Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. A campaign to get the Nigerian government to shut down a notoriously corrupt police unit has evolved into the most significant protest movement in Nigeria in decades, with demonstrators across the country calling for sweeping police reforms and an end to human rights abuses by security forces. President Muhammadu Buhari has tried to quell the protesters by promising to meet their demands, even as security forces have responded with a brutal crackdown, including the use of live ammunition, killing at least 10 [...]
Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Lavender Au and Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. In a further round of sanctions last week, the U.S. blacklisted virtually all of Iran’s financial sector. Perhaps in anticipation, Iran’s central bank announced that it had adopted the yuan, also known as the renminbi, as its main foreign reserve currency, replacing the U.S. dollar. With a 25-year strategic partnership with China under discussion, Iran will have a guaranteed market for its oil and gas exports, and with renminbi reserves, it will be able to [...]
Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Ethiopian lawmakers voted to sever ties with leaders of the northern Tigray region this week in a move that one Tigrayan official called “tantamount to a declaration of war.” The decision by the upper house of Ethiopia’s national parliament, the House of Federation, is the most severe in a series of tit-for-tat provocations between Tigrayan leaders and federal officials and puts Tigray at risk of losing up to $281 million in federal budget subsidies. Tensions between the two sides arose early in [...]
