Words and photos: Fatma Fahmy

Lake Qarun in Egypt’s Fayoum region formed about 70,000 years ago – one of the oldest lakes in the world. Fast-forward several thousands of years to when pharaonic-era engineers developed it into a reservoir by constructing canals to increase the flow of water.

In more recent history, the lake used to provide a livelihood for the people of Ezbet Soliman and nearby villages. It was a watery portal to love, companionship, and a whole way of life.

Over the past decades, that portal has slowly closed. When the Aswan High Dam was completed in 1970, the lake’s connection to the Nile River was cut.

The resultant increased salinity, untreated sewage, and agricultural runoff, polluted the water. Fish disappeared and the shoreline receded.

It felt as if closing the portal had left the community suspended between two worlds: land that had lost its water, and souls still searching for life.

This kind of environmental exploitation leaves its deepest marks on women. They are often the first members of a community to feel the pain when
nature collapses, but the last to abandon the land where they live.

In systems built on control and not care, women are left to carry the burden alone – they are the final bridge between crumbling land and its people. They are rarely seen as part of the solution.

But women’s stories are not important only for the suffering they surface. They are a way in – to understand how people hold grief and memory through place.

At its heart, the ecofeminist visual project When Absence Takes Hold asks: What is our relationship with the places we’ve lost? How do we carry memory in our bodies, in our gestures, in the silence we inherit? If you could write a letter to nature, what would you say?

I know my country is a very religious country(Kenya) but please don't come for me saying this. Religion doesn't and shouldn't be respected just because the majority follow it. I'm an ex believer and I no longer subscribe to the dogma (for a year now), but since I live with people who do around me, I have to pretend to. Cause if I dare say it, I'd risk losing my social community,any chance of getting a job or even my life. Yet the constitution explicitly states that the people have freedom of conscience, belief,thought, religion and opinion.

Most people across Africa have never heard of the letter Albert Einstein sent to American President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 2, 1939. In schoolbooks and movies, people talk about this letter as the start of the atomic age, where scientists were just trying to beat Hitler to the bomb.

​Hardly anyone on our continent is taught what was actually written on page two:

​The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo.

Understanding this single sentence is crucial, because it demonstrates that the nightmare of the DRC did not begin yesterday. It exposes roots stretching back nearly a century. Long before modern smartphones, electric vehicles, or coltan, global powers explicitly designated Congolese soil as the fuel for their technological and military hegemony.

The uranium Einstein talked about was in the Shinkolobwe mine in Katanga. While uranium found in the West was low quality, Congolese ore was the purest ever discovered. Congolese workers were forced by Belgian colonial masters to dig it up with their bare hands, with no protection from radiation. That Congolese uranium was used to make the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

From that moment on, foreign powers decided that an independent, strong Congo was a threat. When Patrice Lumumba wanted the country to control its own wealth, he was murdered. A dictator was put in place to keep the minerals flowing out for cheap while the people stayed poor.

Today, we are seeing the exact same foreign playbook in the eastern Congo: the old strategy of divide and conquer.

The real goal of foreign powers and their regional allies is to split the Congo apart. We have seen this before on our continent. Look at what was done to Sudan: they pushed and pushed until Sudan was divided into two countries, and both sides are still trapped in war and poverty. Look at what they tried to do in Mali, using armed groups to cut off the northern part of the country and create a fake state called Azawad.

In the eastern DRC, they want to do the exact same thing. If they can break the country or permanently cut off the Kivus and Katanga, foreign companies and regional bosses will never have to answer to a strong central government. They can just loot the coltan, gold, and cobalt without laws, taxes, or borders.

Sadly, our own politicians are helping them do it.

Joseph Kabila has now joined hands with the M23 rebels and Corneille Nangaa. People are shocked, but he is only playing the exact same broken record his father played thirty years ago.

