The conflicts we forsake: How Gaza hides Africa’s pain

Africa has long been forgotten by the world, except when something can be extracted from it. Inspecting the major news outlets in Australia, the USA, or the UK over the past two years, you will have struggled to avoid coverage of Israel and Gaza — even Ukraine lost its sheen as the darling of crises. 

The sheer intensity of the reporting around the Israel and Gaza conflict would suggest it is the world’s defining battle and the mantle on which the morality of all mankind rests. Yet the same news organisations barely register the ongoing humanitarian disasters and conflicts raging on the continent of Africa. The imbalance of reporting is all the more staggering when you consider the staggering human cost of these African conflicts.  

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, there are at least eight conflicts raging in Africa.  

Since April 2023, Sudan has been torn apart by civil war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces. More than 15,000 people have been killed and 10 million displaced — the largest crisis of human displacement in the world today. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, after decades of fighting between militias and state forces, more than 6 million lives have been lost with a further 7 million displaced. Across the Sahel, jihadist insurgencies stretch from Mali through Burkina Faso to Niger; in 2023 alone, thousands of civilians were killed and entire villages erased. Meanwhile, the Horn of Africa faces one of the world’s worst food crises: in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya, 25 million people are food insecure after years of drought layered on top of years of conflict.