Blue Lines
It's a bumper election week with results coming in from the national contests in Tanzania and Côte d'Ivoire and from Congo-Brazzaville's referendum on changing the constitution to allow President Denis Sassou-Nguesso yet another term. Meanwhile, a Ni...
Blue Lines
Britain's Africa relations have
been peppered in recent years with near misses, faux pas and a general lack of
policy, but this may be changing with major conferences on migration,
next month in Malta, and on
climate change, in Paris in December. British...
Patrick Smith
This week South Africa's
African National Congress starts preparing for next
year's municipal elections after their policy conference and
predictions of more economic troubles. Political troubles could worsen
in Guinea as the opposition
refuse to accept t...
Blue Lines
This year’s Index of African Governance from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation shows that since 2011 – the year of the Arab Spring and the United States’ financial recovery – human development and rights, and participation have improved but security and economic ...
Blue Lines
Despite the lengthy delays in forming
a
cabinet, President Muhammadu Buhari has been much quicker to appoint
his top military and security officers and to push ahead with a series
of bilateral and multilateral summits. Not only did he chair the
regional l...
Blue Lines
On his coming travels to France and New York for the United Nations General Assembly this month,
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari and his delegation
will be sought
out by the posse of lobbying companies advising Africa’s ever hopeful
opposition partie...
Blue Lines
Hats off to Nigerian magnate
Aliko Dangote. Amid global
panic about China's imploding
stock market
and the plunge in the price of oil, Nigeria's top export, Dangote
chooses to announce a US$4.3 billion joint venture with China's Sinoma
to build cement pla...
Blue Lines
With a cluster of key economic meetings stretched out in the last quarter of the year, Africa’s economic policymakers are grappling with two main challenges: rising youth unemployment and the falling prices of export commodities. The first two meetings – ...
Blue Lines
The week ahead will be
dominated by reflections on President Barack Obama’s historic visit to East
Africa, President Buhari’s radical action over oil, and the repercussions of
the Burundian President’s insistence that he has a right to govern for a third...
Blue Lines
After two decades of obstruction,
the trial of Chad’s ex-President,
Hissène Habré, for crimes against
humanity got under way this
week in Dakar. The Special Court,
jointly set up by the government
of Senegal and the African Union,
offers another forum for...