Before Tortoise, Will Brown worked as the Telegraph’s Africa Bureau Chief in Nairobi, the Economist’s West Africa Correspondent in Dakar and a freelance journalist in New Delhi. In 2020, he won Young Journalist of the Year at the Press Awards for his work on conflicts in the Sahel, Ethiopia and DR Congo. In 2021, he was awarded “Outstanding Investigative Reporting” by the Fetisov Journalism Awards for a series of articles exposing how hundreds of African migrants had been chained, starved or left to die in Saudi Arabia’s covid detention centres. He is also a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.
Will Brown
Senior Reporter

“To make ends meet in the digital age, many media outlets are turning to sensationalised clickbait and comment articles designed to outrage and polarise. Tortoise is breaking through that noise, offering rigorous, quality reporting that takes a story the extra mile.”
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Tuesday 26 September 2023
Why France’s exit from Niger could spark a uranium rush
A seismic power shift is underway in the Sahara, as France retreats out of a region it has dominated for over a century and Niger’s coup raises questions about Europe’s energy supplies.
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Monday 25 September 2023
Macron retreats from Niger
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Friday 22 September 2023
A Small, Stubborn Town
by Andrew Harding
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Wednesday 20 September 2023
Trudeau accuses India of involvement in the killing of a Canadian citizen. How will the US and Britain respond?
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Tuesday 19 September 2023
Turkish construction company that said it rehabilitated Libya’s Derna dam may not exist
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Tuesday 19 September 2023
YouTube suspends Brand
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Monday 18 September 2023
Lampedusa crisis
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Friday 15 September 2023
France orders Apple to stop iPhone 12 sales
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Friday 15 September 2023
Russia jet fired missile at RAF plane
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Wednesday 13 September 2023
Kim and Putin buddy up against the West
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Tuesday 12 September 2023
Governments and businesses beat a path to Riyadh
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Monday 11 September 2023
Tory parliamentary adviser arrested on suspicion of spying for China
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Thursday 7 September 2023
The Ukrainians rooting for Russia
Ukraine’s summer offensive has been dogged by casualties. Russia’s resilience may have been aided by sympathisers on the frontline – as Will Brown discovered when he visited earlier this year
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Wednesday 6 September 2023
Challenging 2
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Tuesday 5 September 2023
Antsy killer whales
Why are orcas biting rudders?
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Monday 4 September 2023
Martha’s rule: family call for right to second medical opinion
The parents of Martha Mills are calling for a new rule after an inquest determined the teenager would likely have survived had doctors heeded the family’s concerns
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Monday 21 August 2023
Assad’s survival in Syria can be traced back to one morning in August 2013
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Thursday 17 August 2023
Stolen treasures
Staff member investigated over stolen items from British Museum
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Wednesday 16 August 2023
Baerbock debacle
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Monday 14 August 2023
Nigeria is not ready to rescue Niger’s president
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Friday 11 August 2023
Former PM calls for Taliban prosecution
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Wednesday 9 August 2023
South America pledges to save the Amazon
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Thursday 3 August 2023
Smart loos a gogo
Japan designed them. China loves them
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Thursday 3 August 2023
Less Amazon logging
Minister claims 60 per cent improvement on last year
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Wednesday 2 August 2023
Gathering storm
EU citizens evacuated from Niger
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Tuesday 1 August 2023
Niger’s coup is the ninth in three years in West Africa
It marks a new low for democracy in a region where decades of French influence is now increasingly resented
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Friday 28 July 2023
Putin’s few friends
Only 17 African leaders turned up to St Petersburg summit
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Thursday 27 July 2023
Quick sand
Niger soldiers declare coup
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Tuesday 25 July 2023
Expensive wind
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Tuesday 25 July 2023
Who watches AI
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Monday 24 July 2023
How one of the world’s most wanted men was run to ground
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Wednesday 19 July 2023
Coup no more
The Wagner Group is back in action in Africa
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Wednesday 19 July 2023
Breaking into prison
US soldier detained in North Korea
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Wednesday 19 July 2023
UK inflation falls
A sigh of relief but not the end
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Tuesday 18 July 2023
Tunisia’s deal
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Tuesday 18 July 2023
Military e-bikes
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Monday 17 July 2023
N-Law man take a bow
Ben Wallace steps down
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Monday 17 July 2023
Typo leaks
US military emails sent to Mali after typo
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Monday 17 July 2023
Timid dragon
China’s economy loses momentum
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Thursday 13 July 2023
Turkey’s President Erdoğan is the real winner of the Nato summit
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Friday 7 July 2023
Ukraine cluster munitions
America will reportedly send cluster munitions to Ukraine
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Friday 7 July 2023
Good cop
Janet Yellen lands in China
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Wednesday 21 June 2023
The last great hope of the Arab Spring has dissolved into a paroxysm of violence
In two months the last great hope of the Arab Spring has dissolved into a paroxysm of violence spreading to its neighbours and reviving memories of genocide.