Back in 1996, the presidents of Rwanda (Kagame) and Uganda (Museveni) wanted to invade the Congo to remove Mobutu. To hide that this was a foreign invasion, they needed a Congolese face. They picked Laurent-Desire Kabila, put him in front of their army, and marched into the country. That move started decades of wars that killed millions of innocent people.

Today, Joseph Kabila is doing the exact same thing his father did. Because he lost power to Felix Tshisekedi, he has teamed up with the very rebel group that has spent years killing, raping, and displacing his own people, all just to get back into power.

This shows how selfish our political class really is. On one side, you have Kabila and the rebels, backed by Kagame and Museveni, who act as regional servants for European interests in Brussels looking for cheap minerals. On the other side, you have Tshisekedi, who acts like a puppet for Washington and the American establishment, paying foreign lobbyists and relying on outside promises instead of building a real national army.

Neither side cares about the Congolese mother sleeping in the mud in a refugee camp. Neither side cares about the young boy digging cobalt with his bare hands. They are just competing against each other to show their foreign bosses who can be the most obedient puppet.

The plan to divide the Congo is happening right in front of our eyes, just like it was done in Sudan and attempted in Mali. The sad truth is that the innocent Congolese who are dying in this conflict are dying for absolutely nothing. They are not dying for freedom or for Congo. They are dying for the greed and egos of politicians who sold out their own people.

What's your opinion on the african leaders above?

Lumumba, Nkrumah, Sankara, Gaddafi, Nasser, Kagame and Mugabe

Some of them are portrayed very negatively by Western media, which is why I'm interested in understanding how Africans themselves view them

Boatman Yusuf Athman waits for passengers
in Lamu, Kenya. The island’s dhow boats, 12th-century Old Town and pristine beaches will soon have to reckon with an oil refinery, being built nearby by Nigerian tycoon Aliko Dangote.

Photo: Luis Tato/AFP

For context , formula 1 ( a world championship ) has never been to Africa in the last three decades , even more . It was announced that in 2030 the sport will return to the continent in form of a Grand Prix in Rwanda , which was great news for all fans.
But they decided to call it the “African” Grand Prix , instead of the Rwandan Grand Prix ; which I find horrible to be honest . It’s that same colonialist view lingering again after centuries and treating the second biggest continent in the world as one big jungle .
Thoughts ?

GOMA, Congo (AP) — Former Congolese President Joseph Kabila on Monday launched a new political and military coalition of groups opposed to the current government, including the M23 rebels who have captured wide swaths of territory in eastern Congo.

Kabila’s new Front for the Refoundation of the Nation, or FRN, includes rebel groups formerly united under the Congo River Alliance, whose former leader Corneille Nangaa will serve as one of the new coalition’s four vice presidents.

Coalition adviser Claude Ibalanky said at a news conference late Monday at Kabila’s residence in the eastern city of Goma that the FRN’s mission is to restore the pillars of a functioning republic. It aims to “unite and coordinate all resistance forces in order to put an end to tyranny — by any means necessary, including the use of force,” Ibalanky said.

Hello everyone, I put together a map estimating the median monthly income across all 54 African countries.

Because finding standardized, recent data for the entire continent is challenging, I wanted to share the methodology, the data sources, and a breakdown of what these numbers actually reflect about our economic realities.

I also discuss the limitations of this data and the modeling approach at the end of the post.

Why the Median?

When discussing income, averages or means are heavily skewed by extreme wealth inequality. A high GDP per capita or a high average salary does not mean much for the typical citizen if the vast majority of that wealth is concentrated at the top.

The median represents the exact middle point where half the population makes more and half makes less. This provides a much more accurate picture of everyday economic realities, especially considering the massive scale of informal economies and agriculture across the continent.

Data Sources and Methodology

Because no single database tracks current median household income across every country, this data synthesizes two tiers of information to achieve full continental coverage.

