Quoted: Now 21, he bore little resemblance to the cocky teenager who left four years ago for Liberia, a war-ravaged nation in West Africa. Around his neck, folded in a paper amulet, he wore a pinch of dust a medicine man had given him to protect against the evil eye. On the long drive home he spoke urgently, as if in a trance, about the civil war that had engulfed him, and the child soldiers who ordered him to strip naked on a street corner.

Quoted: On the surface it resembles any other impoverished Colombian village. But when adults here speak with one another, their language draws inspiration from as far away as the Congo River Basin in Africa. This peculiar speech has astonished linguists since they began studying it several decades ago.

Quoted: The violence that has rocked the Niger Delta in recent years has been aimed largely at foreign oil companies, their expatriate workers and the police officers and soldiers whose job it is to protect them. Hundreds of kidnappings, pipeline bombings and attacks on flow stations and army barracks have occurred in the past two years alone. But these days the guns have turned inward,

Quoted: “Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art offers many magnetic images in a gorgeous, morally and spiritually vibrant show that is sure be one of the sleepers of the fall art season. Sleepers, awake. Change your habits, alter your route, see what you’re missing. This African show isn’t esoteric at all. Anyone familiar with Western religious art, particularly art before the modern era, will recognize its basic theme: life as a cosmic journey homeward, with parental spirits, embodied in materials and images, coddling, counseling and chiding us every step of the way.
— Holland Cotter

Quoted: “Before I left China,” said Mr. Yang, now 25, “I thought Africa was all one big desert.” So he figured that ice cream would be in high demand, and with money pooled from relatives and friends, he created his own factory ...

Quoted: In mineral-rich countries that had been all but abandoned by foreign investors because of unrest and corruption, Chinese companies are reviving output of cobalt and bauxite. China has even become the new mover and shaker in agricultural countries like Ivory Coast, once the crown jewel in France’s postcolonial African empire, where Chinese companies are building a new capital, in Yamoussoukro, paid for by Chinese loans.

Quoted: Across Africa, and especially in the relatively robust economies of southern Africa, there are clear winners and losers. Textile mills and other factories here in Zambia have suffered and even closed as cheap Chinese goods flood the world market, eliminating much-needed jobs in a country where less than half the adult population has formal employment. And the Chinese investment in copper mining here has left a trail of heartbreak and recrimination after one of the worst industrial accidents in Zambian history, a blast at a Chinese-owned explosives factory in Chambishi in 2005 that killed 46 people, most of them in their 20s.

A British photojournalist working mainly in the Congo. He does most of his work in B&W and has published a book of his photographs called "One Hundred Years of Darkness".

The title of the book is a nod to Joseph Conrad's book and the continuing legacy of colonialism and the Congo 'Free' State.

Quoted: With his film “Bamako,” director Abderrahmane Sissako lashes out at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.