Susanne D. Mueller, a Visiting Researcher at the African Studies Center, was the keynote speaker at a June conference in Nairobi on Devolution organized by the French Institute in Africa. “The Devolution Paradigm” was the title of her address. In September she was an invited participant at the Electoral Integrity Project’s annual workshop held at […]
On Thursday, December 8, the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center launched two new publications on Eritrea. The first, Eritrea’s Economy: Ideology and Opportunity, authored by fragile states expert Seth Kaplan, examines the nexus between the ideology of Eritrea’s leadership and the country’s struggling economy. The second, Eritrea: Coming In from the Cold, authored by Africa Center Deputy Director Bronwyn Bruton, […]
By Jesse Singal It’s understandable why some people are concerned that there will be violence during or immediately after tomorrow’s presidential election. After all, for the entire final stretch of the campaign, Donald Trump has been pre-complaining that the results of tomorrow’s election will be “rigged,” and has repeatedly refused to say that he will accept the results, […]
Marc Sommers’ interest in Africa’s youth dates back more than three decades to his work in Kenya, where he was headmaster of a girls’ secondary school. In the ensuing years, he has returned to Africa routinely as a scholar and analyst, and his growing body of research suggests that the prevailing wisdom about the continent’s […]
From Dan Connell, Visiting Researcher, BU African Studies Center Thousands of refugees have made their way to eastern Ethiopia across Eritrea’s porous southern borders in recent years. Many traveled by foot through the Danakil Depression, one of the lowest and hottest places on earth. Others slipped across the heavily militarized frontier with Djibouti. Still others […]
James McCann, professor of history and associate director of the African Studies Center at Boston University. He is winner of a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2014 Distinguished Scholar of the American Society of Environmental History. In his latest book he turns his gaze on malaria and its pernicious history. Malaria is an infectious […]
“I stand before you as a proud American, I also stand before you as the son of an African,” he said. Obama spoke about democracy and warned African leaders that “nobody should be president for life.” That’s a sore point in a number of African nations, where leaders in their 80s and 90s continue to hold power. […]
TAPACHULA, MEXICO—It is not hard to find the Eritreans in this low-key town near the Pacific coast a few miles north of the Guatemalan border. They gather on the front steps of the Palafox Hotel with the only other Africans here—Somalis, Ethiopians, a handful of Ghanaians, all of them migrants—or they crowd into the bustling […]
Over 35,000 Eritrean refugees live in Israel today. Dubbed a “cancer” by right-wing politicians, just four have been granted asylum. Kifle was in the fourth grade at Bet Soira — the “Revolution School” run by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front at their rear base in Harareb — when the final battle of the 30-year struggle for independence […]
Central Americans are not the only ones risking their lives to get to the United States through Mexico. Tucked in among this northward flow are hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia. They include hundreds from the troubled northeast African state of Eritrea. Eritreans have been taking this perilous route for more […]