There’s a chilling phrase that has stayed with me. Someone had sent a message to a political activist from Zimbabwe,” You have to go to the police, or you will come to the police with flowers on your chest.” This is the stark reality of those speaking out against the Zimbabwean government.

For months, I’d been watching reports come out of Zimbabwe, arrests, intimidation, the quiet suffocation of dissent. Then public hearings on the constitutional amendments turned violent. People who showed up to speak against the bill were beaten. Students were arrested. And the hearings kept going anyway, the government apparently unbothered by the optics. So I went looking for someone living through it. After searching, I found Youngerson Matete, who’s been moving between safe locations, in hiding, and fearing for his life. He shared his story with me, of how he landed up in exile after fearing death and violence in Zimbabwe. He’d been sleeping under bridges on bad nights, and trying to escape the shadow of the state security agents. All because he stood up against a proposed constitutional change in Zimbabwe that critics say could keep President Emmerson Mnangagwa in power till 2030 and beyond.

The man in hiding

He’s been a political activist for over ten years, promoting democracy, mobilising communities, doing the slow unglamorous work of civic life. He has been training and organising young people to attend the public hearings on the constitutional amendments, to show up and make their voices heard. That work made him a target. The government accused him and his network of inciting violence and of training young people outside the country to destabilise Zimbabwe by force. He told me that it is all a fabrication. But fabricated or not, the consequences were real. I asked him to walk me through his journey of how he ended up in exile.

“It’s because from the beginning of March to where we are now, I’ve seen increased threats around me using my family, my brothers, being tortured by people who claim that they are from the president’s office, looking for me. I really do not have a sense of freedom because the ghosts of the state security agents who have been harassing me for the last three weeks, still follows me. Sometimes I still have nightmares when I’m sleeping. I hardly step out of the door. I can’t go anywhere because I don’t know if I’ll be safe. The government has got a network of state security agents around the region, which they follow people, abduct them, kill them or do whatever that they want to do.” - Youngerson Matete

State security agents visited his family. They showed up at every place he tried to sleep. He ran out of money. The border crossing to safety was its own ordeal. This was actually his second time fleeing, he’d briefly left in October last year during street protests, then gone back. Going back cost him. And even after making it out this time, the fear still stays with him. I asked him what it costs, emotionally, mentally, to keep speaking out knowing the risks. His answer was careful and heavy. He talked about the psychological toll of constant surveillance, the way it strips away ordinary life. He mentioned comrades who have developed PTSD, some who broke down entirely. Female activists sexually assaulted and left without any rehabilitation support, carrying the damage alone. He said he’s currently attending counselling himself, trying to stay functional.

“It’s something you really don’t wish on someone else,” he told me. “But it’s where we are.”

His matter of factness took me aback. I could see he was shouldering a great burden, but still insisting on fighting for his country, despite the immense risk that has followed him.

The constitutional coup?

Matete’s story is set against the political backdrop of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, now 83, who came to power through a military coup in 2017, orchestrated largely by his then-ally and current vice-president, Constantino Chiwenga. He was re-elected in 2018 and again in 2023. His current term was supposed to end in 2028. The proposed amendments, which critics have dubbed “Agenda 2030,” would push that to 2030. The proposed changes go further than just extending Mnangagwa’s term. They also include scrapping direct presidential elections altogether, replacing the public vote with a parliamentary one, where ruling party MPs would effectively choose the next president. Given Zanu-PF’s long-established grip on parliament, this would move Zimbabwe closer to a system where power circulates almost entirely within the party. Other proposals would expand the senate, redraw constituency boundaries, and return the electoral commission to an official widely seen as partisan. Critics say each of these changes, taken together, is about locking in one-party dominance for the long term. In a bold statement, Matete called this a constitutional coup.

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“So what you are seeing now is an unconstitutional attempt to violate the constitution. Some are calling it a constitutional coup, just an extension of the 2017 coup that we saw in Zimbabwe. What they’re trying to do is just creating a precedence of amending the constitution further and civilian future. We are not going to have elections in 50 years, we are not going to have elections in a 100 years. We are now in a dynasty. Cecause once you open that gate, you can’t close it.”

