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AfricaSource

Sep 4, 2014

Succession in Somalia: al-Shabaab after Godane

By Joshua Meservey

  Ahmed Abdi Godane, leader of al-Shabaab, the Somali terrorist group and al-Qaeda affiliate, may have been killed in a US airstrike on Monday. The Pentagon said on Tuesday that the military was gunning for Godane in the strike and that it was confident it hit the target, though there is no confirmation Godane is […]

Somalia

AfricaSource

Sep 4, 2014

Palacio: Africa Beyond Ebola

By Ana Palacio

Atlantic Council Executive Committee Member Ana Palacio writes for Project Syndicate on why despite this summer’s Ebola threat, there are still many reasons to be optimistic about emerging opportunities in Africa:

Africa

AfricaSource

Aug 14, 2014

US-Africa Leaders Summit: Highlights

By The Atlantic Council

The Africa Center hosted a busy week of events around the US-Africa Leaders Summit, welcoming four heads of state, the head of a regional governmental organization, numerous ministers, corporate executives, and other stakeholders for lively and thoughtful conversations about the important African issues of the day. Below is a sampling of some of our favorite […]

AfricaSource

Aug 14, 2014

Africa’s Projected Population Boom

By JAMES ATTWELL AND JOSHUA MESERVEY

Africa’s demographic trends have been gaining attention for years, and our last maps for this week show why. Africa today has just over 1 billion people, but by the end of this century it is projected to hold more than 4 billion. Nigeria is a major part of the story; already Africa’s most populous country […]

AfricaSource

Aug 13, 2014

Select Countries’ African Trade Partners

By James Attwell and Joshua Meservey

Today’s graphs show selected trading heavyweights and their five largest African trading partners, along with the trade volume by US dollar amount per country. The BRICS countries minus China are presented in a bar graph for ease of comparison.

AfricaSource

Aug 12, 2014

Africa’s Exports and Imports

By James Attwell and Joshua Meservey

Today’s map documents the primary imports and exports, and primary export destinations, of all African countries (excluding Swaziland, for which there is no recent data). China leads the pack as the primary export destination for fourteen countries, while nine countries export primarily to Europe. Most of the latter are in North Africa, unsurprising given those […]

AfricaSource

Aug 11, 2014

A Snapshot of Africa’s Economies

By James Attwell and Joshua Meservey

The US-Africa Leaders Summit concluded last week, and in honor of the billions of dollars’ worth of deals that emerged from the Summit, the Africa Center has created a series of maps and charts—a new one of which will be released daily—highlighting different aspects of the continent’s economic story. The map featured here presents three […]

AfricaSource

Aug 1, 2014

Aubrey Hruby on the 2014 US-Africa Leaders Summit

By The Atlantic Council

Visiting Fellow Aubrey Hruby discusses her hopes of seeing increased US business interest and investment in Africa as a result of the US-Africa Leaders Summit, as well as what she believes the long-term impact of the historic gathering will be.

Africa
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, left, greets Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore upon his arrival at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., on Sept. 23, 2013. The two leaders will meet to discuss security issues of mutual importance. DoD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo.

AfricaSource

Aug 1, 2014

Burkina Faso “punches above its weight”

By J. Peter Pham

Although scores of African heads of state and government who will be arriving in Washington in coming days for the historic US-Africa Leaders Summit, media attention will likely focus on only a handful of leaders either because of the economic heft of their countries or because of the controversies surrounding them. This is regrettable since, […]

Africa North & West Africa
Senegalese soldiers participate in a training exercise. An end to the Casamance conflict presents an opportunity for Senegal to redirect military resources to peacekeeping operations throughout West Africa. US Marine Corps/Elsa Portillo

AfricaSource

Jul 9, 2014

Senegal: An End to One of Africa’s Longest Civil Conflicts?

By David Seyferth

On April 30, the leader of Senegal’s main separatist rebel group, the Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de Casamance (MFDC,) agreed to a ceasefire and peace talks to end one of Africa’s longest-running civil conflicts, which has sputtered off and on in the country’s southern Casamance region for the last thirty-two years. The separatist movement poses […]

North & West Africa
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