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Africa
Joined April 2020
All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 189 of The Continent. M23 fighters are marching on to take a second city in the DRC. The Tanzanian president is hosting a leader’s conference to address the crisis. But Tanzania is not a disinterested party.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 119 of The Continent. @ombachi13, a Kenyan chef who whips up meals on his balcony in Nairobi, is TikTok’s number one Africa-based content creator.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 118 of The Continent. It is a very dangerous time to be a black person in Tunisia.
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🧵 There’s an ongoing fight for the future of farming and Africans are finding they are having to farm the way the Gates Foundation wants them to.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Season 11 and Issue 122 of The Continent.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 123 of The Continent. Bless the reign down in Africa: Britain’s new king gets to have a big party to celebrate winning the genetic lottery and the rest of us are supposed to just forget how his family acquired all that power and wealth.
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Canada’s silence on the horrors of Ethiopia’s 18-month war has led to accusations that gold deposits and other precious minerals in the northern Tigray region at the centre of conflict are behind why Canadian Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau has not spoken out.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 171 of The Continent. We join Botswana 🇧🇼 to celebrate Letsile Tebogo, and his mum in the ancestral realm, to honour a journey that began 21 years ago in the village of Kanye and culminated in a record-breaking 200m dash in Paris.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 137 of The Continent. Is he unlucky, incompetent or simply not the man for the job?
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Sourcing ideas from friends and family, he sets each video around making that night’s supper. Millions watch. We follow the former Rugby Sevens national team player’s second act.
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The war in Ethiopia is not over yet – and the atrocities are mounting, writes @RAbdiAnalyst. The video of a Tigrayan man being torched by men in uniform, then thrown into a smouldering pyre and literally “cooked” has stunned Ethiopians and shocked the world.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 120 of The Continent
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 109 of The Continent.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 135 of The Continent. Putting their own life at risk, someone filmed what appeared to be Ethiopian soldiers executing two civilians in cold blood.
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But the delineation between North Africa and the rest of the continent is not as strict as Saied would have us believe.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 106 of The Continent. Lemekhani Nathan Nyirenda called his parents in August to say he was out of prison, two years into a nine-year jail term in Moscow.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 145 of The Continent. We could bombard you with facts, stats or horrifying imagery but the conclusion would remain the same: The world doesn't care if there's democracy in the DRC – as long as the resources flow and rainforests grow.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 142 of The Continent. “When I went to Africa, it seemed like no one was paying attention. It was like: ‘We can do whatever we want.’”
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The country’s president, Kais Saied, has put authoritarian learning to devastating use, blaming “sub-Saharan Africans” for all the country’s problems, while he attacks the judiciary, media and the opposition.
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🌾 The first, espoused by their Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), prioritises small-scale, eco-friendly cultivation in which farmers grow a variety of nutritious crops while protecting biodiversity.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 168 of The Continent: . A century ago, Eritrean cyclists were forbidden from riding competitively by their European overlords. Now, an Eritrean cyclist has won 3 stages of @LeTour – overcoming enormous odds to do so.
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Trudeau has said nothing about this, despite his pledge that Canada stands for “democracy, peace, and security at home and around the world”. Read @jrfjeffrey’s full report in this week’s issue of The Continent.
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On this day a year we told you the system was rigged. The Pandora Papers was one of world’s biggest data leaks in history. It took 150 newsrooms around the world – including The Continent – to sift through the nearly 12-million files obtained by the @ICIJorg.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 115 of The Continent. Lazarus Chakwera sold himself as the second coming of Malawi’s democracy. He promised clean governance and to transform ordinary Malawians’ lives.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to The Continent’s end-of-the-year special edition. Stop. Pause. Take a deep breath.
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Today is The Continent’s 3rd birthday! . Our very first issue was published on 18 April 2020. 121 issues later and a readership that spans the globe, we’d like to thank you for joining us on this incredible journey.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 150 (!) of The Continent 🥳
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 177 of The Continent. In this week's issue: Geolocating a massacre in Ethiopia. Digging for gold in Ghana. And a little bit of Africa in Buenos Aires. Read it here:
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 166 of The Continent. In the Yeka Hills above Addis Ababa, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is building a $10-billion palace complex. No, that’s not a typo. That’s nine zeros.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 112 of The Continent. This week, The Continent celebrates the short but important life of Edwin Chiloba, a 25-year-old LGBTQ activist from Kenya, who was buried on Tuesday.
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We are thrilled to announce The Continent has won the prestigious award for best news service at the Digital Media Africa Awards #DMAfrica20. Thanks for all of your support!
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 125 of The Continent. Diabolus ex Machina: The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo’s iconic fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, depicts the Christian deity breathing life into the very first man.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 108 of The Continent. Kenyan soldiers are already on the ground in the DRC. With peace talks stalling and a tentative ceasefire already broken, a military intervention looks increasingly likely.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 124 of The Continent. For Willem ‘Ters’ Ehlers, it was simply business. In April 1994, when the apartheid regime fell in South Africa, Ehlers, who served as PW Botha’s secretary, had to find a new gig.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue of 128 of The Continent. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The war in Sudan is not just destroying the country’s future – but also its past.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to issue 63 of The Continent. The system is rigged. And it’s working as intended.
