Uber shut down in Nigeria and Uganda on September 2, closing a chapter it opened more than a decade ago. It entered Nigeria in 2014 and Uganda two years later, quickly becoming the go-to app for commuters in Lagos and Kampala — even running a boat service in Lagos starting in 2019 to help people dodge the city’s traffic.

Uber points to a broader review of its business priorities and hasn’t given a detailed financial explanation. But few who’ve watched this market are surprised. Nigeria has been a grind for ride-hailing: rising fuel costs, inflation, and drivers squeezed on one side while riders watch their spending on the other. Competition from Bolt, inDrive, and local rivals only made it harder.

Drivers who relied on Uber for income will likely migrate to those platforms. Riders won’t be stranded — app-based transport isn’t going anywhere; it’s just changing hands. If anything, this hands Uber’s rivals an opening.

The bigger story is what it says about doing business in Africa’s tech sector. Nigeria and Uganda both have huge, young, connected populations — but a large customer base doesn’t automatically mean a profitable one. This exit isn’t about whether Africans want ride-hailing. It’s about whether a global platform can make its model work under local economic pressure.

The riders are still there. So are the drivers. The only question now is who steps in to win them over.

Most of what’s been written about King Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV since his death focuses on the strange arc of his life — becoming king of Tooro in 1995 at age three, then reigning for almost 31 years before dying at 34.

That’s the headline version. But since I heard the news, I keep thinking less about the crown and more about the family behind it.

I only met King Oyo once. What I actually know about the Tooro royal family, I learned from his sister.

Princess Ruth Komuntale interned with me at Voice of America’s Africa Division back in 2011: six months, same office, Washington, D.C.

She showed up like any other intern — casual clothes, put her head down, worked through the same newsroom grind as everyone else. She never mentioned she was a princess. Actually, she asked me not to tell anyone.

No special treatment, no title, nothing. She just wanted to be judged on her work like everybody else in that room. And when people eventually figured out who she was and started treating her differently, I could tell it genuinely bothered her.

I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. Most people spend their whole lives trying to get closer to status. Here was someone born into it, trying to get away from it — just wanting to learn and be useful.

I saw the same instinct in her brother’s leadership, from what I could tell. He wasn’t loud. He wasn’t chasing the spotlight or playing politics. Through Tooro Kingdom Vision 2045, he pushed things like youth skills training, education, agriculture, public health, environmental work — practical stuff, not headline stuff.

His authority was cultural, not political, and the kingdom didn’t have many resources. He worked with what he had.

King Oyo died far too young. But between a shared desk in a Washington newsroom and a throne in western Uganda, his family taught me something worth holding onto: real Royalty isn’t about demanding respect. It shows up in humility, and in the quiet work of actually serving people.

Hichilema later described how security forces entered his home at night.

“This house was broken into by a whole platoon of almost 200 to 300 heavily armed policemen,” he said. “We were arrested in a brutal manner. They didn’t come to arrest me. They came to kill.”

He said he was held in solitary confinement for eight days under degrading conditions.

“We slept on the floor,” Hichilema recalled. “I was put in a room in solitary confinement, with fecal matter on the floor—no lights, no electricity, no toilets, no water.”

Nine years later, Hichilema is president, and opposition leader Brian Mundubile is facing a similar ordeal following Zambia’s disputed election.

Mundubile said armed security personnel raided his residence before his arrest.

“Heavily armed personnel believed to be members of the Zambia Army came to my residence in what I can only describe as an attempt on my life,” he said.

“Shots were fired. My home was invaded. My family was terrorized.”

Mundubile said several people were wounded during the operation.

“I watched one of my colleagues and fellow Zambians bleed as gunfire erupted around us,” he said. “This was not politics. This was an attack on human life. I thank God that I am alive today.”

Mundubile and his running mate, Makebi Zulu, have now been charged with treason. The government says the case concerns national security and will be handled in court.

The circumstances may differ, but the political parallels are striking.

Same country. Same charge. Different president.

