Basket 0 Items

Goodluck with the numbers

President Jonathan is slowly winning over the governors and party barons - but time is short

The arithmetic is not right yet but Goodluck Jonathan is making steady progress in his bid for the candidacy of his party in next year's presidential ...

NIGERIA

Political spills

A new burst of militancy is haunting the Niger Delta less than a year after the amnesty deal delivered an uneasy peace

NIGERIA

Father Kukah, Professor Jega and the vote

In the Nigerian tradition of irrepressible optimism periodically suffused with brutal realism, Father Matthew Hassan Kuk...

BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

Limelight was the only light shining in The Hague this week. After three years of ignoring the trial of a man charged with 11 counts of war crimes, international news networks fought for the best angle on supermodel Naomi Campbell’s gripping display of disinterest in the court and its work. Charles Taylor’s trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone started in June 2007. On 5 August, prosecutors reopened their case, having subpoenaed Campbell. They had wanted to show the she had been courted with the blood diamonds by Liberia’s warlord-turned-president following a party hosted by Nelson Mandela. She testified that after an event for Mandela’s Children’s Fund in 1997, she had been given a parcel of ‘two or three’ – or six, by her former agent’s testimony – ‘small, dirty-looking stones’ by two men who tapped on her hotel room door in the small hours. These, she supposed, were from Taylor, whom she had talked to at dinner. Unimpressed, the brusque British beauty claims she gave the stones to Jeremy Ratcliffe, then head of Mandela’s charity. The fund denies receiving them. Ratcliffe, for now, is silent. This brief international interest in the trial failed to show how the revelations advance the war crimes case against Taylor. Or even why he would send henchmen to deliver uncut diamonds to Campbell. Possession of rough diamonds in South Africa is a crime but the prosecution failed to link Taylor conclusively to them and his operations as an arms trader.

NIGERIA

Abuja takes Halliburton to court

President Goodluck Jonathan's government is taking on the United States' oil services giant Halliburton and its Nigerian associates for organising bribes to secure contracts for the $6 billion liquefied natural gas plant on Bonny Island from 1995 to 2005.

KENYA

This time a peaceful vote

Kenyans voted overwhelmingly for the new constitution at the 4 August referendum. The process was orderly and voters turned out in impressive numbers to voice strong support for the constitution.

KENYA

Rumbles in the Rift

Such was the tension in the Rift Valley as the referendum neared that a drunken brawl in a shebeen in Nandi District between a Nandi man and his Kisii friend swiftly formed the core of a rumour that evictions of non-Kalenjin had already started.

CONGO-KINSHASA | ANALYSIS

New pressure on the war-minerals link

Rebels are taking over more mines throughout the east, while control of minerals by corrupt government forces continues, making even Congo's 'clean' state-sourced minerals more politically toxic than the buyers would like. Moreover, there is the risk that the new and poorly coordinated schemes intended to clean up the sector may lead to the certifying of conflict minerals as clean, rather than weeding them out of the system.

CONGO-KINSHASA

Contract clashes

President Joseph Kabila's government is set for another round of legal clashes with foreign companies. First is Canada's First Quantum, locked in battle with Kinshasa at the International Court of Arbitration in Paris. On 27 July, Congo's Court of Appeal nominated Lubumbashi businessman Eric Monga, who heads the mining unit of the Fédération des Entreprises du Congo, as the liquidator of First Quantum's US$750 million Kingamyambo Musonoi Tailings project.

CONGO-KINSHASA

8 ways to clean up minerals

Several schemes and approaches aim to limit the flow of Congo-Kinshasa's conflict minerals, not all of them as well coordinated as they should be. Here is our rundown.

SOUTH AFRICA

An uneasy ruling alliance

The policies and programmes of the governing African National Congress will be reviewed at the party's National General Council in Durban on 20-24 September. Few of the policies are original and most are redrafts of old ones. President Jacob Zuma took office in May 2009 at the head of a broad alliance of nationalists, populists, trades unionists, socialists and conservatives. The policy document reflects his style of saying something to try to please everyone, presenting arguments and counter-arguments for particular policies, with none specifically endorsed. The debate will be dominated by factions - on one side the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), and on the other the nationalists, Black Economic Empowerment business interests and populist groupings, including the ANC Youth League (ANCYL).

SOUTH AFRICA

Taking sides in the big debate

The main opposing statements for the National General Council to be held by the governing African National Congress come, firstly, in the official policy document and, secondly, in proposals from the party's leftist allies, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party (plus, sometimes, the ANC Youth League). Some extracts may give a flavour of the debate.

ECONOMY | AFRICA

Roaring to go

Optimism about Africa's economies is in fashion, as commodity prices stay high thanks to demand from Asia and Western investors seek outlets for capital that they find no profitable use for at home. Banks, consultants and fund managers have been selling Africa hard in 2010, sighing with relief at the continent's comparatively successful reaction to the global recession and predicting big things for the next few years as 'African capitalism flexes its muscles', to cite Boston Consulting Group's (BCG) June report on African companies that have the potential to go global.

ECONOMY | AFRICA

The numbers are looking up

After peaking at US$72 billion in 2008, foreign investment in Africa fell to $59 bn. in 2009 but is now growing again and could exceed the $80 bn. mark within a couple of years. Extractive investment, in oil and minerals, dominates the picture but South Africa is bringing in more backing for manufacturing and service industry projects.

SOMALIA

The Afghan effect

Behind the general condemnation of the 11 July bombings in Kampala, for which Harakat al Shabaab al Mujahideen (Mujahideen Youth Movement) claimed responsibility, Western governments are wary of African calls for diplomats and soldiers to tackle the worsening chaos in Somalia. The United States has made it clear it is not prepared to support the African Union's call for a 20,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force. US officials have also told President Yoweri Museveni that Washington would not support a major Ugandan assault on Al Shabaab under a bilateral agreement with Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) or offer logistical support for such a move.

BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

SOMALIA

Mogadishu's ministry of truth

Somalia's new Information Minister, Abdirahman Omar Osman, wants African Union troops to defend more aggressively the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and its 'moderate' Islamist vision. The AU should act to 'prevent further extremism...and prevent what's happening in Afghanistan' being repeated in Somalia, he told Africa Confidential in London last week.

FREE EMAIL ALERTS

Need to know what's really happening in political, diplomatic and security circles across Africa?

Then sign up today to receive our FREE email alert service, from Africa Confidential’s Editor, Patrick Smith, and you'll be one of the first to find out what's happening – and understand the implications for your organisation.

You get the latest Africa Confidential headlines delivered direct to your email inbox every fortnight, plus a FREE COPY of 'The Editor's Choice' – 66 pages of the very best recent articles from Africa Confidential.

NB: 'The Editor's Choice' is in PDF format. So you can download it in an instant – just as soon as you have registered with us.

Complete your details below, and you'll soon be reading our first-class coverage and analysis of African developments.

out now!

Visit africa-asia-confidential.com to see extracts from the latest edition.

Patrick Smith talks about Africa-Asia Confidential on the BBC World Service

confidentially speaking

The Africa Confidential blog

Go to the blog

Latest post

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.