Zambia’s record of 25 years of peaceful elections appears to be under threat. With less than a month to go before the country goes to the polls on August 11, 2016, for national elections, the Electoral Commission of Zambia has suspended campaigning, after reports of hundreds of injuries and many deaths at political rallies. The latest related deaths were reported on July 9th.

Tensions one day before Zambia’s August 11 elections are high. As incidents of violence perpetrated by political party cadres against other parties increased, young party activists – typically blamed for the violence – worked across parties to publicly disavow the violence. After an NDI training on conflict mitigation, youth leaders organized a series of public events and marches to call for ending the violence.

On July 22, at the request of the U.S. Embassy in Niamey, NDI facilitated a meeting between 12  female members of Niger’s National Assembly and a high-level US delegation headed by Dr. Jill Biden. The delegation also included Cathy Russell, U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues; Shannon Smith, deputy assistant secretary at the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs; Eric Doucette, special advisor to the Vice President, and Susan Markham, senior coordinator for gender equality and women’s empowerment at USAID.

Mali faces multiple national security challenges, from former separatist rebels in the north to violent attacks by radical Islamist factions across the country, including in Bamako. Combined with porous borders through which arms, drugs and members of criminal networks pass, the Government of Mali (GOM) must handle multi-faceted threats across a vast expanse of territory.

Every four years, NDI has the honor of hosting the International Leaders Forum (ILF), a week-long series of non-partisan events for international leaders organized around the Democratic National Convention. The Forum carries on NDI’s tradition of providing analysis on the current state of U.S. politics and on the foreign policy challenges that the next administration will face.