Welcome to the latest edition of WSJ Pro Emerging & Growth Markets, our weekly review of key news affecting frontier and small emerging markets.

This newsletter is a companion to Strategic Intelligence, an information resource focused on emerging markets that brings together the global news coverage of The Wall Street Journal with the analysis of market intelligence firm FrontierView.

After a year marked by unexpected disruptions to the global economy—and to people’s lives across the world—investors and companies will be hoping 2021 will provide a return to stability. On November 19th at 10 am EDT, I'll be hosting a free webinar in which I will discuss the prospects for the coming year with FrontierView’s Martina Bozadzhieva and Ryan Connelly.

To sign up, please click here.

Ivory Coast’s president wins third term, sparking violence fears. Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara won a controversial third term in office this week following an election that was boycotted by the opposition and harshly criticized by Western observers, Gabriele Steinhauser reports. Mr. Ouattara, a former IMF official who turned the world’s largest cocoa producer into one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies, won 94% of the vote in Saturday’s election, the country’s electoral commission said on Tuesday.

Even before the full results were presented, opposition parties had declared the vote illegal, citing a two-term constitutional limit for presidents, and said they would set up their own transitional government.

More than 40 people died in the lead-up to the election, while many more were injured, observers from the U.S.-based Carter Center and the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa said. On Tuesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said 3,200 Ivorians had fled into neighboring Liberia, Ghana and Togo in anticipation of more violence.

Instability grows as Ethiopia deploys military to restive Tigray region. Ethiopia’s prime minister deployed the military to the northern Tigray region, escalating long simmering tensions with one of the country’s most powerful ethnic groups into a confrontation that could reverberate across the strategically important Horn of Africa region, Gabriele Steinhauser writes.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front of trying to steal artillery and military equipment from a base in the region, which is wedged against Ethiopia’s border with Eritrea. The government declared a six-month state of emergency in Tigray and internet access monitor NetBlocks reported that the internet had been shut down in the region and telecommunications appeared to be closed off.

“The last red line has been crossed with this morning’s military attacks and the federal government is therefore forced into military action,” Mr. Ahmed said.

Strains between the government and the Tigrayan ethnic group, whose members constitute around 6% of Ethiopia’s 110 million people but have long dominated politics and business, have grown since Mr. Ahmed’s came to power in 2018. Senior Tigrayan officials and businessmen have been dismissed or detained in moves Mr. Ahmed said were a crackdown on corruption, but which many Tigrayans viewed as an attempt to silence and disempower them.

Pakistan to strengthen its control over a disputed part of Kashmir. Pakistan announced plans to formally integrate part of the territory it controls in the disputed region of Kashmir, in a move China has been requesting but has upset India, which claims the territory, Saeed Shah reports. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said that making the area part of Pakistan has long been a demand of the people there.

The two countries have fought two major wars over Kashmir, as well as smaller conflicts. Both claim the whole of Kashmir.

Azerbaijan sets back peace efforts with gains in conflict with Armenia. Advances on the battlefield by Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh this week shattered hopes for an end to the fighting and the forging of a diplomatic settlement, Ann M. Simmons reports. On Friday, Azeri rockets and artillery shells hit Nagorno-Karabakh’s regional capital of Stepanakert, killing three people, local authorities said, and Azeri forces were fast closing in on Shusha, the enclave’s second-largest town less than 10 miles away.

Several other nearby Armenian settlements had already fallen to Azerbaijan and communications between Armenian military units and their command had severed in some places, according to Azeri military officials.

Both sides have traded blame for the current outbreak of hostilities and each accuse the other of attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and schools. Roads, electricity and gas and communication networks have been damaged across the region, officials from both countries say, though both deny targeting civilians.

Lebanese flee an imploding economy. A new exodus is underway from Lebanon as multiple crises, compounded by the massive explosion at the Beirut port in August, have plunged the middle class into poverty and the poor into destitution, Isabel Coles and Nazih Osseiran report. Lebanese have long moved abroad in times of crisis, sending home billions in remittances that helped keep this tiny Mediterranean country afloat.

While some Lebanese, such as those with dual nationality or money abroad, are able to move legitimately, for others it is more of a struggle. The agency responsible for securing Lebanon’s borders recently uncovered, for example, a network at Beirut’s airport that was smuggling people to Spain. The most desperate are piling into boats bound for Cyprus—a perilous voyage by sea that until this year was a last resort for refugees fleeing war in neighboring Syria.

Kosovo president resigns amid war-crimes charges. Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci resigned on Thursday and was transferred to The Hague after being indicted over war-crimes charges by an international tribunal, Laurence Norman writes.

