Conflict & Security

Introduction In the early hours of a May morning, gunmen struck a school in Nigeria’s Oyo State, abducting a group of students and teachers in an incident that sent shockwaves across a region that had grown accustomed to such violence being confined to the country’s northeast. The attack targeted a community that sits squarely within […]

Introduction Liberia, a nation still visibly marked by its twin civil wars that lasted from 1989 to 2003 and claimed an estimated 250,000 lives, is taking a significant step toward reckoning with its violent past. President Joseph Boakai has submitted two landmark bills to the national legislature: one establishing a war crimes court to prosecute

Introduction The skies over Kidal grew darker in more ways than one. In what marks a grim escalation in one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts, forces operating alongside Mali’s military have been accused of deploying cluster munitions against civilian areas in the Kidal region — the first documented use of the banned weapons since the insurgency

The Kidal Region Becomes a Test Case for Accountability For years, the Kidal region in northern Mali has been a symbol of everything that has gone wrong since jihadist groups and separatist Tuareg rebels began their insurgency against the Malian state in 2012. Remote, arid, and long neglected by Bamako’s governments, the region has cycled

The physical destruction wrought by years of conflict in Mali has been extensively documented, burnt villages, displaced populations, and a landscape dotted with the remnants of military hardware. But the psychological wounds that the war has inflicted on ordinary Malians, particularly the children who have grown up knowing nothing but insecurity and violence, have received

The United States government has imposed sanctions on a senior Tanzanian police official, accusing him of involvement in the torture and arbitrary detention of human rights activists and opposition politicians in a move that signals growing international scrutiny of Tanzania human rights record. The designation, announced by the United States Treasury Department Office of Foreign

A team of scientists in the United Kingdom has announced an accelerated programme to develop a vaccine against the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, which is driving an ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has already claimed close to 140 lives. The announcement came as the World Health Organization warned

Mali is grappling with a severe humanitarian and security crisis as jihadist groups have established a sweeping blockade across the country north and centre, burning dozens of vehicles and triggering critical shortages of fuel and food just days before the Eid al-Adha holiday. The blockade enforced by JNIM, the group aligned with Al-Qaeda in the

A City in Mourning After Residential Building Collapses in Morocco’s Ancient Fes A residential building in Morocco’s historic city of Fes collapsed on Thursday, killing at least nine people and injuring several others, in what officials are calling one of the most devastating urban structural failures the country has seen in years. Emergency responders worked

In the pantheon of Kenya commercial battles, the rivalry between Naivas and Quickmart may not command the global headlines of corporate giants duking it out in Silicon Valley. But in the supermarkets that line the streets of Nairobi middle-class neighbourhoods and dot the highways of the Rift Valley, a fierce contest is playing out that

In Lilongwe, Malawi capital, the queues at fuel stations have become a daily feature of urban life that people have grudgingly normalised. Cars line up before dawn. Engines are left running so drivers can sleep in air-conditioned comfort while they wait — if they can afford the fuel at all. On bad days, the queues

Liberia has been rated among the worst countries in the world for education access and quality in a damning new global assessment, placing the West African nation near the bottom of international rankings for literacy, school completion rates, and learning outcomes. The ranking places Liberia alongside a handful of sub-Saharan African nations where basic education