Bloomberg

When former U.S. president Bill Clinton visited Africa in 1998, he praised "a new generation of leaders" as champions of a dawning "African Renaissance". Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni was one of them: Two years before, he had been elected president after a decade as a military ruler. Museveni is again running for president — at the age of 71, after abolishing constitutional limits on presidential terms. He refers to the East African country’s oil reserves as his own, holds a public holiday to mark when he seized power in a coup 30 years ago, and is expected to easily win a fifth term in the February 18 elections.

Kenya police tightened security in the capital, Nairobi, on intelligence that suspected al-Shabaab militants are planning attacks on targets in the city including parliament, a spokesman for the legislature said. The action comes as the country’s main opposition party called for elections scheduled for 2017 to be brought forward because of deteriorating security and the government’s failure to address corruption.

El Salvador Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren is favored to win the presidency this weekend amid a spike in gang violence and investor concerns about the government’s embrace of Venezuela’s socialist government

The illegal marijuana trade provides Mexican organized crime with about $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year. That’s not chump change, but according to a number of estimates, it represents no more than a third of gross drug export revenue