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When Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, came to power in 2018, he promised a new era of democratic reforms and an end to years of autocracy.
Political prisoners were freed, opposition parties were allowed to operate, and the new prime minister even won a Nobel Prize for securing peace with neighbouring Eritrea after decades of an uneasy armistice.
But since then, long-standing ethnic divisions have made the future of this complex country more uncertain.
Earlier this year, we went to find out why.
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The event followed a now familiar pattern: a small convoy of dusty 4x4 vehicles drove on to the edge of the airstrip at Galkayo in Puntland, north-central Somalia; armed security guards took up watchful positions nearby and a number of bemused-looking men stepped gingerly from the cars and lined up to have their photographs taken by the media.
On this occasion there were 11 of them; all had been hostages until that morning. They were sailors from a Malaysian cargo vessel that had been hijacked by Somali pirates a few years ago and held until a ransom was paid for their release.
One of them gave a brief account of what had happened. "On November 26, 2010 our ship was hijacked in the Indian Ocean. Their demand was 20 million. After that, they threatened the owner. You now increase money or we will shoot the crew. The owner didn't increase the money and then one Indian is shot with just three bullets. Then they hit us and tortured us. Tell your family to bring us money, otherwise we will kill you!"
The crew had been held for three and a half years but they were the fortunate ones. Five of their crew mates had died in that time. Now the survivors were going home and a UN plane with two envoys on board was flying in to see them to safety.
Such scenes have become relatively commonplace in Galkayo in recent times. Eighty percent of global trade is carried by sea and Somalia sits on a key maritime route linking Europe and Asia. More than 18,000 ships pass its shores every year. Over the past decade, Somali pirates, often former fishermen whose traditional livelihoods have been destroyed by foreign trawlers and toxic waste dumping, have attacked more than 300 vessels and kidnapped 700 people.
Faced with such a threat, the international community responded aggressively. In 2008, European states, the US and others began sending naval forces to these seas. They are still there today - warships, planes and helicopters patrolling thousands of square miles and doing a fair job of keeping the hijackers at bay. The UN and others have also played an increasing role in facilitating negotiations for the release of hostages - such as those set free at places such as Galkayo - for whose liberty large ransoms have been paid.
But if the problem is now slowly coming under control in Somalia, the same cannot be said for other parts of the world where piracy is on the increase. Lawlessness, desperation, poverty, greed and even political radicalism have brought the phenomenon to the waters of South America, Asia and, perhaps most aggressively, to West Africa.
In an effort to understand the reasons why, Bertrand Monnet, a French academic and filmmaker, has been travelling to piracy hot spots around the coast of Africa. In an extraordinary and very tense series of encounters, he came to face to face with heavily armed pirate gangs operating in and around the Niger Delta, where Nigeria's huge offshore oil industry, which employs thousands of expatriates, offers rich ransom pickings. It gradually became clear that piracy in West Africa has many of the same root causes as piracy in Somalia and elsewhere, not least of which is that those who don't share in the benefits and profits of global trade have ever fewer reasons these days to respect the security of those who do.
Source: Al Jazeera
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Film by Sorious Samura and Clive Patterson
How political corruption is turning the country's spiralling youth unemployment into a threat to society.
You can witness the same scene at dawn every morning in Kenya's capital, Nairobi: thousands of young people in search of work are streaming out from the city's slums towards its industrial areas.
Most of them are neatly if simply dressed, many of them are full of optimism, but the vast majority are destined to be disappointed. Those that can afford it will try and cram onto a bus in an attempt to beat the crowds, the rest will weave their way on foot through the heavy morning commuter traffic. But when they arrive, the situation for all of them will invariably be the same as it was on the previous day and the day before that and on all the other preceding days.
They will spend an hour or so packed in their hundreds along the pavements and parking lots outside a factory, warehouse or office block, certificates of education and references from previous employers ready to hand, waiting patiently for something to happen.
The usual rumours pass from person to person, this company is said to need people with computer skills, that one needs fork lift truck drivers or perhaps some just some day laborers. But then a supervisor will step from the building and shout out that he can offer a day's work for four people with experience of working a lathe or two with secretarial skills.
Many step forward, a lucky few are selected at random and make their way inside, then the doors of the building close and the rest drift off to take up station at the next place or to make their long way back home - hopes dashed yet again.
A national disaster in the making?
George, a Kenyan in his early twenties, has graduated from university in December 2012 with a diploma in electrical engineering but so far he has been unable to find work.
"The chance I'm going to be chosen today is limited," he says. "I'm just gambling. You can stand here for as long as half a day, because you never know the time that you can be picked."
It is a story that is all too common. Joblessness among all people of working age is a serious problem in Kenya, but among young people, it is a catastrophe. The country has one of the largest youth populations in Africa, but roughly 70 percent of its working age youth - almost 10 million people - are unemployed, although a surprising number are very well educated and possess the kinds of skills a healthy economy really should be able to put to use.
In a country where almost 80 percent of the population is under the age of 35 some have labelled it a national disaster in the making, that may have serious social consequences and lead to civil unrest.
For a country that is still recovering from the scars of the widespread community violence that followed the 2007 election and which is still reeling from the aftermath of the al-Shabab Westgate mall terrorist attack in September 2013, it is a hint worth taking seriously.
Dr Alex Ezeh of the African Population and Health Research Centre in Nairobi put the significance of this youth population 'bulge' in context.
"It is a demographic event," he says. "It's something that many countries go through at different stages as they move from very high fertility and mortality to very low mortality, it creates this reservoir of people." But this, as he explained, can have positive and negative consequences.
"Generally, what makes it a good thing is our ability to harness the economic potential of such a large proportion of young people going into the labour market … There is a side of it, the more negative part of it, which is, if there are no jobs and no opportunities to engage, then you have a lot of young people understanding what is going on but they're disenfranchised politically, economically, and in many other ways, and this creates a lot of political instability."
The stark reality for the young people from the huge slums at Kibera and Mathare and elsewhere around Kenya's capital is that life without a job is extremely difficult. With no regular income many of them have to turn to crime to make a living. And even if they do not, they are often suspected of involvement in crime, which in turn leads to deadly entanglements with Kenya's notoriously trigger-happy police.
A generation pushed to the edge
When asked who should be doing what about Kenya's youth unemployment, the answer is clear. Successive governments in Kenya have done little to alleviate the plight of the jobless and should be doing more.
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#AlJazeeraEnglish #KenyaUnemployement
Uganda and Tanzania have entered a partnership to build a 1,443km (896 mile) heated oil pipeline to pump oil from the Albertine basin in Uganda to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean port of Tanga.
What does the deal mean for both countries? Why were environmentalists against the project? And why was Kenya left out?
BBC Africa's Peter Mwangangi explains.
Produced and edited by Leone Ouedraogo.
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