China’s Kingho Energy has big ideas for Sierra Leone, but such plans could go the way of many other ambitious investments. The US$6 billion agreement the company signed with the Mi...

Efforts towards comprehensive reform of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry are in tatters some five years after the first version of the Petroleum Industry Bill was presented to Parlia...

At face value, the declaration by President Goodluck Jonathan’s government, dominated by appointees from the oil-rich Niger Delta, of a state of emergency in north-east Nigeria and...

The conference hosted in Brussels by the European Union on 15 May was seen as a political and financial success. One hundred countries sent delegations and those from Mauritania an...

A Lagos court has sentenced Azim Aghajani, the Iranian convicted on 13 May of importing 13 containers of infantry weapons, to only five years, along with his Nigerian accomplice, U...

Partisan politics is back as the Bamako establishment focuses on the presidential election promised for 7 July. The transitional government of President Dioncounda Traoré, encourag...

A meeting with financial institutions, regional neighbours and external partners in Brussels, Belgium, on 15 May is the next main focus for the accelerating international drive to ...

Africa Confidential has discovered the whereabouts of one of the key financiers and middlemen who worked for the Liberian ex-President and convicted war criminal, Charles Taylor, d...

Transcripts from the Special Court on Sierra Leone’s trial of Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor contain copious evidence about the central role of Ibrahima Bah in diamond trading and...

The Italian businessman who claims to have been cheated by Ibrahima Bah over gold deals, Vittorio Narciso Ruello, made other interesting connections through Bah in the region. In 2...