COMMENT: A second Trump presidency is not necessarily a disaster for the African continent. Over the course of the next four years, if he is true to form (and there is little reason to believe he has learnt anything from his first term), the rest of the world will be working out how to function without its self-appointed “indispensable nation”.

Trump’s return is Africa's signal to move on

As the once and future president makes America grate again, the nations and institutions forging a new world order will simply pick up the pace

Several thousand people took to the streets of Maputo on Thursday to continue their protest against the official results of the 9 October presidential election. It was the culmination of what opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane called the “third phase” of the protests.

Mozambique: Aluta continua in the capital

The army has been deployed to quell unrest as the opposition leader pledges to keep resisting.

All Protocol Observed Welcome to Issue 181 of The Continent. Trump is back: on the African continent we must build the post-American world order we want; the sun is setting on liberators in southern Africa; and rebuilding limbs in post-war Tigray. Read the full issue here: https://bit.ly/TC181

While base jumping is unregulated in South Africa, regulatory bodies are starting to form elsewhere. The Swiss Base Association, for example, works with authorities, locals and other air sport parties such as paragliders to keep the sport safe for everyone involved.

Photo Essay: Go jump

The daredevils who leap off skyscrapers for fun.

COMMENT: Sure, the US is still the premier military power on the planet and has demonstrated that it can hold the UN Security Council hostage on votes over Gaza. But politically, the US has probably never been more isolated and derided than it is today. And it only has itself, not the rest, to blame.

A new Dark Age is here

We should welcome it.

No one can afford a war that directly hits the central bank. Not even Libya’s militias, which – like everyone else – get their money from it. That calculation may be all that saved the country from another civil war.

Libya has avoided another civil war – but only just

A bitter dispute over the central bank laid bare the country’s fragilities

ANALYSIS: Technically, Colonel Assimi Goïta does not have to hold elections in Mali any time soon. But he has a tactical incentive to do so now: battlefield difficulties are hollowing out his promise to secure the country, writes [@beverly_ochieng](

Mastodon

Beverly Ochieng (@beverly_ochieng@mastodon.social)

149 Posts, 17 Following, 797 Followers · Obnoxious literary fiction reader | mostly watching Sahel coups, stalking the Wagner Group and analysing ...

)

Goïta appears ready to give elections a go

But a day at the ballot boxes won’t necessarily make the military just some junta that you used to know.

The last tim Cameroonian president Paul Biya was seen in public anywhere in the world was on 8 September in Beijing, after attending the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. He was conspicuously absent from the UN General Assembly meeting in the US weeks later, and from the Francophonie summit in Paris this month.

Cameroon’s president is very old and missing in action

What is going to happen when Paul Biya dies?

All Protocol Observed Welcome to Issue 178 of The Continent. His aides insist that Paul Biya, the nonagenarian president of Cameroon, is not dead. But he's not been seen in public for weeks, and he was already starting to look a bit frail. Cameroonians are worried: not so much for the longtime president himself, who is not especially popular, but for the future of a fragile country that has no clear succession plan – and lots of hungry pretenders. Read it here: https://bit.ly/TC178

Cabo Verdeans first arrived in Argentina in the late 19th century to work in the whaling fleets. Later migrations followed in the 1920s and 30s, with another surge during Cabo Verde’s devastating 1946-48 famine.

Dock Sud, Buenos Aires

The City of Fury’s harbour district is a home away from home for Cabo Verde’s diaspora in Argentina