Vol 53 No 4 |
- SIERRA LEONE
President Koroma falls out with a top diplomat over allegations of political interference
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon closed the door on a bitter dispute with the government of President Ernest Bai Koroma by recalling his Executive Representative for the...
Brazilian mining conglomerate Vale is keeping its operations under close review, after threatening to sell its investments in Guinea last month. After tough talks with its minority partner and President Alpha Condé’s government, Vale has for now pulled back from the brink. Yet it still has grave misgivings about the terms and conditions of a project in which it may have to invest as much as US$10 billion for a stake in one of the world’s richest iron-ore mines.
The financial firm JP Morgan estimates that Simandou’s Vale-controlled blocks can produce 50 mn. tonnes of ore annually by 2020. That compares favourably with the output of...
Hard choices confront President Alpha Condé as he comes under pressure to set a date for parliamentary elections this year. Polling was postponed from November 2011, after Condé...
Ministers have lost their jobs, the President’s anti-corruption halo is tarnished and the scandals are running out of control
The deepening row over Alfred Agbesi Woyome’s financing of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) is a nightmare for President John Atta Mills’s re-election campaign. The scandal has...
The Woyome scandal has so far claimed two cabinet ministers. The Education Minister and former Attorney General, Betty Mould-Iddrisu, resigned on 23 January, after her successor as AG,...
Mali has rapidly moved from peaceful political campaigning to bloody military confrontation and inter-communal strife
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...
Although the President has consolidated his power, there is no let up in pressure on the media
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...