The Panel should be drawn into a discussion on grand strategy by asking: What similarities are there between 1884, when the Berlin Conference partitioned Africa, and 2025? Then, colonial powers had established weaponized ports to dominate trade and project power inland/ 🧵

https://twitter.com/AUC_PAPS/status/1962586989565247928

In 1884, each of the continent’s kingdoms and nations faced the coming conquest alone. With no shared political identity and no framework of coordination, their fates were decided by a panel in Berlin. That a panel of Africans now meets in Nairobi shows how much has changed!

A single overblown, diplomatically ill-timed sentence in President Ruto’s April speech in Beijing saying that Kenya and China are “co-architects of a new world order” is all it took for US Senator Jim Risch to question Kenya’s foreign policy. A 🧵 Now comes a review of Kenya's designation as a Major Non-NATO Ally.
But real allies, or good friends, should not be judged on the basis of a single line in a speech. Unless the point is that being a MNNA is an allegiance to Washington, reversed by a single visit to Beijing

AGOA is dead. Kenya saw the writing on the wall early. In 2020, under President Uhuru Kenyatta, it sought a Free Trade Agreement with the US, despite widespread skepticism. That call now looks prescient. Africa needs more foresight in its trade and geopolitical relations. 🧵 AGOA was not a treaty. It was a unilateral preference, a form of aid as trade, that could be withdrawn without warning. No African state had recourse and that fragility is now plain to see as these new US tariffs gut its benefits or it is withdrawn for political reasons

As a member of the @UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, it has been a privilege to participate in the second session this week in New York. Here is a🧵of key points I heard made (note: this is NOT the forum’s official report)
#PFPAD #UN #HumanRights #AfricanDescent 1/ An insistence on robust civil society participation and a call for the removal of structural and bureaucratic barriers to those attending annual sessions, including accommodations for language, disability, and event capacity

Shakahola. Many people are very vulnerable to cults. Years ago, as I wrote my thesis, and later as we built a national disengagement & reintegration system for violent extremists, I found Professor Robert Jay Liston’s work on cult manipulation useful. Here are his 8 criteria. A🧵 The 8 criteria work in combination.
1 Milieu Control: control of the access to information and social support for the targeted individual. He or she is isolated from their friends and family. You experience this as a friend/relative suddenly becoming scarce and avoiding contact

It was a pleasure being back to a much changed Addis Ababa & the @_AfricanUnion to feedback on lessons we learned in the UNSC. A special thank you to @JeanKamau and @KenyaEmbAddis for organising the event which I hope becomes a tradition for all A3 members. A wonky thread: 1/ Kenya’s commitment to Africa went beyond our actions in NY. We used the seat to support our pursuit of peace mediation in the Horn of Africa & the Great Lakes. We learned that the Council is a single link in a chain of actions that stretch from capital to practical initiatives