Despite legal prohibitions, several African countries continue to suffer high rates of child marriage. Now, tribal leaders are teaming up with civil society, taking as many routes as necessary to find solutions.
Tag: africa
Conspiracy theories about France’s involvement in every twist and turn of African politics abound. Yet, writes Adama Wade for Dakar-based Financial Afrik, using leftover grievances of colonial influence is often a way for Africans to make excuses for their political failings.
The number of pirogues leaving the African coast to reach the Canary Islands more than doubled in 2023. Among them are many Senegalese fishermen forced to leave because of the scarcity of fish resources that trawlers, some of them foreign, come to fish in their waters.
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.
The war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been going on for decades, with ups and downs. An offensive by a Rwandan-backed armed group threatens to degenerate into a regional war. A forgotten war while the world looks away.
A video is fueling speculation about Ukrainian military activities in Africa that appears to show the capture of Wagner mercenaries in Sudan. Kyiv is cooperating with the army in the African nation in the fight against the RSF militia supported by Wagner — in a sort of proxy war far from home.
An interview with Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone, whose movie Me Captain is nominated for an Oscar, after he won the Silver Lion for directing at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. The tale centers around the life-and-death quest of migration, a topic that remains at the center of debate in Italy — and beyond.
A wave of denouncements against prominent Cameroonian businessman Hervé Bopda has led to his arrest late Tuesday night. The public outcry is coming as many across Africa say its time confront sexual violence head on.
As Russia and China weave more intricate and long-lasting relations within the African continent, former colonizing powers like France need to step up their game in order to maintain their influence and connections.
Ambition and ambiguity are the unspoken rules utilized by the participating parties in China’s much touted Belt and Road Initiative, launched 10 years ago, to expand its economic power across the world. But what has actually come of it is not so clear.
What has driven the rise and slow decline of Chinese social media influencers on the African continent? A mix of business, racism and censorship — and short attention spans of all of the above.
Burkina Faso’s production of local chicken, nicknamed “bicycle chicken,” has been declining in recent years, with the traditional delicacy being slowly replaced by a cheaper imported version.
It is not only the health of the Pope that worries the Holy See. From the collapse of vocations to the conservative wind in the USA, there are many ills to face.
Africa faces a complex choice: entirely eliminate fossil fuels and risk slowing down development, or alter the energy mix and maintain a balance between the environment and the economy.
Mali’s “mysterious city” welcomes a new class of students trained in looking after ancient books. From conservation to digitization of these works, a colossal task awaits them to preserve this endangered heritage and the secrets they contain.
Many had predicted that the death last month of Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin meant the demise of the mercenary outfit. Yet signs in recent days say the private military outfit is active again in Ukraine, a reminder of the Kremlin’s interest in continuing a private fighting formula that has worked all around the world.
Emmanuel Macron announced on Sunday evening the recall of the French ambassador to Niger, and the departure of the 1,500 French soldiers stationed there: the end of a dangerous impasse. France is being forced to wholly review its African policy.
Disowned by their families, evicted by their landlords, and persecuted by the state, LGBTQ Ugandans have fewer and fewer places to turn.
With the G20 in New Delhi around the corner, India risks finding itself the wrong side of history, and end up as an observer and not one of the drivers of a “once in a lifetime” change.
? Ia Orana!* Welcome to Friday, where Ukrainian drones keep hitting targets in Russia, the leader of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots is sentenced to 17 years, and New Delhi is not monkeying around ahead of the G20 summit. Meanwhile, for French economic daily Les Echos, Pierre de Gasquet looks at how a Kremlin […]
August 28 – September 3, 2023
Wagner PMC has built up a powerful network on the African continent. It’s one of the mercenary group’s greatest assets — and now, a Kremlin takeover of Wagner could even strengthen its influence in Africa, including through the recent coups d’état in Niger and Gabon.
Russia has entered the race for influence in Africa over the past decade, largely on the shoulders of the Wagner Group and its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin. What happens now is unclear, though Vladimir Putin won’t want to cede any ground to other world powers in the race for influence on the continent.
Is it a Russian conspiracy or anti-Paris bias? Or a sign that democracy has never really taken root in post-colonial realities?
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba is in Paris seeking help to convince Africa to abandon its wait-and-see attitude, which benefits Russia. It’s an extraordinary illustration of how Africa is singularly focused on emancipating itself from its former colonizers.
There is a long history of mining in Egypt that goes back thousands of years, but has largely been dormant over the past century. But it’s picking up now, with troubling ramifications.
The best tables near Table Mountain!
Just days after the military seized power in Niger last week, the new junta has already been the target of sanctions by Brussels and Washington. What that means for the 1,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Niger, among other things, remains unclear.
East African concerns about food security are accompanied by farmers’ concerns that they will not have sovereignty over their own crops in the wake of a push toward GMOs.
After the Wagner mutiny, the palatial home of the mercenary group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was searched in St. Petersburg. Among other chilling finds was a framed photograph of the severed heads of slain Africans. It fits in with the profile of a man Proekt media calls “Putin’s Sadist.”
Prigozhin’s brief insurrection will be watched closely in many African countries, where Wagner mercenaries have largely been the beachhead for Russian foreign policy. Keep an eye on a key African-Russian summit next month.
Writers and translators in Shona, the most widely spoken language of Zimbabwe, have dedicated the past five years to bringing the George Orwell classic to a country that has known the cruel formula of human despotism first-hand.
The projections from the United Nations Population Division for African demographics reveal some striking figures. And it’s up to leaders to turn it into economic growth and social vitality.
African leaders traveled to both Kyiv and Moscow to discuss a potential “peace plan” for the war in Ukraine. Predictably the envoys failed, and others will likely meet the same fate as Ukraine’s counteroffensive kicks into gear and Putin keeps digging in.
The U.S. is set to rejoin UNESCO, after Donald Trump pulled the country out in 2017, accusing it of being biased against Israel. The reasons for the return include artificial intelligence and pure geopolitics.
Uganda has signed a harsh anti-LGBTQ+ bill into law. It’s part of a wider push back against “Western” values that’s partly being funded by a global coalition.
Tunis and Moscow have been increasingly close — at the cost of relations with the West, which had once looked to Tunisia as a model of democracy. The two countries are brought together by Kremlin’s efforts to woo African countries, but also a natural alliance of its strongman Presidents Putin and Saïed.
Recent allegations by the U.S. ambassador to South Africa that the African nation gave ammunition and weapons to Russia in December 2022, amid Russia’s war on Ukraine, illustrate the complexity of U.S.-Africa relations.
Khartoum, one African capital that hadn’t seen fighting in its recent history, is in the grip of a civil war between rival military forces. How it looks to an architect who grew up in the heart of its creative energy.
After Beijing’s dubious push to lead negotiations on settling the war in Ukraine, now it’s South Africa’s turn. But its “ambiguous” neutrality on the war — and reports of secret weapons sales to Russia — raise serious skepticism in Kyiv and the West.