Vol 2 (AAC) No 4 | GABONCHINA Iron in the soul 20th February 2009 After renegotiating for better terms in the Bélinga iron ore deal and drops in commodity prices, parties in Beijing are no longer as keen on the deal Having won a dangerous game of brinkmanship, President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba is trying to re-excite China's interest in the Bélinga iron ore project. Since the end of last year,...
Vol 49 No 21 | GABON Spiralling serpents 17th October 2008 President Omar Bongo Ondimba’s anti-corruption drive has produced unexpected results.As Harvard University and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation announced that Gabon was among the top ten best governed African...
Vol 49 No 9 | GABON Politique a l'Americaine 25th April 2008 The election season has started with the usual components of fraud, corruption and attempts by the government to co-opt any credible opposition candidates. A review of the national...
Vol 1 (AAC) No 4 | GABON Jean Ping 6th November 2008 African Union Chairperson and Gabon's Foreign Affairs Minister The career of Gabon’s consummate diplomat owes its success less to the impact he made as President of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2004-05 than his accomplishments as head...
Vol 48 No 22 | GABONCHINA Digging Belinga 2nd November 2007 Gabonese are outraged at the terms of a US$3 billion iron ore project at Bélinga and the likely damage to the country’s national parks. We hear that the...
Vol 48 No 15 | GABONTAIWAN Clipping Taiwan 20th July 2007 President Omar Bongo Ondimba, a close ally of Beijing, appears to have literally clipped the wings of Taiwan's African diplomacy.
Vol 48 No 14 | GABONFRANCE Long arms 6th July 2007 On 22 June, a judge in Bordeaux, France, found Gabon's President Omar Bongo guilty of accepting a bribe to free French citizen René Cardona from gaol in 1996.
Vol 48 No 8 | GABONNIGER Areva in hot water 13th April 2007 The war of words between two non-governmental agencies and French nuclear energy company AREVA escalated last week, with public accusations of malpractice in the extraction of uranium in...
Vol 47 No 21 | EQUATORIAL GUINEAGABON No man an island 20th October 2006 United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan wanted to resolve a 35-year old territorial dispute between Equatorial Guinea and Gabon before his tenure ends. That looks doubtful. The minuscule,...
Vol 47 No 14 | GABON Time's up 7th July 2006 The oil is running out and the ruling family is split, after Omar Bongo's forty years in power Mastery of the political chessboard and lashings of oil revenue have kept President Omar Bongo Ondimba in power for almost four decades and earned him re-election last December....