Matete told me that under Zimbabwe’s constitution, changing presidential term limits requires a referendum. And if the sitting president would personally benefit from that change, a second referendum is required, one that cannot happen less than six months after the first. Those rules exist specifically to prevent what critics say is now happening. On paper, Zimbabwe has a 90-day consultation process. In reality, the government compressed in-person public hearings into just four days across roughly 60+ locations, often giving people only a few hours to speak. I asked Matete what he thought the constitutional hearings means for the legal process being used as a way to further authoritarianism in Zimbabwe. His answer stopped me in my tracks.

“Yeah so what the government has done is that they’ve abandoned pretences of democracy and rule of law. They are forcing people through the chaotic and shambolic public hearings that are being organised by parliament, where those opposed to the Bill are not allowed to speak, they’re physically being beaten up, being hunted. We are seeing young people, students being arrested who are opposed to that and actually have some students are currently behind bars. It’s like a worker who extends his own contract before consulting the employer and then comes back and says, ‘I’ve awarded myself this extension, is it okay?’ And you’re not allowed to say it’s not okay. You’re beaten up.” - Youngerson Matete

The hearings were packed with bussed-in ruling party supporters. Zanu-PF structures controlled the microphones, handing them only to those they approved of. People who came to oppose the bill were sidelined, ignored, or worse. By the second day, the main coalition of civil society groups defending the constitution had walked out, declaring the process a charade. This followed a pattern going back months, when in October 2025, a civil society meeting to discuss the amendments was firebombed.

Takunda’s story

In a tragic tale, Matete told me about a student leader named Takunda, affiliated with the Zimbabwe National Students Union. Takunda attended one of the public consultations in Harare. He hadn’t even spoken yet, he’d just arrived to observe, when he was grabbed by what Matete described as state security agents or their proxies and assaulted him. He is currently in custody. His crime, as Matete put it, was simply showing up.

As Matete described it plainly: the government has abandoned the pretence of democracy. And he has a pointed way of framing what’s at stake, not just for Zimbabwe, but for the region. Millions of Zimbabweans already live in South Africa, driven out by poverty and political instability. If the constitutional order collapses further, that pressure only grows, and the consequences spill across borders. What neighbouring countries forget is that Zimbabweans are just trying to make a living and survive. But Matete told me that he still fights for a Zimbabwe that will welcome its people from South Africa and the diaspora back home.

The power struggle within Zanu-PF

What’s less visible from the outside is that these amendments aren’t just about Mnangagwa vs. the opposition, they’re also about Mnangagwa vs. Chiwenga. The two men have a complicated history. It was Chiwenga, as military chief, who made the 2017 coup possible. The informal understanding at the time was that Mnangagwa would go first, and Chiwenga would follow. Extending the term to 2030 effectively kills that arrangement, blocking Chiwenga’s path and consolidating Mnangagwa’s hold and his family’s influence, before any transition can happen. Zanu-PF’s factional tensions, never far below the surface, are being pulled tighter.

Beyond these internal divisions, what we’re seeing in Zimbabwe is part of a wider trend recently, where leaders who came to power through military or dominant-party systems using legal changes to extend and consolidate power. Across the continent and beyond, leaders have used legal mechanisms, constitutional amendments, court appointments, referendum manipulation, to entrench themselves. What makes Zimbabwe’s situation particularly grim is the duration. From the Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980s to the violent suppression of protests in 2019, speaking out in Zimbabwe has always carried a cost. The current moment is not a departure. It’s a continuation.

“Since 1980, speaking out against the government, you will get killed, arrested, disappeared. We have comrades we don’t know where they are, 10 years, 15 years, since 2000. Some since 1980. What it has done is it is put a climate of fear among the ordinary people in Zimbabwe “ - Youngerson Matete

What I keep thinking about

Matete said something near the end of our conversation that I’ve been turning over ever since: “What Mr Mnangagwa is failing to understand is that Zimbabwe cannot be placed in his pocket. It is a country that was fought for by many people and many people still believe in it, despite that many things are not working and we would want to make sure that our country works. It’s an existential threat that we are facing, so we are fighting for our lives.”

