As climate change leads to more weather variability and natural disasters, the need for adaptation is more urgent than ever. The Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN) aims to enhance understanding of adaptation and inform the public and private sectors on actions and investments.

2016 was an eventful year for the continent of Africa, with important implications for U.S.-Africa relations. The Wilson Center’s Africa Program asked experts, scholars, and policymakers to weigh in on the most important and impactful events. This collection of essays reflects on those developments and their impact going forward.

Since the end of World War II, the number of wars between states has declined significantly, but the number of intrastate civil conflicts – as seen in Syria and Afghanistan – has increased.

Early this June, the Israeli government cut off drinking water to people living in the Salfit region of the West Bank and three villages east of Nablus. The consequences have been dire. Thousands of Palestinians have been left with no running water in their homes, and factories have been forced to shutter. The power imbalance that leaves Palestinians so vulnerable to Israeli turns of the valve plays out every year, made possible by Israel’s occupation of the water-rich Golan Heights in 1967. What is perhaps most surprising is that the situation persists.

Last month Rwanda Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Louise Mushikiwabo spoke at the Wilson Center on a wide-ranging set of issues, from the country’s development successes to the prominent role women have played in post-genocide society.

President Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision to run for a third term in April plunged Burundi into a state of unrest not seen since the end of the country’s civil war in 2005. Refugees are arriving in neighboring Tanzania, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the tens of thousands, raising the possibility that the deteriorating security situation could spill over borders.

A new report prepared by the UN Environment Program and UN peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (known as MONUSCO) found that just two percent of the total value of illicit natural resources smuggled from the country comes back to armed groups. Still, these funds, which amount to around $13 million a year, allow some 25 to 49 groups to continue operating in the country’s war-torn eastern provinces. Much more, as much as 50 percent, ends up in the hands of transnational criminal networks with the remaining profits flowing to individuals or companies elsewhere in the DRC or in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi.

“Alphonse, however, had not come to talk. Without saying a word, he raised a machete and brought it down onto his uncle’s skull.”