Former U.S. Senator from Wisconsin Russ Feingold reflects on his time as U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other diplomatic roles he has held throughout his career.

This April marks the twenty-six-year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and twenty years since Paul Kagame took the reins as president. For much of that time, Kagame imposed limits on the political process, democratic debate, and opposition figures. He justified these limits by saying that the country was too fragile, the wounds too fresh, and the competitive aspects of democracy too divisive for a country emerging out of a genocide. But when does that grace period end?

This is a guest post by Jean-Yves Ollivier, a French businessman who has spent over forty years involved in peace talks in Africa. He serves as CEO of the Brazzaville Foundation for Peace and Nature …

The recent spate of coups in West Africa has unsurprisingly drawn the attention of African leaders. The resurgence of coups was high on the agenda of AU leaders who met last weekend in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. Their condemnation of what a spokesperson described as a “wave of unconstitutional changes of government” was loud and unequivocal.