He said it almost matter-of-factly. He’s been threatened, chased out of his own country, separated from everything he loves and he still believes Zimbabwe belongs to its people. That it can be saved. That young people can save it. He used another image that stayed with me too: once you open the gate on constitutional manipulation, you can’t close it. He’s not just fighting for 2030. He’s fighting for what comes after. What struck me most, though, wasn’t the scale of what he’d lost, it was the humanness of what he wants back. He wants to go home. He wants to garden. He mentioned flowers, which felt unbearably poignant given the threat he’d received. He loves his country. He wants to keep fighting for it.

Whether the amendments succeed is not certain. Analysts point to the fractures within Zanu-PF, the lingering question of what Chiwenga does next, and a fragmented but present opposition provides complications that the ruling party hasn’t fully resolved. But uncertainty about the outcome doesn’t mean safety for the people caught in the middle of it. My conversation with Matete made me realize that what’s happening in Zimbabwe raises a bigger concern: how easily legal systems can be reshaped to extend political control and how ordinary people are left to live with the consequences.

Somewhere, Matete is attending counselling sessions, trying to sleep without nightmares, waiting for the moment when it might be safe to go home and plant something. He’s not waiting to give up. He’s waiting to go back home.

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Over the last week, all I’ve heard, in meetings, in news articles, even over coffee with a friend, is that Africa is Europe’s energy lifeline.

It sounds urgent. Hopeful. Almost heroic.

With gas prices spiking and instability flaring across the Middle East, everyone’s looking for a saviour. Russia’s gas is available, yes but it comes with its own set of complications. So while the world and Europe were scrambling at first, they’re now scrambling in panic. The Gulf doesn’t just have oil; it also has gas. And that gas fuels industries all over the world. Here’s the number that keeps rattling around in my head: 21% of the world’s LNG flows through a single chokepoint, the Strait of Hormuz. This is the chokepoint everyone was already worried about. Now add active strikes on the gas fields themselves. The scramble for alternatives just went from urgent to existential. And Africa is the only continent with the reserves, the proximity to Europe, and crucially, no active war on its infrastructure. So everyone is looking for an alternative. And Africa keeps coming up.

So, I spent the week deep in Africa’s energy sector: reading reports, calling analysts, scrolling through energy and shipping trackers, listening to ministers’ speeches, and rewatching every interview I could find. But all I wanted to know is Africa actually the fix?

Well. There’s a catch. And honestly, the gap between what Africa could be doing and what it’s actually set up to do right now is wilder than I expected. I had no idea, when I started working on this story, that the gas fields in the Middle East would be literally on fire by the time I wrote this entry.

What just happened in the Gulf and why Africa is suddenly everything?

Here’s what I need you to understand about South Pars: it’s not just any gas field. It’s the largest natural gas field on the planet, shared between Iran and Qatar. Qatar calls its side the North Field. When Israel struck Iran’s facilities there on March 18th, in a move coordinated with the Trump administration, it triggered an immediate chain reaction.

Iran’s response was swift. Within hours, missiles hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the facility that processes and exports most of Qatar’s LNG to the world. Qatar expelled Iran’s military attachés. Trump claimed on Truth Social that Israel acted alone, then threatened to “massively blow up” the entire South Pars field if Iran struck Qatar again. US and Israeli officials confirmed the attack was, in fact, coordinated all along. –confirmed

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Why African gas is suddenly the hottest thing on the market

Chatting to Menzi Ndlovu, Lead Country Risk Analyst at Signal Risk, this week, he was refreshingly blunt about it. The Gulf instability had already injected what he called “significant uncertainty” over the availability of oil and gas throughout the world, causing shocks in global supply that translated directly into financial market shocks. That uncertainty had given African energy projects a kind of urgency they’d never quite had before.