Cybercrime across Africa has evolved from isolated scams into organized, increasingly automated criminal networks. Interpol estimates it caused at least $5 billion in direct economic damage in 2025, with artificial intelligence enabling 55% of reported cyber offenses across the continent.

Speaking to Paul Ndiho on Different Perspectives, Iziomoh Felix, founder and executive director of the International Center for Leadership in Nigeria, described how he first encountered fraud in 1996—without even knowing it.

“My work then was just to address the envelopes,” Felix recalled. “I didn’t know what it was all about. It was later that I got to understand this was fraud.”

He said the term “Yahoo boys” traces back to when Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger were the tools of choice for online scams.

“Young people don’t even know what cybercrime is,” he said. “So when I started teaching them, I told them, ‘What you are doing is cybercrime.’”

Some offenders, he said, are taught to see fraud as payback rather than theft. “These guys are being brainwashed,” Felix said. “They are told that this money was stolen from us by the West, so we have to get the money back.”

Unemployment, peer pressure and the pull of fast money drive much of the recruitment, Felix said. But he believes the same skills can go the other way — into content creation, digital marketing, photography, video work.

“If you have this smartness, why don’t you channel it into something positive?” he said.

AI has changed the fight too, making scams faster to produce and harder to catch. “With AI, it has made it easier for them,” Felix said. “But we have to be careful. I always say we should use AI for positive things.”

He flagged identity theft and mobile-money fraud as especially dangerous for older people, who often hand off transactions to someone else. Banks and telecom companies need tighter verification, he said — but none of that matters without public awareness behind it.

“Awareness is not enough, because we are not reaching the number of people we hope to reach,” he said. He’s aiming to educate 10,000 people a year through workshops and school visits.

Felix also rejected the idea that cybercrime is a Nigerian problem. “This is a global issue,” he said. “It is not only Nigeria.”

He’s written Cybercrime Awareness and Prevention and hopes to translate it into Nigerian languages, with audio editions for older and rural audiences.

His message to young people: “You can make money legitimately. If this person can do it, why can’t I?”

Artificial intelligence is making cybercrime easier to commit, and Africa’s law enforcement, financial systems, and data protection haven’t caught up, says cybersecurity specialist Adedoyin Adedejé.

In an interview with Paul Ndiho on Different Perspectives, Adedejé said AI has removed the technical skill once needed to fake a banking login page, clone a voice, or produce a deceptive video.

“AI has very much lowered the barrier,” he said. “An awful lot of technical stuff that you would normally need somebody technical to help you do — the technical heavy lifting can be done by AI.”

The interview follows INTERPOL’s 2026 African Cyberthreat Assessment Report, which found AI involved in 55 percent of reported cybercrime on the continent. Reported losses more than doubled in a year, from $192 million in 2024 to $484 million in 2025.

Adedejé said law enforcement is badly outpaced.

“Globally, governments will always play catch-up when it comes to technology,” he said. “We do not have enough capacity within law enforcement and the justice system to deal with this problem.”

Part of the problem is generational — officers with decades of experience are suddenly facing crimes they’ve never investigated, often committed by people far more tech-savvy than they are.

On why so many young people get pulled into these networks, Adedejé pointed to opportunity, not just technology. Graduates leave school with good grades and no job waiting.

“While that is not an excuse to go into crime, we can’t also deny the fact that it’s a factor which leads a lot of young people into cybercrime,” he said.

Many young offenders, he added, don’t see what they’re doing as a real crime since there’s no physical confrontation — just a conversation ending in a wire transfer.

He also called for tighter oversight of government platforms holding citizen data.

“There needs to be an agency that sets the standard for the minimum security requirements,” he said, urging regular audits of public-facing systems.

His three priorities: grow economic opportunity, strengthen law enforcement’s actual capacity, and tighten data protection. To reach the people running these networks — not just the recruits who get caught — he said investigators need to “follow the money.”

