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Today, more than 60% of the world's French speakers -- and more than 80% of the children studying in French -- live in Africa. This map shows the countries in Africa in which at least 10% of the population speaks French. (Map from www.nytimes.com/2023/12/12/world/africa/africa-french-language.html.)
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COVID and geopolitics have played a role in the shifting composition of international students at U.S. colleges and universities. This geo-graphic from Statista looks at international student enrollment, at the undergraduate and graduate levels, across the U.S.: www.statista.com/chart/20010/international-enrollment-in-higher-education/
Israel depends on foreign labor in its agricultural sector, which accounts for the large number of Thai citizens kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7. Since the war began, an estimated 15,000 farmworkers have left Israel. This week the African country of Malawi announced that it is sending at least 5,000 replacement farmworkers to Israel. The deal was announced "two weeks after the Israeli government announced a $60 million aid package for Malawi," one of the world's poorest countries as measured by per capita GDP. www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/28/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war-news#malawi-plans-to-send-thousands-of-farmworkers-to-israel
South Africa has the world's largest known chrome reserves, but this has not been a uniform blessing for the country. This article from Geographical (UK) looks at the impact of illegal chrome mining -- which by some estimates accounts for 10% of all production -- on communities in the chrome belt in the northwestern part of the country. geographical.co.uk/science-environment/witrandjie-south-africa-villaged-ravaged-for-chrome
This satellite image, from Al Jazeera, shows the location of the two dams on the Wadi Derna in far northeastern Libya that collapsed earlier this week following unusually heavy rains. The dams were built in the 1970s by a Yugoslavian company as part of a project to provide reservoirs and an irrigation network for communities in the region. Although Libya is not considered especially vulnerable to climate change, Notre Dame's Global Adaptation Initiative had previously flagged Libya's dam capacity as a significant vulnerability. www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/INTERACTIVE-Libya-Derna-floods-Storm-Daniel-1694506930.png
This map and geo-graphic from Statista looks at extreme poverty -- defined by the World Bank as a daily income of $2.15 or less -- in selected countries before the COVID epidemic. www.statista.com/chart/30742/people-living-in-extreme-poverty-country-share/
With the death of Russian mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin, many people are wondering about the future of the Wagner Group, especially in Africa where the organization has a large footprint, often trading security services, disinformation campaigns, and similar assistance to governments for mines and minerals. This map shows the Wagner Group's activities in Africa as of earlier this year: www.statista.com/chart/30665/wagner-group-engagement-africa/
Despite being slated to host the BRICS summit next month, Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city, is inching ever closer to chaos. Almost half the population is unemployed. The power won't stay on, in no small part because of looting of the electrical infrastructure. Corruption is rife while crime, petty and organized, has soared. www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-06-16/south-africa-s-crime-chaos-and-corruption-make-it-look-like-a-failed-state
Iran has executed at least 307 people so far this year, including 142 in May alone, a 76% increase over last year. According to Amnesty International, only China executes more prisoners than Iran. This map from Statista looks at the status of the death penalty globally: www.statista.com/chart/25211/death-penalty-world-map/
Lake Kivu, sitting between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is one of East Africa's rift lakes. It is also sitting amidst the zone of devastation caused by flooding and landslides that killed more than 550 people, mostly in the eastern DRC, over the last week. www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-65521521
Just 29 countries (shown in yellow) contribute more than half of the world's maternal deaths, newborn deaths, and stillbirths: reliefweb.int/map/world/map-2023-countries-un-humanitarian-appeals-contribute-global-maternal-deaths-newborn-death-and-stillbirths
Landmines often persist long after a conflict ends. This map, based on data from an NGO that monitors landmines and operations to clear them, shows where landmines still exist, more than 25 years after a UN treaty that bans their use: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/26209.jpeg
The AidData lab at the College of William & Mary has found 22 countries that have relied on often-opaque emergency lending from China since 2000, either via liquidity swaps with China's central bank or lines of credit from state-owned Chinese banks. This emergency lending is often at higher interest rates than emergency loans from the IMF, for example, and may not be recorded as external debt, concealing a country's actual debt load. www.statista.com/chart/29603/chinese-emergency-bailouts
Foods represent a key intersection between biogeography and cultural geography. This article from Geographical (UK) looks at the importance of the nsenene, a seasonal, edible grasshopper, to communities in Kampala, the capital of Uganda: geographical.co.uk/culture/ugandas-beneficial-nsenene-feast
The Chagos Islands have been in the news this week. The Chagos Archipelago is in the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar and Mauritius and south of the Maldives. In the 1960s and '70s, the British government forced more than 1,000 residents of the Chagos Islands to leave their homes to make way for a military base on the largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, that was then leased to the United States. The Chagossians have fought for their return ever since. This week Human Rights Watch called for Britain to pay reparations to the Chagossians and allow for their return to their homes.
