THE WORLD IS ON FIRE, AND GHANA MUST WAKE UP: A New Week , A New World

There is a saying my grandmother used to whisper to me on quiet Accra evenings: "when the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers." As we step into a new working week — as bankers resume their desks in Kumasi, students return to lecture halls at Accra Technical University, and market women reopen their stalls at Makola — the elephants of this world are fighting harder than they have in years. From the Red Sea to New Delhi, from the red carpets of Venice to the eerie corners of TikTok, this week has delivered news that should concern every African reading this from their phone on a trotro this Monday morning.

Let me break it down, honestly and without sugarcoating.

1. YEMEN IS BURNING AGAIN — AND THE WORLD SHOULD BE WORRIED

For years, Yemen sat in a fragile, uneasy quiet — a 2022 UN-brokered truce that halted, but never truly ended, one of the cruelest wars of our generation. That quiet has now collapsed. Al Jazeera reports that fighting between Yemen's internationally recognised, Saudi-backed government and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement has escalated into the worst violence since 2022, when a United Nations-brokered truce halted eight years of a war that had killed tens of thousands of people. Government forces have launched counter-offensives aimed at retaking territory near the capital Sanaa, with fighting intensifying in the provinces of Taiz, al-Bayda and al-Jawf — al-Jawf being described as the main gateway to the Houthi-held capital.

The numbers are sobering. Independent monitors reported that Houthi forces took control of the Yemeni port city of Mokha, roughly fifty miles north of the Bab al-Mandeb strait, one of the most strategically vital shipping chokepoints on Earth. Days later, Houthi forces struck the southern Saudi cities of Abha, Jazan, Khamis Mushait, and Najran, wounding at least seventy-three people and forcing a temporary halt to operations at several energy facilities. According to the UN's migration agency, cited by Al Jazeera, more than 82,000 people have now been forced from their homes due to the fighting since the beginning of September alone.

Why should a Ghanaian care? Because the Bab al-Mandeb strait is one of the arteries through which global oil and shipping flows. Any disruption there ripples straight into fuel prices at our own filling stations, into the price of imported rice and cooking oil, into the cedi's stability. Al Jazeera's own analysis warns that Houthi advances toward the strait give the group unprecedented leverage over one of the world's most important maritime corridors — and that this is not a peripheral development but a genuine shift in the region's strategic balance.

The UN's Special Envoy for Yemen did not mince words either, warning that the country faces its greatest risk of full-scale war since the 2022 truce, with attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden threatening to draw the whole region into deeper confrontation. This is not a distant Middle Eastern squabble. It is a warning shot for a world still recovering from pandemic-era shocks and cost-of-living crises. Africa, and Ghana in particular, must diversify its trade routes, its energy sources, and its diplomatic alliances — because when the Red Sea trembles, Tema Harbour eventually feels it too.

2. BRICS SPEAKS — AND THE GLOBAL SOUTH LISTENS

While bombs fell in Yemen, diplomats gathered under a very different kind of tension in New Delhi. The 18th BRICS Summit produced the "New Delhi Declaration," unanimously adopted by all eleven member states despite what Al Jazeera describes as real divisions among members over the wars in Iran and Ukraine. The declaration called for restraint in the Middle East but avoided condemning the US-Israeli strikes or Iran's targeting of Gulf countries in the region — a diplomatic tightrope walk that pleased almost no one entirely, yet held the bloc together.

On trade, the bloc was firmer. Leaders expressed "firm opposition" to the forced displacement of Palestinians by Israel and stressed the need to protect the smooth flow of global trade, supply chains and energy amid what Al Jazeera notes was criticism of the global trade war without naming the United States directly. On Ukraine, the declaration stuck to a careful, generic call for disputes to be resolved through dialogue rather than confrontation, sidestepping direct mention of Russia's war.

Here is why this matters for us: BRICS increasingly styles itself as the voice of the Global South — and Ghana, alongside much of Africa, watches from the outside with growing interest in what this reordering of global power could mean for trade, for de-dollarisation efforts, and for a fairer seat at the table of institutions like the UN Security Council and the WTO. As Prime Minister Modi noted in his remarks, the summit's underlying message was that the changing world "cannot be steered by outdated institutions." Whether one trusts BRICS's motives or not, that particular sentence should resonate deeply in Accra, Lagos, and Nairobi alike. Africa cannot afford to be a spectator in this contest between competing blocs — we must negotiate our seat, not wait to be handed one.

