North Africa

For now, Algiers is what locals call 'normal', a condition in which roadblocks and tight security prevail, mixed with spiralling living costs, massive overcrowding and poor public services. Algerians may wish...

The confrontation over the Nile waters, which pits Egypt and Sudan against the five downstream countries, is escalating into a major regional crisis following the collapse of a...

North Africa’s leaders are among the longest-serving in the world and the most immune to democratic impulses. In comparison, Africa south of the Sahara with its multiparty elections...

More signs are emerging that China is being drawn inexorably into Africa's internal politics and is being compelled to take sides in wider geopolitical disputes. This time, the trigger was the...

Algeria starts 2008 haunted by the threat of a return to wide-ranging Islamist terrorism and political inertia as President Abdelaziz Bouteflika looks set to change the constitution to...

Asian companies are making headway in North Africa. In April, South Korea's Daewoo Engineering emerged as the preferential bidder on a US$650 million town project, complete with roads, sewage...

While intimations of mortality grow ever greater for North Africa’s veteran political leaders, septuagenarian zaïms (big men) will continue to run much of the region. Age it...

EGYPT: President and retired airforce General Hosni Mubarak retains great faith in his political longevity. He cracks down on dissenters, reflected in the five-year gaol term handed out...

Despite the usual political pressures, North Africa's oil and gas producers, led by Algeria, Libya and Egypt, had a prosperous year. Their foreign reserves built up on the...

Elections in Algeria and Tunisia, and Libya's opening to the West, will give familiar faces a new look. The Libyan regime watched Iraq like a hawk and President...