Lily Kuo

At the training camp for China’s first official standby peacekeeping police force in Dongying, northeastern China, the recruits are up by 6am. They make their beds, jog around a track clad in their uniforms and blue United Nations helmets, and eat simple canteen meals of mantou buns, vegetables, and meat. Such is the discipline of Chinese peacekeepers, according to a short documentary by China Global Television Network, the international English-language channel of the state-owned China Central Television (CCTV).

For Ugandan students, watching the Disney film, Queen of Katwe could mean the difference between getting into university and not. According to a new study from Oxford’s department of economics, students who watched the biopic about a girl from the slums of Kampala turned world chess champion as little as a week before national exams performed better.

US president Donald Trump has demonstrated his indifference toward Africa in a number of ways over the past nine months. In July, he left in the middle of a G-20 session on African health and migration, tapping his daughter Ivanka to fill in for him. During a G-7 gathering in Italy in May, Trump removed his headphones when the president of Niger began delivering remarks in French.

Kenya’s highest court has said that the country’s Aug. 8 presidential election may have been hacked. Providing details today about the ruling that nullified the vote earlier this month, deputy chief justice Philomena Mwilu said the court accepted the opposition’s claim that the electronic voting system was “infiltrated and compromised.”

In the 1980s, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe an American photographer, wanted to document the contributions of black female photographers in the United States. She dug through US Census reports and business directories to track down women like Jennie Louise Van Der Zee Welcome, who photographed the Harlem renaissance, or Elizabeth “Tex” Williams, the first black photographer in the Women’s Army Corp during World War II. Moutoussamy-Ashe finally published Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers in 1986, updating it in 1993. Since then there has been no other comprehensive compilation of the work of black women photographers.

Over the past few months as Ugandans argue over a proposal to scrap age limits for presidential candidates, a joke has circulated on WhatsApp. Just change president Yoweri Museveni’s birth certificate. “This would save us lots of money,” the message reads. “Changing one’s date of birth doesn’t require [a constitutional] amendment.

Africans who didn’t sing the national anthem as a child are more likely to be recruited into violent extremist groups. Those living in the periphery of their country with less access to education and health services are more vulnerable, as are those with less involved parents. Exposure to state violence, not religious ideology, is a better predictor of radicalization. 

When Kenya returns to the polls to decide its next president, the hundreds of election observers who attended last month’s vote might not be welcome.

Kenya’s supreme court stunned the nation last week by declaring the country’s Aug. 8 presidential election invalid and ordering a new vote. On Oct 17, incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta, declared the winner of last month’s poll, will face his rival Raila Odinga—again.

Kenya’s supreme court has declared the results of last month’s presidential election invalid and ordered a new vote. Incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta won 54% of the now-nullified vote, defeating opposition leader Raila Odinga.

Kenya is adjusting to life without plastic bags after a strict ban on the carriers went into effect this week. Traders in Nairobi swapped out the cheap lightweight plastic bags for cartons, paper bags, and envelopes, while grocery stores sold reusable fiber bags and cardboard boxes.

It is now illegal to use, manufacture, or import plastic bags in Kenya, according to a new rule that goes into effect this week. Offenders will be fined as much as $38,000, or serve up to four years in jail. Travelers coming into Kenya with plastic bags will have to leave them at the airport.

Louise Linton, the Scottish wife of US treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin and author of a widely ridiculed memoir about living in Zambia, is making waves again.

John Hume, a South African who runs the world’s largest rhino farm, is selling his stockpile of rhino horns. Starting from today, Hume is selling about 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of horns in an online auction. He plans to hold another sale in September.

In the film Wolf Warrior 2, Leng Feng, a former special forces operative, is on a one-man mission to save Chinese nationals and innocent locals from local rebels and mercenaries in a generic African country. In the film’s trailer, a jeep trawls through a green savannah, passing two lions. African workers dancing around a bonfire at an apparently Chinese-financed factory are attacked by white mercenaries. A busy throughway in a market town comes under fire. Leng, armed with a knife and his martial arts skills, arrives at a compound, telling its occupants, “I’m here to save you.”

Kenya’s election, which saw president Uhuru Kenyatta re-elected with 54% of the vote, has been marred by allegations of hacking, fraud, and violence—with the opposition claiming that hackers tampered with the election results. Presidential candidate Raila Odinga also rejected the results streamed by the electoral commission, calling them “fake” and fictitious.”

Kenya’s opposition leader Raila Odinga and his NASA coalition party have rejected the results of the country’s general election, saying the electoral commission’s database was “hacked” to manipulate data and tamper with results.

Kenyans began voting for their next president on Tuesday (Aug 8), in the most expensive and tense elections in its history. The tightly-contested election pits the 55-year-old incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta against the 72-year-old, veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga.

In the battle for Kenya’s presidency, the bloc of voters most neglected by the race’s two main candidates may be the one that matters most. Ahead of the Aug 8 general election, president Uhuru Kenyatta, 55, and opposition leader Raila Odinga, 72, have focused on winning over young people, voters in swing counties, and discontented tribes whose loyalties are changeable.

Two days before Kenya goes to the polls in one of the most contested elections in the country’s history, election officials are scrambling to inspire confidence in the credibility of the vote.

Kenyan presidential candidate Raila Odinga is happiest when discussing government corruption, tribalism, and his country’s regional standing. That’s according to a robot built by a Nairobi startup, Odipo Dev, that analyzed Odinga’s facial expressions during a 90-minute presidential debate in late July.

China has officially opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. In a flag raising ceremony today (Aug.1), Chinese officials unveiled the base that Beijing insists is purely a support center for Chinese peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts in the region.  

A senior electoral official in Kenya has been found dead, with one of his arms cut off, eight days before Kenyans go to the polls to elect their next president. The official, Chris Msando, was found in Kikuyu town, outside of Nairobi, according to authorities. He had been missing since Friday.

Botswana’s standing with China may be on the rocks. The Dalai Lama, who Beijing views as a separatist for his advocacy of Tibetan independence from China, is expected to visit Gaborone next month for a human rights conference. Botswana officials have been quick to say the government is not hosting the spiritual leader. The visit will be ”purely private,” the country’s permanent secretary in the ministry of foreign affairs, Gaeimelwe Goitsemang, said last month.