Nearly 82,000 people have been deported or sent home voluntarily from South Africa in recent months, part of a sweeping crackdown that’s exposed just how messy the line is between enforcing the law and trampling on people’s dignity.

Speaking with Paul Ndiho on Different Perspectives, Bishop Joseph Mary Kizito said South Africa has every right to enforce its immigration laws — but warned that enforcement has to preserve human dignity along the way. As liaison bishop for the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference’s Migrants and Refugees Office, he’d just come from the repatriation center in Musina, near the Zimbabwean border, where he watched thousands pass through on their way out of the country.

He gives the government credit for how the center itself was run. “The repatriation center has done quite a good job to make sure that people go home,” he said, pointing to the tents, food, water, and medical staff on hand. But the process underneath it all left scars. Buses hired to carry people home had no room for luggage, so families arriving with three or four suitcases of belongings built over years in South Africa were told to pick one bag and leave the rest.

“Once they got into the repatriation center, the sad moment was they had to only go with one suitcase,” Kizito said. The abandoned bags ended up dumped on the ground.

Worse, mixed-nationality families were split apart in the process, with no clear sense of when they’d see each other again. “You don’t know when the mother or the father will be able to see the children,” he said.

Kizito pushed back hard on the idea that the Church wants open borders. “We are not really calling on people to be undocumented,” he said. What he’s asking for instead is a visa and documentation system that isn’t so expensive and complicated that it pushes people into the shadows in the first place.

Most of those he met, he said, weren’t criminals — just people chasing work. “They are poor people looking for bread.”

The State Department and Homeland Security are gearing up for what could be the biggest mass visa revocation in U.S. history: pulling business and tourism visas from as many as 200,000 people who came here on B1/B2 visas between 2016 and 2026 and later filed for asylum.

The logic, officials say, is straightforward. Tourist and business visas require applicants to affirm they’ll go home — not stay and seek protection. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau put it bluntly on social media: “Asylum isn’t supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration law.” Spokesperson Tommy Pigott says the rollout will happen in waves, with no fixed number yet.

Here’s the catch: losing a visa does not automatically end an asylum claim. Under U.S. law, anyone physically present in the country may still seek protection in court.

It’s also not happening in a vacuum. The administration has already revoked roughly 175,000 visas over the past year and a half, mostly tied to criminal records or public criticism of U.S. Middle East policy.

For travelers from Africa and other developing regions — many of whom rely on B1/B2 visas for trade summits, conferences, or family visits — tighter scrutiny could push governments and institutions to look harder at alternatives, from regional partnerships to non-U.S. visa pathways, as Washington narrows the door.

Diplomats have signed agreements in Washington, Doha, and Switzerland. Yet in eastern Congo, the fighting continues.

The central problem is not a lack of diplomacy. The parties remain deeply divided. Kinshasa views M23 as a foreign-backed threat to Congolese sovereignty. M23 says it is defending communities abandoned by the state. Rwanda points to the FDLR militia as an unresolved security threat along its border.

Beneath the conflict lies eastern Congo’s vast mineral wealth. Coltan, cassiterite and cobalt feed global supply chains, while armed groups profit from illegal taxation, smuggling and control of mining areas.

Recent agreements have linked regional security to mineral trade and proposed stronger monitoring. But without enforcement, neutral verification and the dismantling of armed groups, they could become temporary pauses rather than lasting solutions.

For millions of displaced Congolese, another signed document means little unless it brings security, accountability and a genuine path home.

A federal judge in Manhattan has thrown out a Trump administration policy that halted immigrant visa processing for people from 75 countries, including 26 in Africa: Algeria, Cameroon, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia and Uganda.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas ruled Friday that the State Department had overstepped its authority, pointing to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which bars discrimination based on nationality in issuing immigrant visas.

The pause began in January. Officials cited data suggesting more than 30 percent of households from the affected countries received some form of public assistance, and described the move as part of a broader screening effort.

In practice, that meant applicants were turned away based on where they were born, regardless of their individual circumstances. Vargas found consular officers had been told to reject applications on nationality alone, skipping the case-by-case review the law requires. She called the policy “contrary to law and in excess of statutory authority.”

