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WORLD BANK Madagascar’s public education spending fell in 2009 after a political crisis, putting thousands of children at risk of having to leave school. Others had to drop out because their families could no longer afford to educate them. With a sharp drop in foreign financing, public spending on education had fallen since 2010. Nationwide, few schools were built, teacher and student materials were not supplied, and many schools did not receive government funding. Emergency funding is helping to overhaul basic education. The Madagascar Emergency Support to Education for All project aims to keep children in primary school by reducing…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE It’s Wednesday, 2 p.m. sharp in the densely populated South African township of Ivory Park —time for about 60 11-year-olds to duel at their local coding club. Armed with basic coding blocks, inventor kits, laptops and inexhaustible imaginations, the six primary school teams compete. The coding club kids use electronic boards to make temporary circuits and prototypes to devise solutions for problems they’ve identified in their community. “We are making an incubator machine that helps children who are born premature and those who are sick,” said student Sifiso Ngobeni. Competitors from another school are tackling the scourge of…

VOICE OF AMERICA The World Health Organization (WHO) says Africans are living longer and healthier lives. But the WHO warns that millions on the continent still face the challenge of chronic diseases. News of the improvement came at a conference in Dakar, Senegal, where WHO representatives met with officials from 47 African countries. Healthy life expectancy on the continent — the number of years at peak health a person experiences — rose from 44.4 years at the turn of the century to 53.8 years in 2015. Overall life expectancy climbed from 50.8 years to 61.2. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional…

VOICE OF AMERICA An international money transfer company has launched an online service for East Africans to send and receive money more easily. Analysts say WorldRemit will lower the cost of transferring money and boost African economies. Africa has become a thriving market for money transfer companies as its telecommunication facilities improve and its economies grow. WorldRemit, a British-based company, handles the transfer of at least $1.6 billion to Africa each year. The co-founder and head of WorldRemit, Ismail Ahmed, said money transfers in Africa have changed over the years. “When we launched our services, 99 percent of remittances were…

REUTERS Morocco has inaugurated Africa’s fastest train, which promises to cut in half the traveling times between the commercial and industrial hubs of Casablanca and Tangier. King Mohammed VI and French President Emmanuel Macron boarded the train for the inaugural trip from Tangier to the capital, Rabat, in November 2018. The train ultimately will run at 320 kilometers per hour, greatly reducing the time it takes to make the 200-kilometer journey between the two cities. It is about twice as fast as South Africa’s high-speed Gautrain, which links Johannesburg’s international airport to the city’s financial district of Sandton. The state…

ADF STAFF The kingdom of Zimbabwe fell into decline in the early 15th century. Some historians say the region was starving. Others say that the kingdom’s warrior prince, Nyatsimba Mutota, left the landlocked region in search of salt, a priceless commodity at that time. The prince is said to have found salt among a tribe of elephant hunters near the Zambezi River about 300 kilometers to the north. He took control of the region, which included some gold deposits. He took over most of the Zambezi River Valley, establishing the Empire of Mutapa, also known as Monomotapa, and established his…

CLUES The Carthaginians founded this site as a trading post, and it was permanently settled in the fourth century B.C. After the fall of Carthage, the city came under Roman rule. Baths, temples and fountains remain from this time. The city ceased to exist soon after the Arab conquest of 635. Excavation has uncovered more than half of the ancient city, including a theater. ANSWER  Archaeological site of Sabratha, Libya

U.S. Africa Command Staff Photo by Reuters No country is immune to violent extremism, and no country has solved the riddle of what causes it. Historically, Africa was not a hotbed for violent religious extremism. That changed in 1998 when it was the site of two major terror attacks with the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Since then, homegrown groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Shabaab in Somalia have taken root. These groups thrive in areas with weak governance and few economic opportunities. At the same time, internationally affiliated groups such as ISIS and…

Photo by AFP/GETTY IMAGES Moussa Faki Mahamat is the former foreign minister of Chad and the president of the African Union Commission. He addressed the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)/Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) Joint Summit on Peace, Security, Terrorism and Violent Extremism on July 30, 2018, in Lomé, Togo. His remarks have been translated from French and edited to fit this format. The security challenges facing West and Central Africa are well-known. Whether it is terrorism, so prevalent in the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin; armed rebellions and other forms of violence that are raging…

REUTERS Photo by Reuters Four Somali brothers have imported dozens of Holstein Friesian cows, the world’s top milk-producing breed, hoping they can build up the war-torn country’s dairy industry from scratch. Parts of the country still are plagued by violence, but a degree of stability in the capital in recent years has begun to attract investment from locals and Somalis living abroad. Some see opportunities in the livestock industry, whose mainstay is traditional breeds of cattle, reared by pastoralists. These breeds produce little milk. A devastating drought recently killed off thousands of cows and camels. Yusuf Abdirahman Dahir, 49, who…