Newsletter Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. After a decades-long eradication campaign, health officials declared Africa free of wild poliovirus this week, even as they called for ongoing vigilance against a rare mutation of the virus that still circulates on the continent. Wild poliovirus, which is usually transmitted through contaminated water, primarily affects children under five years old, causing irreversible paralysis and even death. As recently as 1996, the virus affected 75,000 African children. That was the year health officials launched the ambitious eradication effort, coordinating continent-wide immunization campaigns […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Guest contributor Lavender Au wrote the lead story in China Note this week. When the U.S. tightened restrictions on Huawei’s access to semiconductor chips last week, the Trump administration’s goal became clear, if it wasn’t already: kneecap the Chinese telecom giant’s technological advancement. Under a previous round of U.S. trade restrictions in May, Huawei was blocked from using American technology to make its own semiconductors, but the company found workarounds by obtaining chips designed by third parties. The latest […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was forced from power in a military coup Tuesday, upending the political situation in Mali and, with the country at the epicenter of a fight against a growing Islamist insurgency, raising alarms about regional security. The coup unfolded rapidly as mutinying soldiers seized weapons from a garrison outside the capital, Bamako, then descended on the city, capturing Keita and Prime Minister Boubou Cisse. Within hours, Keita appeared on state television to dissolve the government and announce his resignation. […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Guest contributor Yuan Ren wrote the lead story in China Note this week. President Donald Trump’s increasingly hawkish attempts to limit China’s influence in the United States broadened into cultural territory last week, when the State Department ordered the Washington headquarters of China’s state-funded Confucius Institutes to re-classify as a foreign mission in the U.S., much like its consulates and embassies. The Trump administration claimed that the government educational organization was under significant control of the Chinese Communist Party […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. An emergency cleanup operation has pumped the remaining oil from a Japanese ship that ran aground off Mauritius late last month, but the island nation is just beginning to grapple with the environmental and economic costs of the 1,000 tons of fuel that spilled off its coast. The MV Wakashio, which was en route from Singapore to Brazil, went off course and struck a coral reef about a mile southeast of Mauritius. The ship’s hull began to split open as it was […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar this week became the highest-level American official to visit Taiwan since 1979, when Washington severed official diplomatic ties with Taipei. The optics of the trip were questionable, as it came amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province that should be brought under its control, by force if necessary. Nevertheless, the visit was a boost for Taiwan, as it deals with constant anxiety over Chinese aggression. […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Bowing to the reality that they cannot prevent the spread of COVID-19 in classrooms full of students and teachers, Kenyan officials canceled the 2020 school year in July, at its midpoint. The implications of the decision will be felt not only domestically, where a nearly year-long break in learning could widen educational disparities, but also across the continent. Kenya initially suspended classes back in mid-March, days after the country’s first COVID-19 case and early in its academic year, which begins in January. […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. A vast fleet of Chinese fishing boats was spotted off Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands last month, triggering alarm in Quito and prompting concerns about the threat to numerous vulnerable species in the protected waters around what is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The presence of so many Chinese fishing vessels off South America’s Pacific coast also raised more questions about China’s distant-water fishing industry. Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno, formally complained to China after the Ecuadorian navy announced it had spotted […]