This month, thousands of African migrants to Israel, many seeking asylum, marched in Tel Aviv to demand more rights and protections from the Israeli government. In an email interview, Dov Waxman, associate professor of political science at Baruch College and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), as well as the co-director of the Middle East Center for Peace, Culture and Development at Northeastern University, explained Israel’s immigration policy.

Joseph Kony has been called Africa’s most wanted man, and for good reason: Over the past 27 years, he has led a rebel militia of child soldiers that is responsible for the death of more than 100,000 people and the kidnapping of some 50,000 young boys and girls. From 1986 to 2006, Kony savaged northern Uganda, terrorizing defenseless villages. But after losing clandestine support from Sudan and refuge in neighboring South Sudan, he took his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and began peace talks with the Ugandan government.

Ever since fighting began in South Sudan a month ago, social media has played an important role - as a source of practical information, sharing news, and as a kind of support network. It may sound unlikely in a country in the midst of fighting that has killed more than 1,000 people and displaced thousands more, but over the past three days there have been hundreds of tweets using the hashtag #ThingsIloveaboutSouthSudan - praising things like the food, local customs and the hospitality

African politics took on a humourous angle as Twitter users joked about their countries' affairs using high school analogies. The hashtag #AfricanNationsInHighSchool quickly went viral as Africans online weighed in with perceptions of their own nations and their neighbours, referencing everything from common stereotypes to current affairs. Mentions of the hashtag skyrocketed to nearly 50,000 uses in less than 24 hours.

2013 has seen governments in the Middle East and North Africa venture further into the world of digital diplomacy. Some have fully embraced it, while some linger tentatively on the sidelines. No matter what kind of approach governments take, digital is undeniably a vital element in the MENA diplomacy toolbox. Certain countries in the region have already demonstrated an impressive command of digital platforms.

Dennis Rodman's controversial and bizarre foray into diplomacy made headlines this week. Harvard Professor Nicholas Burns criticized the former NBA player for going to North Korea to essentially embrace a brutal dictator. Rodman certainly isn't the first athlete to take a political stance, or even the first NBA player to do so.

In recent years, Somalia’s al-Shabab militia has banned smoking, playing soccer, watching movies, wearing bras, anything it deemed Western. Now, the al-Qaeda-linked group has targeted something else common in most of the rest of the world: the Internet.

The Tuareg, known amongst themselves as the Kel Tamasheq, have long been recognised as warriors, traders and travellers of the Sahara Desert - known both for their grace and nobility as well as their fierce reputation. Tuareg communities in the Sahara, who have often felt overlooked and unrepresented by their governments, have been seeking self-determination for generations. And years of rebellion have escalated in recent times.