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West Africa moves in unison to promote vaccination and curb falsehoods — Poynter

In West Africa, fact-check­­ers are coop­er­at­ing to expand their influ­ence on local, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lev­els to curb mis­in­for­ma­tion about vac­cines. Orga­ni­za­tions are band­ing togeth­er, form­ing alliances with inter­gov­ern­men­tal groups and cre­at­ing cross-con­ti­­nent task forces to ele­vate health knowl­edge across Africa. “I think the most impor­tant thing is to high­light how fact-check­­ers lever­age col­lab­o­ra­tion to…

Rwanda asylum seeker policy: Ex-PM Theresa May criticises government plan — BBC.com

For­mer prime min­is­ter There­sa May has crit­i­cised the gov­ern­men­t’s plan to send some asy­lum seek­ers to Rwan­da.  Mrs May told the Com­mons she did not sup­port the pol­i­cy due to her con­cerns over whether it met stan­dards on “legal­i­ty, prac­ti­cal­i­ty and effi­ca­cy”.  Home Sec­re­tary Pri­ti Patel said the scheme would be “a major blow to…

Venture Capital Firms Invested Record $5.2B in African Startups in 2021 — PYMNTS.com

Ven­ture cap­i­tal (VC) firms inject­ed a record $5.2 bil­lion into African start­up firms in 2021, a near­ly five­fold increase from 2020 lev­els, which dipped dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, accord­ing to a report by the African Pri­vate Equi­ty and Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Asso­ci­a­tion (AVCA). As Reuters report­ed Tues­day (April 19), the suc­cess of Nigeria’s Paystack, which was…

Why the World Isn’t Really United Against Russia

As Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s army reduced one Ukrain­ian city after anoth­er to rub­ble, crush­ing civil­ians caught in apart­ment blocks and shop­ping malls under a rain of artillery and mis­sile fire, many observers in the rich world bemoaned the dys­func­tion of the Unit­ed Nations for not being able to over­come an obsta­cle writ­ten into its…

A Door-to-Door Effort to Find Out Who Died Helps Low-Income Countries Aid the Living

Many devel­op­ing coun­tries don’t keep offi­cial death records. A nov­el effort uses “elec­tron­ic autop­sies” to count deaths, and record their cause. FUNKOYA, Sier­ra Leone — Augus­tine Alpha begins gen­tly. “Who lives in this home?” he asks the young man, who has come in from the fields to answer his ques­tions. Your name? Age? Reli­gion? Mar­i­tal status?…

China’s Costly Exceptionalism

Amer­i­ca has long thought itself excep­tion­al, a blessed place des­tined to bring free­dom to the world. Chi­na has an even longer his­to­ry of self-pro­­claimed excep­tion­al­ism and, spurred by its many mod­ern achieve­ments, is more assertive­ly pro­mot­ing its brand of gov­er­nance as a mod­el for the world. The widen­ing con­fronta­tion between the Unit­ed States and China…

Russia Flounders in Ukraine but Doubles Down in Mali

A man sits near a por­trait of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin dur­ing a demon­stra­tion in Bamako, Mali, on Feb. 19, cel­e­brat­ing France’s announce­ment that it will with­draw its troops from the coun­try. FLORENT VERGNES/AFP via Get­ty Images On March 30, as Russ­ian forces con­tin­ued their strug­gle to con­quer Ukrain­ian cities, Russ­ian arms sup­pli­ers deliv­ered a…