Diana Konate of African Communities Together, one of the plaintiffs, said the ruling was “a tremendous victory for the rule of law” after months of separated families.

Not everything went against the government. Vargas agreed the policy didn’t require formal public comment before taking effect, and rejected the administration’s reliance on a 2018 Supreme Court ruling tied to an earlier travel ban.

Both sides have until September 11 to propose next steps, and the administration can still appeal. The ruling doesn’t guarantee anyone a visa — it simply means nationality alone can’t be the reason for denial.

It happened fast, and it happened this week. The legal shield that kept thousands of African immigrants in the country came apart piece by piece, and on August 18, the last piece gave way.

That’s when U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy lifted the final court order blocking the Trump administration from terminating Temporary Protected Status for more than 5,000 Ethiopians. It was really the last domino to fall in a chain that started back in June, when the Supreme Court sharply cut how much power lower courts have to block the administration’s immigration calls.

So now TPS is gone for three African nations that had relied on it for years:

• South Sudan — protections ended August 7

• Somalia — ended August 14, and every existing work permit went with it

• Ethiopia — ended August 18

African Communities Together isn’t softening what this means. Real people, they say, are being sent back to countries still digging out from war and famine. Not exactly a safe landing.

There’s one legal thread still alive — a constitutional claim arguing the terminations were driven by racial bias. That case moves forward. But it won’t change what’s happening right now on the ground: people are losing work authorization immediately, and for many, deportation is suddenly back on the table.

It’s the end of a decades-long U.S. policy of letting people stay when their home countries were too dangerous to go back to.

Liberia just became the biggest player yet, agreeing to accept up to 1,200 people over the next year. The first batch — 20 people, including Venezuelans and Cubans — is already on its way. Liberian officials insist these aren’t detainees but “guests” who can apply for asylum or leave on their own. The U.S. is reportedly backing the deal with $5 million to help Liberia build out its migration systems.

Several countries have signed on to smaller versions of the same arrangement. Sierra Leone can take up to 300 ECOWAS nationals a year and has logged around 31 so far. Rwanda’s cap is 250, with seven arrivals to date. Eswatini has received 30 out of an allowed 160. Meanwhile, Uganda has taken in eight people, Ghana at least 42, Cameroon 36, and the DRC 15, with a few more transfers coming through Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan.

For Washington, each new country is another release valve for enforcing removal orders. For African governments, signing on often comes with migration aid and warmer diplomatic ties to the U.S.

But the big numbers deserve some skepticism. A country agreeing to take 1,200 people isn’t the same as 1,200 people showing up. What actually matters — and what nobody can answer yet — is how many transfers really happen, and what becomes of people once they’re there: do they stay, seek asylum, or move on elsewhere?

Zambia’s Electoral Commission announced early Wednesday morning that President Hakainde Hichilema had won re-election with roughly 61.4% of the vote, defeating his closest challenger, who took about 38%. The margin gives Hichilema a clear mandate — but according to governance expert Mundia Paul Hakoola, his second term will ultimately be judged by whether that political stability turns into a better life for ordinary Zambians.

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Hakoola, Executive Director of the Continental Leadership Research Institute, joined Paul Ndiho on Different Perspectives shortly after the results were announced for a broadcast digging into the numbers, the security operations that unfolded on election night, and the findings from the SADC, AU and EU observer missions. He said most voters weren’t voting for something new — they were voting to keep going.

“Mostly, people are looking at the fact that there has to be continuity to some of the programs that were started,” Hakoola said.

Hichilema’s first term was defined largely by Zambia’s debt restructuring, following the country’s 2020 default — the first in Africa during the pandemic. Hakoola called that resolution the foundation everything else depends on.

“We saw the negotiation of the debt to ensure that the debt was actually restructured,” he said. “Having an economy that is going to be free from a status that has defaulted is very cardinal to actually move the economy to greater heights.”

