Conflict & Security

The Middle East Crisis Is Taking a Billions-Dollar Toll on Africa — And the World Bank Is Alarmed The escalation of the Middle East conflict involving Iran, Israel, and their respective networks of allies has sent shockwaves through global commodity markets, and nowhere are those shockwaves being felt more acutely than in Africa. A new […]

Royal Air Maroc Grounds Dozen Routes as Fuel Crisis Bites Into Africa’s Aviation Sector Royal Air Maroc, Morocco’s state-owned carrier and one of Africa’s most strategically important airlines, has announced the suspension of twelve international routes, the majority of them serving destinations in West and Central Africa, in a move that highlights the mounting pressure

For years, the highways linking West Africa’s economic engines have carried more than goods. They have carried the lifeblood of millions of livelihoods — rice, cattle, fuel, textiles — moving from village to town to port with the predictability of tides. But across a stretch of the Sahel and beyond, that predictability has shattered. Armed

The United States government has imposed sanctions on a senior Tanzanian police official, freezing any assets he holds under US jurisdiction and barring him from entering the country, in connection with what the State Department described as a “systematic campaign” of torture and intimidation against human rights defenders and opposition politicians in Tanzania. The targeted

Dakar, Senegal — The speaker of Senegal’s parliament has resigned, two days after his close ally was fired as prime minister, marking a new escalation in a political crisis that is sending shockwaves through one of West Africa’s most stable democracies. El Malick Ndiaye, the outgoing parliament speaker, said on Facebook that his decision to

As millions of Muslims across the Sahel prepared to celebrate Eid al-Adha, jihadist fighters linked to the JNIM group — widely understood to be aligned with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb — moved to enforce a sweeping blockade across northern Mali, setting fire to dozens of vehicles and effectively shutting down major transport routes in

When Elias Phiri drove into a Lilongwe petrol station last Tuesday, he expected to wait twenty minutes. He ended up spending four hours. “I left home at six in the morning. By the time I got fuel, it was almost ten,” the 44-year-old minibus driver told local media, his voice heavy with exhaustion. “The tank

The images from Johannesburg’s Alexandria township told a familiar story: burning shacks, shattered storefronts, people carrying belongings on their heads fleeing into the night. But the targets this time were not property. They were people, specifically people who had come from other African countries in search of work, safety, and opportunity. Over the past three

Liberia, the West African nation founded in the 19th century by freed American slaves and often described as Africa’s oldest republic, has spent the better part of two decades avoiding a reckoning with its most traumatic period: the civil wars that killed more than 250,000 people between 1989 and 2003. Now, finally, the government of

Between 2021 and 2024, South Africa was shaken by a wave of coordinated attacks on foreign-owned businesses, makeshift shelters housing migrants, and individuals simply identified as foreigners on the basis of their appearance or accent. The violence, concentrated in Johannesburg’s inner city and the port of Durban, killed at least 42 people and displaced thousands.

A Country Running on Empty In Malawi’s capital Lilongwe, the queues at fuel stations have become a daily spectacle of frustration. Cars line up before dawn. Engines are left running because drivers fear losing their place. And by the time the pumps run dry — as they often do by mid-morning — hundreds of vehicles

The Streets of Dakar Erupted When the news broke that President Bassirou Diomaye Faye had dismissed Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, the streets of Dakar filled with a mixture of jubilation and uncertainty. It was the kind of political earthquake West Africa had not seen in years — a president removing his own prime minister after