Mauritania

Irregular migration to Europe is down — except on Spain’s Canary Islands 

North from Africa

In 2024, an average of nearly two migrant boats reached the Canary Islands each day. 692 boats in all carried more than 46,000 people that year, mostly from Mauritania, Senegal and Morocco. The majority arrive to the tiny, westernmost island of El Hierro, where emergency services struggle to help new arrivals. But most islanders are receiving the migrants warmly. 

International students in the US face many challenges as they adjust to new cultural norms.

Chaplains open doors for international students on campus

Sacred Nation
A group of people crowded onto a small open boat in the deep blue sea

Europe makes another move to outsource border control with Mauritania deal

Migration
An offshore gas terminal is lit up amid the Atlantic Ocean as houses lay on the beachfront between the sea and the Senegal River, bottom, in Saint-Louis, Senegal, Jan. 18, 2023.

Europe looks to Senegal for new energy supply. But what’s in it for the Senegalese?

Energy
Netflix promotional image

Series of reimagined African folk tales launches on Netflix

Arts, Culture & Media
Men in orange and yellow jackets lift a box of vaccines from COVAX off of a truck bed

Norway’s minister calls on others to follow his country’s lead in sharing COVID-19 vaccines

COVID-19

Just a few months into its rollout, COVAX is now short tens of millions of doses. It has shipped some 50 million vaccines to low- and middle-income countries. It’s a fraction of what it had hoped to get out by now, and an even tinier fraction of what’s actually needed.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Joseph Dunford is stands at a podium during a press conference.

Pentagon looks at stepping up its role in Africa to counter ISIS

Conflict

The United States is considering a stepped-up military presence in Africa to pursue ISIS jihadists looking for new havens after the fall of their “caliphate,” American officials say.

A US special forces soldier demonstrates how to detain a suspect during Flintlock 2014, a US-led international training mission for African militaries, in Diffa, Niger, March 4, 2014.

Niger raid highlights US military’s growing role in Africa

Conflict

The killing of four American special operations soldiers in Niger has highlighted the increasing role elite units are playing across Africa, where their mission is to counter the advances of a slew of jihadist movements, including al-Shabab in Somalia, ISIS affiliates in the Sahel region and Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Mauritania singer Noura Mint Seymali backstage in January 2013

From Mauritania: A song for breast cancer awareness

Music

Noura Mint Seymali is from Mauritania and she wants to make sure women, especially women in Africa, get their yearly breast cancer screenings. Seymali helps raise awareness through a song.

The World

Daby Touré’s new record ‘Amonafi’ is an homage to the displaced

Conflict

Mauritian musician Daby Touré recently released his latest record called “Amonafi.” On the album, Touré sings about displacement, especially all the people he’s seen leave Africa for Europe.