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This week we speak to @timnitGebru, the AI researcher who says she was pushed out of Google for raising ethical concerns, about why this moment in history is so dangerous for Africa – and what she and others are planning to do about it.
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👨🌾 So far, it hasn’t worked. But because of its vast wealth and influence, there is no space for other viewpoints making its vision a priority.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 175 of The Continent. Tanzania’s president Samia Suluhu Hassan was turning the country around. Then people started disappearing. Read it in English and Kiswahili here:
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 146 and the final edition of The Continent for 2023. Your village people did not finish you – but you and me, we finished 2023!. While 2023 wasn’t a great year, we managed to keep making your weekly issue of The Continent.
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All Protocol Observed. This is Issue 44 of The Continent. Welcome to Season 2.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 159 of The Continent. The new military leaders of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger — along with the not-so-new dynasty in Chad — are promising a new dawn in the Sahel.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 144 of The Continent. Thanks to the climate pollution they emit, rich countries are causing about $400-billion a year in losses and damage to communities around the world.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 121 of The Continent. Hops and dreams: @Heineken is one of the world’s most recognisable beer brands. But on land on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital, it’s (in)famous for another reason entirely.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 141 of The Continent.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 132 of The Continent. The Ukrainian flag’s colours represent a blue sky above and a field of golden wheat below. The country grows a lot of the crop, and other grains – far more than it can possibly consume.
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COMMENT: As Africans support the #BlackLivesMatter movement, let us also dismantle the unequal systems we have upheld on our continent itself. Divesting from white-supremacist voluntourism is a good place to start, writes @RosebellK.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 147 of The Continent . Money is the best soap: TotalEnergies is sponsoring Afcon — Africa’s biggest football competition — presumably hoping the stains of its core business are washed away.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 153 of The Continent. The civil war in Sudan has brought untold death and destruction. And yet, somehow, life goes on.
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🌱 The second vision, as represented by the Gates Foundation and the research institutes it supports, holds that African farmers should switch to high-yield commodity crops with genetically modified seeds and increase the use of agrochemical fertilisers and pesticides.
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All Protocol Observed. That's a wrap! . Welcome to our special Africans of the Year edition. Read about the people who made the continent better.
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Canada: A pointer to why Justin Trudeau’s government has been mute on atrocities in Tigray.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 158 of The Continent. The people of Sudan are living through a grim anniversary: it’s been a year since the war broke out on 15 April 2023.
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It’s a man’s world…Fortune Charumbira, the president of the @_AfricanUnion’s Pan-African Parliament has been charged with sexual assault. An internal investigation found his predecessor was making improper advances towards staff.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 129 of The Continent. African presidents on a peace mission would be a welcome change. But if the purpose is to find peace between Ukraine and Russia, why is Ivor Ichikowitz – a South African arms dealer – playing a role behind the scenes?
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 111 of The Continent.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 162 of The Continent. Africa is the fastest urbanising continent: 58% of us will live in cities by 2030. We already have 52 cities with a population of one million or higher – same as Europe, according to the African Development Bank.
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💡 As Million Belay and Bridget Mugambe see it, there are two competing – and mutually exclusive – visions for the future of African agriculture.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 160 of The Continent. Kenya has lost a lot in the devastating floods of recent weeks: property, infrastructure and lives, among them that of Benna Buluma.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 131 of The Continent. Forgive our ignorance, but we always thought surfing was an American thing. We were wrong.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 100 of The Continent. If you watch Ethiopian state media, or listen to the speeches of PM Abiy Ahmed, you might be forgiven for thinking the entire country enthusiastically, and unquestioningly, supports the government’s war in Tigray.
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Also in this week’s issue: In Nigeria, it’s the same old, same old as as the establishment prevails. From cricketing to conservation, if you want the job done right, send in the women. Plus, we’re on the trail of M23.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 127 of The Continent. What was supposed to be a new start for Esther was anything but. Instead of a lucrative job offer in Dubai, she found herself in Muscat, Oman, where she was beaten and sold into modern-day slavery.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 172 of The Continent. A new wave of protest movements is sweeping across Africa. Driven by skyrocketing costs of living, and a dearth of economic opportunities, some are excitedly declaring this an ‘African Spring’. perceptions.
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Or 5 December 2022, a Russian vessel known to trade arms turned off its location transponder and docked in Simon's Town, the home of South Africa’s navy. Over several nights, trucks unloaded containers from the quay to the Lady R. Two months later it docked at a Russian port.
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All Protocol Observed. We’re back! . Welcome to Issue 167 of The Continent. South African troops are in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, trying to counter a greed-fuelled conflict. The DRC’s fabulous mineral wealth has for centuries attracted those seeking profit
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 126 of The Continent. Africa’s richest man has just opened Africa’s largest oil refinery in Africa’s biggest economy.
