#west-africa

#west-africa

When I was growing up in West Africa, my school lunch boxes were mostly prepared by my Lebanese teta (grandmother), whose love for meat-free, plant-based cooking was reflected in our daily meals.It is therefore only natural that I look to her for inspiration during my stint as a stand-in for Meera Sodha's weekly column.

Every year the World Economic Forum (WEF) surveys more than 1,200 global risk experts, policy makers, and industry leaders to measure the weight of looming risks to global finance and stability over the next two and ten years.The WEF releases its Global Risks Report as world leaders and corporate titans convene in Davos for the annual conference to help frame the week's conversations.

More than 120 people were killed in devastating floods and landslides caused by heavy rains in Rwanda, the government said on Wednesday, the highest death toll from a flood reported in a single day in the country's recent history.Entire families were killed, injured or left homeless and in desperate need of assistance.

Relations between Paris and Ouagadougou have deteriorated sharply since the Burkinabe military seized power in a coup in October.Burkina Faso's military government has suspended France 24 broadcasts after the TV station aired an interview with the head of al-Qaeda's North African wing.The new channel this month aired the interview with Yezid Mebarek, also known as Abu Ubaydah Yusuf al-Anabi, who claimed the title of emir of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in 2020 after a French raid killed his predecessor.

All Quiet on the Western Front, a German-language movie set on the battlefields of World War I, emerged on Thursday as the surprise front-runner for this year's British Academy Film Awards, Britain's equivalent of the Oscars.All Quiet, a Netflix-backed movie about the futility of war, secured 14 nominations for the awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs.

Relations between France and former colony Burkina Faso continue to deteriorate as violence continues in the Sahel.The French foreign ministry says it received a letter from the Burkinabe authorities in December requesting the departure of France's ambassador from Burkina Faso.The French ministry's spokeswoman confirmed to Reuters on Tuesday by email that it had received such a letter, but declined to give further details or say how it had responded.

The founder of the Russian private military company Wagner has accused France of being behind the bomb.The head of a Russian cultural centre in the Central African Republic (CAR) has been wounded by a parcel bomb in the capital, Bangui, Russian news agency TASS reported quoting a Russian embassy spokesman.

In many West African cultures, griots serve as communal memory banks, transmitting a people's history, rituals, folklore and values from generation to generation, stretching back centuries.But for Anglo-Gambian kora master Sona Jobarteh, becoming the first women from a griot family to master the 21-string instrument was a decidedly secluded process.

The government of Catalonia has said the wealthy Spanish region must confront the past racism of its slave-trading history, after a documentary revealed how Catalan industrialists and seafarers profited from the transatlantic slave trade when the British abolished the practice in 1807.It has long been acknowledged that many Catalan fortunes including that of Antonio Gaudi's patron Eusebi Guell were made on the back of slave labour in the tobacco, sugar and cotton plantations of Cuba and, to a lesser extent, Puerto Rico.

The deadly Marburg virus has surfaced this week for the first time in Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon.The World Health Organization confirmed at least one death in Equatorial Guinea in West Africa and neighboring Cameroon said two suspected cases were detected, according to Reuters.A handful of Marburg cases were identified in Ghana late last year.

Guinness won't make its Chicago dream come true this year by opening its brewpub in time for St. Patrick's Day.But opening a new restaurant in the summer in Chicago isn't a bad consultation prize.The brewpub, announced in September 2021, is coming along at the corner of Kinzie and Morgan, a three-minute walk north of Randolph Restaurant Row in a mostly industrial part of the West Loop where places like Recess and Tabu have found a home.

A farmer shows the damages done to his cocoa plantation by an elephant in West Africa.New research says climate change is putting wildlife and humans in conflict more often.SIA KAMBOU/AFP via Getty Images Wildfires pushing tigers towards Sumatran villages.Drought prodding elephants into African cropland.

01:21 (From 2nd L to R) French President Emmanuel Macron, Gabon's President Ali Bongo, Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera at the One Forest Summit in Libreville on March 2, 2023.Ludovic Marin, AFP President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said the era of French interference in Africa was well over as he began a four-nation tour of the continent to renew frayed ties.

WASHINGTON An American aid worker abducted by militants more than six years ago in West Africa has been freed, his wife and a senior military official said on Monday, but the circumstances of his release were not immediately clear.The aid worker, Jeffery Woodke, was kidnapped in Niger in October 2016 and then was believed to have been taken to neighboring Mali.

