Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: Protesters take to the streets in Tunisia and Libya, Chad withdraws from the International Criminal Court amid U.S. pressure, and a new political party is launched amid a power struggle in Senegal.
Anti-government protests erupted in Tunisia and Libya over the weekend in response to power cuts amid a severe heat wave. These are the latest in a trend of youth-led mobilization against systemic government mismanagement across the continent.
Starting on Sunday, hundreds of demonstrators have blocked major roads in Libya’s capital of Tripoli to protest rising oil prices and daily 14-hour power cuts as temperatures in parts of the country soared to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
Although a petrostate, Libya is experiencing an electricity crisis driven by years of underinvestment in critical infrastructure. The country often implements load shedding to cope with aging infrastructure, but the frequency of power cuts increased in June. Public frustration over the cuts has tipped into broader anti-government sentiment.
