The limited “consultative and advisory powers” of the Pan African Parliament hamper the African Union’s ability to achieve a prosperous and peaceful Africa as envisioned in its Agenda 2063.
African countries need to start producing and developing their own medical devices. Suitably skilled biomedical engineers are needed for this sort of innovation to take root.
When it comes to foreign policy, Saudi Arabia has recently become far more aggressive. A historian of the modern Middle East sees three possible causes for the shift.
The Valley of the Kings in ancient Egypt proved a useful testing ground for examples of osteoarthritis.
Anne Austin
Bones and texts showed how decades of strenuous hikes led to higher levels of osteoarthritis in workers’ knees and ankles in an ancient Egyptian village.
The pyramids of Giza on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt.
Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters
The belief that ancient Egyptians needed help from supernatural beings to built the Giza pyramids relies, unavoidably, on racism and colonial attitudes.
An Egyptian farmer tries to irrigate his land with water from a well.
Reuters/Mohamed Abd El Ghany
At present, the Middle East and North African region contains 7% of the world’s population but only has access to 1.5% of its renewable freshwater supply through rainfall.
The urgency of an agreement to reasonably and equitably share benefits on the Nile Basin can’t be overstated. It would create a a transparent atmosphere in the countries that depend on the Nile.
Adam Kashmiry and Neshla Caplan play Kashmiry’s past and present selves in Adam.
NTOS
The news of Saif al-Islam’s release should be taken with a pinch of salt. During the past six years of warfare in Libya the fabrication of news has become common practice.
Martin Plaut, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Qatar withdrawing its troops has reignited tensions between Eritrea and Djibouti which the UN and African Union are trying to mediate. This comes as Eritrea is also embroiled in the Yemen civil war.
Qatar has used its wealth to adopt policies sometimes rivaling Saudi Arabia’s. Think, for example, of the popular Al-Jazeera. Now the Saudis seem determined to limit Qatari influence as much as possible.
Sofia Boutella rises from the dead in The Mummy.
Universal Pictures
The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe, is the latest manifestation of our centuries old fascination with Egypt. But beneath this obsession is a darker story of looting and destruction.
The Palm Sunday bombings of Coptic churches in Egypt last month once again put Islamic terrorism in the spotlight and left officials wondering what can be done to prevent it.
Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Religious state institutions wanting to address the rhetoric of violence in the name of religion must begin by reforming their relationship with the state.
Local people at Tendaguru (Tanzania) excavation site in 1909 with Giraffatitan fossils.
Wikimedia Commons/Public domain
Africa has one of the world’s richest fossil records, and evidence suggests that amateurs collected really important fossils long before professionals arrived on the scene.
An Egyptian Muslim woman holds candles in front of the Coptic Christian Cathedral in tribute to the victims of a bomb attack in Cairo on Dec. 17, 2016.
Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters