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Society

Returner's Remorse? Why Germany Is Worried About The Benin Bronzes

Germany is returning looted Benin bronzes back to Nigeria. But there are now concerns that they will now disappear into private ownership or that they will be threatened with damage or loss

-Analysis-

BERLIN — It was supposed to be the world's most extensive repatriation of looted colonial property: the transfer of ownership of some 1,130 Benin bronzes from 20 German ethnological collections to the Nigerian government.

But there has been a great deal of agitation since it was revealed that Ewuare II, the current Oba of Benin, or traditional ruler of Nigeria's Edo State, was appointed the owner and administrator of the first 22 Benin bronzes returned by Germany to the Nigerian state — and for all other old Benin treasures returning to the country.

This was the decision of Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari, published as a decree in the official gazette number 57 of March 28, 2023.

For weeks now, people in Germany have been puzzling over the meaning and consequences of the presidential decree.

Their fear: will important cultural assets disappear into private chambers instead of being shown to the people of Africa?

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Foreign Cash, Women Founders: How African Tech Is Bouncing Back, Post-COVID

The African tech ecosystem is bouncing back after a slowdown during the pandemic, with local innovation fueled by increasing investment from foreign tech giants.

DAKAR — Despite a tense macroeconomic context, the growth of the African tech ecosystem shows no sign of slowing down.

In 2022, African startups recorded an 8% increase in investor funding compared to the previous year, according to a 2022 report from PartechAfrica Tech Venture Capital. The context remains favorable to the continent, which is attracting many foreign investment funds.

"The current period is one of a flight to quality," says Melvyn Lubega, an investor at French fund Breega, which has recently boosted its investments in Africa.

This resilience has surprised many observers. After the COVID-19 health crisis, the strength of African economies and continued high growth rates surprised some economists, who had expected a catastrophe.

But digital technology is not immune to good news. Despite an international context of investor withdrawal, liquidity scarcity and never-ending inflation, African tech remains in the green and has managed to attract 1,149 unique investors in 2022, an increase of 29% compared to 2021.

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Inside Boko Haram, How A Cosmetics Salesman Became A Mass Murderer

Boko Haram is one of the most brutal terrorist groups in the world. In Nigeria, Die Welt reporter Christian Putsch got unprecedented access to the group’s former leaders, who describe unlikely beginnings and a litany of atrocities – and now fear for their lives.

MAIDUGURI — The man who is jointly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people and who has terrorized millions more for years, now fears for his own life. He can't rest, he says: Knowing there is a bounty on his head keeps this former terrorist from sleeping.

Mallam Bana Musaid spends the nights in prayer. The former No. 4 man in the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram is deaf in his right ear, after surviving a grenade attack. With his left ear, he listens intently to the sounds outside his tent in the dark camp, where he has been undergoing deradicalization for the past six months.

Have the hundreds of others in this government-run camp on the outskirts of the city of Maiduguri really all renounced the terror group, like him? Or is someone planning to kill him?

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This Happened—November 28: What Boko Haram Has Wrought

The heartwrenching photograph of innocent farmers' bodies wrapped after being slaughtered during the Koshebe Massacre by Boko Haram would be an image burned into peoples minds.

Sign up to receive This Happened straight to your inbox each day!

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Society
Bai Rui

Business Tips, Free Speech, Racism: A Nigerian Writer's China Diaries

The deepening ties between China and Africa are a hot topic, but the voices we hear are usually the same — white and Western. So what does China look like to an African? Nigerian journalist Solomon Elusoji is the best person to ask.

BEIJING — China's increasing trade links with Africa have become the most discussed bilateral relationships of the twenty-first century.

But the opinions we hear are usually white and Western. Solomon Elusoji, a Nigerian journalist, is in a unique position having spent extended periods of time in China. His perspective adds one that is oddly missing from a widely discussed topic — the voices of Africans.

In 2018, at the age of 23, Elusoji was sent to China by his editor at Nigeria's daily newspaper, This Day.