3. VENICE GLITTERS, CINEMA SPEAKS TRUTH TO POWER

Now to something lighter — but no less important, because culture shapes how the world sees itself. The 83rd Venice International Film Festival closed its Lido red carpet this past weekend with Danish-Egyptian director May El-Toukhy's "Woman Unknown" taking home the coveted Golden Lion for Best Film. The jury, led by American actor-director Maggie Gyllenhaal, honoured a post-World War II psychological drama that El-Toukhy herself has described, in her acceptance remarks, as a story about women's bodies as a battlefield and about the invisible women history forgets to give a voice to.

Elsewhere on the Lido, Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize for "Possible Love," Russian filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky took Best Director for "Dau," and John Malkovich claimed Best Actor for "Wild Horse Nine." One of the festival's most talked-about moments came when Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor received the Special Jury Prize for their documentary "NAZA," which examines the role of Israeli military and intelligence in targeting Palestinians during the Gaza war — reportedly earning the longest standing ovation in the festival's recent history. Legends George Clooney and Ellen Burstyn were also honoured with Lifetime Achievement Golden Lions.

This matters beyond Hollywood gossip. Venice reminds us that cinema remains one of humanity's sharpest tools for confronting uncomfortable truths — war, gender, power, and memory. As African creatives, filmmakers, and storytellers (myself included, through Brownsy Silva Company), we must ask ourselves: are we telling our own stories with this same unflinching honesty, or are we simply consuming the world's narratives without writing our own chapter into world cinema?

4. THE "CAT IN THE HAT" IS NOT COMING FOR YOUR CHILDREN — BUT THE INTERNET'S DARK SIDE ALREADY HAS

Finally, let us talk about something strange, viral, and honestly a little unsettling: the "Cat in the Hat" trend that has gripped TikTok and terrified teenagers across the UK, Ireland, and North America in recent weeks. What began in June as a darkly comic edit of Mike Myers's 2003 film character dancing to an eerie soundtrack has mutated into a full-blown AI-generated horror phenomenon — fake sightings of a menacing, life-sized Cat in the Hat lurking outside schools and homes at night, often tagged with the names of real towns, real schools, and chilling captions like "see you soon."

Police forces in Ireland and the UK have had to publicly step in to confirm the sightings are fabricated. One Irish police spokesperson put it plainly, joking that they could confirm the character was "not currently hiding out" in local towns despite what social media claimed. But the trend has had real consequences — in British Columbia, Canada, an actual incident involving someone in a Cat in the Hat costume chasing a teenager has triggered a genuine police investigation, and school districts across multiple countries have issued safety warnings, urging students and parents not to trust unverified "sightings" and to report threatening content to authorities.

There is a lesson here that transcends the absurdity of a Dr. Seuss villain: artificial intelligence-generated content is now sophisticated enough to manufacture mass, cross-border panic among young people, and our institutions — schools, police, and parents — are still playing catch-up. Ghanaian parents, teachers, and policymakers should take note. The next viral AI hoax will not stay confined to TikTok trends in Europe and North America; it will find its way to our children's phones too, and we must build the digital literacy to meet it before it arrives.

THE VERDICT: A WORLD AT A CROSSROADS
Yemen bleeds while the Bab el-Mandeb strait becomes a bargaining chip. BRICS speaks carefully, trying to hold together eleven nations with competing interests while positioning the Global South as a rising force. Venice reminds us that stories still move the world. And a mischievous cartoon cat reveals just how fragile truth has become in the age of artificial intelligence.

As we begin this new week — workers heading back to offices, students returning to lecture halls, traders reopening their stalls — my appeal to you, reader, is simple: stay informed, stay skeptical of what you see online, and understand that Ghana and Africa are not bystanders in this unfolding global drama. We are stakeholders, whether we choose to act like it or not.

Until next week, stay woke, stay blessed, and let us build.

*— Chief Tutu Baffour Brownsy Williams, for Modern Ghana*

*Sources: Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, IndieWire, CTV News, Gulf News, Fox 5 DC, PM India, and UN monitoring reports.*