For years, the internet has had a transformative effect on the economic and financial progress of the African continent. The availability of mobile broadband and fiber optic cable connections encouraged the growth of innovative industries ranging from e-commerce to education, health, insurance and beyond.
At the end of every month, Ahmed Abubakar walks to a local money transfer agency in Memphis, Tennessee to send money to the Horn of Africa. Abubakar, 29, works as an accountant and the cash is wired to his mother and siblings who now reside 8,000 miles away in Nairobi. It also goes to friends, former teachers, and distant relatives in neighboring Somalia, some of whom Abubakar hasn’t seen in years—or in some cases, never met.
Even though he died at the young age of 30 in 1977, Steve Biko is considered a luminary among the pantheon of great leaders who fought apartheid in South Africa.
For a time on Dec. 13, the four-year brutal and bloody battle for Aleppo came to a grinding halt. It looked like the violence that displaced hundreds of thousands from their homes, leaving traces of death and destruction everywhere and destroying Syria’s largest metropolis, a UNESCO heritage site, and one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, might end.
Officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo have ordered telecom companies to block social media networks from Sunday night (Dec. 18), ahead of protests against president Joseph Kabila, the day he is supposed to step down from office.
Edward Snowden wrote a letter to Annie Alfred, a 10-year-old child living with albinism in Malawi.
Internal displacement across Africa is almost always attributed to civil strife or full-blown wars.
The elections in The Gambia aren’t over after all.
For millions of Ethiopians, access to higher education is a luxury they can only dream to attain. But over the last decade, as the country experienced an economic boom, it also underwent a rapid expansion in educational infrastructure.
After 37 years in power, president Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola will step down before the country’s 2017 elections, state radio announced on Friday (Dec. 2). Dos Santos, who is Africa’s second-longest serving leader, assumed office in 1979 following the death of the southern African nation’s first president, Agostinho Neto.
Gambia, mainland Africa’s smallest country, has switched off its internet, a tactic that is becoming increasingly common in the continent around election season.
Tens of thousands of people across Sudan are participating in a three-day strike against fuel subsidy cuts and the rise in the costs of food, medicine, and electricity. The civil disobedience protests, which started on Sunday (Nov. 27), was called on social media by activists and opposition parties. The government has so far responded by condemning the strike and seizing independent newspapers that are reporting on the strike.
Little Cab, the ride-hailing app backed by telecoms operator Safaricom, is slowly giving Uber a run for its money in Kenya. Since its launch in July, it has signed up 1,600 active drivers, outnumbering Uber’s just over 1,000 drivers since began operations in Jan. 2015. This month, Little Cab also slashed its charges from 55 Kenyan shillings ($0.54) to 30 shillings ($0.30) per kilometer, with no flat rates or price surges like Uber—effectively making it the cheapest e-taxi service in the country.
When it comes to scientific research and innovation, Africa is a global laggard. The continent contributes a paltry 1% of the world’s research output, a far cry from its position as the world’s second most populated continent.
After living and studying in several Asian countries for 7 years, Mohamed Abdilahi Dahir came back to Somalia without a plan on what to do next. When he started asking around for information about start-ups and investment, he couldn’t find anyone to guide him. To better understand the market, he enrolled in a business administration program at a local university in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland region.
Now that we know Donald Trump will become the next president of the United States, we can start talking about the legacy of Barack Obama. Two months before he leaves office, this is the paradox facing the first American president with African ancestry: the sentiment that he hasn’t done much for the continent his father left almost 60 years ago.
From music to movies, from banking to buying food, mobile phones have revolutionized the way we access the world today. But for low-income consumers in emerging markets, the full potential of mobile financial services is yet to be unlocked, a new report suggests.
When a packed train derailed in late October in Cameroon, killing more than 70 people and injuring 600, the country’s citizens took to social media to express their anger and discontent.
US president-elect Donald Trump and vice president-elect Mike Pence have spoken to 29 foreign leaders since they were elected to office a week ago, their transition team announced on Wednesday (Nov. 16). But of all the presidents, prime ministers, and royals whose calls they took (a full list is provided below), none represent the countries of sub-Saharan Africa.
Despite facing economic headwinds, widespread political corruption, and shortages in food, energy, and clean water, citizens in three African countries with almost 300 million people are extremely hopeful about the future of their countries. The Pew Research Center survey from South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya also showed that majority of the citizens favored young people to stay at home and to use the power of the ballot to affect change.
South Africa’s major urban cities remain the most visited in the African continent, attracting millions of tourists, boosting local tourism and injecting billions of dollars into the economy, a new index shows.
On Tuesday (Nov. 8), Hillary Clinton failed to shatter the ultimate glass ceiling. But a number of women in the United States did just that, defying expectations and making history by securing positions in Congress, the Senate and state legislatures.
The Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivered a scathing indictment of Donald Trump’s campaign yesterday, questioning whether the president-elect’s behavior would change after his election.
Wherever he went in Africa during his presidency, Barack Obama spoke about climate change. When he addressed the Ghanaian parliament in 2009, he talked about the “undeniable peril” of a warming planet and its effect on the continent. When he spoke in his father’s homeland of Kenya in 2015, he noted the importance of reducing emissions and promoting clean energy. When he delivered a speech later that year at the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia, he exhorted Africa’s leaders to combat climate change.
