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CONFIDENTIALLY SPEAKING

The Africa Confidential Blog

Displaying 461-470 out of 497 results.

  • 27th July 2009

Nigeria in crisis… and the band played on

Patrick Smith

One of Nigeria’s biggest banks announced this morning that it wants to raise US$3 billion on the local stock market, my old friend Nduka Obaigbena has hosted the glitterati of Lagos in a characteristically grand birthday party and the Lagos go-slow was as...

  • 12th July 2009

Barack Obama beats the drum for democracy and dignity

Patrick Smith

Accra 12 July 2009 Barack Obama's homecoming lived up to the billing. Ghanaians accorded President Obama the warmest Akwaaba! He returned the compliment, meeting with Ghanaian health workers, activists, politicians and traditional rulers. Then at his i...

  • 7th April 2009

Genocide: My Stolen Rwanda, a book by Reverien Rurangwa

Stars Foundation

On 7 April 2009, the anniversary of Rwanda's 100-day genocide, Reportage Press is publishing Genocide:My Stolen Rwanda by Reverien Rurangwa. This is a personal account of the massacres by Reverien Rurangwa, who witnessed the murders of 43 of his family me...

  • 12th February 2009

Letter from a reader: Shame on the African Union Leaders

Dipo

The African Union leaders made history by electing one of their longest surviving dinosaur dictators, Colonel Qaddafi, to be the African Union president for the 2009 term. They made history not because they elected Qaddafi; but rather because this was the...

  • 12th February 2009

Nigerian jobs for Nigerian workers?

Dipo

Protests in Lincolnshire recently by British workers irate over jobs there going to Italian and Portuguese ones raise some interesting issues. Total, the French oil company had caused to be brought in about 300 construction workers from those two EU coun...

  • 8th December 2008

Don't forget about Africa's big vote

Patrick Smith

After Somali pirates, Congolese warlords and Zimbabwe in the time of cholera, Ghana’s elections just don’t cut it. Or that’s the verdict of the international news organisations, which have studiously ignored election campaigning in a country that has some...

  • 12th November 2008

On the ropes

Meerkat

In September's Africa-Asia Confidential, we reported on Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou's proposed diplomatic truce with China (AAC Vol 1 No 11, 'Dollar diplomacy fails'). No word on the truce yet; but the current chumminess of Ma's Kuomintang (KMT) and Chi...

  • 22nd October 2008

Lunch at the Dorchester

Dipo

Lunch, last Tuesday at the Dorchester, was an immoveable feast. The tables were laden with food in a sumptuous spread worthy of a royal dinner. The invited guests, try as they did, could not make a dent in the sheer amount of the food made available for t...

  • 10th October 2008

IMF | Africa: Damned statistics

Stars Foundation

The IMF's upbeat projection of 6% GDP growth for Africa in 2009 and the effect it hopes this would have on the world economy is optimistic. The Fund claims that the risk of global depression is small because it forecasts China's growth at 9%, India's at 7...

  • 8th September 2008

Africa | Football: Heros and villains

Stars Foundation

The traditional summer bargaining season has come to a dramatic end and the football season has got underway in earnest. Among the usual whirlwind of gossip about which player might go where and which player is unhappy here and wants more money there, the...

Displaying 461-470 out of 497 results.