Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong & Moroccan FM Nasser Bourita

Algeria seeks to use Papal Visit to whitewash amid rights groups’ outcry

Pope Leo XIV’s upcoming visit to Algeria risks being used by the authorities to whitewash an authoritarian system that persecutes Christians, closes churches and curtails religious freedom, diplomats and rights advocates say. The April 13–15 trip, the first by a pontiff to Algeria, has been presented by Algiers as a historic moment of dialogue and […]

Tanzania confirms Marburg case, heightening global health concerns

President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced on Monday that a sample from Tanzania’s remote Kagera region tested positive for Marburg disease, validating World Health Organization (WHO) warnings from mid-January. While Tanzanian authorities initially denied the presence of Marburg after eight people in Kagera died from what WHO suspected to be the disease, subsequent investigations have now […]

France’s Persistent Role in Africa: The Other ‘Indispensable Nation’?

While recently attending a conference in Benin, the crisis in Mali still loomed large. The conflict in Mali had threatened to unravel the entire security situation in the Sahel and Western African nations spent much of the last year bickering whether a military intervention to save Bamako from approaching Islamist militias was feasible. In the […]