June 07, 2023

Musical Chairs

NEED TO KNOW Musical Chairs SOUTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5516b8d6-0af4-46a7-8454-a3339ff1009f.png"] Apartheid, or legal segregation based on race, ended in South Africa almost 30 years ago. Yet anyone walking around Johannesburg could be forgiven for believing the hateful policy was still in place, according to Catalyst, a free-market-oriented news publication. The...

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June 02, 2023

Seed to Stem

NEED TO KNOW Seed to Stem GUINEA-BISSAU [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c68ca5ff-fb6a-431d-be96-939a6f3c5eae.png"] Farmers in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau are planting their maize, millet, and sorghum in anticipation of the June rainy season. Among them are the women known as “seed keepers” in the Bijagos archipelago of islands on the country’s Atlantic...

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May 25, 2023

Inch By Inch

NEED TO KNOW Inch By Inch MAURITANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/18cc7578-f1a7-4a18-81da-f90716e211fd.png"] Voters in Mauritania cast ballots in parliamentary and local government elections on May 13 and will do so again on May 27. The two rounds of voting are the first since President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani assumed power four years ago....

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May 22, 2023

Comforting the Afflicters

NEED TO KNOW Comforting the Afflicters MALI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1f6bfc52-cbc4-4acf-9a51-d98604de3d93.png"] Government troops and foreign fighters – allegedly soldiers affiliated with the Wagner Group, the Russian military contractor – massacred at least 500 people in the town of Moura in Mali in late March last year, according to the United Nations...

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May 17, 2023

Wobbly Dominoes

NEED TO KNOW Wobbly Dominoes SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/224b0e8f-5be6-4e44-b799-a1b865717c98.png"] The civil war in Sudan has claimed hundreds of lives and forced more than 160,000 people to flee to Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia since it began in mid-April, according to the New York Times. International observers are now wondering if...

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May 08, 2023

Eldorado’s Slums

NEED TO KNOW Eldorado’s Slums MAYOTTE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f0688887-31f5-7da6-248f-2d284876a427.png"] French authorities have dispatched more than 1,800 police officers and gendarmes as well as 500 prosecutors, social workers, and others to the island of Mayotte, a French territory lying between Madagascar and the coast of Mozambique. Called “Operation Wuambushu”, or “take...

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April 24, 2023

The Bombs of Ambition

NEED TO KNOW The Bombs of Ambition SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/224b0e8f-5be6-4e44-b799-a1b865717c98.png"] This week, downtown Khartoum became a war zone. Fighters have been attacking residents, United Nations workers and other civilians, sexually assaulting women, and looting and destroying property, CNN reported. Health officials are warning that the country’s hospitals are running...

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April 18, 2023

Fathers and Sons

NEED TO KNOW Fathers and Sons UGANDA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/eae01c28-7782-4a11-9e2b-886217499c6a.png"] Muhoozi Kainerugaba is the son of the long-serving president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, a 78-year-old who has been in office since 1986. Muhoozi, as he is known, only months ago ran afoul of his father when he tweeted flip references...

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April 11, 2023

The Spiral

NEED TO KNOW The Spiral BURKINA FASO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0c0197a8-9ef4-4935-9656-24fbfbb32b2e.png"] Security forces in Burkina Faso recently murdered a 16-year-old boy and others in Ouahigouya, a regional capital of the landlocked West African country. In a chilling report, the Associated Press detailed the teenage boy’s gruesome murder in the street, citing...

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April 06, 2023

The Hero and the Strongman

NEED TO KNOW The Hero and the Strongman RWANDA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ae24d297-b902-4996-a757-c6a84ab9a136.png"] When ethnic Hutu militants committed genocide against members of the minority ethnic Tutsi community in Rwanda in the mid-1990s, hotelier Paul Rusesabagina sought to give refuge to more than 1,000 people. His life story inspired the 2004 film...