Still, macroeconomic recovery hasn’t reached every household. High living costs, unemployment and power shortages remain daily realities the new administration can’t ignore.

On the credibility of the roughly 61-to-38 result, Hakoola pointed to Zambia’s track record of peaceful transfers of power.

“It’s very difficult to actually rig elections in this country, looking at the way the process is done,” he said. “Our system has been tested over time, and it has changed political parties.”

He acknowledged pockets of election-related violence but said his organization’s observers found the process was largely followed, and called for institutions strong enough to stand apart from politics.

“What we need is to build strong institutions of governance — institutions that will be above board, above the human element,” he said.

Official results are available through the Electoral Commission of Zambia.

Nearly 1,100 Somali nationals in the U.S. just lost a legal shield they’ve been leaning on for years — and the courts aren’t stepping in to stop it, at least not for now.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs lifted the administrative stay that had been holding back the Department of Homeland Security from ending Temporary Protected Status for Somalia. The underlying lawsuit is still alive, but that doesn’t matter much in practice — DHS is now free to move forward while the case drags on.

A quick refresher on TPS: it’s the program that lets people from countries dealing with war, natural disaster, or other serious crises live and work in the U.S. legally, temporarily. Somalia has been on that list since 1991, back when its government collapsed, and the country fell into civil war.

The Trump administration argues that Somalia has turned a corner — that it now has a functioning federal government, working institutions, and closer security ties with the U.S. and other partners. In their view, that’s enough to say the country no longer meets the bar for TPS.

Except the facts on the ground tell a messier story. Al-Shabaab hasn’t gone anywhere. Political tension is still simmering. Aid groups are warning that hunger and displacement are getting worse, not better. And the State Department still rates Somalia at Level Four — Do Not Travel — citing terrorism, kidnapping, and general unrest.

Judge Burroughs didn’t pretend otherwise. She acknowledged that this could genuinely harm Somali TPS holders. But she ruled they were unlikely to win their case anyway, pointing to a Supreme Court decision from June that narrowed how much power lower courts have to second-guess TPS terminations made by the executive branch.

Minnesota is going to feel this one hard. It’s home to the largest Somali-American community in the country, and roughly 400 TPS holders there are now facing an uncertain future.

For a lot of these families, this isn’t some abstract legal dispute — it’s their actual life. People who’ve spent years working, raising kids, and putting down roots here.

That said, nobody’s getting deported overnight. Immigration cases move on their own timeline, one person at a time, and plenty of TPS holders have other paths available — a pending asylum claim, a family-based petition, something else in the pipeline.

But for the people whose only protection was TPS, the clock is now running. They stand to lose their work permits and their shield against deportation.

What happens from here isn’t just a courtroom question anymore. It’s playing out in kitchens, job sites, and neighborhoods across Minnesota and beyond.

The Pretoria Peace Agreement was supposed to close the book on Ethiopia’s civil war. It didn’t. It just moved the fighting to a new address — the Amhara region.

Signed in November 2022, the deal stopped the shooting between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). But Amhara representatives weren’t in the room, and two of the thorniest issues on the table — Wolkait and Raya — were left hanging. That omission, it turns out, mattered a lot more than it seemed at the time.

Tewodros Tirfe, chairman of the Amhara Association of America, pushed back hard on the idea that Fano and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government were ever real allies during the Tigray war. He said as much in a conversation with veteran journalist Paul Ndiho on Different Perspectives.

“I wouldn’t call it an alliance for the Amharas,” Tirfe said. “It was a war of survival.”

According to Tirfe, Amhara communities took up arms only after TPLF forces pushed into their territory and began attacking civilians there. “The Amharas had no choice but to organize themselves and defend themselves,” he said.

He’s convinced that leaving Amhara voices out of the Pretoria talks all but guaranteed another round of conflict. “What it was going to do was shift the geography of the war into the Amhara region,” he said. “That is really what happened.”