“ And as you know the Gulf is a hub for oil and gas and various other inputs in productive processes, but oil and gas in particular, most countries that are net energy importers. And so what that has done is pose significant uncertainty over the availability of oil and gas and various other inputs throughout the entire world, given the amount of oil and gas that these countries account for and that has caused a shock in global supply which is also translated to a shock in financial markets.”

— Menzi Ndlovu, Lead Country Risk Analyst, Signal Risk

The numbers back this up. Africa already accounts for over 11% of global LNG exports and that share is set to grow. The continent sits on an estimated 620 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves, nearly 10% of the global total. And the geography is a genuine structural advantage that no other major supplier can match: LNG carriers from West Africa reach European terminals in 8 to 12 days. From Asia-Pacific, that’s 40 days or more.

So who’s actually doing something about it? Right now, Africa is still more vulnerable than it is powerful in this space. But there is real money starting to move. Energy ministers from Africa’s biggest producers are meeting European buyers in Paris next month to lock in deals. Nigeria alone already supplies over half of Portugal’s total LNG imports. Senegal started producing in 2025. Congo is targeting 3 million tonnes of annual export capacity. After this week, the Europeans sitting across that table in Paris will be a great deal more motivated than they were when the meeting was scheduled. Ndlovu explained it to me further:

“What that has done is engage or inject rather a degree of impetus in African oil and gas projects that we haven’t seen before and so we are seeing projects being expedited like Namibia as mentioned, Senegal for instance that has been expedited, Mozambique as well. We see movements in markets as risky as Libya as well, we know that the Italians are heavily involved in Libya. We are also seeing movements around Tanzania, which has been frozen for quite a while now. And we’re seeing movements in other West African markets.”

The one to watch: Mozambique

Talking through African resource capacity with Ndlovu, it kept coming back to Mozambique. The Rovuma Basin is sitting on an estimated 180 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves. Major energy companies, like TotalEnergies and ENI, are already committed. The momentum has been building for years despite serious setbacks. And something he said now reads very differently after the Qatar strikes.

“Mozambique is gaining significant momentum not just through TotalEnergies but also through ENI with the offshore gas projects. Perhaps if there’s any country that can potentially serve as a short-term route, it is Mozambique, due to the floating liquefied natural gas facility. That is the only one I believe that can actually serve as some kind of repository.”

A floating LNG facility. In a world where Qatar’s Ras Laffan, the world’s biggest fixed LNG export complex, just took missile strikes and suspended production, that distinction suddenly matters enormously. Mozambique’s offshore floating infrastructure is harder to target, faster to reposition, and represents the kind of supply resilience that no Gulf facility can currently offer. The world just got a very loud demonstration of what happens when you concentrate that much gas infrastructure in one place.

The Rwanda complication and what it’s really about

But Mozambique’s story comes with a complication that I covered in last week’s entry and it’s worth connecting the dots here, because the energy angle changes how you read it entirely.

If you missed it: earlier this month, the US imposed sanctions on Rwanda. I covered the full breakdown in my last entry.

The background you need: Cabo Delgado, the province where Mozambique’s Rovuma Basin sits, was gripped for years by an insurgency that made the region effectively uninvestable. Rwanda deployed troops and stabilised the security situation. TotalEnergies, which had suspended operations after a particularly brutal attack on the town of Palma in 2021, returned. The projects restarted. That part of the story is real. But what’s happening now is something different. Rwanda is threatening to withdraw from Mozambique, not out of some principled stand, but as direct leverage in response to the US sanctions imposed on Kigali earlier this month. Kagame is using Rwanda’s presence in Cabo Delgado as a bargaining chip, specifically to pressure the EU into helping circumvent those American sanctions. It’s a calculated move: signal that you’ll walk away from the security arrangement, watch European energy ministers panic, and use that panic to extract concessions. Rwanda is essentially daring the EU to choose between its transatlantic relationships and its gas supply.

“Rwanda is basically playing a game of chicken. They’re essentially saying, you can try us and see how far you go with securing these assets, because we know that you know that we are crucial to the security.”

