Vol 56 No 9 | SUDAN The President’s new clothes 1st May 2015 With an official turnout of less than half of the registered voters in the 13-16 April elections, President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir consoled himself with a dictator-level...
Vol 56 No 9 | BURUNDI Pierre nears the precipice 1st May 2015 Now that the ruling party has backed the President’s bid for a third term, hopes for a peaceful election are fading fast The latest attempt by a two-term president to flout the constitution and stay in power got formally under way on 25 April. The congress of the ruling party,...
Vol 56 No 9 | TANZANIA LNG plant held up 1st May 2015 The immediate future of the liquefied natural gas project may rest with one of Africa's richest people, Tanzanian businessman Mohammed Gulam Dewji, whose fortune is estimated at over...
Vol 56 No 10 | SOUTH SUDAN The other crisis 1st May 2015 As government funds dry up and talks with the World Bank break down, Juba is seeking increasingly risky loans The government in Juba is trying to make do with virtually no income. The fall in the world price of oil, the government's main source of income, has...
Vol 56 No 8 | KENYA Garissa security shambles 17th April 2015 The government failed to heed warnings of imminent attacks and reacted with ill-thought out measures In what is becoming a familiar pattern after terrorist attacks, the government’s response to the massacre at Garissa University College (GUC) on 2 April was unfocused and haphazard,...
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...