Ivory Coast's President Laurent Gbagbo attends an official funeral ceremony in Abidjan in this November 15, 2003 file photo. (Luc Gnago/Courtesy Reuters) Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara’s admini…

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment of Naledi Pandor as minister of international relations may be a positive step toward improving South Africa’s relations with the United States. Pandor is part of a Ramaphosa’s trimmed-down cabinet whose positions are split equally between men and women. 

The killing of the Italian ambassador to the DRC and the lifting of U.S. Treasury sanctions against an Israeli businessman in the final hours of the Trump administration has again focused international attention on the interlocking crises in the DRC.

Numerous countries will hold elections in 2016. Here are ten to watch. 

Several successive years of being one of the world’s fastest-growing economies have made Côte d'Ivoire a darling of investors bullish about Africa. But the country’s strong economic performance has not been matched by political progress in overcoming the divides that drove the country into civil war twice in the last twenty years. With elections scheduled for 2020, many of the same antagonists that featured in those earlier conflicts are jockeying for position, giving observers and citizens an unwelcome sense of déjà vu.