Africa Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. The arrest took place in a Paris suburb, but its ramifications may be felt most acutely thousands of miles to the south, in West Africa. On Tuesday, Vincent Bollore, the French billionaire and head of the Bollore Group, was detained in Nanterre for questioning over the circumstances under which the holding company obtained major port deals in Guinea and Togo. He was placed under formal investigation the following day. The allegations touch on the shady dealings that persist at […]

In February, Liberia’s former president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was awarded the prestigious $5 million Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, becoming the fifth winner since the prize was established in 2007. It was the latest in a long line of honors acknowledging her efforts to rehabilitate Liberia’s democracy after more than a decade of civil conflict. In the eyes of pro-democracy activists, however, Sirleaf’s record was far from perfect. One of the most commonly cited weak spots was her commitment to freedom of the press. Her time in office certainly represented an improvement over that of her predecessor, the […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about press freedom and safety in various countries around the world. In March, Tanzania’s government imposed sweeping new regulations restricting online media, including requiring a license to run a blog that costs $930—more than Tanzania’s GDP per capita in 2016. The new regulations also affect online radio stations, streaming platforms, social media and internet cafes, which will now be required to install surveillance cameras. The clampdown follows other restrictions placed on Tanzania’s media in recent years that have severely limited freedom of expression. In an email interview, Jeff Smith, the […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Over a three-day period in December 2015, Nigerian security forces carried out an operation in the northern town of Zaria that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 civilians, according to an official commission of inquiry. The attack targeted the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, or IMN, a Shiite organization founded in the 1980s by Nigerians inspired by the Iranian revolution. Nigeria is about evenly split between Christians and Muslims, and the vast majority of Muslims are Sunni. As […]

In mid-March, Canada announced it would be sending 250 troops and six helicopters on a 12-month deployment to support the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali, which is considered the deadliest peacekeeping mission in the world. Since 2013, 162 troops from the U.N. mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, have been killed by al-Qaida and other extremists. Canada’s involvement in international peacekeeping has lagged in recent years, but shortly after taking office in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised that his government would commit 600 troops to U.N. peacekeeping missions. In an email interview, Simon Palamar, a research fellow on […]

On this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Omar H. Rahman, discuss the political fallout from another suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria, including a potential military response from the United States. For the Report, Celeste Hicks talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about how courageous survivors of sexual violence helped bring Chad’s former dictator, Hissene Habre, to justice. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. It was a rare example of a protest in the Central African Republic that managed to get the world’s attention, however briefly. On Wednesday, demonstrators placed at least 16 dead bodies outside the offices of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the capital, Bangui. The demonstrators said the dead were civilians killed by U.N. peacekeepers during recent operations in a mostly Muslim neighborhood of Bangui known as PK5. For the past several years, the Central African Republic has been […]

Almost a month after voters went to the polls in the first round of elections, Sierra Leone has chosen a new president. Julius Maada Bio, the candidate for the Sierra Leone People’s Party, secured 51.8 percent of the vote in the March 31 runoff against Samura Kamara of the ruling All People’s Congress. Maada Bio, who lost in the first round of 2012’s presidential race, was sworn in as president on April 4. This is not the first time Maada Bio has led Sierra Leone, as he was the military head of a transitional government for three months in 1996. […]

An opinion poll conducted in January and February offered a window into the mindset of voters in the Democratic Republic of Congo as they headed into another year of political uncertainty. Perhaps surprisingly, the news wasn’t entirely grim. While 82 percent of respondents said they believed the country was heading in the wrong direction, and 80 percent reported having a negative opinion of President Joseph Kabila, a majority nevertheless expressed faith that things would improve. In fact, nearly two-thirds of Congolese felt “very optimistic” about the future of the country over the next five years—a figure that rose to 82 […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about religious minorities in various countries around the world. Since early March, the government of President Paul Kagame in Rwanda has ordered the closing of thousands of churches and dozens of mosques, citing unsafe conditions for worshippers. It also banned mosques in the capital, Kigali, from using loudspeakers for the Muslim call to prayer. Kagame insists that there is no reason for so many places of worship in a small, developing country like Rwanda. The predominantly Catholic country has seen a proliferation of non-Catholic churches in the decades since the […]

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from Celeste Hicks’ book “The Trial of Hissene Habre: How the People of Chad Brought a Tyrant to Justice,” which was published by Zed Books this month. In July 2015, the unthinkable happened. After having spent more than 20 years living in comfortable exile in a plush suburb of Dakar, Senegal’s capital, Chad’s former president, Hissene Habre, was brought before the Extraordinary African Chambers, or EAC, a special court set up within the Senegalese judiciary. The beginning of his trial came two years after he was arrested in Dakar and charged with war crimes, […]

A court in Burkina Faso was due to resume hearings this morning in a trial against the alleged perpetrators of a short-lived coup nearly three years ago that came close to derailing the West African nation’s transition away from quasi-authoritarian rule. In September 2015, members of the country’s presidential guard stormed a Cabinet meeting in the capital, Ouagadougou, taking the country’s acting president, Michel Kafando, hostage along with the acting prime minister and several other high-ranking officials. Kafando’s transitional government had been installed after a popular uprising in October 2014 forced the resignation of Blaise Compaore, who served as president […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. It was a tumultuous week for tens of thousands of African asylum-seekers in Israel, though it ultimately produced no clarity on whether some or all of them might be permitted to stay in the country and where they might go if they’re kicked out. On Monday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government and the United Nations refugee agency had reached an “unprecedented understanding” by which more than 16,000 of the African asylum-seekers, many of whom […]