Three weeks after the start of Côte d'Ivoire's armed uprising, its leaders have still not identified themselves. The rebel soldiers are overwhelmingly junior but someone clearly organised over...

On 2 October Nigeria banned imports of all textiles in a bid to revive its own ailing industry. It now depends on imports from Asia, some of them...

Côte d'Ivoire is in danger of fragmenting on ethnic lines as efforts to put down an army mutiny turn into an all-out assault on immigrants and on opponents...

With so many peace initiatives competing for the international community's scarce resources, Liberia's peace process needs to keep up its momentum, and President Charles Taylor's critics need to...

Iraq could yet rescue President Olusegun Obasanjo. The prospect of an United States invasion there is driving up the world price of oil, and oil contributes over 75...

Two weeks ago President Olusegun Obasanjo considered threats by the House of Representatives to impeach him if he didn't resign as 'a joke carried too far' by a...

West Africa in general - and Nigeria in particular - is suddenly gaining from a re-evaluation of global strategy in the United States following the 11 September 2001...

It was a 'boom' speech, so called because it suggests the guns will boom again and return him to power. Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings has form: he...

President Blaise Compaoré has a remarkable ability to cause tremendous trouble for his neighbours and still come up smelling of roses. Despite all his years of support for...

The Igbo people of south-east Nigeria took a terrible battering in the civil war of the 1960s, and the region's businesses were almost all destroyed. The recent achievements...