WASHINGTON U.S. Special Operations commandos killed a senior Islamic State leader in an early-morning helicopter raid in a remote area of northern Somalia on Thursday, U.S. officials said.The Pentagon identified the leader as Bilal al-Sudani.American officials said he was operating in Somalia but that his influence as one of the terrorist group's top financial operatives extended across Africa, into Europe and even to the ISIS branch in Afghanistan that carried out the August 2021 bombing at Kabul's international airport that killed 13 American service members.

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails As extremist violence in West Africa's Sahel region spreads south toward coastal states, the United States military has launched its annual military training exercise aimed at helping armies contain the jihadi threat.

French Armies Minister Sebastien Lecornu looks on as he leaves after the weekly cabinet meeting at the presidential Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris on November 29, 2022.Emmanuel Dunand, AFP Paris' defence minister on Sunday condemned the latest instalment of Marvel's Black Panther franchise, which depicts French troops caught trying to steal resources belonging to the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda.

Maryse Conde's long life and career at 86, the Guadeloupean writer has published more than 20 books has been shaped by some of the world's biggest political and cultural upheavals.And she, in turn, has played a role in interpreting those shifts.With roots in Guadeloupe, but encompassing the years she spent in Africa, Europe and North America, her work has explored the many threads of the Black diaspora always keeping the Caribbean at the center.

France's foreign ministry is standing by its ambassador amid mounting anti-French sentiment in Burkina Faso.France is backing its ambassador in Burkina Faso despite a request by authorities there to replace him amid growing anti-French sentiment.I would like to express my support and our support for our ambassador and for all the embassy staff, who are doing a remarkable job in conditions which, as you know, are difficult, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna told LCI TV on Thursday, adding that the letter had requested a change of envoy.

Coffee is uniquely vulnerable to climate change.It grows in tropical regions, where temperatures and rainfall are becoming increasingly erratic; it is grown by small farms, which do not have the resources available to weather the coming literal and figurative storms; and despite the fact that coffee is among the most highly traded commodities in the world, little agricultural research time or money has been devoted to it.

The move to supply the French-made AMX-10 RC to Ukraine a light tank model in service since the 1980s that is being phased out in the French military represents a significant shift in French military support for Ukraine.Paris has already delivered state-of-the-art artillery, armoured personnel carriers, anti-aircraft missiles and air-defence systems to Ukraine, but Macron has long been wary of antagonising Russia and breaking off diplomatic contact with Vladimir Putin.

France is set to become the first Western country to deliver tanks to Ukraine, the French presidency announced on Wednesday after talks between Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.Published: 5 January 2023 08:51 CET The move to supply the French-made AMX-10 RC to Ukraine a light tank model in service since the 1980s that is being phased out in the French military represents a significant shift in French military support for Ukraine.

This list is compiled by the Guardian film team, with all films released in the UK during 2022 in contention.Check in every weekday to see our next picks, and please share your own favourite films of 2022 in the comments below.Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen directs this answer to Before Sunrise, about an archaeology student who shares a train compartment with a boorish Russian; the pair connect despite their differences.

This list is compiled by the Guardian film team, with all films released in the US during 2022 in contention.Check in every weekday to see our next picks, and please share your own favourite films of 2022 in the comments below.Billy Eichner's ribald romcom, produced by Judd Apatow, saw two gay men struggling with commitment and heteronormative expectations and was heralded as being a groundbreaking queer first within the straight and strait-laced studio system.

Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh is set to create a timber pavilion sheltering a low circular table for next year's Serpentine Pavilion.Announced as the architect of the 22nd commission today, Ghotmeh's À table pavilion will be installed in London's Kensington Gardens in June 2023."À table is an invitation to dwell together, in the same space and around the same table," said Ghotmeh.

The scenes are deep and saturated in dark tones.The film's visual language is disorienting by design.Hauntingly beautiful forms materialize to suggest the experience of being submerged in a body of water; the audience is immersed in Tanerelle 's delicately blended aquatic soundscape.Sonic echoes, running showers, and beach waves are layered with both Aisha's dreams and her reality.

Anna Diop plays a Senegalese immigrant pursuing the American Dream in Nanny.Courtesy of Prime Video There's something in the water in the new film Nanny.Over two unsettling hours, director Nikyatu Jusu submerges the audience in suffocating night terrors, blending glowing reflections of Black love with discomforting glances amongst kin.