Mr. Thaci, a veteran power broker in the Balkans who has held top Kosovo posts for years, said he would go to The Hague to fight a range of war-crimes charges that include murder, enforced disappearance of persons, persecution and torture, dating back to the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. “I don’t want to face the court as the president. In order to protect the integrity of the state. Therefore, I resign,” Mr. Thaci said.

The tribunal late on Thursday confirmed that Mr. Thaci, Kadri Veseli, former speaker of Kosovo’s parliament, and two others had been arrested and taken to the court’s detention centers in the Netherlands on Wednesday and Thursday.

Argentina’s president struggles to avert economic crash. When Argentine President Alberto Fernández was elected last year, many hoped he could lift the country out of a painful economic recession. But today, the economy is facing a growing crisis, as he struggles to come up with an economic plan while managing a fractious Peronist coalition, Ryan Dube reports.

The lack of a clear governing plan has dogged Mr. Fernández from the beginning, as he has grappled with the various Peronist factions, which were bitterly divided during Mrs. Kirchner’s time in office. Now investors are questioning Mr. Fernández’s ability to avoid a full-blown financial crash in South America’s second biggest economy.

Tropical depression Eta brings devastation to Central America. Heavy rains from Tropical Depression Eta brought death and devastation to Central America, with Honduras ordering the evacuation of a major valley and Guatemala reporting the deaths of more than 50 people, Anthony Harrup and Juan Montes write. Eta, which made landfall Tuesday in Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane, has left nearly 400,000 people in Honduras without shelter, clean water or food, authorities and humanitarian groups estimate.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said a mudslide in the village of Quejá, in central Guatemala, buried around 25 houses—or half the village—with at least 50 people inside. In Honduras, where there were at least 11 deaths, the government ordered the evacuation of the flooded Sula Valley, one of the country’s economic engines near the Caribbean coast, with cities including San Pedro Sula and the port of Puerto Cortés.

Eta left significant damage and at least two people dead in Nicaragua. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Eta had moved into the Caribbean and was expected to strengthen over the water into a tropical storm and approach Cuba by Sunday.

Bets on Democratic sweep boosted emerging-market currencies. Investors betting on an overwhelming Democratic victory in this week’s U.S. elections have been giving a boost to the values of many emerging markets’ currencies, Joe Wallace reports. While the so-called Blue Wave never materialized, Mexico’s peso strengthened 3.8% in October and hit 20.87 pesos a dollar last week, its strongest level in more than seven months. South Africa’s rand climbed 2.7% against the U.S. currency, its biggest monthly advance since May. South Korea’s won gained 3.1% in its best performance since June 2019.

Money managers were wagering that an acceleration of growth in the U.S. would be a boon for emerging markets that rely on overseas demand for goods, services and raw materials. Wall Street viewed a Democratic sweep—where the party wins the White House and control of Congress—as the clearest path to more economic stimulus.

The rally in emerging-market currencies signals an easing of the crisis that struck in the spring, when trade, tourism and commodity prices collapsed. An exodus by overseas investors drove down currencies and pushed up borrowing costs. Investors have since cautiously returned, pushing $94.1 billion into emerging-market assets from June through October, according to data from the Institute of International Finance.

Zimbabwe first lady rejects alleged link to gold smuggling. (Barron’s) 

Talks between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over disputed dam hit impasse. (AP)  

Drought threatens Morocco’s agriculture. (North Africa Journal) 

HSBC executes Bangladesh’s first cross-border blockchain letter of credit. (Bangladesh Star) 

Facebook’s Whatsapp gets green light to expand mobile payments in India. (WSJ) 

Vietnam braces for arrival of ‘strongest typhoon in history.’ (SCMP) 

Myanmar’s election marks a step away from peace. (The Diplomat) 

Saudi Aramco sticks by $18.75 billion dividend, despite sharp fall in profit. (WSJ)

Saudi Arabia to remove key restrictions on migrant laborers. (AP) 

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to invest $1.3 billion in Reliance Retail. (WSJ) 

U.S. sanctions Lebanese politician Gebran Bassil on corruption allegations. (WSJ) 

European unity is tested by threats from Russia and Turkey. (WSJ) 

Production plants continue working after nationwide testing in Slovakia. (Slovak Spectator) 

I covered Covid-19’s surge in Peru. Then death came to my own family. (WSJ) 

In rural Colombia, narcotics gangs step into power vacuum left by peace deal. (WSJ)

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s son faces graft charges. (WSJ)  

Pentagon draw-down at U.S. embassies prompts concern about ceding field to global rivals. (WSJ)