A big new hotel and high-rise housing blocks are going up in Tripoli. Libya says it wants to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Resolution of the dispute...

Libya has considerable unfinished business to resolve with the West if it hopes to reintegrate into the global economy and avoid further retribution for past misdemeanours.

Moammar el Gadaffi wants Silvio Berlusconi to buy him a railway or a road. Then he might just stop bending visitors' ears about Italian abuses during Benito Mussolini's...

King Mohammed VI surprised Moroccans on 9 October by naming industrialist-turned-Interior Minister Driss Jettou as his new Prime Minister.

Islamist politicians and Francophone analysts agree on one thing, at least: the longer the outgoing coalition partners, the Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires and Parti de l'Istiqlal, wrangle...

Leaders of the Gadaffi family circle and expert committees are quietly discussing plans for a constitution.

Arriving from Ethiopia as Africa Confidential went to press, the new Israeli Ambassador to Mauritania Ariel Kerem was summoned to present his credentials the day after landing in...

President Ange-Félix Patassé has become even more dependent on the protection of Libya and its Bangui garrison, as last month's arrest of Finance Minister Eric Sorongopé-Zoumanji on corruption...

As Egypt's government celebrated the 50th anniversary of the coup that toppled King Farouk and brought Gamal Abdel Nasser to power, a state security court handed seven years...

The Parsley Island affair underlined the glacial nature of Rabat-Madrid relations. Spain's continuing occupation of the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, within Morocco, is highly sensitive. The coastal...

Islamist violence and Kabyle protests continue, while Algerian militants feature large in the United States' 'war against terrorism'. Yet President Abdelaziz Bouteflika can feel more secure than ever...

The Islamist vote at the legislative elections on 30 May will show whether President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has really transformed Algerian politics. Until the last minute, many electors were...

Morocco, the Polisario Front and their allies are lobbying hard before the United Nations Security Council's 30 April vote on the future of its Western Sahara mission (AC...

Algeria's progress against the Islamist underground was confirmed by the killing last month of Antar Zouabri, the leader of the Groupe Islamique Armé. This was a coup for...

The United Nations has issued an ambiguous legal opinion about exploration licences in the ocean off Western Sahara, and Morocco is objecting to exploration by Spain's Repsol YPF...

King Mohammed VI's cousin Moulay Hicham Ben Abdallah has taken off for the United States, claiming 'police harassment'. He is 37, and second in line of succession after...

In a watershed vote on 15 January, the French parliament declared 19 March a day of commemoration of the victims of the Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian independence struggles....