WEST AFRICA Regional confrontation looms 19th October 2012 SOMALIA: Fighters from the Kenyan-backed Ras Kamboni militia, an anti-Al Shabaab force. Sven Torfinn / Panos Image courtesy of Panos Pictures Support in the UN and Europe is growing for a West African military force to push out the entrenched jihadist groups in northern Mali The developing plan to oust the jihadist forces controlling northern Mali is moving forward, with regional security talks in Bamako starting on 19 October and a meeting between the Algerian and French Presidents on the following day. So far, much of the effort has gone on military and logistical coordination, without much thought on any side about the equally important question of political strategy.
CÔTE D'IVOIRE Ouattara under threat again 19th October 2012 Image courtesy of Panos Pictures View site Ex-President Gbagbo’s supporters in Accra are planning guerrilla attacks over the border and may even have reached out to Mali’s jihadist rebels On 12 October, the United Nations Security Council discussed a worrying report by a UN Group of Experts that says that supporters of former President Laurent Gbagbo are bent on des...
CÔTE D'IVOIRE Gbagbo’s Ghana connection 19th October 2012 Image courtesy of Panos Pictures View site Former President Laurent Gbagbo’s loyalists fled to Ghana in droves when he was finally deposed in April 2011. They did so hoping for political support from Jerry Rawlings, the for...
On 17 October, French President François Hollande acknowledged that Algerians had been massacred at a 1961 independence rally in Paris. The victims of the police crackdown have never been officially counted, but historians reckon the number may have reached 200, making the incident the most brutal use of state force since the G... On 17 October, French President François Hollande acknowledged that Algerians had been massacred at a 1961 independence rally in Paris. The victims of the police crackdown have never been officially counted, but historians reckon the number may have reached 200, making the incident the most brutal use of state force since the German occupation. Hollande stopped short of blaming police chief Maurice Papon, whose forces cleared the protestors who violated a curfew. Nonetheless, the President’s statement angered his political opponents by suggesting police culpability in the ‘bloody repression’. The message should be welcomed by the country’s some three million immigrants from Algeria and the wider Maghreb. Hollande’s olive branch is strategically timed. He arrives in Algeria this week, and he badly needs the cooperation of North African authorities to counter security threats at home and abroad. Hollande backs an Ecowas/African Union force for Mali, where Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb holds six French hostages. It is not only France that is rethinking the colonial legacy. On 5 October, London’s High Court ruled that three Kenyan citizens who were tortured by British colonial authorities during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising could take their case against the British government to full trial. Many who witnessed or participated in the repression are now dead, but the ruling has symbolic significance and has cheered the elderly veterans of the Mau Mau struggle. Read more
MAURITANIA Aziz’s power game 19th October 2012 President Abdel Aziz uses the threat of jihadist forces as a way of fending off pressure to hold elections and make concessions to opposition parties President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz is navigating a delicate course across the region’s geopolitical minefield. Mauritania is not a member of the Economic Community of West African S...
SOUTH AFRICA Winning them over one by one 19th October 2012 The plan to secure President Jacob Zuma certain victory at the African National Congress’s leadership election focuses on one-to-one meetings with his main opponents. Zuma’s enforc...
TOGO Faure fading fast 19th October 2012 The President’s attempts to maintain a consensus collides with a disaffected civil society more interested in genuine democracy President Faure Gnassingbé’s prospects of staying in office in the long-term are diminishing. Ever since he succeeded his late father, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, in February 2005, opposit...
CONGO-BRAZZAVILLE Borrowing big 19th October 2012 Building Congo-Brazzaville’s infrastructure, a more tangible goal than policy reform, has been taken to heart. It is overseen by the department for large projects, the Délégation g...
WORLD BANK Changing tribal customs on J Street 19th October 2012 An anthropoligist and medical doctor, the new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim is putting his training to pratical use: ‘There is a piece of paper up on the wall of my Managing Di...
MAURITANIA Handling the opposition 19th October 2012 Despite official promises of elections, President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz’s government has shown no serious signs of holding any. The opposition is not united and does not present ...
ZAMBIA Big budget, big promises 19th October 2012 The triumph of the bond issue and strong public spending plans may help revive a stagnant economy and the government’s political fortunes One year after taking the helm, President Michael Chilufya Sata and his Patriotic Front (PF) face mounting pressure from electors upset at their apparent failure to deliver on ambi...
TOGO Fraternal rivalry 19th October 2012 There was an inevitability about the clash between President Faure Gnassingbé and his elder brother, Kpatcha Gnassingbé ever since the time when they accompanied their dying father...
WORLD BANKINTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND Bankers of the world unite 19th October 2012 Africa cannot avoid current global financial uncertainties but its higher growth is bringing in bankers bearing cheaper loans and Asian investors Frustration and disarray among policy-makers on the Eurozone recession and fears of a slowdown in Asian growth dominated the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and ...
SOUTH AFRICA Zuma’s campaign pays off 19th October 2012 On the brink of the ANC conference in Mangaung in December, incumbent Jacob Zuma has outmanoevered his rivals for the party presidency African National Congress leaders are trying to stitch together a deal that would avoid a contest for the party Presidency between incumbent Jacob Zuma and Vice-President Kgalema M...
ZAMBIA Ex-President Banda switches horses 19th October 2012 The political landscape is changing and President Michael Sata’s Patriotic Front faces a new opponent. Having lost faith in his own party, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, fo...
CONGO-BRAZZAVILLE A poverty of strategy 19th October 2012 The President and his ministers respond to criticism of their economic policy by changing the goals but little else Stung by accusations that he and the governing elite have squandered the country’s oil wealth with nothing to show for their three decades in power, President Denis Sassou-Nguesso ...
EGYPTINTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND IMF finance for Mursi's new order 19th October 2012 The planned US$4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan for Egypt could be concluded within the next two month. And other foreign financing is on its way, say officials at the...
RWANDAUGANDACONGO-KINSHASA M23’s other parent 19th October 2012 Indirect talks between the M23 rebels in North Kivu and the Kinshasa government are finally taking place in Uganda, sources in Kampala have told Africa Confidential. Yet this news ...
MOZAMBIQUE Guebuza’s new man 19th October 2012 President Armando Guebuza has underlined his command of party and state by removing Prime Minister Aires Ali from his government job after he failed to hold on to his party post. A...
SUDAN Abyei arrangement 19th October 2012 Khartoum’s National Congress Party regime wants to use the diplomatic plaudits following its compromises on the oil-sharing deal on 17 September with South Sudan to win backing f...
TUNISIA Ghannouchi unplugged 19th October 2012 Liberal mistrust of Islamist leader Rachid Ghannouchi is mounting after his unguarded remarks about collaboration with hard-line Salafist groups were secretly videoed and distribut...
