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SUDAN | SOUTH SUDAN

The South goes for sovereignty

Juba turns off the oil and turns up the pressure in its fraught negotiations with Khartoum over oil, cash, security and citizenship

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SUDAN | SOUTH SUDAN

Who pays the pipeline

Whatever the outcome of the oil talks between the Khartoum and Juba governments, the current crisis has focused thinking...

KENYA

The Hague changes the game

The ICC is forcing the elite to rethink the old certainties of ethnic politics and redraw the battle lines

BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

The costs and complexities of China’s fast-track engagement with Africa were thrown into stark relief at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa on 23-31 January. It was a moment of triumph for Beijing and the partnership of mutual benefit that it proclaims.That was symbolised by the opening of the shiny new US$200 million AU headquarters, built by the China State Construction Company on the ruins of Ethiopia’s old maximum security prison. China has also promised $90 mn. over five years to maintain the building.

China started negotiations over some of its workers, taken captive in Egypt and Sudan. They plunged into mediation between Sudan and South Sudan over oil and pipelines. Like their European and American counterparts, Beijing’s diplomats were too discreet to show a preference in the election battle for the AU Commission chair between South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and the Gabonese incumbent, Jean Ping. It dominated the summit.

Neither candidate won and a fresh election is postponed until the next summit in Malawi in July. The messy finale contrasted with the meeting’s businesslike aspirations: to agree on establishing an African free trade zone by 2017 and break down historic divisions, colonially inspired and otherwise, on the continent. The infighting around the vote sent a powerful message to Beijing and other foreign powers at the summit: the primacy of politics can trump the most compelling economic logic in Africa.

LIBYA

Waiting for government

Three months have passed since liberation was officially declared but no functioning government is in sight or even on the horizon. The oil sector is the only operational administration. Elections for a constitutional assembly – even in June – appear unrealistic. There is no up-to-date census, let alone electoral register, and voting procedures are not fixed. A census could take three months at least. After that, the assembly should write the new constitution and give a new executive democratic legitimacy. Until then, the National Transitional Council, led by former Justice Minister Mustafa Mohamed Abdel Jalil, is still in charge, although its authority is constantly under strong challenge amid accusations of failing to provide vision and leadership.

LIBYA

From Gadaffi to Qatar

The lake in Benghazi city centre, beside which its two main hotels stand, epitomises Moammar el Gadaffi’s neglect of the east. Officially known as the ‘23 July lake’, foreigners and some locals more commonly refer to it as ‘Shit Lake’ because it contains the effluent from many of the city’s 24 sewerage stations, whose pumps failed many years ago.

CÔTE D'IVOIRE

Oil is the new cocoa

President Alassane Dramane Ouattara is trying to move the economy away from an over-reliance on agriculture, which accounts for 40% of gross domestic product, and into mining and oil. Earlier plans stagnated, firstly because of civil conflict and then because they did not fit with the system of patronage of former President Laurent Gbagbo. Officials say there has been a surge of interest from new investors since ADO set about streamlining investment requirements and appointed the respected Adama Toungara Minister for Mines, Petroleum and Energy.

CÔTE D'IVOIRE

Who’s who in mines

Mines, Petroleum and Energy Minister Adama Toungara has the President’s ear, so he is likely to keep his position in the cabinet reshuffle many believe to be imminent.

NIGERIA

How terror came to Kano

Since the killing of more than 185 people in Kano on 20 January, southern Nigerian politicians have been railing at Northern and Muslim leaders for their failure to rein in Boko Haram militants. Northern politicians have said much the same about the southern politicians who failed to rein in Niger Delta militants over the past 15 years. The shortcomings of President Goodluck Jonathan’s government have been pointed out by northern grandees, such as Generals Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida and Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, and civilian politicians such as Atiku Abubakar.

NIGERIA

The shape of the deadly sect

Boko Haram has a supreme leader and a consultative body, the Shura. The leader, Abubakar Shekau, was second-in-command until Mohammed Yusuf was killed in police custody in July 2009. It is not clear how much control Shekau can maintain. Even if he were open to dialogue, breakaway members might object and the group’s criminal elements may also not favour negotiation.

SENEGAL

Wade digs his heels in

The prospects for massively increased violence in Dakar are strong after several people died in the last days of January during opposition rallies against President Abdoulaye Wade. This follows the Constitutional Court’s decision to rule President Wade’s candidacy in the election scheduled for 26 February lawful. The ingredients for a stark confrontation between tens of thousands of disaffected voters and the security forces were present as Africa Confidential went to press. The Court had also angered many by disqualifying the singer Youssou N’Dour from standing in the election. Despite submitting 13,000 signatures rather than the required 10,000, the Court ruled that only 9,000 of them were valid.

LIBERIA

A low-key second term

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has lowered the political temperature, preaching political reconciliation and pledging strong commitment to the nation’s youth after a worthy but uninspiring inauguration ceremony and a series of ministerial appointments that suggest bland continuity. She has sought to keep down expectations and political temperatures by announcing cabinet appointments in dribs and drabs. The opposition has been trying to defuse tension, and the defeated candidates for the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), Winston A. Tubman and George Manneh Weah, featured prominently at the inauguration on 16 January.

BURUNDI

Storm over opposition man

Tanzania released the Burundian opposition leader Alexis Sinduhije on 24 January in what is widely seen as a serious diplomatic and political setback for the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi. The Tanzanian authorities had arrested Sinduhije, a leader of the Mouvement pour la solidarité et la démocratie (MSD) and founder of Radio Publique Africaine (RPA, AC Vol 51 No 13), at Dar es Salaam airport as he stepped off an aeroplane from Kampala on 11 January. The detention was at the request of Burundian intelligence, security sources in Bujumbura said.

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THE INSIDE VIEW

ECOWAS

Jobs for the boys

The quarrel between Presidents Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso and Thomas Yayi Boni of Benin over the Economic Community of West African States is symptomatic of an organisation in need of reform. Both want the next president of the Ecowas Commission, the Secretariat in charge of its operations, to be one of their own nationals. Also on the list would be the murder of four journalists, including the Editor of the weekly L’Indépendant in December 1998.

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The regional fight intensifies after Kano slaughter

Africa Confidential In The News

Reuters, 16 January 2012
UPDATE 1-Nigeria: will it fall apart or can it hold?
[Goodluck Jonathan is] "eerily calm considering we could be weeks away from a major confrontation," said Africa Confidential editor Patrick Smith. "The absolute failure ... to wheel on southerners and northerners at the same time to say this is a national crisis and we have to pull together, is striking."

BBC Newshour, 14 January 2012
Suicide bomb kills Basra pilgrims; elections in Taiwan; and special focus on Nigeria
Africa Confidential's editor Patrick Smith speaks to Julian Marshall in the special focus on Nigeria.

BBC Newsnight, 24 August 2011
Risk Islamists will move in to fill Libya power vacuum
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi claimed that if he was ousted from power Islamist radicals would seize control of Libya. Patrick Smith speaks to Newsnight's Robin Denselow about whether he is likely to be proven right or wrong.

BBC, 16 August 2011
Solomon Mujuru: Obituary of a Zimbabwean 'king-maker'
"He had all the mystique of a liberation war hero that has served him to present-day politics," Patrick Smith, editor of the London-based Africa Confidential magazine, told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

TIME Magazine, 1 June 2011
Death, Prison or Exile: Gaddafi Is Out of Options
"My understanding is that they would be delighted if he did a duck," Smith says.