On May 21st 2019, Malawi will hold its tripartite elections, where voters will vote for the President, Members of Parliament and local Councillors. 2019 will also mark the 25 years of multiparty politics in Malawi since the one-party regime presided by Hastings Kamuzu Banda came to an end in 1994.

Despite a relative weakening since 2017, the international jihadist movement should continue to pose a genuine threat over the next decade.

Although it had never entirely disappeared, the surface-to-air threat was mitigated for three decades by Western air superiority. It now benefits from a modernization and dissemination momentum that will increasingly hinder expeditionary forces’ freedom of action. 

In recent years, experts and onlookers have noted a convergence of geopolitical interests between the United States and India.

Nowadays, numerous actors are involved in military cooperation programs aiming to strengthen African armed forces and build special partnerships. 

Interest in deep seabed mining is growing due to the increasing in global demand for metals and recent technological progress. Critical metals are used in low carbon energy technologies, as well as in the mobility, electronics and the defense industries. Metals become strategic when they are essential to the economy of a state, its defense and energy sector and when their supply presents high risks. Uneven distribution of resources and differences in cost of production have led to a market characterized by oligopolies (China for rare earth elements, or the Democratic Republic of Congo for cobalt). As the remaining onshore resources of critical metals appear complex and costly to exploit, attention has been shifting to deep sea resources. 

The middle classes have at times been heralded to be a guarantee for democracy. Studies that find a positive correlation (which should not be confused with causation) often use national economic data as a proxy for class and compare it to the current regime type.[1]

Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus have long been a blind-spot for Chinese diplomacy and economic policy. For over a decade, however, China has been laying the foundations of a long-term presence in the area, a process which has accelerated since the end of 2013 with the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative.