interests.”
Meyer’s “most immediate” priority, according to Mathekga, will be the “de-escalation of tensions.” The bilateral relationship is critical to South Africa’s economy: Washington is one of Pretoria’s top trading partners, and a reduction in exports to the United States has threatened thousands of South African jobs.
At the same time, South Africa—Africa’s largest economy and most industrialized nation—is an important economic partner to the United States.
“The economic reality is that U.S.-South Africa relations cannot be reduced to simplistic political narratives. Approximately 600 American companies operate in South Africa, employing thousands and generating billions in bilateral trade,” Imraan Buccus wrote in Foreign Policy last year.
South Africa is also critical to U.S. ambitions to counter China’s rare-earths dominance. Despite ongoing tensions, the U.S. government moved forward last week with a $50 million investment in South Africa’s Phalaborwa Rare Earths Project.
Although the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) made the funding commitment in 2023 under then-U.S. President Joe Biden, the Trump administration has chosen to continue with the project, which the DFC refers to as a way of “advancing U.S. strategic interests.”
Tuesday, April 28, to Thursday, April 30: The Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development is held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Wednesday, April 29: The United Nations Security Council adopts a new mandate for the U.N. Mission in South Sudan.
Thursday, April 30: The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds a nomination hearing on Frank Garcia to be a member of the African Development Foundation’s board of directors.
Wednesday, April 29, to Friday, May 1: U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau is set to visit Morocco. His trip started in Algeria on Monday.
Blow to Mali’s junta. Malian Defense Minister Sadio Camara was killed along with members of his family over the weekend by an apparent suicide bombing that was part of a series of coordinated rebel attacks across the country.
Militants from the al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and Tuareg separatists within the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) joined forces to target Camara’s residence in Kati, a key military garrison town, as well as the capital of Bamako and other military sites across the country. The FLA said it had taken control of the northern city of Kidal.
The attacks are a major blow to Mali’s military junta, led by Assimi Goita, who justified his double coups in 2020 and 2021 by promising to eliminate jihadis.
Russia’s Africa Corps—the paramilitary group that replaced the Wagner Group in recent years—has been supporting Mali’s junta but announced its departure from Kidal in a statement on Monday. Moscow claims that the group prevented a coup in the country following the weekend attacks, though Russian mercenaries in Mali have faced heavy defeats in recent years.
Iran-Sudan arms trafficking. Earlier this month, U.S. authorities arrested Shamim Mafi, a California resident, on charges that she brokered weapons sales to Sudan on behalf of Iran, including a $70 million drone contract with Sudan’s Defense Ministry.
Mafi, an Iranian national living in Los Angeles, allegedly facilitated a Sudanese delegation’s visit to Iran, according to the U.S. State Department. Evidence from satellite imagery and open source intelligence shows that Iranian drones have been used in Sudan’s civil war since Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the leader of Sudan’s military, resumed diplomatic relations with Tehran in late 2023.
Dangote’s oil empire. Africa’s richest person, Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, has seen his wealth rise this year. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Dangote’s net worth has climbed by $3.99 billion in 2026 alone, reaching $34 billion.
Dangote owns the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, the largest in the continent. The refinery’s exports have surged in recent months amid global fuel shortages caused by the war in Iran.
Last week, Dangote announced that he plans to partner with Kenya and Uganda to build another refinery in Tanzania, which would serve east Africa.
Last week, Nigerian conservation ecologist Iroro Tanshi won the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for her work protecting endangered bats and their habitats.
Tanshi focuses on wildfire prevention and mitigation in southeastern Nigeria’s Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary, which is home to endangered bats and other species, and educating surrounding communities on fire prevention and the critical roles that bats play in their ecosystems. Nigeria is home to 100 known species of bats, making up around a third of Africa’s bat diversity.
Tanshi told Mongabay that the award came just as her organization is seeking to expand its wildfire prevention program abroad: “It’s just perfect timing to tell that story and get more people to join this fight, to use simple solutions to stop wildfires in small rural areas where resources may not be available and people there might actually feel the effects of climate change so much, but without resources to respond.”
Niger’s junta under pressure. In HumAngle, Aliyu Dahiru reports that Nigeriens are growing wary of their country’s military government amid increased attacks from terrorists affiliated with groups such as JNIM and the Islamic State Sahel Province.
“While the junta has partly succeeded in shielding the capital city, Niamey, from attacks, more people are being killed across the country, and more people are being displaced from regions that were previously stable,” Dahiru writes.
Tunisian landmarks under threat. In New Lines Magazine, Amelia Dhuga argues that the demolition of the iconic Hôtel du Lac in Tunis and other postcolonial landmarks highlights President Kais Saied’s crackdown on Tunisia’s architectural history.
“Wary of being branded as elitist or opposed to the public good, architects, urban planners, and even those within the administration are often too fearful to advocate for preservation,” Dhuga writes. “At the same time, by framing architectural care as the concern of a privileged few, Tunisia’s citizens are being distanced from a culture that should belong to them.”