Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: Nigerian President Bola Tinubu presses on with military reforms ahead of 2027 elections, Africa’s richest man launches the continent’s biggest-ever initial public offering, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo plans to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: Nigerian President Bola Tinubu presses on with military reforms ahead of 2027 elections, Africa’s richest man launches the continent’s biggest-ever initial public offering, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo plans to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has appointed Maj. Gen. Ibikunle Ajose as the new top army commander for the northeast, the epicenter of the country’s Islamist insurgency, after the previous leader spent less than two years in the role. The move is the latest in a series of military reforms ahead of January’s general elections, in which insecurity will be high on the list of voters’ concerns.

Ajose’s appointment was part of a bigger reshuffling last week that involved 15 top generals. These redeployments, along with a major hike in military spending, are key to the government’s wider plan to stabilize bellwether regions before Nigerians head to the polls.

Tinubu is seeking a second term as the candidate for the All Progressives Congress party and will face the same main challengers he came up against in 2023: former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who is running under the African Democratic Congress (ADC), and former Anambra state Gov. Peter Obi, with the Nigeria Democratic Congress.

This year, Abubakar and Obi initially joined forces to unseat Tinubu under an ADC-led opposition coalition, but the alliance fractured due to their competing ambitions. Observers are looking to see whether Obi in particular, who came in third in 2023, can translate the unprecedented backing he garnered from young Nigerian urbanites in the last election into rural support.

Importantly, the public is paying close attention to how candidates intend to address widespread violence and kidnappings for ransom. A mass kidnapping of schoolchildren in Tinubu’s political heartland in the southwestern state of Oyo in May magnified the issue.

More than 7,800 people were kidnapped in Nigeria between July 2025 and June 2026—a 66 percent increase from the previous year, according to a new report from risk advisory firm SBM Intelligence. Over that period, kidnappers received some $5.8 million in ransom money, three times that of the previous year. Boko Haram collected 90 percent of those payments, mainly from mass abductions.

The insecurity has ripple effects across the country. For instance, many farmers have been unable to access their lands due to the threat of kidnappings, leading to food shortages and hunger, especially in the........

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