East Africa Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. The arrest took place in a Paris suburb, but its ramifications may be felt most acutely thousands of miles to the south, in West Africa. On Tuesday, Vincent Bollore, the French billionaire and head of the Bollore Group, was detained in Nanterre for questioning over the circumstances under which the holding company obtained major port deals in Guinea and Togo. He was placed under formal investigation the following day. The allegations touch on the shady dealings that persist at […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about press freedom and safety in various countries around the world. In March, Tanzania’s government imposed sweeping new regulations restricting online media, including requiring a license to run a blog that costs $930—more than Tanzania’s GDP per capita in 2016. The new regulations also affect online radio stations, streaming platforms, social media and internet cafes, which will now be required to install surveillance cameras. The clampdown follows other restrictions placed on Tanzania’s media in recent years that have severely limited freedom of expression. In an email interview, Jeff Smith, the […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Over a three-day period in December 2015, Nigerian security forces carried out an operation in the northern town of Zaria that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 civilians, according to an official commission of inquiry. The attack targeted the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, or IMN, a Shiite organization founded in the 1980s by Nigerians inspired by the Iranian revolution. Nigeria is about evenly split between Christians and Muslims, and the vast majority of Muslims are Sunni. As […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. It was a rare example of a protest in the Central African Republic that managed to get the world’s attention, however briefly. On Wednesday, demonstrators placed at least 16 dead bodies outside the offices of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the capital, Bangui. The demonstrators said the dead were civilians killed by U.N. peacekeepers during recent operations in a mostly Muslim neighborhood of Bangui known as PK5. For the past several years, the Central African Republic has been […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about religious minorities in various countries around the world. Since early March, the government of President Paul Kagame in Rwanda has ordered the closing of thousands of churches and dozens of mosques, citing unsafe conditions for worshippers. It also banned mosques in the capital, Kigali, from using loudspeakers for the Muslim call to prayer. Kagame insists that there is no reason for so many places of worship in a small, developing country like Rwanda. The predominantly Catholic country has seen a proliferation of non-Catholic churches in the decades since the […]