April 09, 2024

Sowing Justice

NEED TO KNOW Sowing Justice LIBERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9eb32998-6471-45a3-a560-2a676df24771.png"] A French court recently sentenced Kunti Kamara, a former rebel leader in Liberia, to 30 years in prison for war crimes during the West African country’s first civil war between 1989 and 1997. Kamara, now 49, committed “acts of torture and inhuman...

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April 03, 2024

A Cut of Control

NEED TO KNOW A Cut of Control GAMBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/89b5a0c0-046d-402b-bc1b-96a8d9ab5730.png"] The Gambia banned female genital mutilation in 2015 because officials said the tradition of partially removing girls’ genitalia violated human rights. It didn’t, however, enforce it until last year. That’s when the trouble began. Now, lawmakers in the tiny West African...

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March 26, 2024

Iron Junta

NEED TO KNOW Iron Junta GUINEA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/963d6fc3-90db-4090-ad9a-da882d906f12.png"] The leader of the junta that runs Guinea, Gen. Mamadi Doumbouya, recently sacked the head of the state electricity company and his deputies. Doumbouya, who read the announcement on national television, made the decision after power cuts triggered deadly protests in the...

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March 21, 2024

Listen to the Children

NEED TO KNOW Listen to the Children SENEGAL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3676cf10-2f23-4295-b085-c86147830390.png"] A primary school in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, recently held elections for their student body president. A BBC video crew asked the student candidates what they would do if they were elected president of their West African country. “My...

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March 11, 2024

The Crows Gather

NEED TO KNOW The Crows Gather DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ed507180-9c5f-4223-b88c-6f054c876a9f.png"] Rwanda’s incursion into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has sparked violence, massive displacement and concerns about the possibility of a new war in one of the poorest, most unstable regions in the world. Irredentist Rwandan...

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March 04, 2024

Location, Location

NEED TO KNOW Location, Location DJIBOUTI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/34a9512f-f04f-4b88-af31-1d97b2b3d59a.png"] An Iranian ship named the Behshad was docked off Djibouti near a Chinese military base for weeks, allegedly transmitting commercial shipping information to the Houthis, a Yemeni militant group that has been attacking ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of...

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February 26, 2024

Swimming With Crocodiles

NEED TO KNOW Swimming With Crocodiles ZIMBABWE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/32d2805e-affb-4474-9ba4-8fc5eae44e98.png"] A Zimbabwean court recently gave opposition leader Job Sikhala a suspended sentence of nine months in prison for making falsehoods on social media. The charges stem from his allegation that a police officer killed a child at a bus stop. Sikhala’s...

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February 19, 2024

Failing Grade

NEED TO KNOW Failing Grade SENEGAL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3676cf10-2f23-4295-b085-c86147830390.png"] Senegal is traditionally a “haven of stability and democracy” in West Africa, Agence France-Presse recently wrote. But President Macky Sall’s decision to postpone the West African country’s presidential election that had been slated for Feb. 25 changed all that. Demonstrations, often violent,...

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February 15, 2024

The New Clique

NEED TO KNOW The New Clique WEST AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/8bda180e-c600-c3ec-d2fb-e8dfad709a2d.png"] Officials in the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria have a dilemma: On the one hand, they want to ensure prosperity, democracy and security in the region. On the other, they want to keep...

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February 09, 2024

Clinging to the Snake

NEED TO KNOW Clinging to the Snake GABON [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/8b6af594-29cd-4ef9-63c5-84ef31e981ea.png"] Hours after President Ali Bongo won reelection to a third term in Gabon in August last year, extending his family’s 56-year rule of the West African country, his military officers seized power in a bloodless coup. It was just the...

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January 29, 2024

Law & Disorder

NEED TO KNOW Law & Disorder SOUTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5516b8d6-0af4-46a7-8454-a3339ff1009f.png"] Residents of Rabie Ridge, sick and tired of criminals running rampant through their township outside Johannesburg, South Africa decided to take matters into their own hands. They went house to house and rounded up six people they accused of...

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January 22, 2024

A Spoonful of Salt

NEED TO KNOW A Spoonful of Salt THE GAMBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/89b5a0c0-046d-402b-bc1b-96a8d9ab5730.png"] Gambian Ebrima Sagnia, 44, in an emotional interview with Al Jazeera, recalled how in 2022, he gave the cough syrup to his four-year-old son to combat his high temperature. The boy became drowsy and couldn’t urinate for days....

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January 16, 2024

The Coming Storm

NEED TO KNOW The Coming Storm ETHIOPIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bf55b5d2-7db8-404a-b87b-c88a42597d29.png"] When Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993, the latter retained access to a port on the former’s Red Sea coast. But five years later, Ethiopia lost access to this port during a war between the two countries that lasted...

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January 12, 2024

Eternal Turmoil

NEED TO KNOW Eternal Turmoil COMOROS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3e1e7791-0efb-4c01-bc98-96b7c2eacff0.png"] After he secured power in a coup in 1999, Azali Assoumani ran for the presidency of Comoros in 2002. After retiring from politics in 2006, he ran for office again and won in 2016 and 2019. Now, after a court decision...

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December 26, 2023

Palace Intrigue

NEED TO KNOW Palace Intrigue NIGER [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/770c49e5-a303-44c1-86fc-05e51df3933a.png"] Two years ago, the president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, was elected in the West African country’s first peaceful, democratic change of government since independence from France in 1960. He almost didn’t make it – a coup was attempted to thwart him from...

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December 20, 2023

When Cynics Win

NEED TO KNOW When Cynics Win DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ed507180-9c5f-4223-b88c-6f054c876a9f.png"] Musa Bi, a 42-year-old mother, is one of the nearly 7 million internally displaced people in Congo. She fled M23 rebels who have sown chaos in the central African country, walking for seven days with six...

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December 13, 2023

Like Father, Like Son

NEED TO KNOW Like Father, Like Son CHAD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b08925fb-4623-40c3-9563-de5bd3009fa5.png"] Opposition and civil society leaders in Chad recently asked the military junta running the Central African country to ask French troops to leave. The opposition leaders want France, which formerly ruled Chad as a colony, to stop meddling in the...

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November 30, 2023

Tragedy Redux

NEED TO KNOW Tragedy Redux SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/224b0e8f-5be6-4e44-b799-a1b865717c98.png"] In 2003, rebels in Darfur, the western region of Sudan, took up arms against the central government in the capital of Khartoum because they felt officials were mistreating non-Arab citizens. In response, as the Encyclopedia Britannica recounted, the Sudanese government armed...

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November 14, 2023

Hooray for Nollywood

NEED TO KNOW Hooray for Nollywood NIGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c258edc-b123-4d47-98e3-f42e226ea64f.png"] In the Nigerian-produced film for Netflix, “The Black Book,” actor Richard Mofe Damijo plays an ex-security forces agent-turned-deacon, who exacts revenge against the crooked police officers who framed and murdered his son. As he tracks down the bad cops, wrote...

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November 09, 2023

The Grudge Match

NEED TO KNOW The Grudge Match MADAGASCAR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/cf906d99-8f50-4493-b06f-8a929a73ebeb.png"] A Madagascan court recently postponed the first round of the country’s presidential election by a week to Nov. 16, after security forces injured opposition candidates at unauthorized political demonstrations. Police dispersing the demonstrations fired a tear gas canister that struck and...

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