August 26, 2024

When the War Ends

NEED TO KNOW When the War Ends ETHIOPIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a92e5842-0dc5-6ff6-ee91-6ebc335dec58.png"] Alemetu, pregnant, was trying desperately to fall asleep when the men from the rebel Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) came for her. Held hostage for four weeks in an abandoned school in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, she was beaten with a horsewhip...

Read full story →

August 21, 2024

Common Ground

NEED TO KNOW Common Ground TANZANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f2554b58-7524-1a48-202e-140719a07af1.png"] Architects in Tanzania are using three-dimensional printers to construct housing and other buildings, also using soil rather than artificial materials – the production of which emit greenhouse gases that cause climate change. The builders hope to construct a village called New Hope...

Read full story →

August 12, 2024

The Tyranny of Doubt

NEED TO KNOW The Tyranny of Doubt MALAWI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/87290663-ce6f-a91e-8a1b-ae0d9b187ea9.png"] In March last year, Cyclone Freddy ripped through Malawi and southeast Africa, killing 679 people, displacing almost 660,000, and causing property damage totaling more than $500 million. Thirty-nine-year-old mother Gladys Austin was one of those hundreds of thousands who had...

Read full story →

August 07, 2024

Nothing to Lose

NEED TO KNOW Nothing to Lose KENYA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6a6f20fb-6a89-3416-50d9-989b3f051e12.png"] In late June, Kenyan President William Ruto blinked. After winning the 2022 general election on his plans to reform the economy, he scuttled planned tax hikes and conceded that he was reversing his position in the wake of protests by...

Read full story →

July 30, 2024

Mirror Image

NEED TO KNOW Mirror Image WEST AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/01d49cdb-61dd-cd7c-a674-0b4da8c2471a.png"] Earlier this month, a triumvirate of military leaders who oversee military juntas in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger signed a pact to establish the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), a new confederation that they said would combat jihadism and foster...

Read full story →

July 22, 2024

The Blood Minerals

NEED TO KNOW The Blood Minerals RWANDA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c5b845af-ddad-875c-b7f5-fe4838a6ba93.png"] Rwandan President Paul Kagame recently won reelection in a landslide, adding five more years to his 24-year rule. At the point that election officials had counted almost 80 percent of the ballots, he had garnered more than 99 percent of...

Read full story →

July 15, 2024

Prosperity, by Fiat

NEED TO KNOW Prosperity, by Fiat RWANDA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ae24d297-b902-4996-a757-c6a84ab9a136.png"] A notable international exchange occurred recently when Sir Keir Starmer, the new Labour prime minister of the United Kingdom, announced that he would scrap his Conservative predecessor’s plan to fly migrants to the southern African country of Rwanda. Starmer said the...

Read full story →

July 10, 2024

Lost in the Desert

NEED TO KNOW Lost in the Desert AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b8aca45b-1687-4d5b-b62c-09186470d8a2.png"] Bella, 27, from a small village in northern Guinea, decided to try her luck getting to Europe. However, the boat she was on, sailing from Mauritania to Spain, was intercepted by Mauritanian security officials. Soon after, she and about...

Read full story →

July 05, 2024

The Many Shades of Terror

NEED TO KNOW The Many Shades of Terror SOMALIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/15cd6f05-9c0c-4887-86f7-20dad73138cf.png"] The Somali National Army suffers from bungling leaders, inexperienced field officers and corrupt overseers who steal food, military equipment, weapons, and ammunition to sell on the black market, reported Voice of America, citing unnamed senior American military officials. That...

Read full story →

June 24, 2024

A Permanent Transition

NEED TO KNOW A Permanent Transition SOUTH SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/63f3bf8f-63ac-093e-e3bd-bc4bfa78b55b.png"] Global leaders are putting their heads together to solve South Sudan’s political crisis and civil war so the country can form a stable government and devote its energies into building new infrastructure, institutions and a civil society. Dennis Francis, a...

