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Almost born a slave

A FEW miles from the green grass of Mauritania’s presidential palace, in a slum where the Sahara washes into the capital, Mbarka shields her five-year-old son’s eyes from the dust. She was his age when her mother gave her away to be a slave.

Mbarka’s mother was herself a freed slave. But when her former master said he needed help at home, tradition dictated that she had to give up her daughter to him. Mbarka did all the chores she could but the family still beat her. She doesn’t remember how old she was when the father and his son started to rape her, but she had her first child at 13.

Mauritania, with its tiny economy and population of just 4.3m, would normally attract little attention. But its vast expanse—it is four times larger than Britain—and its position astride migration and smuggling routes across the Sahara have pushed it to prominence. This month France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, visited it to discuss co-operation...Continue reading

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THE scene in the centre of Afrin, a Kurdish city in north-western Syria, hardly inspires confidence in the future. A destroyed statue of a mythical Kurdish hero is a reminder of the plunder of the city after its capture earlier this year by Arab and Turkoman rebels backed by Turkish tanks, from Kurdish rebels. The teenage son of one of the Arab rebels peddles cigarettes, a rifle across his knees. Another rebel directs traffic. Turkey argues it saved Afrin from terrorists and boasts of opening schools and hospitals. Residents are not exactly brimming with gratitude. “The Turkish soldiers are behaving decently,” says a Kurdish merchant. “But the bearded ones are big trouble,” he adds, referring to Islamist militants. “They’ve stolen so much.”

More than 100,000 civilians, and scores of Kurdish fighters known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), fled Afrin when the Turkish army and its proxies swept in. Turkey considers the YPG an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party...Continue reading

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IN A rough-and-ready church in Ifo, on the northern fringe of Lagos, Prophet Emmanuel Akanni and Prophetess Foluke Akanni do extraordinary things. During moments of religious ecstasy, Mr Akanni receives visions that indicate which of his congregants are struggling to conceive children. By holding a chicken’s egg over a woman’s belly, he claims to be able to spy into her womb. Then he uses herbs and prayers to effect a cure. “There is nothing God cannot do,” adds Mrs Akanni.

The fertility rate in Nigeria is estimated to be 5.4, implying that the average woman can expect to have that many children during her life. Yet many Nigerians experience infertility. Chelsea Polis of the Guttmacher Institute, a think-tank, and her colleagues estimate that 31% of Nigerian couples fail to conceive a child after 12 months of unprotected sex—a rate at least as high as in the West. In a country where a woman’s worth is defined largely in terms of her ability to bear children, there is a growth...Continue reading

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The King and Buhari

KING MOHAMMED VI of Morocco has had a quiet year. The monarch, who has visited at least 14 African countries since October 2016, scaled back his travels after a heart operation in February. But he still managed to play host to Mali’s prime minister in March and visit Congo-Brazzaville in April. Last month he took the Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, on a motorcade tour of the capital, Rabat, flattering him with cheering spectators.

Like their king, Moroccan companies are also lavishing attention on west Africa. The African Development Bank estimates that 85% of Morocco’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) goes to sub-Saharan Africa. Trade lags behind, but this too is growing. Exports of Moroccan goods to west Africa tripled from 2006 to 2016. The king brings large trade delegations on his marathon African tours, usually signing a raft of deals with his hosts.

Politically, it is easier for Morocco to cultivate allies...Continue reading

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Who is in the driver’s seat?

DJIBOUTI was the last of Europe’s African colonies. France clung to this sliver of Red Sea coast until 1977; even today it occasionally resembles occupied territory. In the black lava desert stands a hilltop garrison of the Foreign Legion. French tanks trundle along the narrow road to Ethiopia. This whiff of colonialism helps explain why many Djiboutians fret about their independence.

China is the country’s biggest investor. It plans to remake Djibouti as a staging post on President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative. In the past two years Beijing has lent Djibouti some $1.4bn, more than 75% of its GDP. In 2015 the country was Africa’s fifth-biggest recipient of Chinese credit, despite having barely 1m citizens, one of the continent’s smallest populations.

