NPR News -Africa

March 22, 20245:39 PM ET
Senegal’s democratic resilience has been tested in recent years, and after some pre-election chaos, the West African country finally heads to the polls.
Enlarge this imageSupporters of Presidential candidate Amadou Ba gather for the last rally of the campaign in Dakar, Senegal, Friday, March 22, 2024.

Sylvain Cherkaoui/AP

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Sylvain Cherkaoui/AP

Supporters of Presidential candidate Amadou Ba gather for the last rally of the campaign in Dakar, Senegal, Friday, March 22, 2024.

Sylvain Cherkaoui/AP

Ayen Deng Bior

March 22, 20243:06 PM ET
Enlarge this imageOpponents of the ban on female genital mutilation (FGM) gather outside the National Assembly in Banjul, The Gambia, on March 18, 2024. Lawmakers voted to advance a highly controversial bill that would lift the ban on FGM.

Muhamadou Bittaye/AFP via Getty Images

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Opponents of the ban on female genital mutilation (FGM) gather outside the National Assembly in Banjul, The Gambia, on March 18, 2024. Lawmakers voted to advance a highly controversial bill that would lift the ban on FGM.

Muhamadou Bittaye/AFP via Getty Images

As more and more countries outlaw the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), The Gambia could become the first country in the world to overturn such a ban.
The country’s National Assembly advanced a bill on March 18 that would repeal the 2015 law criminalizing all acts of FGM. That prospect has alarmed health and human rights activists in The G..

March 22, 20245:00 AM ET
Enlarge this imageSupporters celebrate the release of Senegal’s top opposition leader Ousmane Sonko and his key ally Bassirou Diomaye Faye outside Sonko’s home in Dakar, Senegal, Thursday, March 14, 2024.

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Supporters celebrate the release of Senegal’s top opposition leader Ousmane Sonko and his key ally Bassirou Diomaye Faye outside Sonko’s home in Dakar, Senegal, Thursday, March 14, 2024.

Sylvain Cherkaoui/AP

Senegal holds elections this weekend. Finally. The West African country has long been lauded as a stable, even model democracy, in a region rife with political crises and coups.
But the last few years have belied that image. President Macky Sall’s unprecedented decision in February to extend his stay in office and delay the elections until the end of the year — after they were initially planned to be held later that month — outraged many both at home and abroad.
Senegal h..

March 19, 20244:56 PM ET

NPR’s Ailsa Chang talks with Jaha Dukureh, the founder of Safe Hands for Girls, a Gambian group that aims to end female genital mutilation. Lawmakers there advanced a bill that would end its FGM ban.

March 18, 202410:00 AM ET
Enlarge this imageRahima Banu had the last recorded case of naturally occurring variola major smallpox, a deadly strain of the virus, in 1975. At left: Banu in her mother’s arms as a small child. At right: Banu today, close to 50 years old, lives in a small village in Bangladesh with her husband, Rafiqul Islam, and their children.

Michael Schwartz/CDC, Céline Gounder/KFF Health News

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Michael Schwartz/CDC, Céline Gounder/KFF Health News

Rahima Banu had the last recorded case of naturally occurring variola major smallpox, a deadly strain of the virus, in 1975. At left: Banu in her mother’s arms as a small child. At right: Banu today, close to 50 years old, lives in a small village in Bangladesh with her husband, Rafiqul Islam, and their children.

Michael Schwartz/CDC, Céline Gounder/KFF Health News

Smallpox was certified eradicated in 1980, but I first learned about the disease’s twisty, storied history in 1996 wh..

March 17, 20249:50 AM ET
Enlarge this imageA store in Monrovia, Liberia, advertises Coca-Cola. The photo is from circa 1947.

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A store in Monrovia, Liberia, advertises Coca-Cola. The photo is from circa 1947.

Alberts/Alberts/Three Lions via Getty Images

Author-historian Sara Byala had an epiphany about Coca-Cola’s role in African life and culture in 2003. She and a group of fellow graduate students had found their way across Mali’s Saharan Desert via an arduous journey that involved a broken-down jeep followed by bouts of hiking and hitchhiking.
When the exhausted group reached a Niger River ferry stop the next day, the pause that refreshes took on new meaning. “Boarding, grimy and parched, we are offered — as in a dream — ice-cold Coca-Cola,” she writes in her book, Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African.
At the time, she wondered, “How is this ..

March 17, 20248:06 AM ET

Tom Perriello, U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan, talks with NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe about his efforts to help broker peace talks in Sudan and the current state of affairs there.

March 12, 20245:00 AM ET
Enlarge this imageJuniper forests and orchards planted by the Berber people frame the lower Toubkal valley in Morocco. Even in winter, the trees are full of songbirds.

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Juniper forests and orchards planted by the Berber people frame the lower Toubkal valley in Morocco. Even in winter, the trees are full of songbirds.

Brian Mann/NPR

HIGH ATLAS MOUNTAINS, Morocco — When we set off on foot from a tiny mountain town called Imlil, it was still early, the sky purple. The peaks towering above the valley were just visible in the dim light, with rocks and crag outlined in sharp blue shadows.
The High Atlas Mountains run roughly east to west through central Morocco. They’re some of the wildest, most remote places in North Africa. I first glimpsed these soaring, snowcapped summits nearly 40 years ago.
In the 1980s, I was little more than a hippie kid hanging out in the nearby city of Marrakesh,..

March 11, 20246:28 PM ET

The High Atlas Mountains run east to west across central Morocco. They’re some of the wildest, most remote places in North Africa. Here’s an audio postcard from a trek in the area.

March 11, 20245:18 PM ET

When Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, the U.S. and western allies froze $300 billion dollars worth of Russian assets. Now the U.S. wants to send that money to Ukraine, but many European countries don’t agree with that plan.
And we take a trip to the wild, remote High Atlas Mountains in Morocco.