Millions of people in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region are facing starvation. Until now, it’s been a crisis without pictures. Those wrenching images of emaciated children and mothers with dull-eyed gazes, so sadly familiar from famine zones, have yet to emerge. But that’s because journalists aren’t permitted to travel to the worst-hit areas of Tigray, where hunger is deepening by the day. When the media can finally get access, or when starving villagers abandon their homes and flee to towns, the pictures will surely remind viewers of drought victims from Ethiopia’s 1984 famine, which prompted the famous LiveAid benefit concert and [...]
Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. For more than a week, Islamic State-linked militants have laid siege to Palma, a coastal town in northern Mozambique that serves as a hub for natural gas projects worth a combined $60 billion. The sustained attack has left dozens of people dead, potentially displacing tens of thousands more. It is the most severe escalation of a jihadist insurgency that began in 2017, and is expected to exacerbate an [...]
Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. Extending a presidency that has lasted more than 36 years, Denis Sassou Nguesso won reelection in the Republic of Congo with nearly 90 percent of the vote, according to provisional results from Sunday’s ballot. His victory was overshadowed by the death of his main opposition opponent, Guy Brice Parfait Kolelas, who died on Election Day from COVID-19. Sassou Nguesso’s resounding victory underscores the near-absolute control he maintains over [...]