The breaking point came in April 2023, when Addis Ababa ordered regional special forces disbanded and folded into national or regional units. Officials framed it as a routine step toward a single, unified military command. Many Amharas read it differently — as disarmament, arriving before any of their security or territorial concerns had been addressed.

“What happened immediately was the Amhara special forces, instead of joining the military, joined the Fanos because they didn’t trust Abiy,” Tirfe said.

Since then, the conflict has generated a grim list of accusations: drone strikes, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, sexual violence, attacks on civilian infrastructure. Tirfe calls it genocide, pointing to his organization’s own investigations. That’s a serious charge, and it’s worth noting it hasn’t been confirmed through any independent legal process — access to the region is limited, and communications restrictions make outside verification difficult. Tirfe says the fix for that is obvious: let independent journalists and human rights investigators in.

When Ndiho pressed him on abuses attributed to Fano fighters themselves, Tirfe didn’t dodge it. “Accountability should extend to everyone — to all groups,” he said. “No one is above accountability.”

His proposed path forward is fairly simple on paper: release political prisoners, pull federal troops back to their barracks, and bring in a trusted third party to start negotiations.

The government insists it’s just trying to restore order and keep the country from splintering. Fano’s supporters say they’re fighting to survive. Caught between those two arguments are the civilians who keep paying for a war nobody in power seems able to end.

Uganda’s decision to authorize the deployment of troops to Gaza has opened a difficult debate: Is Kampala taking its place on the global diplomatic stage—or sending Ugandan soldiers into a mission whose risks remain unclear?

Parliament approved the proposed deployment of the Uganda Peoples’ Defense Forces on August 6. The troops would join an International Stabilization Force operating under President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” initiative.

Supporters say Uganda can draw on its experience in Somalia, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to protect civilians, secure humanitarian corridors and support Gaza’s reconstruction. They also argue that the mission could strengthen Kampala’s relationship with Washington.

Kharim Ntambi, Team Leader for Advocacy and Strategic Outreach with the National Unity Platform Diaspora, remains deeply skeptical.

“For so long, Uganda has been seen as a stabilizing force in the region,” Ntambi said on Different Perspectives. “But that’s what it tells the outside. We haven’t examined what the success stories have been.”

Ntambi pointed to Uganda’s intervention in the DRC, which led the International Court of Justice to order Kampala to pay $325 million in reparations. He also cited the deaths of 54 Ugandan peacekeepers when al-Shabaab overran the Buulo Mareer base in Somalia in May 2023.

“The families didn’t get answers,” he said. “And the nation didn’t even get to mourn what happened fully.”

Host Paul Ndiho challenged that argument, noting that Uganda’s Somalia deployment was initially considered extremely risky but later established the UPDF as a major regional security partner.

Ntambi acknowledged the diplomatic opportunity but said receiving a call from Washington is not the same as having a credible plan.

“We as Ugandans want to know: What are the terms? What would the modus operandi look like? What is the endgame going to look like?”

He said three questions must be answered before deployment: Who will Ugandan troops serve? What will success look like? And what happens if the mission fails?

Those questions go directly to the uncertainty surrounding command, financing, neutrality, rules of engagement and Uganda’s exit strategy.

The UPDF may have the military experience to operate in Gaza. But peacekeeping without a clear mandate can quickly become combat.

Uganda may gain international influence by joining the mission. The real measure of success, however, will be whether it protects civilians, advances peace, and brings Ugandan soldiers home safely.

Is this a bold step for African diplomacy—or an unnecessary military risk?

Zambia votes Thursday, August 13, 2026, and more than 8.7 million registered voters will decide a race that’s become a genuine referendum on how you measure progress—held under a newly expanded constitution— with more constituencies and guaranteed proportional seats for women, youth, and people with disabilities. The contest pits President Hakainde Hichilema’s UPND against a now-unified opposition.

