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When the African Union begins its annual summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, on Saturday two items will top the agenda. The first is security. Although Africa is not the war-torn hellscape imagined by some Western commentators, there are many parts where conflict is raging, such as the Sahel, eastern Congo, northern Mozambique and parts of Somalia. The West is becoming increasingly reluctant to send its own soldiers to enforce peace, so the continent’s leaders will discuss how they can raise more money to put African boots on the ground.

The second topic is a lack of food, especially in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, where Somalia is at risk of famine. Drought and the war in Ukraine, which has driven up global food prices, have made things worse, but political dysfunction and poverty are largely to blame. African politicians have historically been unable to rise to the continent’s myriad challenges. The least they can do is take steps to prevent them from getting worse.

Brazil’s first post-pandemic carnaval officially starts on Saturday. Most of the 26 state capitals will host parades of escolas de samba, the associations of dancers and revellers that compete every year for the title of best performance. More than 450 street parties, or blocos de rua, are scheduled in Rio de Janeiro.

It is also the first carnival since President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office for a third term in January. He is popular among artists. His right-wing predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, dissolved the ministry of culture and defunded artistic organisations. Lula, by contrast, has allocated a record 10bn reais ($1.9bn) to the reconstituted ministry.

In 2019 carnival revellers wore orange, the word for which—laranja—also refers to someone who facilitates fraud. It was a jibe at Mr Bolsonaro, whose son, also a politician, was embroiled in financial scandals. This year, at a pre-carnival bloco in São Paulo, partygoers chanted Lula’s name and wore red, the colour of his Workers’ Party. The party’s past scandals have, for now, been forgotten.

The Indian government treats its museums quite shabbily. Money and resources are in short supply and leadership, in some cases, is non-existent. The new Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), which opens in Bangalore on Saturday, promises to show up the authorities. Founded by Abhishek Poddar, an industrialist, with a gift of $7m—as well as 7,000 artworks—MAP will bring together paintings, textiles, sculpture, tribal art, Bollywood memorabilia and an extraordinary collection of photography that dates back to the mid-19th century.

Appropriately for a museum in India’s techiest city, MAP’s reach will extend far beyond its state-of-the-art building and bright exhibition spaces. Virtual visitors can expect digital tours, podcasts of artists’ talks and a multimedia gallery where the whole collection can be viewed even when it is not on display. MAP is a museum not just of and for India but for the world.

Women may pick from a range of contraceptive options. Men, by contrast, have thus far had just two choices: condoms and vasectomy. For decades none of the injections, gels and hormonal pills developed for men has so far advanced beyond clinical trials.

In a new paper researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine, a medical school in New York, put forward a new candidate: a fast-acting pill. In mice it works within half an hour, making the animals temporarily infertile by stopping their sperm from swimming. It has no perceptible effects on their behaviour or sexual performance. Within a day their fertility returns. More animal tests will be needed before trials on people can go ahead.

Generally men have less control over family planning than women do, and sometimes feel little responsibility for it. The breakthrough, said one of the authors, “gives men the ability to be a partner”. Who knows? Some of them might even give it a try.

“What do I offer you: coffee, tea, water?” asks Peter Obi, the minor-party candidate leading the polls to become Nigeria’s president. Such hospitality is de rigueur among African politicians. But usually the Big Man barks out an order; a flunky proffers the drinks. With Mr Obi, things are different. He fetches tea for your correspondent himself and asks, “Do you need honey?”

In the egotistical world of Nigerian politics, Mr Obi’s humility is refreshing. The army of young supporters hoping to see him elected on February 25th, dubbed “Obidients”, delight in the fact that he often flies economy class, carries his own suitcases and claims to own just two pairs of shoes. They view Mr Obi, aged 61, as a sprightly outsider shaking up Nigeria’s venal, sclerotic political class. By contrast, the two big parties’ candidates—Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar—are in their 70s. America’s government has accused both of corruption (and both deny wrongdoing).

In fact, Mr Obi is no political neophyte, having served two terms as governor of his home state, Anambra, in the south-east. He then stood as Mr Abubakar’s vice-presidential candidate in 2019. Before entering politics he worked as a trader and banker, becoming wealthy—unlike lots of Nigerian politicians—before holding office. But he, too, has faced questions about his finances. He appeared in the Pandora Papers, a leak of the records of financial companies, for owning an undeclared offshore company. He insists there was no deliberate wrongdoing.

