confidentially speaking

The Africa Confidential Blog

• TUESDAY 27th October 2009

Annkio on Amnesty: a Niger Delta activist speaks out.

By Dipo

On 16 October, the day a group loyal to Henry Okah broke from an amnesty and vowed to keep fighting in the creeks, another key figure in the armed struggle held forth in more rarefied settings. At Chatham House, the London-based think tank, in the ...

• MONDAY 27th July 2009

Nigeria in crisis… and the band played on

By Patrick Smith

One of Nigeria’s biggest banks announced this morning that it wants to raise US$3 billion on the local stock market, my old friend Nduka Obaigbena has hosted the glitterati of Lagos in a characteristically grand birthday party and the Lagos ...

• SUNDAY 12th July 2009

Barack Obama beats the drum for democracy and dignity

By Patrick Smith

Accra12 July 2009Barack Obama's homecoming lived up to the billing. Ghanaians accorded President Obama the warmest Akwaaba! He returned the compliment, meeting with Ghanaian health workers, activists, politicia...

• TUESDAY 7th April 2009

Genocide: My Stolen Rwanda, a book by Reverien Rurangwa

By Lion

On 7 April 2009, the anniversary of Rwanda's 100-day genocide, Reportage Press is publishing Genocide:My Stolen Rwanda by Reverien Rurangwa. This is a personal account of the massacres by Reverien Rurangwa, who witnessed the murders o...

• THURSDAY 12th February 2009

Letter from a reader: Shame on the African Union Leaders

By Dipo

The African Union leaders made history by electing one of their longest surviving dinosaur dictators, Colonel Qaddafi, to be the African Union president for the 2009 term. They made history not because they elected Qaddafi; but rather because this ...

• THURSDAY 12th February 2009

Nigerian jobs for Nigerian workers?

By Dipo

Protests in Lincolnshire recently by British workers irate over jobs there going to Italian and Portuguese ones raise some interesting issues.Total, the French oil company had caused to be brought in about 300 const...

• MONDAY 8th December 2008

Don't forget about Africa's big vote

By Patrick Smith

After Somali pirates, Congolese warlords and Zimbabwe in the time of cholera, Ghana’s elections just don’t cut it. Or that’s the verdict of the international news organisations, which have studiously ignored election campaigning in a country that has some...

• WEDNESDAY 12th November 2008

On the ropes

By Meerkat

In September's Africa-Asia Confidential, we reported on Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou's proposed diplomatic truce with China (AAC Vol 1 No 11, 'Dollar diplomacy fails'). No word on the truce yet; b...

• WEDNESDAY 22nd October 2008

Lunch at the Dorchester

By Dipo

Lunch, last Tuesday at the Dorchester, was an immoveable feast. The tables were laden with food in a sumptuous spread worthy of a royal dinner. The invited guests, try as they did, could not make a dent in the sheer amount of the food made available for t...

• FRIDAY 10th October 2008

IMF | Africa: Damned statistics

By Lion

The IMF's upbeat projection of 6% GDP growth for Africa in 2009 and the effect it hopes this would have on the world economy is optimistic. The Fund claims that the risk of global depression is small because it forecasts C...