Africa
Finding Family 60 Years Later
Perhaps Monique, the illegitimate child of a Congolese mother and French father in a village ruled by the Belgians since the turn of the 19th century, was abducted by the Catholic Church. Premarital sex remains a sin in the eyes of the religion that still dominates the country today, but back then it was also against the law for Congolese men and women to sleep with white people. Her quest to find some answers led to me.
Tigray’s Women Seek Justice
During Ethiopia’s war against the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, ethnic Tigray women took up arms to fight against the atrocities such as gang rape and sexual violence being committed in their hometowns. With a fragile peace deal now in place, the women recount the horrors of war and call for accountability.
In Africa, Wagner Is Not the Only Game in Town
Russia's Wagner Group has plenty of profit-seeking rivals providing similar military and security services that are less chaotic and more reliable by comparison, a dynamic that will factor into its survivability in Africa. With business booming on the continent, entrepreneurs and former elite soldiers the world over want a piece of the action.
Ivory Coast’s Crackdown on Child Labor Clashes With the Realities of Cocoa Farming
There are an estimated 800,000 child laborers in Ivory Coast’s cocoa industry, the majority of whom work on small plantations. For many years, the focus has been on the abuse of children in industrial cocoa production, turning a blind eye to those at the smallholder level who have also suffered many abuses.
Conflict in Congo Is Causing Untold Suffering and Threatening Wider War
The unrest caused by the rebels' advance has not been contained to Congo but threatens to spiral into a wider conflict across the Great Lakes. On Jan. 24 of this year, the Rwandan military fired a rocket at a Congolese fighter jet as it flew over Goma, forcing it to make an emergency landing with one wing on fire, as debris plummeted to the ground. Rwanda claimed the plane violated its airspace.
African Solutions for European Problems? — with Hopewell Chin’ono and Redi Tlhabi
After an Africa-led peace plan for Ukraine failed to take off, Hopewell Chin'ono and Redi Tlhabi join New Lines magazine’s Kwangu Liwewe to talk about the continent’s complicated relationship with the warring powers.
An Organ-Trafficking Plot Lands a Nigerian Senator in a UK Prison
The frantic testimony he gave over the next few hours would culminate in the dramatic downfall of one of Nigeria’s most prominent political families. Three were convicted of conspiring to harvest the man’s organs, in the first such case tried under modern slavery laws introduced in 2015 in the U.K.