Abdi Latif Dahir

Ethiopia has experienced significant economic growth over the last 25 years, in part by embracing an authoritarian development model. But dissatisfaction with the government’s heavy-handed approach has mounted in recent months, culminating this weekend with thousands of demonstrators from two ethnic groups taking to the streets for the first time together to demand land reform, full political participation, and an end to human rights abuses in the country.

This week, South Africans handed the African National Congress its worst electoral defeat since the ruling party ended apartheid under Nelson Mandela’s leadership in 1994. It was the country’s most competitive local elections, as voters decided who would govern the country’s more than 250 municipalities and districts, which oversee basic services such as water, electricity and sanitation.

Lower smartphone prices are driving a digital revolution in Africa, allowing mobile phone users to access the internet at unprecedented levels. Operators and developers are also leveraging the power of mobile networks to transform services in health, agriculture, education, energy and water management.

There’s not a single standardized pitch to play cricket in Rwanda. Yet, in this nation of 11.6 million people, cricket is gaining a new foothold, bringing people together and strengthening Rwanda’s budding sports industry, as photographer Cornell Tukiri found in Kigali.

In an attempt to stifle dissent and clamp down on what it views as extremist elements, Egypt’s government wants all mosques to deliver one government-scripted, Friday sermon to the country’s 80 million Muslims. The standardization is also seen as a way to limit partisan political messaging at the country’s estimated 108,000 mosques. The sermons (link in Arabic), posted days ahead on the website of the Ministry of Religious Endowments, deal with avoiding illegal money, practicing chastity, and observing cleanliness on a daily basis.

Raila Odinga, Kenya’s current opposition leader, is caught in a bind. The former prime minister faces dissent within his own party, the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy, as tensions build toward next year’s general elections. Over the last few weeks, his party’s vice chairman and secretary general resigned, citing allegations of betrayal and lack of transparency. Last week, he went on a tour to western Kenya, a longtime regional stronghold for his party, whose leaders are now mired in divisions over whether to support him for the presidency next year.

Since 2012, more than 11,300 refugees have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. Among them: Samia Yusuf Omar, a 21-year-old runner from Somalia who undertook the voyage in the hopes of getting closer to her goal of competing in the 2012 London Olympic Games.

In the craggy hills of Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway region of Somaliland, organizers and participants this morning (July 23) flooded the opening ceremony of the ninth edition of the Hargeysa International Book Fair. In four days, almost 400 miles away in Garowe, the administrative capital of Puntland region, the second edition of another book fair will be launched. And in just over three weeks, in the seaside capital of Mogadishu, another international book fair will kick off, also for its second year.

Fresh violence has engulfed South Sudan on the eve of the fifth anniversary of its independence, leading to the death of 300 people, the displacement of tens of thousands and sparking fears that the country is on the verge of another civil war. Yet in the midst of the conflict, there is one bright spot for the fledgling state as it prepares to send its first delegation to the Olympics.