It’s a sophisticated play. And with the Gulf in flames and Mozambique’s floating LNG facility now looking like one of the few credible near-term alternatives for Europe, it’s a play that just got a lot more leverage behind it. But let’s be clear about what it is: Rwanda using African energy infrastructure as a geopolitical escape hatch from American sanctions pressure. The stability in Cabo Delgado is real. The motivation for threatening to undo it is entirely self-interested.

So why can’t Africa just step up right now?

Because even talking to Ndlovu, someone who knows this sector better than most, the answer was the same: yes, but not yet. And that gap, between yes and not yet just became one of the most consequential gaps in the global economy.

The gap between what’s in the ground and what can actually be delivered is enormous. No amount of reserves fixes a bottleneck problem, and right now the bottlenecks are everywhere, from logistics, pipelines, to refining capacity. Only Nigeria has a refinery large enough to service international markets. The continent currently exports raw and unprocessed gas rather than refined products, which means slower delivery and less value captured from its own resources.

“ And that once again has injected renewed impetus as Africans and other stakeholders to look at our logistical facilities, to look at our oil and gas infrastructure in order to position us appropriately, to take advantage of some of the openings that are happening in the oil and gas markets. So it’s great on paper but we’ve got very serious practical realities to deal with this. The other reality of it is actually refining the products here as opposed to importing raw crude or unprocessed gas. So, we can serve as an emergency rescue for Europe and global markets because we have the endowment but that is in the long term. Because in the short term we don’t have adequate capacity to extract and to transport those minerals that are needed. So, the net result is we end up suffering in the short term but if we do the right things, we’ll benefit in the long term.”

When I started writing this entry, the question was whether Africa could eventually be Europe’s gas backstop. By the time I’m filing it, Iran’s largest gas field has been bombed, Qatar’s biggest LNG facility has been struck, Brent crude oil is above $107, and Europe’s gas benchmark jumped 6% in a single session.

The geography works. The reserves are real. West Africa’s proximity to European terminals is a structural advantage no other supplier can match right now. The Paris meetings are happening. The deals are starting to move. And every missile that hits a Gulf gas facility makes the case for African energy more urgent than any amount of diplomatic advocacy ever could.

As always, my honest answer is that infrastructure still takes years to build. Refineries don’t appear overnight. And as the Rwanda situation shows, Africa’s energy potential is already being pulled into geopolitical games that have nothing to do with actually getting gas to the people who need it. Africa has the resources and the geography to shift global energy markets. But to truly seize this moment, we need infrastructure and political urgency.

Until next time.

Joshua Nkrumah, a Ghanaian, thought he was traveling to Russia to study and work. Instead, he found himself on the frontlines in Ukraine. And he is far from alone. Investigations reveal that hundreds of African nationals are being recruited into the Russian military under false promises of scholarships, high-paying jobs, or migration opportunities. Social media, travel agencies, and local recruiters play a central role. In South Africa, 17 men were lured to Russia under the promise of legitimate jobs, only to end up in combat in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Families report sporadic communication, trauma, and even paralysis among some of the men. Just last week, South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa called Russian president, Vladimir Putin, requesting to bring back the South Africans fighting in Ukraine. The matter has prompted the Hawks (South Africa’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation) to open a probe into the network responsible for sending the men to Russia. Investigators are examining whether the recruits were deceived or unlawfully recruited in breach of the Foreign Military Assistance Act, which bars citizens from serving in foreign armed forces without government approval.

According to investigative research organisation INPACT, even the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) appears to coordinate some of these recruitment networks. An investigation by investigative research organisation, INPACT reveals a systematic campaign: since 2023, Russia has actively recruited African nationals to bolster its forces in Ukraine. The numbers are alarming. INPACT obtained files listing 1,417 African nationals recruited into the Russian army, with 314 of them killed in action, while others have been detained in Ukraine. The average life expectancy in combat is often 6 months for African nationals fighting in Ukraine. The motivations are clear: young people facing limited economic prospects, political instability, and ongoing crises on the continent are drawn toward the possibility of a better life. Social media posts, flashy recruitment ads, and the hope of moving abroad create the perfect conditions for exploitation.

