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Richard L.'s avatar

As an American born in Tanganyika, now Tanzania, I am so incredibly impressed with your coverage of African issues. I apologise for the typo now corrected!

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Georgia Fisanick's avatar

Much of the conflict in Africa is being fueled by mass migrations due to climate change, especially in West Africa where nomadic peoples (herders) are moving south and are in conflict with farm cultures over water resources and grazing land. This is driving many into the cities where there is insufficient infrastructure to support the population increase. Huge slums are developing with little sanitation and water, and few jobs. It is a recipe for conflict, and increasing crime.

I think the East African population movement is split, primarily northward towards Europe, with countries south of the DRC moving towards South Africa. As European governments move to the right, anti-immigration policies are increasing, and that will tighten the bottleneck that will trap East African climate refugees in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia. Egypt's ability to accommodate refugees will be overwhelmed by the Palestinians being forced out of Gaza. European humanitarian resources will be focused on rebuilding Ukraine.

Africa will be the hotbed of conflict and humanitarian crises over the next decades. Russia and China and the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and now Trump's America, are only interested in securing rights to natural resources. Their infrastructure development is focused on extraction and transport of those resources, not on the welfare of the population. The rights they want can be obtained cheaply through bribery and graft. Millions of Africans will die because they simply are not a big enough market in world GDP to matter.

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