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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January 06, 2023

Theme Park Politics

NEED TO KNOW Theme Park Politics BENIN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2f9461ee-c4e6-4b8e-a1ae-3fd929fd2dfa.png"] Al Qaeda and Islamic State extremists are gaining a foothold in Africa as the Russian-Ukrainian war, the pandemic and economic woes preoccupy the rest of the world. Benin in West Africa is among the hardest hit. Jihadist attacks in Benin increased...

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December 22, 2022

Nowhere To Go But Up

NEED TO KNOW Nowhere To Go But Up SOMALIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/15cd6f05-9c0c-4887-86f7-20dad73138cf.png"] Somali government forces and local militias recently won a pitched battle against al-Shabab, the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group that has sown fear and violence throughout the Horn of Africa for years. The allied forces managed to kill around...

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December 16, 2022

White Noise

NEED TO KNOW White Noise TUNISIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1f262cf6-0ed8-4367-aeca-5f0f2b6684d0.png"] The Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) recently attacked Tunisian President Kais Saied in the run-up to parliamentary elections on Dec. 17, raising the prospect of the union’s million-plus members going on strike and/or boycotting the polls. Already over the weekend, hundreds took...

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December 15, 2022

White Rock Politics

NEED TO KNOW White Rock Politics GUINEA-BISSAU [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c68ca5ff-fb6a-431d-be96-939a6f3c5eae.png"] Braima Seidi Ba and Ricardo Ariza Monje thought they could stuff nearly 2 tons of cocaine into flour bags and elude authorities in Guinea-Bissau, a tiny West African country that serves as a transit point for drugs between Europe, Africa...

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December 02, 2022

New Money, Old Problems

NEED TO KNOW New Money, Old Problems NIGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c258edc-b123-4d47-98e3-f42e226ea64f.png"] Nigeria recently launched newly designed currency notes in denominations of 200, 500, and 1,000 naira that are worth, respectively, 45 cents, $1.13, and $2.25. Leaders in the West African nation, the most populous and with the largest economy on...

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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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