On Different Perspectives, UPND spokesperson Oliver Shalala didn’t hedge on the government’s record. “There are no electricity shortages in Zambia. It’s been almost six months now since loadshedding ended,” he said, crediting nearly doubled coal output and new solar stations for closing a gap he traced back to unpaid debts the government inherited in 2021. On jobs, he pointed to over 50,000 teachers hired this year, another 50,000 in health, and five straight years of civil-service raises — “the first time when we have a consistent increase in salaries for five years in a row.”

Opposition coalition spokesperson Muhabi Lungu didn’t dispute the load-shedding numbers outright, but questioned the timing — improvement arriving six months before an election, after four years of outages. His bigger argument was about what the statistics leave out. Citing data from the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection, he noted that the average family food basket has climbed from roughly 7,000 to 12,000 kwacha since 2021, while wage increases have moved at a fraction of that pace. “The wage adjustments of 500 kwacha annually are far below the mark and have almost no impact,” he said, adding a warning that governments lose touch “when there is a different perspective between the governors and the governed.”

Shalala pushed back hard on the math, arguing that 2,500 kwacha in cumulative raises had closed nearly half that gap and calling Lungu’s framing selective.

On fixing the cost of living, Lungu laid out a two-track plan: short-term food subsidies, then longer-term housing expansion and rural road investment to bring down what he called runaway rental costs and the “marginal cost” of goods reaching cities. Shalala’s rebuttal leaned on sequencing — “to jump to the micro level forgetting all the fundamentals is like wanting a house to be roofed before you have done the foundation.”

The two also clashed over campaign fairness, electoral violence, and whether either side would accept Thursday’s result — a question that, more than the inflation debate, may say the most about what happens next.

What happens when the legal protection holding up hundreds of thousands of long-term U.S. residents — including thousands from South Sudan —... disappears? Overnight?

That question isn’t staying in courtrooms anymore. It’s showing up in hospitals, city halls, and living rooms across the country. U.S. District Judge Patti Saris in Massachusetts just cleared the Department of Homeland Security to strip Temporary Protected Status from South Sudanese nationals — a 15-page ruling built on statutory language and administrative authority. The human fallout, though, is nowhere near that tidy.

This comes right after the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision that lifted lower-court holds protecting more than 350,000 Haitians, 6,100 Syrians, and 4,000 people from Myanmar. South Sudan is just the latest domino.

The numbers here are small — 232 active cardholders, 73 pending applications. But the contradiction is glaring. The State Department still has South Sudan under a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” warning, citing armed conflict and a humanitarian crisis so severe that 10 million people — two-thirds of the country — depend on emergency aid to survive. And yet families with expiring status may soon be sent back into exactly that.

The ripple effects hit home fast. In cities like New York, hospitals and transit agencies are already auditing payrolls, because federal law leaves them no choice — once work authorization lapses, they have to let people go. That means losing home health aides, bus operators, city workers who’ve paid taxes and built lives here for years.

Behind every court filing is someone’s coworker, someone’s neighbor, now facing a brutal choice — go back to a war zone, or disappear into the shadows. The legal story ends in a ruling. The human one is just getting started.

Nigeria just gave its soldiers the biggest raise in years — 30% to 80%, with junior officers getting the deepest bump. On paper, it looks like a win. But talk to the people who actually study this stuff, and the picture gets a lot murkier.

Constitutional lawyer and public affairs analyst Sir Leonard Anyogo joined Different Perspectives to unpack it, and he didn’t sugarcoat much. Yes, the raise matters. No, it’s not close to enough on its own.

“Nigeria is passing through serious security challenges,” Anyogo said, pointing to Boko Haram and armed bandits terrorizing the north and northeast. Boosting troop pay, he argued, is really about morale — giving soldiers a reason to believe the country has their back.

The problem is math. Nigerian soldiers have historically taken home as little as $45 a month. Even an 80% raise barely clears $100 — in a country where the cost of living, by Anyogo’s own account, rivals much wealthier nations. And inflation, he warned, could eat the gains before soldiers ever feel them.

“We must keep inflation very low for that salary increase to be useful, to be meaningful,” he said. “Otherwise... that money will become meaningless.”

