Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: A large Nigerian delegation arrives in England to cement closer bilateral ties, President Denis Sassou Nguesso extends his 42-year rule in the Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda threatens to withdraw troops from counterterrorism operations in Mozambique.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: A large Nigerian delegation arrives in England to cement closer bilateral ties, President Denis Sassou Nguesso extends his 42-year rule in the Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda threatens to withdraw troops from counterterrorism operations in Mozambique.

Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu began a two-day historic state visit to the United Kingdom on Wednesday. King Charles III and Queen Camilla are hosting Tinubu and his wife, former Sen. Oluremi Tinubu, at Windsor Castle, marking the first formal visit by a Nigerian leader to the country since military ruler Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s trip nearly four decades ago.

The two nations share a violent colonial history, where Britain effectively looted and ran the country as a corporate enterprise, but have grown ever closer in recent years as Abuja seeks to cultivate stable and predictable alliances in the face of an increasingly erratic White House.

“I do not seek to offer words that dissolve the past, for no words can,” Charles said at a state banquet for Tinubu on Wednesday, adding that he hoped for a more optimistic future “worthy of those who bore the pains of the past.”

Recent military cooperation with the United States has also not yielded results in combating a toxic brew of security problems spurred by jihadists, criminal armed groups, and separatists.

At least 65 Nigerian soldiers were killed, and 300 civilians, including children, were abducted in a coordinated attack earlier this month on military bases in northeast Nigeria by the Islamic State West Africa Province. On Monday, suicide bombers targeted crowded areas in the northeast, including a hospital, killing at least 23 people; the army blamed suspected Islamist militants.

Some British lawmakers have called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to confront Tinubu during the visit about alleged Christian persecution in Nigeria—a claim popularized by U.S. President Donald Trump that misrepresents the security situation in the country, where all faiths have been affected by rising violence.

Perhaps as counterpropaganda, Oluremi Tinubu, who is a Christian pastor, is slated to preach at services in London’s Lambeth Palace and meet with representatives of the Church of England.

The British government recently said that it wants to shift........

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