The last time we put Sudan on the cover was 20 years ago. I remember it vividly because I wrote the cover leader, having spent a fair amount of time chatting to dissidents in Khartoum and enduring finger-wagging lectures from government ministers who insisted that there was positively, definitely no campaign of mass rape and murder against black Africans in Darfur. Today the situation is even worse. The country is imploding, as two unscrupulous warlords battle for control. The Khartoum neighbourhoods where I once sipped hibiscus tea are charred ruins. More than 10m people have fled from their homes and a famine looms that could be worse than anything the world has seen since the 1980s.

Getting into Sudan today is dangerous, but one of our correspondents, Tom Gardner, filed a harrowing dispatch from the east of the country that forms part of our briefing. He also recorded a moving episode of the Weekend Intelligence podcast. Other writers analysed the geopolitical shockwaves emanating from Sudan, in a report and a leader. Our data team used tools unimaginable two decades ago to track atrocities on the ground. Our video team assembled terrifying footage, and 1843, our sister publication, looked at instability in neighbouring Somaliland.

If you subscribe to The Economist and want all of our coverage of Africa in one place, with some exclusive analysis thrown in, sign up to Analysing Africa, our weekly newsletter.