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March 24, 2023

When Hate Comes To Town

NEED TO KNOW When Hate Comes To Town TUNISIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1f262cf6-0ed8-4367-aeca-5f0f2b6684d0.png"] Tunisian President Kais Saied has recently been claiming that migrants originating from sub-Saharan Africa were coming to his North African country as part of a conspiracy to alter its largely Arab-Muslim culture. His comments came as part of...

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March 14, 2023

Coming Due

NEED TO KNOW Coming Due GHANA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7e0e6e88-9163-4694-b6cb-60313006b676.png"] Officials in Ghana’s finance ministry recently said talks to restructure its debt to China were “highly cordial and fruitful” – but, however, not concluded. Ghana owes China almost $2 billion. As Reuters reported, while the West African country technically is in default...

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March 08, 2023

Second Thoughts

NEED TO KNOW Second Thoughts SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/224b0e8f-5be6-4e44-b799-a1b865717c98.png"] Sudan’s military junta has been colluding with an affiliate of Russian military contractor the Wagner Group to plunder the strife-torn African nation’s gold, robbing impoverished Sudanese citizens of critical funds while bolstering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The European Union recently slapped sanctions...

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March 07, 2023

Giving Back Paradise

NEED TO KNOW Giving Back Paradise CHAGOS ISLANDS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/89d7160a-87be-e679-f5a2-cea2b674235b.png"] In the 1960s, British leaders were in the final stages of dismantling the empire that their forebears had built over the preceding 400 years. Yet, as Africans, Indians, and others were establishing their new nations, Chagossians were losing control...

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February 23, 2023

Quite the Handoff

NEED TO KNOW Quite the Handoff NIGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c258edc-b123-4d47-98e3-f42e226ea64f.png"] Rioters in Nigeria recently attacked banks and blockaded roads to express their anger over the scarcity of cash since the country’s central bank began replacing old banknotes with new, supposedly more secure designs of the local naira currency. A shortage...

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February 14, 2023

The Puppetmasters

NEED TO KNOW The Puppetmasters ZIMBABWE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/32d2805e-affb-4474-9ba4-8fc5eae44e98.png"] Police in Zimbabwe recently arrested more than two dozen members of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) opposition political party during an “unsanctioned gathering.” It was the latest example of “a wave of politically motivated violence against opposition supporters,” reported Reuters. That...

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February 10, 2023

Lights Out

NEED TO KNOW Lights Out SOUTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5516b8d6-0af4-46a7-8454-a3339ff1009f.png"] André de Ruyter launched investigations into corruption and organized crime at South Africa’s state-owned energy company, Eskom, where he was CEO. Soon after he tendered his resignation in December, he says someone slipped cyanide into his coffee, Quartz reported. He...

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January 30, 2023

Sharp Elbows

NEED TO KNOW Sharp Elbows MOROCCO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/51ed502f-b616-bdda-8769-e407c1a0bb69.png"] Moroccan lawmakers recently voted to “reconsider” their North African country’s relationship with the European Union. The origins of the diplomatic shift began with Morocco’s alleged persecution of journalists, as Reporters Without Borders recounted. The triggering event, however, was the European Parliament’s...

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January 26, 2023

The Morning After

NEED TO KNOW The Morning After ETHIOPIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bf55b5d2-7db8-404a-b87b-c88a42597d29.png"] The war between Ukraine and Russia has understandably garnered much attention over the past year. While that carnage has unfolded, however, another bloodbath recently was to end in the Horn of Africa. Approximately 600,000 people died in the two-year-long war that...

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January 20, 2023

Rags to Riches

NEED TO KNOW Rags to Riches BOTSWANA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/17159046-9205-41d2-a989-0e0218ccc942.png"] Sprawling, landlocked, relatively lightly populated Botswana enjoys a higher gross domestic product per capita than neighboring continental economic powerhouse South Africa. As the South African newspaper the Daily Maverick explained, Botswanans earn around $9,200 on average annually, compared with South Africans...

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