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In The News
Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet, Laure Gautherin And Sophia Constantino

New Monday Morning Assault On Ukraine Cities, Nigeria Floods Toll At 600, Billions Of Crabs Vanish

👋 Hej!*

Welcome to Monday, where Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities wake up under air strikes for the second consecutive week, Xi Jinping gives no ground at China’s Communist Party Congress and seven billion crabs have gone missing. Meanwhile, Christoph B. Schiltz in German daily Die Welt says it would be a mistake to think Putin is cornered, noting four distinct options he has to try to regain the upper hand in Ukraine.

[*Swedish]

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Germany

Give Them A Bronze? When Europe Returns Looted Cultural Treasures

August 27-28

  • What Russians can learn from the 1944 plot to kill Hitler
  • The true meaning of being a “family man”
  • Dancing with Sanna Marin
  • … and much more.
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LGBTQ Plus
Laura Valentina Cortés Sierra, Lisa Berdet, Lila Paulou, McKenna Johnson, Joel Silvestri and Emma Albright

LGBTQ+ International: Iraq Homosexuality Ban, Bhutan’s Beauty Queen — And The Week’s Other Top News

Italian police, Brazilian soccer, Japanese politics, and plenty of other stories from around the world

Welcome to Worldcrunch’s LGBTQ+ International. We bring you up-to-speed each week on the latest news on everything LGBTQ+ — a topic that you may follow closely at home, but can now see from different places and perspectives around the world. Discover the latest news from all corners of the planet. All in one smooth scroll!

Featuring, this week:

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LGBTQ Plus
Laura Valentina Cortés Sierra, Lisa Berdet, Lila Paulo, Shaun Lavelle, Emma Albright and Bertrand Hauger

LGBTQ+ International: Lebanon Crackdown, 50 Years Of London Pride — And The Week’s Other Top News

Indigenous pride, Ukrainian drag queen carpenter and in-flight, same-sex marriage proposal, and plenty of other stories from around the world

Welcome to Worldcrunch’s LGBTQ+ International. We bring you up-to-speed each week on the latest news on everything LGBTQ+ — a topic that you may follow closely at home, but can now see from different places and perspectives around the world. Discover the latest news from all corners of the planet. All in one smooth scroll!

Featuring, this week:

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Society
Eva Sauphie

Unzipped! The African Women Breaking Taboos Of Sexuality

In countries and communities where sexuality is often kept under wraps, more and more women are taking up their microphones, pens and keyboards to talk about intimate issues without filters.

When the subject of African women's sexuality gets media coverage it's almost always a bad thing, says Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, a Ghanaian writer based in London: "through the spectrum of disease, HIV or repeated pregnancies."

While universal access to sexual and reproductive health services remains a central issue in West Africa, Sekyiamah wants to share other narratives. To do this, she co-founded the blog: Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women.

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Coronavirus
Hannah Steinkopf-Frank

Here's Why Healthcare Workers Around The World Are Quitting In Record Numbers

The long toll of the pandemic is the final straw for many burned out healthcare workers in the West. But the Great Resignation in the medical field is global, with developing countries already struggling to contain the pandemic in the face of a doctor brain drain.

PARIS — The COVID-19 pandemic has led many around the world to reevaluate their careers, becoming part of the so-called “great resignation.” Just take one statistic: a record 4.5 million U.S. citizens quit their jobs last November. By far, the industry that has been most shaped by the pandemic is healthcare, the field leading resignations, with a 3.6% increase in the number of U.S. health workers quitting their jobs in 2021.

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Weird

When Public Statues Go Very Wrong

This giant chicken will attract tourists! Let's honor a heroine of our history with a see-through dress! And other very visible bad ideas around the world...

From Mount Rushmore to Lenin's statue at Saint Petersburg’s Finland Station, political legacies have long been carved into stone, literally. But sometimes the vanity or silliness driving such projects turns them into monumental WTFs. That was undoubtedly the case last month in the U.S. state of Georgia, where a local mayor was ousted from office after pushing through a project to build a giant chicken as a way to attract tourists to this town.

But the list of grandiose ideas that fell flat, or worse, is long: from the racy likeness of an Italian heroine to the immortalizing of a corrupt African leader who isn't even from your country.

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