By the end of October Mali's national hero, General Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT), will almost certainly announce that he'll stand in next year's presidential election. ATT is said...

'There is no political crisis in Côte d'Ivoire,' President Laurent Gbagbo assured diplomats and politicians on 7 September. He was inaugurating the National Reconciliation Forum, which is meant...

With 34 years in power and reason to fear retirement, President Gnassingbé Eyadéma shows signs of joining the club of presidents seeking to hang on in power. Premier...

Guineans believe President Lansana Conté is also eager to join the 'third term' club. Territorial Administration Ministry officials are behind the 'spontaneous demonstrations' for a referendum on another...

General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida is once more at the centre of Nigerian politics. As he celebrated his 60th birthday in Saudi Arabia on 17 August, many northern Nigerians...

Nigerian advocates of Sharia – governance according to the norms, principles and rules laid down by Islamic law – face a reckoning this year. The poverty and frustration...

North-west Nigeria, with probably more than 30 million people, is the country's most populous zone - overwhelmingly Muslim, with significant numbers of Christians only in southern Kaduna and...

Eight months into his first term, the glister is coming off John Agyekum Kufuor's presidency. Glad-handing his New Patriotic Party government and demonising the outgoing National Democratic Congress...

Poisoned by Liberia's support for the rebel Revolutionary United Front, relations between President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah's government and President Charles Taylor face a new test. They are...

Two years before the next national elections, decision-making comes a poor second to political manoeuvring - and that threatens the few recent successes in reforming the mismanaged and...