AP Photo

On a cloudy Sunday morning this September, a gaggle of reporters and photographers walked past a large, stuffed lion to sit amid a collection of bone china and assorted curios in a waiting room of the Presidential Palace in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. Somewhere in the vast palace, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, was in conversation with Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, discussing, no doubt, the imminent presidential summit with Salva Kiir Mayardit, the leader of South Sudan.