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👓 Read the full analysis in Issue 101 of The Continent. Sign up for a subscription on WhatsApp or Signal on +27 73 805 6068 or join the mailing list by emailing us at Read@TheContinent.org. It’s free.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 157 of The Continent. We’re back for Season 14! We had a break, planned the path towards world domination, and caught up on some emails. Expect more journalism about life on our ever-spectacular continent.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 149 of The Continent. The Ruto of the problem: Hustler-in-chief William Ruto was elected on promises of creating opportunities for ordinary people. But as is the case with the “grindset grift”, that’s not what’s happened.
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This week’s edition is dedicated to the organisers who keep organising;the creators who keep creating; and to the refugees who, having lost everything, are starting again somewhere else.
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Panama, Paradise, and now, Pandora. What’s the big deal? . To understand the ramifications for Africa, tonight we’ll be speaking to the journalists who trawled the papers. Join @johnallannamu, @WillFitzgibbon, @Latashia_Naidoo & @nicholasibekwe in #ContinentSpaces at 7pm (CAT)
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 117 of The Continent. 🫣 Out of sight, out of mind: We all like to get our house in order before welcoming visitors.
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PITCH PLEASE: Do you have a pitch about organisations and people facilitating access to justice; or barriers in access to justice? What about an interesting take on an underreported issue or group or an original angle about a story already in the news?
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 70 of The Continent. We did it. We survived. That in itself is enough in what has been an absurd year. A year that somehow feels even worse than the shitshow that was 2020.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to issue 32 of The Continent. This is the last regular season issue for 2020 — and we're going out with a bang. Don’t worry, we will be back in 2021 and before we go on a much-needed break, we have one more special edition lined up.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to a special edition of The Continent.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 77 of The Continent.
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💵 In support of this approach, the Gates Foundation has pumped more than $5-billion into farm initiatives in Africa.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 143 of The Continent.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 138 of The Continent. Images of the Chagos Islands, which are illegally occupied by Britain, are rare. Images of Chagos from the perspective of Chagossians themselves are even rarer.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 140 of The Continent. Burna Boy is Nigeria’s biggest musical export since Fela Kuti, lauded by fans around the world for his stage performances and championing of Afrobeats.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 43 of The Continent. Something curious is afoot in Uganda. As if by magic, hundreds of Ugandans — most with some connection to Bobi Wine’s opposition party — have gone missing over the past few months.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 169 of The Continent. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap: Artificial Intelligence is not as artificial as it says on the box. In fact, programs like ChatGPT and Copilot rely on millions of data workers – actual humans – to do the grunt work.
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The head of Pfizer claimed, without any data to support his view, that vaccine hesitancy in poor to middle income countries would be “way, way higher than the percentage of hesitancy in Europe or in the US or Japan” – implying that there is no reason to waste vaccines on Africa.
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Uganda’s parliament has passed sweeping homophobic legislation that proposes tough new penalties for same-sex relationships and criminalises anyone identifying as LGBTQ.
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All Protocol Observed . Welcome to Issue 82 of The Continent. Nearly 40 years after the fact, Thomas Sankara’s killers have finally been convicted. We remember his life and legacy.
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Have you subscribed to The Continent? . Here are three reasons why you should. 1. It’s FREE. 2. It’s produced by top-shelf African journalists. 3. It’s in a format that allows for cross-border sharing.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to the 31st issue of The Continent. This week we are publishing a massive new investigation that implicates one of Africa's most prominent presidents in war crimes. You don't want to miss this one.
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We are because you are. In April 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, we sent The Continent to a few people and asked them to share it if they thought it would be of use to others. This team is here because of your efforts.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 156 of The Continent . There are candidates. There are (very short) campaigns. There is an actual election date.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 173 of The Continent. If the cost of living crisis has got you down, and the banks won’t lend you any more money, you might have to pay a visit to a loan shark – despite high interest rates and looming threats of violence.
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The footage caused an uproar online, but until now, it was unclear where or when the killings took place. A visual investigation byThe Continent has geolocated the potential war crime to a specific spot in the town of Debre Markos, in the Amhara region.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 104 of The Continent. Black Panther dared to imagine a fictional African kingdom untouched by western imperialism. It celebrated African heroism, cultures and dazzled with a showcase of Black excellence.
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The blackened pit shows other human remains, suggesting he could be one of a number of prisoners executed in similar fashion. “His grilled flesh would be good to eat with injera,” says one of them. “With bread!” retort the rest, amid guffaws and further insults.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to issue 56 of The Continent. What should we learn from Afghanistan? Don’t trust the West. Or anyone else, for that matter. But that’s too simplistic a lesson.
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SAVE THE DATE: After Russia invaded Ukraine, can (and should) Africans stay neutral? Join #ContinentSpaces with @soafricane, @Kayode_ani, @priyal_singh and @qataharraymond for the discussion. @aanuadeoye will moderate.
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All Protocol Observed. Welcome to Issue 87 of The Continent. “A female African superhero saves the world from Big Tech, in the style of Afrofuturism”.
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Already facing a cholera outbreak, this is the third storm to hit Malawi in a year. While fossil fuel companies celebrate $400-billion in profits from ventures that fuel climate change, Malawians are digging to find their dead.
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