Jump to navigation

CONFIDENTIALLY SPEAKING

The Africa Confidential Blog

Displaying 171-180 out of 495 results.

  • 4th April 2019

The line between revolt and revolution

Patrick Smith

A wise head in Algiers advised a young activist to curb his enthusiasm for the forced resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika: 'Don't call this a revolution. At best it's a revolt… we don't even know if the flight of Ben Ali from Tunisia was a revol...

  • 1st April 2019

ALGERIA: Big questions about the shape of the transition as Bouteflika prepares to depart

Patrick Smith

This week our correspondents file from the slow-motion exit of President Bouteflika in Algiers, the chances of a long-awaited cabinet reshuffle in Nairobi, news about more ambitious borrowing and spending plans from the re-elected President Buhari in Abu...

  • 25th March 2019

ANGOLA: The freeing of detained financiers sends mixed signals on the President's corruption fight

Patrick Smith

This week we look at a surprising legal deal in Luanda, the power crisis that could shape South Africa's elections, how politics and climate change worsened the Mozambique disaster, a personal post-election battle in Nigeria and the unravelling of Kenya's...

  • 21st March 2019

Disaster politics

Blue Lines

In Mozambique, Cyclone Idai has torn through the homes of over 1.7 million people in what is turning into a regional catastrophe.  Eye-witnesses speak of an 'inland ocean' forming west of Beira, which has been almost completely cut off from the rest of th...

  • 18th March 2019

SOUTH AFRICA: Will President Ramaphosa face a parliamentary rebellion after the elections in May?

Patrick Smith

Today we start a new series of news despatches from our correspondents across Africa and beyond. Our aim is to give you a sense of the news agenda for the week ahead as well as spelling out the implications of events that are still playing out. Our news ...

  • 7th March 2019

Anger in Algiers

Blue Lines

The campaign to stop President Abdelaziz Bouteflika from running for a fifth term in Algeria's elections has provoked both shock and surrealism. Shock because the millions of young Algerians marching in Constantine, Oran as well as the capital Algiers is ...

  • 21st February 2019

South Africa's most political budget

Blue Lines

The gargantuan numbers aside – state power company Eskom has unserviceable debts of 420 billion rand (US$30bn) – the most pressing equation in South Africa's budget is a political one. Ahead of national elections on 8 May, President Cyril Ramaphosa has to...

  • 19th February 2019

NIGERIA ELECTIONS: The two main parties lash out at poll delay

Patrick Smith

This week we look at the delayed general election in Nigeria, a tough budget in South Africa, an oil rights dispute between Kenya and Somalia and the complexities of Ethiopia's plan to sell a large stake in its state-owned telecoms company. NIGERIA ELECT...

  • 7th February 2019

Ramaphosa's big day

Blue Lines

A year into his presidency and a quarter century after the first free elections in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa has to strike a balance in his State of the Nation address to Parliament on 7 February. On the one hand he wants to assure people th...

  • 24th January 2019

Africa in 2019: The youngest continent fights back

Blue Lines

Shakier economies and an accelerating youth revolt dominate our second special issue on the year ahead There are clear parallels between the wave of protests demanding radical change across Africa this month with the early days of the North African revol...

Displaying 171-180 out of 495 results.