Recent Posts

Bürgergeld is Gone. What you need to know about Grundsicherung

From 1 July, Germany’s long-term unemployment benefit has a new name, tougher sanctions and a stricter savings rule. Here is what changes, what stays the same, and what African claimants should do now. _______ From 1 July 2026, Bürgergeld, the benefit that millions of jobseekers in Germany have received since 2023, has been replaced by Grundsicherung (Basic Income Support). For …

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Germany’s Muslim Population: New Estimates Highlight Increasing Diversity

Germany’s Muslim population has reached between 6.6 and 7 million people, according to a new projection by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, BAMF). This represents 8.0 to 8.5 percent of the total population, a figure that challenges persistent public misperceptions, with surveys consistently showing that Germans dramatically overestimate the actual proportion of Muslims …

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Why Africa Needs the Diaspora Stories as Much as Its Money

By Collins Nweke On a recent evening in Brussels, I had the privilege of delivering the keynote address at the launch of The City He Never Returned To, a remarkable new novel by a Nigerian-born Belgian writer, Ibekwe Paul Chukwuemeka. The book is ostensibly about the Nigerian Civil War, memory, healing and national repair. But as I reflected afterwards, I …

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