In the most malarious town on earth, I find Dr. Matthew Emer at his desk behind two sets of fly screens and under a ceiling fan. I introduce myself and tell Emer I am reporting on a campaign to wipe malaria off the planet. If I want to know why that is important and how …
By late June and early July, when their goats were all gone and the last of their cows had sunk to their knees and died, the men told their families it was time to leave. In Daynunay, Haji Hassan and his children packed up what they had — a few rags, plastic bottles, some old …
I have arranged to meet our pirate, somewhat incongruously, in the desert. I board a 1960s prop airplane that smells of goat and is piloted by four portly Russians. After a series of short hops across Somalia’s northern wastes, we touch down on a red-dirt strip outside the town of Galcayo. The government in the …
Sudan’s separation was meant to end decades of civil war. Instead it has created two weak states and more conflict High in the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan lies a green valley of guava, mango and custard-apple trees where the people live in conical grass-roofed huts, tending goats and raising maize and sorghum on steep …
The buzz at Pivot25, a conference for mobile-phone software developers and investors held this June, is all about the future of money. Ben Lyon, the 24-year-old business-development VP of Kopo Kopo, wants $250,000 to produce his app for shops to process payments made by text message. Paul Okwalinga, 28, describes his money app — called …
Nestled in the golden bush grass of an open savanna, a black rhinoceros lies on her side. Her head is haloed by a dried pool of blood. The animal’s horns have been sawed off at the stump. Her eyes have been gouged out. “That’s a new thing,” notes Rusty Hustler, the manager of South Africa’s …
In his epic 1976 anthem “Go Slow,” Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti described the traffic in his hometown of Lagos, casting it as a metaphor for Nigeria’s spiritual standstill. “Then your head start to ache because car crush they for your head,” he sang. “Lorry they for your front, tipper they for your back, motorcycle they …
To meet the future of retail banking, cross Moi Avenue into the rougher part of downtown Nairobi, pass the Chicken Spot restaurant and squeeze between four stalls selling counterfeit mobile phones, and you’ll reach a door — and behind it a tiny room containing a hat stand, a wall calendar, a strip light and a …
Fed by drought, Africa’s deserts are spreading, bringing with them hunger, disease and tribal conflict. But innovative policies can push the deserts back Head north from Nairobi toward Mount Kenya and almost invariably you’ll hit weather. Fog, rain, hail, even snow, all unusual for the equator but a blessing for Mount Kenya’s farmers, who export …
New mines in Zimbabwe help keep the despotic Robert Mugabe in power and threaten to undermine global efforts to eliminate blood diamonds Searching for the world’s newest blood-diamond bazaar, I arrive in Manica, Mozambique, near the border with Zimbabwe. It’s a sunny provincial town of shady bungalows and bright purple bougainvillea set around a central …