​First, for the 14 countries with direct household survey coverage, the figures rely on the standardized global polling series aggregated by Gallup and World Population Review. These figures draw from rolling household survey waves administered between 2013 and 2022, depending on the country's latest validated national round.

​Second, for the remaining 40 countries where direct survey data is unavailable, macroeconomic proxies were calculated using the latest available World Bank Open Data and Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) indicators:

• Gross National Income (GNI) per capita (Atlas method, current USD) values reflect the most recent reported national accounts, primarily spanning the 2022 to 2024 reporting years.

• Gini inequality coefficients used for the discount factor come from the latest published World Bank household surveys, with reporting dates ranging between 2015 and 2023 depending on when each nation last conducted a comprehensive consumption and expenditure census. For countries without a recent national survey, the regional Sub-Saharan benchmark average of 43 was applied.

Map Ranges

• The $0 to $30 range includes countries like Burundi, Madagascar, and Burkina Faso. These numbers reflect economies that are predominantly agrarian and subsistence-level. In many of these nations, ongoing or recent instability has disrupted formal market growth. The vast majority of the population operates entirely outside the formal banking and wage system, meaning their monetary income is extremely low even if they generate daily agricultural value to survive.

• The $31 to $60 range includes countries like Uganda, Rwanda, Senegal, and Tanzania. This tier represents developing economies with emerging formal sectors. While these countries often boast strong macro-economic growth and heavy investments in infrastructure, the baseline reality is that most citizens are still engaged in informal trade or agriculture. The gap between the growing urban middle class and the rural majority remains wide.

• The $61 to $100 range includes regional powerhouses like Nigeria, Kenya, and Cote d'Ivoire. The relatively low median income here, despite high national wealth, perfectly illustrates why averages are misleading. High Gini coefficients in these countries show massive wealth inequality. Urban centers might have thriving formal sectors and high costs of living, but the sheer volume of the population means the median citizen still earns a fraction of the average GDP per capita.

• The $101 to $150 range includes countries like Egypt, Ghana, and South Africa. These economies generally have more established industrial, mining, or service sectors. South Africa is a prime example of the data's nuance: it is one of the wealthiest nations on the continent, but historical legacies of disenfranchisement have left it with one of the highest inequality rates in the world. The formal labor market is stronger, pushing the median up, but the economic hurdles for the typical citizen remain incredibly steep.

• The $151+ range includes nations like Mauritius, Seychelles, Algeria, and Gabon. This top tier is largely made up of specialized economies. Nations like Mauritius and Seychelles benefit from smaller populations and highly developed tourism and financial sectors. Meanwhile, countries like Gabon or Algeria leverage significant natural resource wealth spread over relatively smaller populations, which helps establish a much stronger baseline formal labor market and higher minimum wages.

Limitations

Before drawing absolute conclusions from the map, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of this data. Converting everything to USD ignores Purchasing Power Parity, as fifty dollars goes much further in some local markets than in others. Furthermore, much of the continent relies on the informal economy, which is incredibly difficult to quantify in standard monetary surveys. Finally, relying on Gini coefficients as a proxy for the missing 40 countries is an economic heuristic, not a perfect substitute for actual on-the-ground census data.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, especially how these numbers align with what you see on the ground in your respective countries.

When I say African unity, I don't mean we all get together and become one big country and family and it's all kumbaya. That seems impossible since Africa is very diverse.

I mean a strong united African political and economic front founded on some level of mutual respect, a shared general history of exploitation and the desire to compete on the world stage.

That doesn't mean we have to LOVE each other (that'd be ideal but we don't live in a world of ideals)

That can be in any form,

Perhaps individualized blocs across the continent coming together: for example, West African's forming their own EU style bloc, the East doing so, the South etc and all of them coming together.

OR a reformed version of the AU

That's all besides the point, there is a myriad of practical reasons why this is hard to do but I want to nail down one reason as to why I stopped believing it's possible.

Many Africans across the continent just don't see it as necessary and or straight up don't like the idea of it.

