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On July 1st, Togo began systematically enforcing a comprehensive fiscal marking system which will allow authorities to track a wide range of consumer goods, from fruit juices to alcoholic beverages. Distributors and local points of sale who have so far sold their wares under the table in an attempt to…
On the eve of the second Libyan peace conference, which took place in Berlin on June 23, the EU finally took a strong stance on the elections which the troubled North African country is slated to hold this December 24th: Brussels threatened to impose sanctions on anyone attempting to delay…
Mahamat Idriss Déby, the head of Chad’s Transitional Military Council (CMT), scored another political endorsement last week, with a visit to Abuja earning him the support of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. Nigeria follows in the footsteps of France and the USA, who have also given their backing to Déby’s running…
On May 18th, US diplomat Joey Hood became the highest-ranking American official to visit Libya since 2014, the year that Washington closed its embassy in Tripoli amid surging violence. Hood’s visit tempered optimism—the US dangled the possibility of eventually reopening its Libyan embassy—with clear concern over the likelihood of achieving…
As with so many other facets of global wealth (and health) inequality, the rollout of the four Covid-19 vaccines produced by Western pharmaceutical companies and approved by American and European health officials – the “Big Four” of Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson – has quickly became yet another…
The long-time president of Djibouti, Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, has launched his re-election campaign in the run-up to national elections on 9 April. With the exception of Zakaria Ismael Jafar, an “anti-system” independent candidate, Guelleh is set to run for his fifth term unopposed. His challengers in the 2016 election have…
Note: This article was updated on March 26, 2021 to include comments from Apollinaire Compaoré. Two troubling recent investigations from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) have shone a fresh spotlight on the tobacco industry’s continued complicity in tobacco smuggling in Africa. The first highlighted how Philip Morris…
Africa is finally joining the rest of the world in providing the long-awaited COVID-19 vaccinations to its people, beginning with Rwanda and Kenya. Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Angola and Congo have also received their first vaccine doses, while Mali, Senegal, Malawi and Uganda are set to receive them later this…
Monday morning’s arrest of the democratically elected leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, and party officials from the National League for Democracy (NLD) in a military coup, has sparked international outrage. Just hours before the new government were set to convene for the first time, the military seized control…
Ismail Omar Guelleh, president of the small but strategically vital country of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, announced in late December he would be running for a fifth term in presidential elections this April. Taking advantage of the media attention surrounding the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) summit, which…
In the nearly ten years since Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his famous visit to Mogadishu in August 2011, Turkey has rapidly become one of Somalia’s most important (and generous) international benefactors. After Erdogan became the first head of state from outside of Africa to visit Somalia since the country’s disastrous…
A 30-year ceasefire in the Western Sahara has been brought to a crashing collapse, as rebel independence fighters the Polisario Front reportedly launched attacks on Moroccan forces over the weekend of November 14 and claim to have caused “human and material damages” since then. The Front, which claims to represent…
Access to water has long been recognized as a basic human right, but the ways in which women and girls bear the brunt of water scarcity is often overlooked by those who seek to address the issue. Now, climate change and coronavirus are combining forces to wreak havoc on African…
After widespread protests in the lead-up to the vote, Guinea carried out the first round of its presidential election on Sunday, 18 October. The vote drew particularly international scrutiny due to the fact that 82-year-old incumbent Alpha Condé was among the 12 candidates on the ballot, having pushed through a…
The head of South Africa’s tax authority (SARS) has warned that it may take years to dismantle the criminal networks that have flourished during the alcohol and tobacco ban implemented as part of the country’s response to coronavirus. SARS Commissioner Edward Kieswetter said that the ban – which was established…