Feature

Regardless of government intentions, the problem with Nigeria failure to hammer out permanent peace agreements with insurgents is that the accords negotiated so far are badly flawed and amateurishly executed. The running theme in all conflicts in Nigeria – as is the case elsewhere in Africa – equitable access to...

They are known simply as “bandits” – heavily armed criminal gangs that have terrorised Nigeria’s rural northwest, killing, kidnapping, forcing people from their homes, and taunting the authorities with their brazenness. The violence typically involves scores of gunmen on motorbikes sweeping into villages, shooting all the young men they can...

Political and economic exclusion, poverty and radicalisation came together to create the insurgency in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, and although military intervention has driven the insurgents back, it will not solve the root causes that led to young men taking up arms. This is according to a number of experts,...

In preparation for the 2000 parliamentary elections, the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front’s (ZANU-PF) militias were created and trained by the National Youth Service (NYS) to “transform and empower youths for nation-building through skills development and leadership training.” A report published by African Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS) says...

 Eagerly awaited results of the largest-ever study of psilocybin were announced on Tuesday this week, with Compass Pathways revealing the psychedelic drug was highly efficacious as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression. Still, the company’s stock price dropped 16.4 per cent by the close of trading, perhaps because of safety concerns...

The Hong Kong-listed Frontier Services Group (FSG), one of the largest Chinese players in Africa, is wholly owned by CITIC Group, the Chinese state-run investment company. But while Chinese private security companies (PSCs) have the support of the state, they remain a sensitive topic politically, something that was evident in...

It was the dead of night as 12 men approached a Chinese mining compound near the city of Likasi. Just after 2:30am, they cut a hole in the wire fence and slipped through, carrying AK-47s and metal pipes. Once inside, they moved swiftly through the camp to the security office,...

Extracting the valuable materials from an electric vehicle (EV) battery is difficult and expensive. The recycling process typically involves shredding batteries, then breaking them down further with heat or chemicals at dedicated facilities. That part is relatively simple. The harder part is getting dead batteries to those facilities from wherever...