Yesterday, the head of the UN's atomic watchdog, Rafael Grossi, stressed the alarming status of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant on the Dnieper River in Ukraine, which has been without power for several days. Having been seized by the Russian military in 2022, Moscow has repeatedly stoked fears of nuclear fallout-- and the spectre of the Chernobyl disaster-- by cutting off electricity as it has sought to consolidate its hold over the plant.
Earlier this year, a clip of an interview with Peter Thiel, a billionaire founder of the US cyber-arms and tech firm Palantir, went viral. In it, he was asked whether he would prefer the human race to endure, and Thiel pauses before stuttering through a half-answer in the affirmative. For those following Thiel and his brand of ultra-conservative Christian politics blended with surreal transhumanist tech-based visions of a future, though undoubtedly creepy, it came as little surprise. But Thiel and his ilk are the ones now directing much of our future, a handful of nearly exclusively white North American men, wealthy, vainglorious and battling out the future of humanity with their egos in the race for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data supremacy.
Today, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is finally being inaugurated amid great pomp and fanfare-- and just in time for the Ethiopian New Year. After over a decade in construction and many more in the making, it is a colossal feat of hydroelectric engineering, stretching over a mile wide in the country's western Benishangul-Gumuz region. With African leaders gathered in Ethiopia for the Africa Climate Summit, the symbolism is hard to miss, with PM Abiy Ahmed triumphant in the rapturous celebrations and bonhomie atop the structure. Yet it also comes amid the worst Ethiopia-Egypt relations in years, even while perhaps the most 'dangerous' moment has passed-- the filling of the GERD, with Cairo still furious at Addis's fitful, unilateral approach to negotiations. And with the dam finally complete and supposed to transform Ethiopia's development capacity, the messianic vision of Abiy continues-- with his gaze firmly trained on the Eritrean Port of Assab on the gates of the Red Sea.
Later this month, world leaders, diplomats, and politicians from across the world will gather in New York for the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting under the banner 'Better together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights.' Under current circumstances, the theme of 'better together' feels more evocative of a plea to save a failing marriage than any anticipated genuine commitment to multilateralism. It comes as no surprise that the multilateral order is badly adrift, with the age of the Middle Powers--alongside China and the US--bearing down upon the grim-seeming decades to come. What celebrations will be planned for the UN's 80th birthday will have to be seen, but with the Gaza Strip lying in ruins and the contours of the 'illiberal globalised' alliance in shape, it is hard to envisage anything beyond a continued attempt to maintain the slipping status quo. And though Gaza and Ukraine will—understandably—absorb much of the international oxygen, the Horn of Africa is facing its most intense crisis for decades.