November 24, 2021

Punching Above Its Weight

NEED TO KNOW Punching Above Its Weight ERITREA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a90fd977-7674-18bb-a4c1-4c046edb3465.png"] The US government recently imposed sanctions on Eritrea’s sole political party and military forces to punish the East African country’s role in the bloody civil war in neighboring Ethiopia. For the past year, Eritrea has been helping Ethiopia combat a...

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November 10, 2021

Heeding Candide

NEED TO KNOW Heeding Candide MAURITANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/18cc7578-f1a7-4a18-81da-f90716e211fd.png"] Algeria recently accused Moroccan forces of killing three Algerian citizens who were driving a truck from the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott to the Algerian city of Ouargla. As Agence France-Presse explained, Morocco’s regional rival, Algeria, supports the rebels who are fighting for...

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November 04, 2021

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"] Earlier this year, Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno wanted to command his troops fighting against jihadist rebels in his country’s remote north. So he journeyed to the front, where he died in the fight, National Public Radio reported. Deby,...

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November 01, 2021

Leadership in Retrograde

NEED TO KNOW Leadership in Retrograde SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/224b0e8f-5be6-4e44-b799-a1b865717c98.png"] After widespread protests and violence, President Omar al-Bashir stepped down as president of Sudan in 2019. In his wake, a power-sharing government of military and civilian officials ruled the country. The arrangement was difficult, but it pointed to a better...

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October 15, 2021

A Working Democracy

NEED TO KNOW A Working Democracy CAPE VERDE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/8420c90a-021d-4851-a9cc-4c15d49f1083.png"] The people of Cape Verde work hard to improve their country. Some have formed citizens groups to document illegal fishing and preserve the legacy of the sea for their children, as the Guardian wrote. Others have set up boxing programs...

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October 12, 2021

Going Nowhere Fast

NEED TO KNOW Going Nowhere Fast SOUTH SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/63f3bf8f-63ac-093e-e3bd-bc4bfa78b55b.png"] Recent fighting over cattle rustling, kidnappings and revenge killings has claimed scores of lives and injured many more in South Sudan’s central Warrap State over the past few months. Such violence has surged throughout South Sudan in the past two...

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September 28, 2021

Move Over, Ivory

NEED TO KNOW Move Over, Ivory SOUTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5516b8d6-0af4-46a7-8454-a3339ff1009f.png"] South Africa extradited a South Korean citizen to the US last year for trafficking in unlikely contraband: the fascinating, fleshy and sometimes flowery plants known as succulents. The criminal recently pled guilty to illegally harvesting $600,000 worth of Dudleya...

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September 23, 2021

The Absolute

NEED TO KNOW ESWATINI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e564c03c-87c1-b4d7-d7d9-39a3e0290133.png"] The Absolute In southern Eswatini – a small, landlocked country bordering Mozambique and South Africa formerly known as Swaziland – grandmothers depend on the illegal marijuana farming industry. They call the weed “Swazi gold.” As the Guardian reported, elderly women resort to growing the...

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September 14, 2021

The Price of Democracy

NEED TO KNOW GUINEA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/963d6fc3-90db-4090-ad9a-da882d906f12.png"] The Price of Democracy The lives of Guineans and the wallets of industries everywhere were thrown into disarray after a recent coup in the small Western African country of Guinea. After gunfire erupted in the capital of Conakry, Guinean Army Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who...

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September 09, 2021

Remember the Children

NEED TO KNOW NIGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c258edc-b123-4d47-98e3-f42e226ea64f.png"] Remember the Children Gunmen in Nigeria freed nearly a hundred kidnapped school children recently. Families in Nigeria's north-central Niger State raised $140,000 and handed over motorbikes to pay the gunmen’s ransom. A relieved Hauwa'u Isa reclaimed her seven children upon their release. "I cannot...

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September 01, 2021

When the Levee Breaks

NEED TO KNOW ETHIOPIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bf55b5d2-7db8-404a-b87b-c88a42597d29.png"] When the Levee Breaks Rebels seeking to separate their region from Ethiopia, the Oromo Liberation Army, have been on the rampage in the East African country, killing around 150 people in one recent incident alone, the Associated Press reported. The rebels and their affiliated...

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August 26, 2021

Fighting the Undertow

NEED TO KNOW AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b8aca45b-1687-4d5b-b62c-09186470d8a2.png"] Fighting the Undertow Zambian opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema was sworn in as president Tuesday after a stunning defeat of an incumbent bent on staying put and using all the powers of his office to do so. What's remarkable, though, is that former President Edgar...

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August 12, 2021

A Storm Is Brewing

NEED TO KNOW ZAMBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b35b30bb-8281-f4fe-f15c-397cafc083d1.png"] A Storm Is Brewing Zambian President Edgar Lungu deployed the army after clashes between members of his ruling Patriotic Front and the opposition United Party for National Development resulted in the deaths of two Patriotic Front supporters in the capital of Lusaka. Assailants...

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July 30, 2021

A Land of No Yield

NEED TO KNOW MADAGASCAR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/cf906d99-8f50-4493-b06f-8a929a73ebeb.png"] A Land of No Yield Hungry people in Madagascar are eating raw cactus fruit, leaves and locusts to survive the country's worst famine since the early 1980s. A woman identified as Tamaria who lives in Amboasary on the African island’s southern coast told the...

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July 28, 2021

Sparking Tinder

NEED TO KNOW SOUTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5516b8d6-0af4-46a7-8454-a3339ff1009f.png"] Sparking Tinder The BBC video of a woman throwing her baby out of a burning building illustrates the violence and suffering that has racked South Africa in recent weeks. The baby and mother survived the fire, which looters lit amid widespread civil...

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July 13, 2021

Atonement

NEED TO KNOW SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/224b0e8f-5be6-4e44-b799-a1b865717c98.png"] Atonement Around 18 years ago, the Sudanese region of Darfur was synonymous with violence and tragedy. Not much has changed. Violence continues to mar the region today. “The expression ‘forgotten crisis’ is a problematic one – no crisis is forgotten by the people living through...

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July 06, 2021

The Hardest Word

NEED TO KNOW WEST AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/8bda180e-c600-c3ec-d2fb-e8dfad709a2d.png"] The Hardest Word President Emmanuel Macron recently apologized for his country’s role in the massacre of thousands of Rwandans in the 1990s when Paris supported the African country’s murderous regime. “In ignoring the warnings of the most clear-sighted observers…France bore damning responsibility...

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June 30, 2021

Who Matters?

NEED TO KNOW BURKINA FASO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0c0197a8-9ef4-4935-9656-24fbfbb32b2e.png"] Who Matters? Angelina Jolie recently visited war-ravaged Burkina Faso to bring attention to – and generate help for – the plight of people fleeing violence and struggling with displacement. “The humanitarian crisis in the Sahel seems to me to be totally neglected. It...

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June 23, 2021

Tweet Control

NEED TO KNOW NIGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c258edc-b123-4d47-98e3-f42e226ea64f.png"] Tweet Control When Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Information and Culture announced a new ban on Twitter on June 4, they released their order in a tweet. The social media platform is an important part of the West African country’s political and economic landscape. About...

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June 18, 2021

Living Ghosts

NEED TO KNOW ETHIOPIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bf55b5d2-7db8-404a-b87b-c88a42597d29.png"] Living Ghosts Thousands have perished and more than 2 million people have fled their homes in Tigray, a mountainous region in northern Ethiopia, since fighting between Tigray People’s Liberation Front rebels and the central government started late last year. Now famine has struck...

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