Djibouti’s experience shows how Chinese cash can transform even the smallest country. “None of this would have been possible without...Continue reading

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IT SEEMED an irrational decision 20 years ago. DP World is one of the world’s largest maritime firms. From a squat office overlooking Dubai’s bustling Jebel Ali port, it directs operations in 40 countries. Most are in busy shipping hubs such as London and Rotterdam. But in the 1990s it started making surprisingly big investments in the Horn of Africa. It built a large port in Djibouti, and is now working on another in Somaliland (see map). The combined GDP of the two African entities is smaller than that of Moldova. Yet the firm sees the region as a land of opportunity.

So do the rulers of United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of whose...Continue reading

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IS THAT a light at the end of the tunnel? Since South Sudan’s war began nearly five years ago, tens of thousands have died and more than 4m—one in three South Sudanese—have been forced from their homes. The country teeters, for the second year running, on the brink of famine; more than half the population do not have enough to eat. At least nine ceasefires have been struck, none lasting longer than a month, including the latest, which was signed on June 30th and has already been violated. Observers have warned repeatedly of genocide. Yet tentative signs offer hope that the world may act to stop the bloodshed.

On July 13th the UN slapped an arms embargo on the world’s youngest nation, in the hope of stopping atrocities against civilians. Under the resolution all countries are barred from supplying arms until May 2019, following in the footsteps of America, which imposed its own embargo in February, and the European Union, which has barred weapons sales to Sudan since 1994 (this was...Continue reading

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YAD VASHEM, Israel’s national authority for research and commemoration of the Holocaust, is a staid institute, as befits its role, and usually shies away from political controversy. So a public announcement by its leading historians on July 5th, denouncing a joint statement by the prime ministers of Israel and Poland, which it said contained “grave errors and deceptions”, was highly unorthodox.

The statement had been issued a week earlier by Binyamin Netanyahu and Mateusz Morawiecki, to end a crisis in relations between the two countries caused by a new Polish law on the death camps in Poland. It had threatened fines or imprisonment for anyone who blames the Polish nation or state for their part in the Holocaust. Many historians viewed this law as an attempt by the conservative Polish government to revise history, by playing down the willing participation of many Polish citizens in the murder of 3m Polish Jews by Nazi Germany. After months of talks, the Polish government agreed to...Continue reading

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THEIR hair tightly braided, two young girls sleep head-to-toe in matching pink dresses with gold trim—a sight to gladden the heart were it not for the startling white bandages around their arms and legs. The beds in this ward are overflowing with patients, the rounded stumps of their amputated limbs pointing at the ceiling. Colour-coded tags hang near the door to sort casualties: red for the most urgent cases, black for those beyond help. They attest to the grim efficiency of the surgeons from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), gained from dealing with the unrelenting flow of bomb and gunshot victims. Their clinic is, perhaps, the only thing that works well in Maiduguri.

Nigeria’s main north-eastern city is at the centre of a series of jihadist campaigns stretching in two broad belts across Africa on either side of the Sahara. The northern one hugs the Mediterranean, from Egypt through Libya and Tunisia to Algeria. The southern one extends from Somalia and Kenya in the east...Continue reading

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Officers but no gentlemen

THE mayor of Broumana, Pierre Achkar, has a problem. Rich tourists from the Gulf, who spend big and stay long, no longer holiday in his mountain town. The mayor wants to entice tourists from the West to plug the gap, but Lebanon’s reputation for violence and instability keeps them away, he says. His solution: to hire young women as police officers and dress them up in black hot pants.

“People in the West don’t visit Lebanon because they think it’s a country of Islamic extremism,” explains Mr Achkar. “We want to show that we have the same way of life as the West. You wear shorts and we wear shorts. We have democracy. Our women are free.” The mayor’s stunt has caused a stir and split opinion. Some are pleased, but others say it exposes the young women to sexual harassment, or worry that they will distract drivers and cause road accidents. The mayor is undaunted. “Why would we hire ugly girls?” he asks.

