Vol 56 No 8 | ETHIOPIA Troubled road to liberalism 17th April 2015 The Prime Minister is set to come out of Meles’s shadow after the elections with greater emphasis on the free market. Not all are on board Come October, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn will almost certainly be re-elected as Chairman of the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front with only token, if any, opposition. Then...
Vol 56 No 8 | UGANDA Kampala murder mystery 17th April 2015 Police investigating the murder of the Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions, Joan Namazzi Kagezi, on 31 March by two men on a motorbike have rounded up dozens of...
Vol 56 No 8 | SUDAN A no vote election 17th April 2015 The pitiful turnout in the 13-16 April elections defeats the government's aim in organising them. The only queues which journalists and activists found to photograph were of police...
Vol 56 No 7 | UGANDA Spending for victory 3rd April 2015 A surge in voter-friendly spending accompanies the NRM’s election campaign and there is little the opposition can do to stop it Both public spending and borrowing have shot up over the past year as the governing National Resistance Movement gears up for next year's elections. Although the NRM faces...
Vol 56 No 7 | ETHIOPIA Easy on the landslide 3rd April 2015 The EPRDF wants a less crushing win in the elections in May. Meanwhile, it delicately manages the ethnic balance within the party Nobody, least of all members of the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front doubts that anything less than overwhelming victory awaits it at the end of the national...
Vol 56 No 7 | SUDAN Fresh doubts over polls 3rd April 2015 The government shuns its own National Dialogue policy, raising more questions about this month’s elections The ruling National Congress Party (NCP)'s refusal to attend a preparatory meeting with the opposition Sudan Call Forces in Addis Ababa on 29-30 March suggests it has dumped...
Vol 56 No 7 | SUDAN Positive deterrence 3rd April 2015 Labelled 'Top Secret', a National Congress Party document, '2015 Elections: An organisational perspective', leaked out late last year. The 28-page NCP strategy was dated January 2014 but appeared...
Vol 56 No 7 | EGYPTETHIOPIA Grand union on show 3rd April 2015 The new tripartite accord over the US$4.8 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam may not provide the resolution to arguments over the use of the Nile waters that the...
Vol 56 No 7 | SUDAN One-way ticket 31st March 2015 The government tries to distance itself from the radicalisation of seven British-Sudanese students at a private medical school in Khartoum The Islamist organisation in Khartoum which helped to radicalise seven British-Sudanese medical students who went to join the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria was disbanded days after...
Vol 56 No 6 | RWANDA No room at the top 20th March 2015 The ruling party is priming the public for a change in the law to allow President Paul Kagame a third term The campaign is now in full swing to amend the constitution to allow President Paul Kagame to stand for a third term. Pro-government media are running opinion pieces... READ FOR FREE