Southern Africa Archive

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. The decades-long dispute between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front in the region of Western Sahara is threatening to erupt into a full-blown war. Frustrated by the lack of international attention to its cause and angered by a recent Moroccan military operation in a United Nations-monitored buffer zone, the Polisario Front broke a three-decade-long cease-fire agreement last weekend. U.N. officials are scrambling to restore the broken deal, as […]

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. With the conflict between Ethiopian troops and forces from the northern Tigray region rapidly escalating this week, more than 14,500 refugees from the region have flooded into neighboring Sudan. United Nations officials are now warning of a looming humanitarian crisis. But Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is resisting international calls for de-escalation and negotiation until leaders of the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, have been captured […]

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. Ethiopia’s military declared it has “entered into a war” with leaders of the northern Tigray region Thursday, escalating a conflict that could tear apart Africa’s second-most populous country and destabilize the Horn of Africa. Troops from across the country are reportedly massing at the border of Tigray in response to what Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said was a deadly attack this week on a federal military camp, which […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has made everyone much better versed in basic epidemiological modeling than they were eight months ago. We have all familiarized ourselves with exhaustive data collection and the analysis of epidemic curves based on prior crises, the reproduction rates of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the daily influx of new cases. Yet, even for professional epidemiologists, the question of when this pandemic will end has no simple answer. Certainty is a luxury rarely afforded to scientists, and this is particularly true in the world of public health. However, we do know that pandemics do not attack indiscriminately. While we […]