In January 2017, the coastal region of northern Mozambique was battered for five long days by a severe cyclone. The tropical storm brought heavy rainfall and devastated large swathes of the countryside in two of the coastal provinces of this country in southeast Africa, already one of the poorest in the world. Thousands of homes …
In Algeria, the birthplace of Saint Augustine, there are approximately 5,000 Catholics living today. Algeria, in Northwest Africa, is the largest country in Africa, with an area of almost 930,000 square miles – around one quarter the size of the United States. Close to 97% of its 36.5 million inhabitants are Muslims.
The Apostolic Vicariate of Gambella lies in the extreme west of Ethiopia, on the border with South Sudan. It is one of the poorest and most underdeveloped regions in the country, and is constantly plagued by violence, unrest and conflict.
There were a total of 31 wars and armed conflicts during 2017, as reported by the Group for the Investigation into the Causes of War, based at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
Tony Zender, who oversees projects in a number of English-speaking African countries for international papal charity Aid to the Church in Need, recently visited Zambia. It is a politically stable nation, though it has far to go in terms of development and lifting its people out of poverty.