As simple as that, I'd like to believe that change start's with the mindset of the common people and if the common people don't see something as necessary then it's not going to happen. This applies to democracies because your leader's are somewhat a reflection of the majority vote and this applies to dictatorships because dictators don't grow up in a vacuum. Many grow up amongst the people and grow up in the communities and cultures where ideas are spread.

I think a lot of African's don't want that unity, hate the idea and don't see it as necessary. It show's in various tribal conflicts, and I know when it comes down to it these conflicts are complicated but I see it in everyday conversations when someone goes "Man I don't like Nigerians, they're so [ insert bigoted opinion here], "Batswana are so [ insert bigoted opinion here], "Habesha's are so [ insert bigoted opinion here], "Zulu's are so [insert bigoted opinion here]", you get the gist, and it's with such vitriol. It's discouraging.

I though will always see any African as my brother and or sister, same applies to those in the diaspora. I will practice that in my personal life but I don't think African unity is possible any time soon because of the micro level we just seem so divided.

What do you guys think?

• Oryx Energies, a Swiss energy company focused on Africa, was acquired by its management team in a deal valued at approximately $1 billion.

• Chief executive Moussa Diao and trading manager Hervé Bouvet bought the majority stake from founder Jean-Claude Gandur.

• The company has significant infrastructure, including 410 service stations, over 890,000 cubic metres of storage, and key terminals, particularly in West Africa.

• The management buyout occurs amid rising global fuel prices, but leaves control of Oryx Energies with leaders who have long managed its operations.

Today, Kenya celebrates Mazingira Day (Environment day), a celebration that originally commemorated Daniel Moi (second president of the republic) but was later renamed and repurposed. During Mazingira Day, Kenyans plant trees.

I know that Africa is the birthplace of our species, but Africa is a large region. I wonder which country in Africa did our species originate in. Also, I think the idea that homo sapiens just originated in Africa and not in a specific African country probably comes from a misconception that Africa is a single country.

The South African jurist, 85, helped establish rape as an act of genocide and became one of international law’s most influential figures. Her latest confrontation has been over Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“This year’s laureate has been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

As a lawyer under apartheid, Navi Pillay could defend political prisoners but was barred from entering judges’ chambers. On Friday, the 85-year-old South African won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for helping build an international legal system to hold perpetrators of atrocities accountable.

• IPO's regional ambitions face "teething problem"

• Dangote says lessons to be applied in future transactions

• Experts cite disparate regulatory frameworks in Africa

• Dangote wants to secure 10 million new shareholders

Rwanda is poised to host a Formula 1 Grand Prix, marking the sport's return to Africa after decades and boosting the nation's global profile through major sporting events.

Government and FIA sources confirm Rwanda’s F1 bid has been approved, with an official announcement expected soon and support from Qatar in the process.

President Paul Kagame and F1 champion Lewis Hamilton have been vocal backers of Rwanda’s ambitions, with Hamilton praising the country as one of his favourites.

Rwanda has aggressively used sports for international promotion, partnering with top football clubs and global leagues.

I am aware that this sub contains some of the next leaders of this continent. I am estimating that most people on this sub are relatively young (<40) but this still applies to any reader.

The African continent is one to be cherished. I would love for the future president or future productive citizen whomever she/he might be to have a read through this beautiful quote.

"Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all, without regard to race; until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained; and until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique and in South Africa in subhuman bondage have been toppled and destroyed; until bigotry and prejudice and malicious self-interest have been replaced by understanding and good-will and tolerance; until all Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven; until that day, the African continent will not know peace. We Africans will fight, if necessary, and we know that we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil."

H.I.M Haile Selassie, United Nations Address (1963)

We should love each other and regard every fellow African as a brother or a sister. The idea of equal race should be one that we should hold dear even within our own borders. The white man tought us to divide ourselves on the basis of tribes, let's revolt and understand the power of unity.

How long do we want to stay down ?