November 18, 2022

Waving Bye-Bye

NEED TO KNOW Waving Bye-Bye EGYPT [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/180d3d63-0093-422e-a6d2-b3d9896f0053.png"] Shortly before Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi hosted world leaders for the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh, he delivered a scornful message to his constituents. He asked them to stop having...

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November 11, 2022

‘The Hungriest Place on Earth’

NEED TO KNOW ‘The Hungriest Place on Earth’ SOMALILAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3acb250d-c8fb-ab06-e014-2db36946b098.png"] Photographer Misan Harriman was openly distressed after journeying to Somaliland to document how four years of drought – the worst in 40 years – has precipitated a food crisis in the region that is an independent part of...

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October 28, 2022

Blood and Soil

NEED TO KNOW Blood and Soil TANZANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7819ef2-af28-4877-8ca5-9689142b709a.png"] The Tanzanian government describes the transfer of ethnic Maasai people from their traditional homelands as “voluntary relocation.” The Maasai call it “eviction,” Le Monde reported. The truth is far more complicated, especially after the regional East African Court of Justice recently...

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October 26, 2022

Turning to the World

NEED TO KNOW Turning to the World ALGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/afd743d3-28d8-42d3-ad85-cbd124324f7b.png"] Algeria’s authoritarian rulers have a mixed relationship with globalization. After winning independence from France in a bloody war that ran from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, Algeria championed decolonization and the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War. After a...

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October 18, 2022

A Moment to Exhale

NEED TO KNOW A Moment to Exhale GUINEA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/963d6fc3-90db-4090-ad9a-da882d906f12.png"] Djenabou Bah was nine years old in 2009 when she attended a protest against former president Moussa Dadis Camara’s junta in a soccer stadium in the Guinean capital of Conakry. Protesters were singing and dancing when, suddenly, security forces began...

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October 13, 2022

Try, Try Again

NEED TO KNOW Try, Try Again BURKINA FASO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0c0197a8-9ef4-4935-9656-24fbfbb32b2e.png"] Protesters took to the streets of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, recently to wave Russian flags and condemn alleged meddling by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the impoverished, landlocked West African country’s former colonial...

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October 06, 2022

The Kingdom and the Chaos

NEED TO KNOW The Kingdom and the Chaos LESOTHO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0126ef0b-9a22-c2a5-427c-0e29e9a16add.png"] Born in Shanghai in China, Zhenyu Shao moved to Lesotho 25 years ago and became a citizen in 2006. Now he’s running for parliament in his adopted country when voters go to the polls for a general election...

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September 27, 2022

The Best Man for the Job

NEED TO KNOW The Best Man for the Job UGANDA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/eae01c28-7782-4a11-9e2b-886217499c6a.png"] An Ebola outbreak is occurring in Uganda, raising fears that the country will not be able to contain and control the deadly disease in the East African nation, reported CNN. Public health officers are scrambling to trace...

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September 13, 2022

Going A-Courting

NEED TO KNOW Going A-Courting AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b8aca45b-1687-4d5b-b62c-09186470d8a2.png"] In the universe of Marvel Comics, Wakanda is a secret kingdom in sub-Saharan Africa ruled over by the benevolent, super-powered hero, the Black Panther. In the real world, there is not one but four centers of innovation in Africa that now,...

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September 07, 2022

Wasting Away

NEED TO KNOW Wasting Away SOMALIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/15cd6f05-9c0c-4887-86f7-20dad73138cf.png"] Death has two faces in Somalia these days. If famine doesn’t claim one’s life in the war-torn nation on the Horn of Africa, then Islamic militants might. Drought has brought Somalia to the precipice of its worst famine in 40 years. More...

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August 31, 2022

Breathing Room

NEED TO KNOW Breathing Room SOUTH SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/63f3bf8f-63ac-093e-e3bd-bc4bfa78b55b.png"] Rather than hold elections in December as previously planned under a 2018 peace agreement that ended its almost five-year civil war, the government of South Sudan will hold elections in two years as a “transitional leadership” team makes supposedly necessary...

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August 24, 2022

The Old, the New and the Dead

NEED TO KNOW The Old, the New and the Dead ANGOLA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e580f12f-c318-4898-ba82-0cb1373117e3.png"] The recent return of the body of the late president of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, to his home from Spain was a fitting prelude to the tensions that have been growing in the country in...

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August 17, 2022

The War Dividend

NEED TO KNOW The War Dividend CAMEROON [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6863deda-11be-43e3-9033-4bec4b249409.png"] A few months ago, elite government soldiers in Ndop in the Northwest region of Cameroon detained more than 30 young men on motorcycles who were part of a funeral procession, but whom the soldiers said they believed were separatist fighters. “The...

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August 09, 2022

We’re Jammin’

NEED TO KNOW KENYA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/042c2340-7f46-4be6-b8d2-b99757193837.png"] Everywhere in Kenya these days, people are jamming, on corners, at gas stations, and even on buses. That’s because there’s a presidential election Tuesday and appealing to the youth vote – 40 percent of the electorate – is critical for a win. But...

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August 02, 2022

Floating On

NEED TO KNOW Floating On EGYPT [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/180d3d63-0093-422e-a6d2-b3d9896f0053.png"] The houseboats of the Nile River in Egypt have a storied past. Many believe the pharaohs used them thousands of years ago for long river voyages, the BBC explained, while in the 19th and 20th centuries Ottoman and British military leaders used...

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July 28, 2022

The Great War, Redux

NEED TO KNOW The Great War, Redux DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ed507180-9c5f-4223-b88c-6f054c876a9f.png"] The Great African War, or the African World War, took place in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. As many as six million people...

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July 21, 2022

Do Not Pass Go

NEED TO KNOW Do Not Pass Go SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/224b0e8f-5be6-4e44-b799-a1b865717c98.png"] A court in Sudan recently sentenced a woman to death by stoning on adultery charges. The cruel decision, the first in a decade, is bad enough, the Guardian reported. But some Sudanese worry that it heralds a new era...

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July 04, 2022

Make Some Noise

NEED TO KNOW Make Some Noise SENEGAL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3676cf10-2f23-4295-b085-c86147830390.png"] The leader of Senegal’s opposition, Yewwi Askan Wi, asked his fellow citizens to bang pots and pans in the streets to show their displeasure with the regime of President Macky Sall. The result was a lot of banging. “I'm here to...

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June 21, 2022

Country First

NEED TO KNOW Country First SOUTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5516b8d6-0af4-46a7-8454-a3339ff1009f.png"] At a recent demonstration against foreigners in South Africa, Mary Lowe said she was marching because an undocumented immigrant killed her nephew. "We are basically fighting against all the crime committed by foreigners who are illegally in the country," Lowe,...

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June 17, 2022

No Place Like Home

NEED TO KNOW No Place Like Home AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b8aca45b-1687-4d5b-b62c-09186470d8a2.png"] Khady Sene, 53, has a problem – rising seawater claimed her ancestral home in Saint-Louis, Senegal four years ago. It happened to be located on the Atlantic coast of the country, a place the United Nations has determined is...

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