Read full story →

June 19, 2024

Back to Basics

NEED TO KNOW Back to Basics MAURITANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9d3b7ddd-bfc7-fa9a-f2dd-2d4b53dc38fc.png"] In 2019, the former president of the West African country of Mauritania, Ould Abdel Aziz, respected his country’s term limits and quit his job – even though he came to power in a coup. It was the first successful, peaceful...

Read full story →

June 10, 2024

Becoming Besties

NEED TO KNOW Becoming Besties KENYA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/042c2340-7f46-4be6-b8d2-b99757193837.png"] Western influence on the African continent has been waning in recent years, with many countries moving toward China and Russia, often after military coups have overthrown democratically elected leaders – for example, in Niger and Mali. Kenya, however, has been an outlier,...

Read full story →

June 03, 2024

The Inheritance

NEED TO KNOW The Inheritance NAMIBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b8d2c7ac-0ac4-4b14-8265-2f9660928132.png"] The southwest African country of Namibia has long been isolated geographically and politically. A former German colony that came under a White-minority government under South African control after World War I, Namibia only gained its independence in 1990. Now, however, things here...

Read full story →

May 29, 2024

A Long Way to Fall

NEED TO KNOW A Long Way to Fall SOUTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5516b8d6-0af4-46a7-8454-a3339ff1009f.png"] Since the racist apartheid regime in South Africa ended 30 years ago, the African National Congress party, whose crusaders brought down white minority rule, has won every election, with support in the high double digits. That track...

Read full story →

May 21, 2024

The Fertility of Chaos

NEED TO KNOW The Fertility of Chaos SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/224b0e8f-5be6-4e44-b799-a1b865717c98.png"] On June 15, 2023, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and its Arab allied militias attacked a convoy of locals as it proceeded through El Geneina in West Darfur, killing civilians as they ran through the streets, trying to...

Read full story →

May 14, 2024

Naming and Shaming

NEED TO KNOW Naming and Shaming UGANDA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/eae01c28-7782-4a11-9e2b-886217499c6a.png"] Barred from staging street protests, Ugandans are leveraging social media to shine a light on the misdeeds of their corrupt and incompetent leaders. The latest online protest, or “exhibition,” is trending under #UgandaParliamentExhibition on X (formerly Twitter), and it details...

Read full story →

May 06, 2024

The Last, Wobbly Domino

NEED TO KNOW The Last, Wobbly Domino CHAD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b08925fb-4623-40c3-9563-de5bd3009fa5.png"] When polls in the landlocked central African country of Chad open on May 6, it will be the first of coup-hit states across Central and West Africa to use the ballot box to try to emerge from years of...

Read full story →

April 30, 2024

The Lost and the Found

NEED TO KNOW The Lost and the Found NIGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c258edc-b123-4d47-98e3-f42e226ea64f.png"] Nigerian military forces recently found one of the 276 schoolgirls abducted 10 years ago from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok in the West African country’s Borno State. Troops rescued Lydia Simon, who was pregnant, and her three...

Read full story →

April 23, 2024

Breeding Ground

NEED TO KNOW Breeding Ground MOZAMBIQUE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/145ea551-3c3e-4af3-915f-9d349351d3b2.png"] A jihadist insurgency with links to the Islamic State terror group has plagued Mozambique’s lawless Cabo Delgado region for more than six years. Recently, however, an upsurge in violence has forced more than 70,000 people to flee the area, reported News...

Read full story →

April 16, 2024

Like Father Like Son

NEED TO KNOW Like Father Like Son TOGO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bb466bd7-9e9a-7c5d-0be4-ffae7064b9b9.png"] For years, Togolese citizens have been calling for the resignation of President Faure Gnassingbé. The man has held the office since 2005, but his critics say his political machine stretches beyond those 19 years – his father, Gnassingbé Eyadéma,...

Read full story →