Long reads on African history, governance, economics, culture, and what comes next.
The Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) opened in June 2017 — the largest single infrastructure investment in Kenya's post-independence history at USD 3.2 billion, financed approximately 90% by …
African startup venture funding peaked in 2022 at roughly USD 4.8 billion in disclosed deals (Big Four total: Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa), per Briter Bridges and the …
The M23 (Mouvement du 23 mars) insurgency in eastern DRC, dormant from 2013 to 2021 and reactivated since November 2021, has captured most of Rutshuru and Masisi territories …
The Kenyan mobile-money sector, dominated by M-Pesa, has reached structural saturation. GSMA Mobile Money State of the Industry data for 2024 show Kenya at over 85% adult registered-account …
*Fonio* (*Digitaria exilis*) is a small-grained millet that has been cultivated in the West African Sahel for at least three thousand years. The Dogon plateau in Mali, the …
Across West Africa they are called *susu* (in Akan and adopted into Caribbean English). In East Africa they are *chama* (Swahili). In Cameroon they are *tontine*. In Egypt …
Cocoa was supposed to be the politically stable commodity. Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire produce roughly 60% of the world supply, the Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) has run a …
Kigali's 2013 masterplan, revised in 2019/2020, is the most ambitious top-down African urban transformation programme of the last two decades. The plan reorganizes the city around mixed-use density …
Gum arabic is the polysaccharide you have eaten today without knowing it. It stabilizes the Coca-Cola formula, holds the sugar coating on M&Ms, and is the emulsifier in …
Andela was founded in Lagos in 2014 by Jeremy Johnson, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, and co-founders as a developer-training-and-placement company aimed at the global remote-engineering market. The original model — …
*Mehari* (Tigrinya: 'compassionate' or 'merciful'), the Mekelle-based Tigrinya-language literary quarterly, was the most important post-Derg Tigrinya literary venue from its 1994 founding through the 2020 war shutdown. Ras …
Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, a Boeing 737 MAX 8, crashed near Bishoftu on 10 March 2019 killing all 157 people on board, six minutes after takeoff from Addis …