West Africa Archive

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about education policy in various countries around the world. Liberia’s plan to task independent operators with running some of its public schools has received extensive media attention over the past year. Not long after the plan was first unveiled, one outlet said it was an attempt to outsource the entire education sector, and a U.N. rapporteur accused Liberia of violating students’ right to education. In an email interview, Justin Sandefur, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development who is helping to coordinate the randomized evaluation of the […]

After more than three decades away, Morocco successfully accomplished its mission of rejoining the African Union during the body’s summit meeting in January. “I’m finally returning home… I’ve missed you all,” King Mohammed VI said to applause after his country’s readmission was confirmed. Instead of savoring the moment, however, the North African nation quickly moved on to its next diplomatic initiative: an application, confirmed last week, to join the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS. The bid is reportedly due to be considered in July. The move has been widely, and correctly, viewed as a continuation of the […]

Boko Haram, the Nigeria-based jihadi movement affiliated with the self-proclaimed Islamic State, has been in decline for more than two years, since it began to lose territory around Lake Chad under joint military pressure from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. After retreating from major towns in northeastern Nigeria such as Bama and Mubi, Boko Haram now controls only certain remote rural areas in that corner of the country. But even though its strength peaked back in 2015, Boko Haram is still a major threat to Nigeria and its neighbors, as the group’s decline has been uneven and frequently punctuated by […]

The arrival of interim authorities in northern Mali combined with the launch of joint security patrols involving soldiers and former rebels underline the government’s determination to make significant headway this year toward implementing a stagnating 2015 peace accord with separatist insurgents in the region. But both efforts have run into trouble, and the recently announced alliance of three jihadi groups is a reminder that the threat of disruptive extremist violence isn’t going away. Beginning in late February, interim authorities have been sent to the northern cities of Gao, Kidal and Menaka. Their arrival marks an attempt by the government, based […]

Late last year, in the early morning hours of Dec. 16, 40 heavily armed fighters stormed a military post in Nassoumbou, in northern Burkina Faso, about 18 miles from the border with Mali. Many observers assumed the attack was conducted by one of the extremist groups that are active across the Sahel and that find a safe haven in parts of Mali. Burkina Faso had already suffered several attacks at the hands of foreign insurgents, most often in its remote northern provinces, but also when operatives of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb infiltrated Ouagadougou, the capital, in January 2016, killing […]