Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. In the coming weeks the series will explore how the COVID-19 pandemi…

These are still early days for coronavirus in Nigeria, whose first case was reported on February 25. As of the morning of March 24, Nigeria had forty-two confirmed cases and one confirmed death, according to COVID-19 tracking by Johns Hopkins University. But an outbreak of Lassa fever, caused by a more common virus, has been active in Nigeria for the past few months.

Sierra Leone currently ranks as one of the least developed countries in the world, with a GDP per capita of less than $300 and high levels of poverty. But President Julius Maada Bio has charted an ambitious development plan for the small West African country. Since 2017, President Bio has overseen increased investment in advanced technologies in the hopes of spurring development.

Almost 5,000 African students study in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. To date, health officials reported over 2,000 deaths and more than 70,000 infections across mainland China. In response, many governments have moved to evacuate their citizens from Hubei province, where Wuhan is. China is Africa's most important trading partner, and African governments are concerned about the coronavirus spreading to the continent. 

Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) have developed the Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRI). The index ranks 157 countries by their commitment to reducing inequality through increased spending on health and education, taxing the rich more than the poor, and paying a living wage.

Recent obituaries published in both the New York Times and the Washington Post celebrated Dr. Lamin Sanneh'a enormous scholarly contributions to religion in Africa. He emphasized the role of African missionaries as well as European ones in the spread of Christianity throughout the continent.

Investing more in human capital is the region’s best hope to escape the middle-income trap.

His personalistic presidency threatens years of hard-won institutional gains.

New data from UNICEF indicates that 25 million child marriages were averted over the last decade, proving that child marriage is not an intractable problem. Despite good news, progress has been uneve…

A group of twenty-five African migrants attempted to sail in a catamaran from the West African archipelago of Cape Verde to northeastern Brazil, a distance of less than two thousand miles.