Kent Mensah, a Ghanaian journalist who visited Ukrainian detention centres and saw Joshua there, told The Debrief Network that the situation ultimately reflects the broader unemployment crisis across Africa.

“So basically, it’s all bows down to unemployment and then the economic situation in the various African countries we have high unemployment rate among the youth in the various countries so people are looking forward to where they can be greener pastures and then looking forward to travelling outside a country. So, before this Russian Ukraine issue, you realise that a lot of the youth always see Europe or America as a safe haven for them to have solutions to their unemployment situation or economic situation. So, when this Russian Ukraine saga happened, I think people also took advantage, knowing that the youth can easily fall prey to it and then giving them non-existent employment opportunities in Russia.”

Hearing Kent describe this, I felt a lump in my throat. He had to break the news to Joshua’s family. They had no idea he was alive, let alone fighting in Ukraine. Joshua had believed he was going to further his education. Instead, he is now stuck in detention, which is a reality many families face silently.

The recruitment process is heartbreakingly systematic:

1. Young men finish school and face the harsh reality of unemployment.

2. Seeking income to support themselves and their families, they turn to the internet.

3. On platforms like Telegram and Instagram, “influencers” promote life-changing opportunities, where jobs in private security, farm work, or scholarships in Russia. Promises of $2,000/month sound like a dream.

4. They travel to Russia, on student visas or through agents, only to find themselves bound by contracts they don’t understand and sent straight to the frontlines.

I wanted to know what African governments are doing. Sadly, very little. Most do not track travel to Russia, leaving intervention limited to post-detention support. Mensah told me that a few countries, like Kenya, are beginning to monitor these routes.
“There’s a huge failure in migration oversight. African governments and their diplomatic missions rarely collaborate on who is leaving for Russia or why. Kenya is one of the few trying to track this, working with Russia to understand the flow of people.”

Kenya has been forced to confront this issue directly. Officials condemned recruiters who sent their citizens to fight in Ukraine instead of legitimate work opportunities. Families have reported deaths and severe injuries, and the government has closed more than 600 illicit recruitment agencies, while working to bring home those who survived.

In Africa today, the stakes are real. Kenyan and South African families are desperate for answers. Young men are injured, traumatized, or dead. Meanwhile, citizens follow heroes online who may be consolidating power rather than delivering freedom.I write this newsletter not just as a chronicle of events, but as a reminder that behind every statistic is a young person, a family, a dream hijacked by desperation.

The core problem is simple: African countries are forced to dedicate huge parts of their national budgets just to repaying loans. I recently spoke to David McNair, the Executive Director of The ONE Campaign, a global policy expert who illustrated the massive scale of this burden.

“This year African companies will pay about $88 billion in servicing their debts and a lot of that is a very high rate.”

That massive figure means that many African countries simply cannot afford to pay for essential services like schools, hospitals, or even critical preparation for climate disasters.

I get it—debt sounds complicated and abstract. But here’s the part that actually affects everyday life, as seen recently in East Africa:

“What happened in Kenya was that the government couldn’t afford to do both and therefore they paused payments for civil servants, so what ended up happening was teachers were working for free, so that Wall Street bankers could get paid.”

The insanity of this situation is not that African countries necessarily have more debt than other countries; they don’t. The crazy part, as South Africa’s Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, explained to us, is that African countries have to pay significantly higher interest rates than their Western counterparts.

“If they look at the African panel, which we have set up as part of our G20 presidency, when it rebuilds is precisely, but there’s always a risk attached to the African continent, sometimes an unjustifiable risk which imposes a higher cost of capital than is necessary.”

The solution, therefore, is not just more aid, but a systemic change to lower the cost of borrowing for the continent. This is exactly what South Africa pushed hard for during its G20 presidency this year, ensuring the issue moved from the periphery to the main agenda.

According to Minister Godongwana, these efforts resulted in concrete steps.

“We have declaration on debt, which means we’re going to have serious conversation, as the finance track and beyond,m with our presidents on the issue of debt on the African continent.”

The message is clear: if the G20 can successfully fix this broken system and make borrowing fair, African governments can finally start investing in people, in teachers, nurses, and climate resilience, instead of being forced to prioritize high-cost debt payments.

This systemic reform is the only way to truly give Africans a level playing field.

Amid the devastation of Sudan’s ongoing war and deepening famine, ordinary people are creating extraordinary lifelines. Community kitchens like the one I watched, are feeding thousands of starving people every day. I wanted to understand what compelled ordinary victims of war to risk their own safety to feed others, so after I reached out to Mazin Al Rasheed, the founder of the Sururab Community Kitchen in Khartoum, and a photographer before the war, I learned that these Takayas are among the few things still holding the war-ravaged country together.

More than just a place for meals, the Takayas have become a symbol of unity, care, and belonging. Over 700 days since the conflict began, they remain a powerful reminder of Sudanese resilience. When Al Rasheed first started his Takaya, he served 18 families, and after more people heard about the kitchen, it increased to almost 90 families.

Al Rasheed shared the story of Fatima, a volunteer who, despite losing everything and becoming an internally displaced person (IDP), was the first to step forward and offer her help. Initially, she believed Al Rasheed planned to hire someone to run the kitchen, and she insisted that he didn’t need to.

“Fatima told us there was no need to pay someone else. She said she would do the work because she wants to help others. So, in my mind, I consider this woman to be an IDP herself. She has nothing, but she’s willing to offer the little she has left, herself, her work, and her strength.”

Fatima’s story is just one of many. Since the conflict erupted, more than 12 million people have been displaced across Sudan. Famine has been confirmed in at least 10 regions, and for many, these kitchens are their only means of survival.

The city of El Fasher has been among the hardest hit. Under siege by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the number of displaced people has surged in recent months. In September, RSF attacks intensified, and in one horrific incident, a drone strike during Friday prayers killed 70 worshippers at a mosque. These recent RSF drone attacks have caused major obstacles for food access in El Fasher, with food markets, such as the Abu Qurun station market bombed in late September.

While such violence continues, over 24 million Sudanese face famine. Food has become a luxury. A mere 2 kilos of millet can cost $100, while a kilo of sugar or flour can reach $80. In El Fasher, a sack of ‘ambaz’, once animal fodder, now a staple food, costs two million Sudanese pounds. Yet, despite everything, the Takayas endure.

Sudanese activist Hala Elshaygi told The Debrief Network that even though many have lost everything, volunteering at the Takayas has given people a renewed sense of purpose and stability.

“Even during this tragedy, there have been symbols of hope, like the Takayas. These kitchens bring people together from all over Sudan, and even beyond. They are mostly run by volunteers, youth, women, and they show that solidarity can survive even in the harshest times. These volunteers are often the most vulnerable, risking their own safety to support others. They do more than just provide food; they rebuild, unite, and inspire hope.”

In the brutal reality of war, these community kitchens have become lifelines for Sudanese. Yet when I watched the videos Al Rasheed shared with me, I saw more than just need, I saw a community that cares deeply. People who show up for each other. Volunteers who begin their days at 5:00 a.m. just for the chance to help. Al Rasheed’s kitchen just ‘celebrated’ 500 days of being operational, yet he explained to me that these takayas should not have had to exist in the first place.

“It came from a deep need of people needing food, and it’s not a beautiful site to see people lining up for a bag of lentils or rice, but most people don’t have 500 days of being able to help others. It’s a good thing, but I hope that we don’t reach our 700 days or 1,000 days. I hope this is our last large milestone that we have. I hope that people can return to their homes, can return to their normal lives, can sustain themselves, can help themselves and we can start to see what we can do in normal times.”

After I spoke to Al Rasheed, I realized that these kitchens were never meant to exist, but their presence reveals something powerful: the ability of Sudan’s people to build and create in the face of destruction. And if peace can find them, they will have the strength to rebuild an even better Sudan.