Into Africa

As leaders gather in New York for the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Africa sits at the center of many of the world's most consequential debates, from peace and security to climate, development, and global governance.

In this episode of Into Africa, Oge speaks with Bitania Tadesse of the International Peace Institute about what to watch as UNGA unfolds, the prospects for meaningful UN reform, and Africa's evolving role in shaping the international agenda. Together, they explore a central question: as Africa's voice grows louder on the world's stage, is it also gaining the leverage needed to shape outcomes?

As Nigeria prepares for its 2027 elections, the country faces a critical test. Trust in electoral institutions is weakening, young voters are increasingly disillusioned, and demands for accountability are growing louder. These challenges extend beyond Nigeria, as countries across Africa grapple with questions of democratic credibility, governance, and public trust amid declining funding for democracy and governance programs. Despite these challenges, citizens and civil society across the continent continue to push for more accountable and responsive governance. On this episode of Into Africa, Oge Onubogu is joined by Samson Itodo, Executive Director of YIAGA Africa, to discuss Nigeria’s electoral landscape and the governance deficit at the heart of many of its challenges. Can Nigerians trust the 2027 elections, and what will it take to rebuild public confidence in the institutions that underpin democratic governance? 

Africa’s economic future will be shaped in part by the movement of people, skills, and labor across the continent. Yet migration remains one of the most debated and politically sensitive issues in Africa and around the world, raising questions about jobs, borders, demographics, and social cohesion. Recent attacks against migrants in South Africa have brought these debates back into sharp focus, even as the African Union and the African Continental Free Trade Area push for deeper regional integration.

In this episode of Into Africa, Oge Onubogu speaks with Amanda Bisong, a policy expert and researcher on migration and labor mobility, and Daniel Yu, founding partner of the Africa Jobs Fund and co-founder and former CEO of Wasoko, about the realities of migration across Africa, the gap between political rhetoric and economic evidence, and what greater labor mobility could mean for the continent’s growth and integration. 

The 2026 men's World Cup was a landmark for African football. Nine of ten African sides cleared the group stage, a continental record, yet only Morocco and Egypt reached the round of 16. In this Youth Roundtable, Catherine Nzuki is joined by Janine Anthony, an award-winning broadcaster who founded LadiesMarch, Africa's first all-women women's soccer network, and was the BBC World Service's first African female commentator to run lead commentaries at a major men's football tournament (the Africa Cup of Nations); and Chibuogwu Nnadiegbulam, a journalist with the International Sport Press Association and an editor with LadiesMarch.

Together they unpack what drove the group-stage surge, from expanded participation fees to the competitive edge of AFCON, and why so many campaigns unraveled after the 80th minute. They discuss game management and investment African football needs before 2030.  They also discuss WAFCON 2026, where early upsets have already reshaped expectations. Janine and Chibuogwu make the case for why the women's game, long under-resourced and under-covered, deserves the same investment as the men's, with four tickets to the 2027 World Cup in Brazil on the line.

This week on Into Africa, we are sharing an episode from the CSIS podcast, CommonHealth, hosted by CSIS Senior Vice President and Director of Global Health Policy Center Stephen Morrison. Stephen is joined by Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme. Dr. Ihekweazu spent several weeks in the hot zone in eastern Congo, mobilizing the international response to the late-discovered Ebola outbreak. Establishing community trust and confidence is the single most urgent challenge across all activities. At the six-week point, the response is scaling. However, "We have to be humble." "We are nowhere yet where we want to be." There is now a high-level UN figure in eastern Congo charged with addressing the complex security challenges. The absence of advanced US technical expertise in the deliberations and response, following the US withdrawal from WHO, is "strange." "Everyone pays a price." 

As global power shifts and competition intensifies, Africa is moving from the margins toward the center of the global strategic stage. The question is whether the continent will become a decisive global actor—and whether its partners are prepared for that repositioning.  Too often, policymakers consumed by immediate crises overlook the deeper structural forces reshaping Africa’s trajectory. Trade integration, demographic shifts, and greater African agency will shape the continent's role in the changing global order.

Drawing on decades of forecasting data and scenario modeling, Jakkie Cilliers, Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Security Studies and Director of the Africa Futures program, joins Oge to unpack the structural forces shaping the continent's future. Together, they explore the slow-moving but transformative trends shaping Africa's future.

Across Africa, the security landscape is shifting. Extremist groups are becoming more mobile, more digitally savvy, and more deeply rooted in local grievances, even in cases where they lose physical territory. From northern Mozambique to the Sahel, the old playbooks for counterterrorism and conflict response are struggling to keep pace with threats that operate more like adaptive ecosystems than traditional insurgencies. 

In the season two premiere of Into Africa, Dr. Olajumoke Ayandele, Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University, and Peter Bofin, Senior Analyst, Southeast Africa at ACLED, join Oge to unpack this evolving threat landscape. Together, they examine how technology is reshaping how armed groups recruit, finance, and operate.

In this season finale, we revisit our guests’ reflections on what continues to inspire hope for them.  
Into Africa will be back on June 18th for its second season. 
Thank you for listening. 

The international development and humanitarian landscape in Africa is at an inflection point, driven by a convergence of severe funding cuts,  escalated climate and conflict-related crisis, and a necessary, but challenging shift from donor-led relief to locally led, long-term development. The current aid architecture was built for a different era, and this moment of disruption presents an opportunity to reimagine a system that is more effective, sustainable, and built on local partnerships and resilience.

Tjada D'Oyen McKenna, CEO of Mercy Corps, and Noam Unger, Vice-President of the Global Development department at CSIS, join Oge to assess the current state of the international development and humanitarian assistance landscape and explore what challenges and opportunities this moment presents for  Africa’s future.

Note: Into Africa will be taking a short break and will return in the next few months!

In this youth roundtable, Catherine Nzuki, Associate Fellow with the CSIS Africa Program, is joined by two Sudanese scholars to discuss Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms, a grassroots network of young volunteers delivering food, medicine, and essential services across all eighteen states in Sudan. Noaman Mousa is a political science PhD student at UCLA, where his research focuses on civil wars and state-building in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yasir Zaidan is an adjunct lecturer at Seattle University and a PhD student at the University of Washington, where his research examines the expanding influence of Middle Eastern states in the Horn of Africa. Together, they trace the ERRs' origins in the neighborhood resistance committees that drove Sudan's 2019 revolution and explore what a day in the life of an ERR volunteer looks like across different regions and frontlines. Yasir and Noaman also reflect on the deepening of ethnic and tribal cleavages in Sudan since the outbreak of war in April 2023, the role of Gulf states in prolonging the conflict, and the difficult question of what a path to peace might look like.

Reading Recommendations from Noaman Mousa:

Reading Recommendations from Yasir Zaidan: