Legislative elections in Comoros last month were dominated by President Azali Assoumani’s party, the Convention for the Renewal of Comoros, or CRC. Opposition parties boycotted the vote, arguing it was rigged against them, and the CRC-led coalition won 19 of the 24 seats that were contested. Runoffs will be held later this month for constituencies where no candidate took a majority of the vote. But last month’s results alone have already made the legislature “no more than a rubber stamp” for Assoumani’s agenda, says Simon Massey, a senior lecturer in international relations at Coventry University. In an email interview with [...]
The Trump administration provoked another international outcry when it announced late last month that it was adding six new countries to its list of nations that face broad travel restrictions to the United States: Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania. The expansion of the travel ban, which President Donald Trump first issued as an executive order just days after his inauguration in January 2017, will take effect on Feb. 22. The inclusion of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and its largest economy, generated immediate outrage among many observers. But the reaction from the Nigerian government was more muted than [...]
The United Kingdom may have officially left the European Union, but the terms of its exit are still being worked out, including what British trade policy will look like post-Brexit. During the current transition, which lasts until at least the end of the year, the U.K. will continue trading under EU rules while negotiating new arrangements with Brussels. Once that is done, the British government will be free to negotiate new trade terms with the rest of the world. While a potential free trade deal with the U.S. gets all the attention, development advocates are watching to see how the [...]
