Côte d'Ivoire is in danger of fragmenting on ethnic lines as efforts to put down an army mutiny turn into an all-out assault on immigrants and on opponents of President Laure...

With so many peace initiatives competing for the international community's scarce resources, Liberia's peace process needs to keep up its momentum, and President Charles Taylor's c...

Iraq could yet rescue President Olusegun Obasanjo. The prospect of an United States invasion there is driving up the world price of oil, and oil contributes over 75 per cent of Nig...

Two weeks ago President Olusegun Obasanjo considered threats by the House of Representatives to impeach him if he didn't resign as 'a joke carried too far' by a group of politician...

West Africa in general - and Nigeria in particular - is suddenly gaining from a re-evaluation of global strategy in the United States following the 11 September 2001 attacks. Relat...

It was a 'boom' speech, so called because it suggests the guns will boom again and return him to power. Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings has form: he led two coups d'état in 1...

President Blaise Compaoré has a remarkable ability to cause tremendous trouble for his neighbours and still come up smelling of roses. Despite all his years of support for L...

The Igbo people of south-east Nigeria took a terrible battering in the civil war of the 1960s, and the region's businesses were almost all destroyed. The recent achievements of eas...

Igbo politics are boiling with preparations for next year's general elections. Since the dream of an independent Biafra was crushed in 1970, many Igbo have felt marginalised, and s...

The government has raised eyebrows by contracting a $1 billion, low-interest loan from a group calling itself the International Finance Consortium (not to be confused with the Inte...