The pragmatic Mr Obi seems above all to be selling competence. In conversation he refers to the Human Development Index and the money supply. As governor he left a fiscal surplus to his successor—a rarity. His economic instincts appear to be liberal.

Rival campaigns scoff that Obidients are a paper army that is only influential on Twitter. Many pundits concur. At the previous presidential election the candidate from his Labour Party won just 5,074 votes out of nearly 29m cast.

Still, Mr Obi has energised young, urban voters across Nigeria’s main divisions of geography, ethnicity and religion. (The country is divided between a largely Christian south and Muslim north; Mr Obi is Christian.) By making this election about competence, character and perhaps even ideas, he promises to upset the old electoral calculus based on horse-trading. When asked what distinguishes him most from the other two major candidates Mr Obi replies: “Who can people trust?”

On Tuesday Japan’s government named the next governor of the Bank of Japan. Ueda Kazuo, a veteran economist who served a term on the BoJ’s policy board until 2005, will replace Kuroda Haruhiko, who oversaw a decade of monetary stimulus, in April.

The change comes at a difficult time for the central bank. Japan has struggled with low inflation, sometimes tipping into deflation, for decades. The current rate of 4% is the highest in 41 years. But there is little sign of the sustained wage growth the BoJ would like to see before it opts to abandon its stimulus.

Analysts see in Mr Ueda a sign of continuity. Yet ultimately he will face tough decisions about the future of the BoJ’s policy of “yield-curve control”, a cap on ten-year government-bond yields; he may even have to oversee rate raises. This will require deft communication, impeccable timing and lots of luck.

On Tuesday the Ukraine Defence Contact Group met in Brussels, bringing together defence ministers and chiefs from some 50 countries that support Ukraine with Oleksii Reznikov, their Ukrainian counterpart.

On the agenda is the supply of ammunition and heavy weapons, which Ukraine needs to face down a renewed Russian offensive and to retake occupied territory. Since the group last met in January, America and Germany have promised to supply tanks (Britain earlier pledged to do so). Germany has also given permission for other countries to send their German-made Leopards. Ukraine, meanwhile, is now pressing for fighter jets. America has so far ruled out supplying F-16s. Sweden, which makes the Saab Gripen jets, has not yet been forthcoming, either. Following the larger group session, Sweden and Finland will attend a meeting of NATO defence ministers, though the countries’ applications to join the alliance have for months been held up by Turkey’s objections.

Amid growing optimism that inflation is receding in America, figures on Tuesday will provide a reality check. Consumer prices rose by 0.5% in January compared with December, breaking a string of steadily decreasing readings. The figures are more evidence that America’s economy is stronger than many had expected—but that it remains saddled with more persistent inflationary pressure.

Prices for some goods, such as cars and furniture, have started to decline, thanks partly to the post-covid recovery in supply chains. But prices for services, from schooling to dry cleaning, are rising, fuelled by a tight labour market. Officials at the Federal Reserve say they will need to raise interest rates at least twice more to truly tame inflation. This tightening may eventually tip the American economy into a recession. But for now its resilience is remarkable.

Alcoholism has blighted many Aboriginal communities in Australia. But last summer saw the expiry of old bans on the possession and consumption of booze in some parts of the Northern Territory, originally imposed to curtail Aboriginals’ drinking. In some places alcohol was able to flow freely for the first time in 15 years.

Natasha Fyles, the chief minister of the territory, had pronounced an end to what she called “a race-based policy”. Anthony Albanese, who took office as prime minister last May, had promised better representation for Australia’s indigenous people. But the wet season did not last long. Once alcohol sales resumed, crime and violence surged. At a parliamentary session beginning on Tuesday Ms Fyles’s government will legislate to reinstate the ban on alcohol sales.

This time communities can opt out of prohibition, although state officials must approve. Yet many Aboriginals are among the greatest supporters of restrictions⁠ on sales of booze—on the grounds that their communities are the biggest victims of the consequences of alcohol abuse.

“A Doll’s House”, by Henrik Ibsen, had its debut in Denmark in 1879. But the play still has something to say about the ordinary corrosiveness of marriage. The plot sounds like a cliché: a seemingly meek housewife grows disillusioned with her husband’s condescending and controlling ways. Yet it patiently and convincingly builds up to its climax in a way that continues to feel fresh. Is there a moment in theatre more renowned than Nora slamming that door?