www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F21f707ea-3949-11e9-8581-34e77e2582ca.png Valentine's Day is a major chocolate-giving holiday. This site has an interesting collection of links related to the geography of chocolate: cocoarunners.com/the-geography-of-chocolate/
Over the last two decades, China's economic influence in Africa has grown enormously, as a lender, as a buyer of raw materials, and, as this map shows, as a primary source of imported goods. www.statista.com/chart/26668/main-import-countries-sources-africa
Megacities are generally defined as metropolitan areas of at least 10 million people. There are currently 33-35 megacities, depending on who is counting and who is being counted. This map looks at cities expected to reach megacity status by 2050: bucket.mlcdn.com/a/2764/2764870/images/0d7ca37bc55b1c8101a1a5e77cb243aae75162b2.jpeg
This geo-graphic from Statista looks at "land grabs" in the developing world, defined as "the buying, leasing or concession land use for commercial purposes by companies from abroad, affecting land that had previously been used communally, by small-scale shareholders or was natural environment." (Until 2019, the country experiencing the most land grabs was Peru, but Peru is not on this list because it has been reclassified as an upper-middle income country.) cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/19044.jpeg
For more than 7 years, Egypt has been planning and building a new capital city 40 miles east of Cairo. New Administrative Capital, as the city is called, is not yet complete, but civil servants are being asked to move to the new capital beginning this month, in the hope that other Egyptians will follow: www.wsj.com/articles/egypt-is-spending-billions-on-a-new-capital-that-egyptians-may-not-visit-11671838772
Negotiations over a "cap" on the price paid for Russian oil has been in the news recently. This geo-graphic from Al Jazeera highlights Russia's role in global oil markets: bucket.mlcdn.com/a/2764/2764870/images/e37fb5d7fa9398245e8017714bc383775d23a256.png
The world's tropical glaciers -- in Asia, in Africa, and in South America -- are essential sources of water for billions of people. This article looks at the looming disappearance of Africa's glaciers, due not just to warming but to drought and changing rainfall patterns across East Africa: www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/kenya-glaciers-africa-climate-change/
Electric vehicles are dependent on a variety of minerals. This article from The Wall Street Journal includes maps that show where cobalt and manganese, as well as lithium and nickel, are mined and refined: www.wsj.com/articles/electric-vehicles-scarce-parts-supply-chain-11668206037
This topological map from Visual Capitalist shows the number and percentage of each country's population deemed to be at high risk from once-in-a-century flooding, like the floods that inundated more than one-third of Pakistan earlier this fall, killing more than 1,700 people, destroying buildings and crops, and creating lasting crises in food security, education, and waterborne disease. www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-highest-flood-risk/
Chad's capital of N'Djamena sits at the confluence of the two major rivers that feed Lake Chad, to the north of the capital. A rainy season that came early and has produced unusually heavy rains, after years of drought, resulted in massive flooding in N'Djamena over the weekend, with many streets in the capital navigable only by boat. www.nationsonline.org/maps/Chad-political-map.jpg
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