Vol 50 No 7 | NIGERIAECONOMY Homemade toxic assets 3rd April 2009 After some stellar years of expansion, the financial sector faces a deepening crisis The uncertainty about the future of Central Bank Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo reflects the drift in Nigeria’s policy over the past 18 months. Soludu, who was appointed in...
Vol 2 (AAC) No 5 | GHANAVIETNAM Victoria Kwakwa 27th March 2009 World Bank Country Director for Vietnam Ghanaian economist Victoria Kwakwa starts her job as World Bank Country Director for Vietnam in April. It is an important posting, given Vietnam's economic record over the past three...
Vol 50 No 6 | SIERRA LEONE Paying off grudges 20th March 2009 Riots and old resentments bring fighting back to Freetown The worst political violence to hit Sierra Leone since the 2007 election left dozens wounded this week, when supporters of the governing All People’s Congress and the opposition...
Vol 50 No 5 | BURKINA FASO A brutal family business 6th March 2009 President Blaise Compaoré is getting ready for his re-election in November next year, two decades after the murder of Thomas Sankara Western donors think well of Burkinabè President Blaise Compaoré. On 11 February, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the wife of the French President, made Ouagadougou her first port of call as...
Vol 50 No 5 | BURKINA FASO Waiting in the wings 6th March 2009 François Compaoré, the President's brother, and a lawyer named Sankara (but no relation) are just some of the applicants queuing for the top job P>After President Blaise Compaoré and Prime Minister Tertius Zongo, Burkina Faso's most senior politician is Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, National Assembly Speaker and Chairman of the National Executive...
Vol 50 No 5 | SIERRA LEONE See you in the court 6th March 2009 Some kind of justice has been done but the Special Court has not set a good precedent for international justice The Special Court for Sierra Leone completed its last trial on 25 February, convicting the three most senior leaders of the reviled Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of a...
Vol 50 No 5 | SIERRA LEONE Shake-up in Freetown 6th March 2009 President Ernest Bai Koroma has finally shaken up his government, before a vote to determine if he will continue to lead the All People's Congress (APC). In all,...
Vol 50 No 5 | NIGERIAUNITED STATESBRITAIN Tesler trapped 6th March 2009 Officers from Britain’s Serious Fraud Office arrested lawyer Jeffrey Tesler, 60, at his offices in Tottenham in London on 5 March in a move that will widen the...
Vol 50 No 5 | GUINEA BISSAU Mutually assured destruction 6th March 2009 The main threat to peace in Bissau is a coup d’état following the fatal bombing of the Army Chief of Staff, General Batista Tagme Na Waie, on 1...
Vol 50 No 4 | SIERRA LEONE Peace and the looming crisis 20th February 2009 The government in Freetown has to tackle growing financial pressures as it struggles to create jobs and to improve health and education services. Time is running out for the small group of reform-minded ministers around President Koroma, if they are not to lose the battle against the criminal and corrupt elements....