Money isn’t the whole fix, either. Anyogo argued that soldiers without modern gear are still sitting ducks, no matter what’s in their bank accounts. He pointed to the war in Ukraine as a wake-up call for what modern militaries need.

“If you pay money... and it doesn’t have the equipment, it is still the same thing,” he said, calling for drone technology and better equipment to give troops a real edge.

On the bigger question — whether Nigeria is pouring too much into defense while roads, hospitals, and power grids crumble — Anyogo pushed back hard. Security, he argued, comes first, because nothing else works without it.

“Security of lives and property — that’s when development can only take place,” he said.

But raises and weapons only go so far without accountability. Anyogo was blunt about Nigeria’s habit of letting the well-connected off the hook while going hard after political opponents.

“If you do the crime, you should be able to do the time,” he said — a line that, more than any pay bump, may be the real test of whether this reform sticks.

South Africa’s immigration debate has reached a critical point, with economic pressures, tighter government enforcement and growing anti-immigration sentiment driving a major movement of migrants out of the country.

Ndiho Media previously reported that more than 77,000 foreign nationals had been processed for deportation or voluntary repatriation. New reporting from The Associated Press (AP) now puts the broader number of African migrants who have left South Africa in recent months at more than 178,000.

According to AP, citing authorities in migrants’ home countries, more than 115,000 people have returned to Zimbabwe since late May, while over 56,000 have returned to Malawi. Nigeria, Ghana, Mozambique and Lesotho have each reported more than 1,000 returning citizens.

The latest figures include both migrants deported by South African authorities and those who accepted voluntary repatriation offers from South Africa or their home countries. Voluntary returns make up the vast majority. South Africa says about 19,000 people have been officially deported since April, according to AP.

The departures come amid intensified immigration enforcement and anti-immigration protests, some of which have turned violent. In some communities, informal groups have demanded identification from migrants and targeted foreign-owned businesses, raising concerns about vigilantism, due process and the safety of documented migrants and refugees.

Economic frustration remains a major factor. South Africa continues to struggle with high unemployment and pressure on jobs and public services. However, large-scale departures are unlikely to resolve the country’s deeper economic challenges. Migrants remain active in sectors such as small-scale retail, agriculture and domestic work, while their remittances support families across Southern Africa.

The humanitarian impact is also growing. AP reports that advocacy groups are concerned about thousands of children being pulled out of school and HIV patients losing access to life-saving treatment.

South Africa has the right to enforce its immigration laws and secure its borders. But the latest developments underline the need for due process, protection from violence and stronger regional cooperation.

For South Africa and its neighbors, addressing the economic conditions that drive migration remains as important as managing migration itself.

Updated by Ndiho Media with reporting from The Associated Press (AP).

The United States has made permanent a controversial visa-bond program that requires some business and tourist visa applicants to deposit up to $20,000 before entering the country.

Under the new rule, consular officers may require B-1 and B-2 visa applicants from 50 designated countries to post refundable bonds of $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000. The previous $5,000 option has been eliminated, while the maximum has risen from $15,000.

Africa bears the greatest impact, accounting for 30 of the 50 countries:

Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The other 20 countries are Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Cuba, Dominica, Fiji, Georgia, Grenada, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Venezuela.

The bond is returned if the traveler follows the visa rules and leaves the United States on time. However, no interest is paid while the government holds the money, and paying it does not guarantee visa approval.

The State Department says the pilot program reduced overstays among bonded travelers to nearly zero. But business and tourist visa issuance from affected countries reportedly fell by about 83 percent.

That raises a difficult question: Did the program improve compliance, or did it simply make travel unaffordable?

In many affected countries, $15,000 represents several years of income. Legitimate travelers—including entrepreneurs, researchers and families—may have strong reasons to return home but lack access to that much cash.

Critics argue that the policy risks turning visa screening into a test of wealth rather than risk. It also gives Washington added leverage when negotiating with governments over deportations, security cooperation and information sharing.

The bond may be refundable, but for those unable to raise the money, America remains financially out of reach.