Given its timeless themes, “A Doll’s House” is usually on some stage somewhere. This week a new Broadway adaptation starts at the Hudson Theatre in New York. Directed by Jamie Lloyd and starring Jessica Chastain, who won a best actress Oscar in 2022, the production, which is being billed as “radical”, has a script by Amy Herzog, an off-Broadway darling known for her insightful plays. The question is whether this “thrilling reinvention” sharpens the contemporary resonances of Ibsen’s classic—or dulls them by making the parallels too obvious.

Across the disaster zone hundreds of bodies are being pulled from the rubble every hour. Increasingly few are found alive. The death toll from the earthquakes that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6th has already exceeded 21,500 people, with more than 16,000 killed in Turkey alone. Rescue efforts are ongoing and aid is flooding in.

Even so, tens of thousands of people probably remain buried. At least 6,000 buildings in Turkey were destroyed; countless more are barely standing. Turkey’s shoddy building standards, often a product of corruption, have compounded the suffering. Even scores of new structures, supposedly quake-proof, have folded like houses of cards. Since a disaster in 1999 Turkey has collected an earthquake tax to fund disaster prevention and relief. Critics say the money was spent elsewhere. The priority now is surviving. Once the dust settles President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government will have hard questions to answer.

Alphabet is learning how much damage a chatbot can do. On Wednesday Bard, an artificially intelligent program developed by Google’s parent company, failed to impress investors and presented a factual error in an advert. The blunder was compounded by comparisons with Microsoft, which on Tuesday showed off how its search engine, Bing, and browser, Edge, would be enhanced by AI. Microsoft is using models developed by OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, an eerily perceptive chatbot.

Alphabet’s market value has since lost $170bn. The rout has less to do with Google’s gaffe than with the impression that Microsoft has stolen a march on its rival. (Google is yet to demonstrate how exactly Bard will integrate with search.) More competition and the use of expensive chatbots in search will mean lower profit margins, which will be especially painful for Google. Markets will watch closely to see how much users like the improved Bing, and how Google responds.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, will visit President Joe Biden in Washington on Friday. Lula’s objectives are to discuss the climate crisis and how to strengthen democracies, as well as Brazil’s role in the “new geopolitics”. To that end Lula is planning to make one international excursion a month, including to China after March.

Brazilian diplomacy typically favours neutrality; in the past, Lula has too. During his first two terms as president—from 2003 to 2010—he managed to maintain strong ties with America and China. The latter now buys nearly a quarter of Brazil’s exports.

In his inauguration speech on January 1st, Lula promised to again “have relations with everybody”. But Brazil, and the world, have changed since he was last in office. The relationship between America and China is more tense, and Lula’s reluctance to support Ukraine has caused friction with Western leaders. His noncommittal stance may not work as well this time.

China has mostly dodged the inflation roiling the rest of the world. Its zero-covid regime restricted movement and took a heavy toll on Chinese morale. That suppressed consumer spending more effectively, ultimately, than it did infection. But now that China has abandoned lockdowns and quarantines, its consumers are shopping, dining and movie-going again. There is much talk of “revenge spending”. Will China also suffer from “revenge inflation”?

Figures released on Friday showed that inflation increased in January, but not by much. Consumer prices rose by 2.1% compared with a year earlier, up from 1.8% in December. Food prices should soften later in 2023 as China’s pork cycle turns. The ongoing property slump will keep rents subdued. And the economic slowdown elsewhere—partly engineered by central banks to stop inflation—could keep a lid on the price of commodities. The rest of the world fighting inflation so earnestly means that China might not have to.

The “Vermeer” exhibition that opens in Amsterdam on Friday is an extravaganza. The Rijksmuseum is showing 28 paintings by Johannes Vermeer, the most ever assembled in one place. They represent around three-quarters of his surviving works. (One was stolen in Boston in 1990 and hasn’t been seen since.) The pieces have been gathered from seven countries, despite the typical reluctance of institutions to loan out such paintings.

The Rijksmuseum has sold more advanced tickets for “Vermeer” than for any previous show. It is easy to see why. The exhibition traces the development of the artist’s technique, the leap he made to depict interiors, and the way he honed his mastery of perspective, colour and (above all) light. Vermeer died penniless in 1675, aged just 43, but today he is an artistic deity. For fans of “The Milkmaid” and “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, this show is a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.