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Monday 19 June 2023
Uganda attack
Uganda school suffers one of the country’s deadliest terrorist attacks
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Wednesday 14 June 2023
The United Nations has cut its annual aid budget plan for Afghanistan by a third
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Wednesday 31 May 2023
Great British Design
Dyson offers pure air at a price
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Tuesday 30 May 2023
Forgotten victims
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Friday 26 May 2023
Rwanda genocide arrest
Fulgence Kayishema has been run to ground
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Friday 26 May 2023
Summiting Everest
Two Sherpas compete for the most climbs
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Thursday 25 May 2023
Boris at Chequers
The country retreat is haunting Johnson’s political rehab
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Wednesday 24 May 2023
Liberia cocaine smugglers escape
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Tuesday 23 May 2023
Why Syria’s Assad was welcomed back to Arab summit
Syria’s dictator is being embraced by his neighbours after more than a decade of isolation. Why?
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Friday 19 May 2023
South Africa’s Russia crush
The US ambassador has accused South Africa of supplying arms to Russia. What game is Pretoria playing?
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Thursday 18 May 2023
Montana bans TikTok
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Tuesday 16 May 2023
UN betrays women in Afghanistan
Afghan women working for the UN in Kabul say they have been betrayed by the organisation’s failure to protect them from the Taliban’s gender apartheid. Also in today’s Sensemaker: why an opposition win in Thailand isn’t quite a win.
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Tuesday 16 May 2023
South African aligned
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Thursday 11 May 2023
Sprung offensive?
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Wednesday 10 May 2023
Cobalt jugular
The US and China are jostling for control of a strategic highway through Zambia on which the transition to EVs depends.
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Wednesday 10 May 2023
Imran inside
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Tuesday 9 May 2023
I spy
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Friday 5 May 2023
UN caves to Taliban in Kabul
A de facto ban on women in the UN’s Afghanistan offices is now in force
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Thursday 4 May 2023
Moscow escalator
What just happened
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Tuesday 25 April 2023
India’s dying democracy
What just happened
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Wednesday 19 April 2023
The tragedy of Sudan
What just happened
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Thursday 13 April 2023
Intelligence blared
What just happened
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Thursday 6 April 2023
The coming war?
What just happened
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Tuesday 4 April 2023
Sensemaker: Chained to a dictator
What just happened
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Monday 20 March 2023
Sensemaker: Moscow rules
What just happened
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Thursday 2 March 2023
Sensemaker: Nigerian crossroads
What just happened
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Thursday 27 October 2022
Sensemaker: Scramble 2.0
What just happened
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Monday 25 September 2023
A murder in Surrey
Why India and Canada are lashing out at each other
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Monday 18 September 2023
Kim Jong-un on the Siberian express
Why the North Korean leader went to meet Vladamir Putin in Siberia.
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Tuesday 29 August 2023
Putin v Prigozhin: A story of mutiny and death
In late June, Yevgeny Prigozhin marched on Moscow with a small army of mercenaries. Exactly two months later, he was dead. This is the story of what really happened on the road to Moscow
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Monday 14 August 2023
What do you do when somebody is dying at the top of a mountain?
Plus: what’s happening in Niger and why King Charles is getting a pay rise
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Tuesday 8 August 2023
Niger’s coup
A deadline to reinstate the democratically-elected president has passed. What does the military takeover mean for the region?
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Monday 31 July 2023
Why should you care about a coup in Niger and what is carbon capture?
Liz Moseley and the team discuss Rishi Sunak’s new carbon capture scheme in the North Sea, the coup in Niger and the death of Rianna Cleary’s baby in prison.
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Monday 24 July 2023
Genocide hunters: on the trail of a mass murderer
How one of the most wanted men on earth was caught after three decades on the run
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Monday 10 July 2023
BBC presenter suspended, NHS & big pharma, and cluster bombs
Before founding Tortoise James Harding was head of BBC News. In this episode he’s joined by journalists Liz Moseley, Will Brown and Ceri Thomas, a former editor of Radio 4’s Today programme, to discuss the scandal surrounding a BBC presenter and what it means for the corporation. They also cover the US government’s decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine, and the links between the NHS and big pharma.
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Wednesday 31 May 2023
Captagon: Syria’s drug trade
The illegal narcotics business shaping diplomacy in the Middle East
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Friday 19 May 2023
The United Nations in Afghanistan
Why the UN is under fire from some of its own staff in Afghanistan for its treatment of women staff.
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Friday 14 April 2023
Pentagon leaks, China’s war games and sewage dumping
Journalist and broadcaster Rachel Johnson is joined by Tortoise reporter Will Brown, climate editor Jeevan Vasagar and producer Katie Gunning. In this episode they discuss the leak of classified US intelligence documents, Chinese military exercises around Taiwan and the report which revealed that sewage was dumped in UK waters for almost a million hours last year.
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Monday 3 April 2023
No questions asked: A convenient death in Rwanda
John Williams Ntwali, one of the last critical journalists in Rwanda, died in suspicious circumstances just before Suella Braverman, the British home secretary, flew in to Kigali to sell the country as a “safe” place to send asylum seekers and migrants
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Monday 20 March 2023
Detained in Modi’s India: A British citizen’s story
For five years a British citizen has been locked up in an Indian prison, and the British state hasn’t been willing – or not strong enough – to stand up for him
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Monday 20 February 2023
Wagner’s war: A year in Ukraine and beyond
First they were known as the “little green men”, an anonymous private Russian force appearing first in Crimea, then Syria, then in central Africa. Now, they are on the frontline of Putin’s war in Ukraine. Just how powerful is the Wagner Group and their increasingly vocal founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin?