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Lagos: Demonstrators holding a placard which reads 'N(aira) 65 or nothing' burn tyres and protest in Lagos against the government's decision to remove a popular fuel subsidy.

How the fuel row caught fire

An unwieldy and spontaneous opposition has won its first battle against the government; now it needs a strategy

Nobody in government, least of all President Goodluck Jonathan, seemed prepared for the torrent of opposition excited by the decision to end fuel subs...

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NIGERIA

Sanusi hits out at subsidy racket

Almost alone among his colleagues in government, Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Sanusi Lamido Aminu Sanusi has made a ...

GHANA

The Accra boosters

Foreign praise-singers try to justify aid but skate over the difficult choices facing President Mills before this year’s...

BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

The embarrassing admission that the Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, now awaiting verdict on his trial at the Hague for crimes against humanity, worked for the United States’ intelligence services was extracted from the authorities via a Freedom of Information request. To many Liberians caught up in their country's civil war, reports of Taylor cavorting with Western intelligence are not surprising. The relationship dates back to the overthrow of William Tolbert in 1980 and Taylor’s role in the subsequent regime under Master Sergeant Samuel Doe. Then, Liberia hosted the main US intelligence and surveillance centre in Africa.

When Taylor fell out with Doe and was charged with embezzlement, he fled to the USA. There he was detained at a gaol in Massachusetts from which he says friendly officials helped him escape in 1985.

In the early stages of the 1990 insurrection, Taylor kept in close touch with one Lieutenant Colonel Bob Richards, a US military attaché in its Abidjan embassy. Although the Defence Intelligence Agency has confirmed Taylor was a source, it is more coy about the details of the relationship: did it provide him with tactical advice for the insurrection or put him on its payroll? Money may not have been a major concern: by then, Taylor’s joint ventures with Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaoré – arms smuggling and selling assets from captured territory in northern Liberia – were providing a big income. Taylor had also taken on a lucrative ‘consultancy’ for the German-based defence company Merex, which specialised in breaking international arms embargoes.

ANGOLA

Marques takes them on

A doughty campaigner, Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, has launched a formal complaint against three top officials close to the presidency for taking personal stakes in oil concessions and abusing their office. We hear that a report on President José Eduardo dos Santos will follow. Under the constitution, the complaint requires a judicial investigation, from which little is expected. Of greater concern to the governing MPLA is an enquiry that Portuguese prosecutors may launch into money laundering by Angolan officials.

ANGOLA | UNITED STATES

Cobalt's compulsory partners

In its annual disclosures (also known as the 10-K Form) to the Securities and Exchange Commission in New York on 31 December 2010, United States-registered Cobalt reported that it had been ‘assigned’ Nazaki Oil & Gaz and Alper Oil as partners by the Angolan government. It admitted it did not know of them or their record in the oil business beforehand.

ZIMBABWE

Positions pending

The security officers around President Robert Mugabe like to shroud his movements in mystery. During the congress of his Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in Bulawayo in December, Mugabe did not stay overnight in Matebeleland to risk being troubled by the ghosts of the Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980s. His flights are marked by a large attendant flock, an end-of-year migration to Asian beaches and clinics, and vivid displays at international functions.

ZIMBABWE

Mugabe breaks with the region

By snubbing the African National Congress centenary celebrations and their host, South African President Jacob Zuma, President Robert Mugabe wanted to make some political points. He is furious at South Africa’s continued pressure on him over power-sharing in government, particularly the work of Ambassador Lindiwe Zulu.

CONGO-KINSHASA

Opposition steps up fight

Battle lines are hardening as disputes rage over the results of November’s legislative and presidential elections. Although the parliamentary results are not to be formally announced until 26 January, opposition parties have been quick to claim that those released so far suggest massive fraud.

CONGO-KINSHASA

No confidence vote from companies

The election campaign and its dubious results have made foreign companies jumpy. In early January, the monetary policy and banking operations department of the central bank, the Banque centrale du Congo, said that business confidence had fallen from plus 5.7% in November to minus 27% in December after President Joseph Kabila’s re-election. It also spoke of ‘the socio-political psychosis caused by the November elections.’

CONGO-KINSHASA

Electoral chicanery and the UN

Electoral fraud has rarely been better documented than in the presidential poll of 28 November, of which every stage involved the Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation du Congo (AC Vol 52 No 24, & Vol 53 No 1). Given the UN’s strong claims about electoral fraud in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010, Monusco’s role in Congo’s vote is coming under special scrutiny.

AFRICA | TELECOMS

New technology, new repression

One of the most striking aspects of last year’s North African revolutions was the use of new technology as a tool for political organisation – and to outwit flatfooted dictatorships. In its final desperate days, President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak’s regime shut down the internet to stop its opponents mobilising hundreds of thousands of Egyptians. This worsened the crisis, almost closing down the economy.

NAMIBIA

The man most likely to succeed Pohamba

In the coming political battles, Vice-President Hage Geingob is best placed to succeed President Hifikepunye Pohamba as leader of the governing SWAPO, previously the South West African People’s Organisation. As long as he fights off some late and weighty challengers from within SWAPO, he is all but certain to be the country’s next leader, thanks to his party’s electoral pre-eminence.

SÃO TOMÉ & PRÍNCIPE

Dragons in Eden

The authorities are still tracking down protestors on Príncipe island who, at dawn on 8 December, burned the national flag in front of the Regional Government building in Santo António. They also distributed anti-government leaflets attacking Prime Minister Patrice Emery Trovoada. Some pamphlets even demanded independence for the 142 square-kilometre island. Behind it all lies disagreement over a massive leisure investment that favours Príncipe over the larger and usually more advantaged island of São Tomé.

BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

The embarrassing admission that the Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, now awaiting verdict on his trial at the Hague for crimes against humanity, worked for the United States’ intelligence services was extracted from the authorities via a Freedom of Information request. To many Liberians caught up in their country's civil war, reports of Taylor cavorting with Western intelligence are not surprising. The relationship dates back to the overthrow of William Tolbert in 1980 and Taylor’s role in th...

MOZAMBIQUE | UNITED STATES

Maputo shuns US concern

The United States is making little headway in its bid to get Mozambique and other coastal states to beef up their anti-piracy laws and their military response. It also wants action on drug-smuggling, and infiltration by jihadist militants. Mozambique has a 2,470-kilometre coastline and its navy cannot operate beyond Maputo harbour. President Armando Emílio Guebuza’s government relies on South Africa for help against pirates and appears indifferent to the other threats.

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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.