Open Dialogue Research Journal
Part I Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, al-Qaeda no longer looks like the organization that carried them out. Its numbers have grown, its territory has expanded, and its center of operations has moved thousands of miles from where it began – yet, by most measures, its capacity and […]
Sub-Saharan Africa is growing a little faster than expected, and that is notable because the global background is hostile. In its semi-annual Africa Economic Update, published on Tuesday, the World Bank projected regional growth of 4.3% in 2026, up from 4.1% last year and 0.3 percentage point above its April […]
Recent events in Ethiopia demonstrate how the middle powers of the region are trying to project their interests and use the emerging opportunities to destabilize their geopolitical opponents. On September 23, large–scale fighting began in Tigray, Akhmara and Afar provinces as the so-called Alliance for Survival began attacking government forces […]
Twenty-five years after al-Qaeda struck Washington and New York, the organization’s most active theater of operations isn’t in the Middle East or South Asia – it’s in a stretch of West Africa most Americans would struggle to locate on a map. New figures from the conflict monitor Acled show violence […]
When Aliko Dangote’s oil refinery began listing shares on the Nigerian stock exchange, it wasn’t just Africa’s largest-ever public offering – it was the culmination of a bet that reshaped an entire country’s relationship with its own oil. If the flotation of Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals goes as planned, […]
Trade statistics rarely tell a dramatic story on their own, but Nigeria’s latest import figures come close. In the first quarter of 2026, China supplied N5.10 trillion worth of goods to Nigeria compared with N2.81 trillion from the United States – already a substantial gap. By the second quarter, that […]
Twenty people landed in Monrovia this week as the opening installment of an agreement that will eventually send up to 1,200 deportees from the United States to Liberia – a west African nation with no direct connection to most of the people it’s about to receive. The arrangement is being […]
There is much in the nature of a map. The very drawing of a line signifies an assertion, an acceptance, or even a repudiation of power. Borders are delineated for reasons of interest and understanding. I chart, therefore it is. Areas of territorial dispute are reconciled by the cartographer’s handy […]
On 17 February 2026, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a sweeping measure: from 1 May 2026, China would lift import tariffs on goods from the 53 African Union (AU) member states that maintain diplomatic relations with Beijing. The policy-covering goods worth more than $116 billion, roughly Africa’s 2024 exports to […]
Part I Discussions about singularity often generate sensational headlines, particularly when connected to population growth. Some interpretations suggest that humanity is approaching a dramatic threshold around the late 2020s. The origins of this idea can be traced to mathematical models developed in the twentieth century. Researchers observed that for long […]
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