West Africa

Shipping containers around West and Central Africa is twice as expensive as in other parts of the world. A private consortium now hopes to transform regional trade, with...

Both sides want to play up the recent rebel offensive against President Charles Taylor's regime. The rebels, calling themselves Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, are mostly Taylor's...

The Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebellion seems to have started in April 1999, when rebels attacked Liberia from Guinea. After more fighting in north-western Liberia...

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo's agenda this year will be crowded with primaries and positioning for the 2003 elections. Although there is no doubt that he wants to stand...

In the evening of 7 January in Accra, four West African heads of state were toasting the inauguration of the newly elected Ghanaian President, John Agyekum Kufuor. At...

Almost everything that could go wrong in West Africa this year has contrived to do so. The region's biggest economies, Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria, are hobbled by political...

Racist hysteria against blacks in Libya has dented Colonel Moammar el Gadaffi's ambition to create a 'United States of Africa' (USA) next year. He proclaimed his plan to...

West African politics wins again. Formerly coup-proof Côte d'Ivoire succumbs to a putsch de Noël and coup-prone Nigeria survives a military-orchestrated transition to civilian rule. Business people are...

Several heavyweight Nigerian and Ghanaian business consortia are bidding for control of 82 year-old, London-based West Africa magazine, which on 24 March went into compulsory liquidation, following the...

The Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest-Africaine (UEMOA), the economic and monetary union of the eight West African states of the Franc Zone, is nine months away from a...