As Turkey expands its international clout, the country looks to boost its development aid around the world. The state-run Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) leads efforts in this field. The agency recently released a report on its 2015 activities and shows Tunisia, where the agency runs several development projects, was the biggest recipient of TİKA aid with $44.7 million.

This renewed “commercial diplomacy” between the United States and Africa in the Obama administration has coincided with a rise in U.S. investment into Africa. Between 2009 and 2013, U.S. goods and service exports to Africa grew 40 percent and totaled $50.2 billion.

Barack Obama's historic election as President of the United States in 2008 was the first time an American of African descent had ever held the United States' highest position. Because of the President's Kenyan roots, many Africans were particularly excited for what they hoped would be the start of a new era in relations between the United States and Africa.

Larry Macaulay first arrived on Italy's shores in May 2011 after taking a dinghy from war-torn Libya. […] He recalls the long journey from Nigeria and how he ended up in 2014 as the founder and editor-in-chief of the Hamburg-based Refugee Radio Network (RNN) […] Between January and April of 2015, RNN started by taking phone calls from refugees and broadcasting an hour-long Refugee Voices show […]

Nigeria's vast and rich cultural heritage should be strategically repositioned to partner tourism as its driver to lift the Nigerian economy. Tourism cannot effectively flourish without the cultural components. The desire to position culture and tourism as the lever of Nigeria's economic growth and development rests with the Ministry of Information and Culture as it must plan to mainstream both sectors into a monolithic entity to galvanize national economic development. 

[...] When Popole Misenga started training for his Olympic judo team he was, well, too ferocious [...] The Congolese judoka is pushing to compete in the Rio Olympics this August as part of the Games' first stateless team […] As a child of the Democratic Republic of Congo's 1998-2003 war, which killed millions and left many more homeless, the 24-year-old has been hardened by terror, hunger, and desperation.

In April 1966, legendary jazz musician Duke Ellington travelled to Dakar, Senegal, with his orchestra to play at the first World Festival of Negro Arts. Organised against the backdrop of African decolonisation and the push for civil rights in the US, the festival was hailed as the inaugural cultural gathering of the black world.