Healthcare workers across Ethiopia launched unprecedented strikes in 2025, bringing an already fragile system to its knees. Beginning mid-May, over 15 ,000 doctors, nurses and other health workers across the country conducted a strike to protest chronic low wages and deteriorating working conditions. By late May, the strikes had spread nationwide, paralysing whatever was left of the public hospitals and clinics.
Facing its bleakest nadir in decades, every country in the Horn of Africa is currently grappling with some form of constitutional or succession crisis. Over several years, the region has gradually slid into a state of near-permanent emergency, with armed conflict, major humanitarian disasters, and political instability all rife. In turn, the legitimacy and presence of the 'state' is contracting across the board, driving nearly every debt-saddled regional government to the Gulf for discreet patronage to prop up their fragile ruling coalitions. This combination of state capture and broad insecurity is both compounding and undermining attempts at a coherent regional response to issues such as the war in Sudan.
On 28 May, Kenyan author and academic titan Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o passed away in the United States at the age of 87. A fierce critic of colonialism and post-independence authoritarianism, Ngũgĩ redefined the role of literature in the fight for liberation and the broader intellectual struggle for decolonisation. Regarded as one of the greats of 20th-century African literature, his death has been mourned widely and comes at a moment when the topics he grappled with, including police brutality, corruption and state overreach, are prominent in the public eye once again.
Once again, Somalia is quietly heading towards a large-scale humanitarian catastrophe. Intersecting threats of rising conflict and worsening drought are estimated to push an additional one million people into 'crisis' levels of food insecurity between April and June 2025. The prospect of 4.4 million people at IPC Level 3 hunger could arguably not come at a worse moment, with the international aid and development architecture paralysed by the savaging of USAID. In 2022, Somalia narrowly avoided famine due to coordinated humanitarian efforts, but it is unlikely to receive such assistance this time around.
An internal memo reported by the Associated Press and US court disclosures has revealed the scale of the Trump administration's intended evisceration of USAID. Last month, Washington ordered a 90-day suspension for all USAID programmes, sending the established aid and development sectors into a tailspin and immediately severing thousands of programmes across the world. Waivers could be nominally applied for, but it appears that the depth of the cuts will be permanent, with the Trump government apparently seeking to eliminate 5,800 of the 6,200 multi-year USAID foreign aid contracts, an equivalent of USD 54 billion in assistance.