Africa

The half-dozen strangers who descended on the remote village of Soumouni, Mali brought its hand-to-mouth farmers alarming news: their humble fields, tilled from one generation to the next, were now controlled by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the farmers would all have to leave. Across Africa and the developing world, a new global land rush is gobbling up large expanses of arable land and displacing farmers. The government in Mali has welcomed investors who will use the Niger River for irrigation. Photo:  Tyler Hicks/New York Times

For more than three decades after independence under the leadership of its first president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Ivory Coast was conspicuous for its religious and ethnic harmony and its well-developed economy. All this ended when the late Robert Guei led a coup which toppled Felix Houphouet-Boigny’s successor, Henri Bedie, in 1999. Mr Bedie fled, but not before planting the seeds of ethnic discord by trying to stir up xenophobia against Muslim northerners, including his main rival, Alassane Ouattara. In September 2002 a troop mutiny escalated into a full-scale rebellion, voicing the ongoing discontent of northern Muslims who felt they were being discriminated against in Ivorian politics. Thousands were killed in the conflict. Under terms of 2007 power-sharing deal, rebel leader became prime minister. Now power-sharing has broken down. Map: BBC

John Prendergast on the banks of the White Nile in southern Sudan. Marco Di Lauro/Reportage, for The New York Times