The new hires...Continue reading

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TO KEEP women quiet, Saudi Arabia’s clerical hierarchy once damned their voices as awra, an Arabic word for genitalia. The late Sheikh Abdelaziz Bin Baz, the kingdom’s top official cleric, opined that women should stay at home to reduce the risk of adultery. In 1994 he ordered the kingdom’s withdrawal from a UN conference because its support for equality between the sexes was “against God’s law”.

Two decades on Saudi female scholars are widely heard. They are penetrating the courts, mosques and universities, and can be heard giving sermons online. Nawal al-Eid, a preacher with her own women’s centre in Riyadh, has 5m followers on Twitter, more than almost any male cleric. “As long as you are qualified, you can speak up,” says Noura al-Hassawi, the director of research at Princess Nourah University’s Islamic Sciences department, the kingdom’s largest for women. “As a scholar, my opinion is equal to a man’s.”

Secular Saudi...Continue reading

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MAJOR GENERAL MARK HICKS, who commands about 1,200 special-operations troops assigned to missions in Africa, spoke with The Economist in Niger on April 9th on the sidelines of Flintlock, a military training exercise. He was joined in the discussion by several members of his staff. Below is a transcript of parts of the interview. It has been lightly edited for clarity. Some of General Hicks’s comments are included in an Economist report on security in the Sahel that can be found here. A leader on the issue is available here.

The Economist: What is your area of biggest concern at the moment?

General Hicks: I’m concerned about youth bulges in...Continue reading

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FOR a cold war it could turn surprisingly hot. Countless skirmishes occurred over the course of the nearly two decades following the bloody conflict, between 1998 and 2000, that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than half a million. In 2012 Ethiopia bombed three military camps in Eritrea used by the Ethiopian opposition. In 2015 it bombed an Eritrean mine and weapons depot. As recently as June 2016 Ethiopian and Eritrean troops came to blows, causing many casualties. Afterwards an Ethiopian official boasted his side was capable of waging “full scale war against Eritrea”.

So the arrival of peace on July 8th seemed unimaginable just a few months ago. In a display of unexpected warmth, Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s new prime minister, embraced Issaias Afwerki, the ageing Eritrean dictator. In the Eritrean capital, Asmara, which no Ethiopian leader had visited since the war, the two pledged to normalise relations, putting an end to one of Africa’s most bitter conflicts....Continue reading

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FIVE years ago the country that hopes to become a Mediterranean energy hub couldn’t even keep the lights on. When Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi took power in a coup in July 2013, Egypt was plagued by blackouts. Factories shut down. Surgeons operated by torchlight.

Egypt’s energy supply is still spotty. But on June 27th newspapers trumpeted the discovery of an enormous natural-gas field, called Noor, off the coast of North Sinai (see map). They billed it as the largest in the region. That title is already held by Egypt’s massive Zohr field, discovered in 2015, which is expected to change the country from a net importer to a net exporter of gas by next year.

Much of the enthusiasm is premature. The Egyptian government has downplayed reports of the Noor field’s size. Eni, the Italian firm working on the field, has done only seismic surveys of the area. It will not drill an exploratory well until August. Still, it is clearly optimistic. It paid $105m for exploration...Continue reading

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LINA MAHFOUZ was six years old when Lebanon’s civil war began. She remembers hearing screams outside her bedroom window. One evening she saw a man in black carrying what looked like a dead body into the orange grove behind her home. “Years later I realised what they were doing. They were torturing and then burying people in the orchard,” she says. “The bodies are there.”

It has been nearly 30 years since the civil war ended. But thousands of people are still missing. Most are probably dead: killed in Syrian prisons, dumped in the Mediterranean or buried in one of more than 100 mass graves dug by sectarian militias. The men who started the war also negotiated the peace, granting themselves amnesty for their crimes. Many are still in power. The government has had scant interest in digging up the past.

But several Lebanese NGOs think bringing up the bodies will provide closure to the families of the missing. They support a bill that would establish an independent...Continue reading

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Selfie-promotion

THE old Afrika Shrine, a music venue in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, was burned down by soldiers in 1977. Its founder, the late Fela Kuti, a musical megastar, had called them “zombies” in a song. The soldiers beat Kuti badly and threw his mother from a first-floor window. But Kuti’s children, Yeni and Femi, rebuilt a nearby venue in 2000. Ever since, the New Afrika Shrine has attracted hip Nigerians and expats, including a young Emmanuel Macron, who once worked as an intern in the French embassy in Abuja.

Mr Macron, now president of France, seems to have developed an attachment. When visiting Nigeria on July 3rd he went out of his way to visit the nightclub, known for its gyrating dancers and counterculture vibe. “What happens in the Shrine remains in the Shrine,” Mr Macron told the unusual crowd. Musicians, artists and stars from the Nollywood film industry drank champagne with government dignitaries, few of whom had ever visited the...Continue reading

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CEASEFIRES in South Sudan’s civil war tend to be short. At least nine such agreements have been signed since the war started in 2013. Only one has lasted longer than a month. The latest ceasefire, agreed to on June 30th, is already in danger of falling apart. On paper it sets the stage for power-sharing talks between President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar, a former vice-president. But hours after it took effect both sides reported violations. Analysts say Messrs Kiir and Machar have lost full control of their forces, which have splintered into factions. To make matters worse, Mr Kiir unveiled plans on July 2nd to extend his term by three years, to 2021. The opposition said the move would derail the peace talks.

“STOP killing us!” chanted a crowd of several hundred people as they marched through Kampala on June 30th. Their protest has good cause. Last year the bodies of more than 20 women, many strangled and mutilated, were found after being dumped in two neighbourhoods close to the Ugandan capital. Scores more people have been kidnapped. “You never know, maybe I’m next,” says Shamim Masika, a student.

Insecurity has become a hot political issue in Uganda. Newspapers have chronicled a wave of crime, from armed robberies to the murder of Muslim clerics. In June an MP was gunned down. Most startling of all was the murder last year of the police spokesman, who was shot in broad daylight outside his home. That case, like many others, remains unsolved.

Yoweri Museveni, the president, has proposed solutions ranging from more security cameras to a ban on hoodies. But many see the ageing guerrilla himself as part of the problem. When he fought his way to power in 1986 he had little trust in...Continue reading

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ON JUNE 14th the Sultan of Aïr, the traditional leader of the Touareg people of Agadez, came out to pray. It was a grand spectacle. Thousands had gathered to mark the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan at a huge open ground. When the Sultan had finished praying, he rode back to his palace, flanked by nobles on horseback and tootling trumpeters. In the streets everyone was smiling and waving. It must have been a relief for the Sultan: a few blessed hours of not having to listen to his subjects moaning about the collapse of the people-smuggling trade.

For centuries Agadez, home to perhaps 200,000 people, has lived off trans-Saharan commerce. Once camel trains set off from here with slaves, pilgrims, salt and gold. More recently it has prospered from a boom in the traffic of people north across the sands to the Mediterranean and onward to Europe. Many Europeans think of this flow of people as a vast, terrifying flood. It has prompted Italy to close its ports to rescue ships, and almost led to...Continue reading

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AS LONG as there have been exams, students have found ways to cheat. Today the correct answers are just a few taps away on a smartphone. So countries have come up with new ways to stop the funny business. Some use metal detectors, surveillance cameras, mobile-phone jammers and even drones. Others have taken a more drastic step.

Cheating in high-school leaving exams got so bad in Mauritania and Algeria that this year the authorities turned off the internet for the entire country. Algeria did so for at least an hour during tests (which last about a week); Mauritania cut access from morning until evening on exam days. Other countries, such as Iraq, Uzbekistan and Ethiopia, have for years been shutting down the internet during exam time.

In each country students are under enormous pressure to do well in the tests, which often determine whether they can continue their education at a good university. A splendid grade may mean a scholarship abroad. But high marks are rare. In Algeria only around...Continue reading

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