Africa

The nomination of Madeleine Albright as President Bill Clinton's new Secretary of State for African Affairs opens the way for a reshuffle of the Africa department's officials. Most...

Iran is working to build a presence across Africa as it seeks to overcome efforts by the United States, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to isolate it. A mid-December invitation ...

President Mobutu Sese Seko was detained elsewhere but everybody in Ouagadougou wanted to know what was happening to his country. The Rwandan and Zaïrean delegations had hardly tou...

World Bank President James Wolfensohn called it a 'lovefest'. True, the rich country finance ministers did reach a rare consensus in Washington on 1-3 October on the outline of wha...

Italy is back in the Horn of Africa. The trigger was Romano Prodi's appointment as Prime Minister in May. Driving the revival (of which there are signs elsewhere on the continent, ...

Paris is cutting its unwieldy, mainly conscript, 500,000-strong army, to form a smaller, well equipped regular force. Defence Minister Charles Millon visited Chad and Gabon on 5-8 ...

United States' plans for a 10,000-strong all-African military force to intervene in regional political crises are winning cautious backing from European and African governments. Mu...

When he came to power 14 months ago, President Jacques Chirac promised a new French policy for Africa. This he failed to deliver during his visit to Gabon and Congo on 16-18 July. ...

Africa's private armies are growing in power and influence. Hired guns are intervening in almost every conflict on the continent, in some cases supplanting, rather than just assist...

Washington's trade campaign in Africa has been hit hard by the death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown when his military Boeing crashed near Dubrovnik, Croatia, on 3 April.