Battle-hardened fighters of the Mouvement national pour la libération de l’Azawad – equipped with heavy weapons they brought back from Libya – are confronting the Malian army in...

Attacks by the Mouvement national pour la libération de l’Azawad (MNLA) have been not only fierce but well planned. The late January assault on Ménaka, in the far...

The announcement by United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on 9 February that Gambia’s putschist President Yahya Jammeh had requested UN assistance in the case of...

After looking distinctly lacklustre in recent weeks, President Abdoulaye Wade’s prospects for re-election have brightened considerably while the opposition looks divided and riot police keep the streets on...

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is taking action on her green credentials after featuring in a New York Times piece headlined ‘A Nobel Laureate’s Problem at Home’. The op-ed accused...

A bruising election year in Ghana kicked off with President John Atta Mills’s 9 January announcement of the death of South Korean company STX Corporation’s US$10 billion housing...

President Alassane Dramane Ouattara is trying to move the economy away from an over-reliance on agriculture, which accounts for 40% of gross domestic product, and into mining and...

Mines, Petroleum and Energy Minister Adama Toungara has the President’s ear, so he is likely to keep his position in the cabinet reshuffle many believe to be imminent.

Since the killing of more than 185 people in Kano on 20 January, southern Nigerian politicians have been railing at Northern and Muslim leaders for their failure to...

Boko Haram has a supreme leader and a consultative body, the Shura. The leader, Abubakar Shekau, was second-in-command until Mohammed Yusuf was killed in police custody in July...