Cartoons are mostly meant to illustrate and comment on the news you already know, but sometimes they inform you about a subject you did not hear about. We follow multiple sources of international news every day, but somehow we missed recent news about the Renaissance Dam until cartoonists from the MENA region stared sharing cartoons about it.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd), which has been in construction since 2011, is now filling up with water. Egypt is opposed to any development on the Nile upstream that could reduce the amount of water it receives from the river and has regarded the Ethiopian project as an existential threat.

The first cartoon that spiked our interest was this one by Emad Hajjaj, who portrays the dam a powerful geopolitical tool of force in the hands of Ethiopia:

Other cartoons take a similar stance, warning that the dam will give Ethiopia the power to control the amount of water flowing up the Nile, like this one by Derkaoui:

And in the end, it will be the common people that suffer, like farmers in Egypt that will suffer from a lack of water, illustrated here by Ahmad Rahma:

While most of probably visit our platform to see satire about the news you already know, do take the time to check out the cartoons you don't immediately understand, because you might learn about issues you did not know about.

The latest cartoonist to join us is Yassin Alkhalil from Syria. His work has been published in may newspapers throughout the Middle East.

Image by Osama Hajjaj

We are back from our summer break with renewed energy to bring you cartoons, comics journalism and more! Check out our latest newsletter (and if you like it, subscribe!) where we introduce new cartoonists, share the latest news and last month's most popular cartoons.

Image by Tjeerd Royaards

We will be taking a summer break for the next two weeks. We will not publish new cartoons on our homepage during this period and our social media channels will be more quiet. Don't worry though, we'll be back at the end of the month with our daily cartoon. In the meantime, if you're going on holiday, have a great time and stay safe!

Nahid Zamani is a freelance cartoonist and illustrator from Iran, active since 2010. She has won several awards for her cartoons. Check out her Instagram to see more of her work.

Tune in tonight at 6PM CET for another episode of Satire Talks Live. Social media manager Emanuele Del Rosso hosts a live chat on our Instagram channel every two weeks, talking to different cartoonists around the globe. The talks focus on satire, censorship, copyright and other issues that pertain to political cartoons. Tonight he talks to Paulo Jorge Fernandes, Auxiliar Professor at NOVA FCSH doing academic research on satire and editorial cartoons.

We are happy to welcome Ricardo Ferreira, another cartoonist from Portugal, to our network. In addition to being a freelance cartoonist, Ricardo is also an art teacher.

One of the projects we're currently working on is a series of comics on public authority in Africa, commissioned by the Africa Centre of the London School of Economics. The comics are based on field research in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sierra Leone and South Sudan. We are currently in the storyboarding phase, where the artists have made rough drafts of the story to get a feel for the story flow and the visuals.

We try to make the comics as authentic as possible, working close with the researchers (who know the subject matter intimately), using a lot of reference photographs, and trying to incorporate as much of actual dialogue from the field research as we can. Although at first glance the topic of public authority can seem a bit dry, the stories we are trying to tell are fascinating.

One narrative is about vigilante justice in Uganda. A village is plagued by crime and has no funds to set up a police presence; the local council enlist a group of youths to patrol the streets and things go downhill from there...

Storyboard fragment of 'Vigilantes: security or insecurity?' - Story by Rebecca Tapscott, art by Victor Ndula

Another narrative takes place in Palabek Refugee Settlement, also in Uganda. Here, a woman is accused of witchcraft. The authorities in the camp fail to take adequate action; violence ensues as the community feels they have to take matters into their own hands.

Storyboard fragment of 'A poisoning in Palabek' - Story by Ryan Joseph O'Byrne, art by Charity Atukunda

Other narratives that are currently worked on deal with the formal and informal economy in Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis and the precarious situation of people living next to Virunga National Park in DRC. The full series will be six comics of eight pages each, which will be published on Cartoon Movement later this year and early next year.