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George Soros

The collapse of an opaque scheme to set up a multi-billion dollar national mining company prompts recriminations in Conakry and South Africa

GUINEA | SOUTH AFRICA

Who's who in the Guinea loan saga

GUINEA

The Italian job

BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

Business leaders and politicians in Nigeria and South Africa have appealed for two former presidents, Olusegun Obasanjo and Thabo Mbeki, to help improve their countries’ ailing relationship. African diplomacy has been critically weakened by disputes between the two biggest economies. Obasanjo and Mbeki fit the task. Despite their differences over Zimbabwe policy, they respect each other and both have problems with their successors. Obasanjo chose Goodluck Jonathan as running mate to the ailing Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2007 but now his influence in Abuja is waning.

Relations between Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have been tense for years. They hit a low point when Zuma ousted Mbeki as African National Congress President in 2007 but have barely recovered. In 2010, Zuma refused Mbeki an official aeroplane to an African Union summit and then fumed after Nigeria chartered him a jet instead. According to ANC insiders, Zuma accuses Mbeki of trying to upstage him with his mediation missions for the AU.

Jonathan was furious when Zuma shouldered his way into the Ivorian and Libyan crises last year. And the two are divided over candidates for the AU chair, with Gabon’s Jean Ping (current AU Chairman) in the Nigerian corner and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in South Africa’s. Now with a compromise on the AU dispute being planned in Addis Ababa, the Nigeria-South Africa hostility could ebb, especially if their leaders listen to their not always respected predecessors.

RWANDA | CONGO-KINSHASA

Kigali’s hand in the Kivus

As fighting escalates in eastern Congo-Kinshasa, pressure is mounting for the publication in full of a United Nations’ investigation into the links between Rwanda and a new militia terrorising the region. In a growing furore in New York, the Congolese government and international human rights groups are accusing the United States of obstructing the release of the investigators’ full findings.

RWANDA | CONGO-KINSHASA | UNITED STATES

US 'protecting' Rwanda

While Congo-Kinshasa’s Foreign Minister, Raymond Tshibanda N’tungamulongo, demanded that Rwanda immediately withdraw its support for militia in eastern Congo, Rwandan President Paul Kagame told a press conference on 19 June that he rejected all accusations of complicity.

MALI

Tuareg splits widen

When day dawns in northern Mali, another faction emerges. Sharp divisions have opened within the Mouvement national pour la libération de l’Azawad over how best to confront the jihadists attempting to hijack its rebellion.

SOMALIA

End of transition looms

There is a mood of broad optimism among many commanders from the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) about recent military successes. Al Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen, however, intends to wait out the invaders and may have the resources to do so.

KENYA

Saitoti’s death leaves a gap

About 40,000 people gathered in Kitengela, on the south-eastern outskirts of Nairobi, on 16 June for the funeral of the powerful Internal Security Minister, Professor George Kinuthia Kiarie Saitoti, 66. He had been en route to a fundraising event in Ndhiwa, Nyanza Province, when the nearly new police helicopter crashed in Ngong Forest, about ten minutes after leaving Wilson Airport.

ZIMBABWE

A coarse debut

The most extraordinary thing about the extraordinary summit of the Southern African Development Community on 31 May-1 June was the performance of Zambia’s President Michael Sata. At 74 he was, after Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, the oldest president present.

ZIMBABWE

Justice denied

The mid-May visit to Zimbabwe by the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Navanethem Pillay, was disastrous. She came at the invitation of Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who blocked discussion of human rights in Zimbabwe at last year’s UN forum in Geneva.

ZAMBIA

Sata takes on the judges

President Michael Sata has sparked a political storm by forcing out Zambia’s most senior judge, Chief Justice Ernest Sakala, on 15 June. The opposition accuses Sata of politicising the law.

ZAMBIA

Mutembo's targets

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Mutembo Nchito, has his sights on Henry Banda, son of ex-President Rupiah Banda, over his role in the US$257 million sale of most of the Zamtel network to LAP Green Networks of Libya .

TANZANIA

Reforming power

Although Jakaya Kikwete sacked Energy and Minerals Minister William Ngeleja, one of eight to go in April’s reshuffle, many of the power sector’s problems remain.

TANZANIA

New broom passed over

Prior to Sospeter Muhongo’s appointment, the conventional wisdom in Dodoma was that an ambitious young Chama cha Mapinduzi member of parliament, January Makamba, would get outgoing Energy and Minerals Minister William Ngeleja’s job.

BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

Business leaders and politicians in Nigeria and South Africa have appealed for two former presidents, Olusegun Obasanjo and Thabo Mbeki, to help improve their countries’ ailing relationship. African diplomacy has been critically weakened by disputes between the two biggest economies. Obasanjo and Mbeki fit the task. Despite their...

MALAWI

The honeymoon’s over

Acclaimed at home and abroad as a breath of fresh air when she took office on 7 April, President Joyce Banda is being severely put to the test. The President faces scheming opponents in Parliament who could yet scupper her chances of getting the all-important budget through the chamber.


Pointers  

CÔTE D'IVOIRE | LIBERIA

Warlords at work

Coup plots in Côte d’Ivoire are linked to the murder of United Nations peacekeepers in the east of the country, officials in Abidjan say.

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