Blue Lines
'Ethiopia is on the precipice' according to an open letter to be published this week from a pan-African group of intellectuals calling for a negotiated settlement to the country's nine-month conflict. Their timing is critical. All the signs point to anoth...
Blue Lines
After the directors of the International Monetary Fund voted on 2 August for a record-breaking injection of resources – the creation of US$650 billion reserve assets known as Special Drawing Rights – the central banks of all member states will be credited...
Blue Lines
Although journalism has been facing all manner of economic and political pressures during the pandemic, it is gratifying to see a team of skilled investigators produce revelatory stories about the state of diplomacy and espionage.
Foreign affairs speciali...
Blue Lines
With the latest reports from the UN that almost a million people face famine in Tigray despite the Ethiopian government's announcement of a unilateral ceasefire on 28 June, there is little prospect of an end to the fighting. Federal troops withdrew from T...
Blue Lines
Sceptics could be forgiven for thinking that the African Development Bank (AfDB) plans to launch a five-year Strategy for Economic Governance in Africa next week is like sending someone out in a typhoon armed with an umbrella. After the devastation of 202...
Blue Lines
Wealthy governments have been promising to donate surplus Covid vaccine doses to Africa and other developing regions since the start of the year. The fact that very few of those jabs have arrived – only 1% of Africans have received at least one jab – has ...
Blue Lines
Morocco's decision to open its usually tight border controls in mid-May, allowing thousands of migrants into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, showed two important things: how African states can weaponise migration in their dealings with Europe and the double...
Blue Lines
A small group of regional leaders flew in to see President Yoweri Museveni's inauguration for his sixth term of office on 12 May following January's disputed general elections.
After sanctions from the United States State Department and censure from the ...
Blue Lines
The synchronicity of two headlines on 27 April – 'Boko Haram two hours from Abuja' and 'Buhari calls on US to move Africa Command HQ to continent' – paints an alarming landscape of the security breakdown in Nigeria and the region. Almost as unsettling is ...
Blue Lines
Foreign aid from governments rose to an all-time high of €161.2 billion (US$192.1bn) in 2020, a 3.5% real terms increase, according to data published this week by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Aid to Africa as a whole increas...