In-Depth Archive

Driving along central Malawi’s M5 lakeshore highway in mid-2016, a visitor could be forgiven for mistaking the surrounding countryside for desert. In what should have been an area lush from rains ending in April, the land of gently sloping hills, baobab trees and fiery sunsets was parched. Although the road meandered past some signs of greenery—mango trees, tobacco fields, irrigated sugar cane for export—the dust that stretched to the horizon did little to mask that Malawi, like much of eastern and southern Africa, is in crisis. Hit by the strongest El Nino in a generation, which disrupted rainfall patterns, ruined […]

The ailing health of Algeria’s aging president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, commonly leads Algeria-watchers to assess the prospects for regime continuity and the risks of political instability in what amounts to an interregnum. Both make up chapters of the country’s recent history. Over the past 25 years, Algerians lived through 10 traumatic years of insurgency and counterinsurgency, sometimes called the Dark Decade that shook the country to its foundations from 1991-2002, followed by a decade and a half of peace under Bouteflika. Bouteflika, along with his predecessor Liamine Zeroual, negotiated the laying down of arms and reconciliation—albeit an imperfect one—among armed groups […]

LIMA, Peru—Like many Peruvians, Augusto Correa has done well over the past two decades. In the 1990s, he and his siblings converted their grandfather’s former home in Lima’s upscale Miraflores district into a small bed-and-breakfast. Customers were scarce at first, but the business grew, and the siblings slowly expanded Hostal Buena Vista, as the bed-and-breakfast is called, from three rooms to 19, adding annexes and a third floor. In the process, Augusto’s brother Jorge opened a second Hostal Buena Vista in the highland city of Cusco, the former capital of the Incan empire, and Augusto recently inaugurated a third one […]

On Dec. 7, 2016, Ghanaians are scheduled to vote in the country’s seventh general election since the return of multiparty politics in 1992, when Ghana transitioned from military to civilian rule. Ghana is considered to be one of Africa’s most mature democracies. Presidential term limits are firmly in place. Political power has peacefully alternated between the country’s two main parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Electoral disputes have generally been resolved through the electoral commission or the courts, and not through violent means. Ghana is often praised for its stability, peace and democratic development. […]

BERLIN, Germany—One year on from a historic wave of migration to Germany, a myriad of challenges remain. And the stakes are high, not only for Angela Merkel’s increasingly unpopular chancellorship. In July, the first Islamist-inspired attacks by asylum-seekers on German soil trained an international spotlight on the country’s efforts to integrate more than a million new arrivals. Last year’s chaotic scenes, which saw hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers and migrants cross German borders within a few months, have long since given way to a more sober approach. Responding to a perceived shift in public mood after foreigners attacked women in […]