Demanding elections and calling the military's bluff in the middle of a civil war was always going to be a high risk strategy. Yet it may have worked,...

Sensing the war is dying down, Lebanese diamond traders are swiftly moving back into centres such as Kono in the east. They are keen to regain control of...

Articulate, persuasive and wealthy; for many, Kwame Pianim seemed the best candidate the opposition could put up against Jerry Rawlings in this year' s presidential election. Pianim' s...

Western support for democracy is being tested by Niger's military rulers who seized power on 21 January. On 25 March, the European Union decided, against French pressure, to...

Tension is rising in Monrovia. National Patriotic Front of Liberia leader Charles Taylor and United Liberation Movement -Krahn (Ulimo-K) leader Alhaji G.V.Kromah have banded together against Liberia Peace...

In a bizarre way, business is learning to live with, if not to love, General Sani Abacha. For those not exercised by questions of human rights, democracy or...

No one could describe General Sani Abacha as a convert to market economics yet the policy of 'guided deregulation' begun last year is certainly his own. Whilst he...

The prospect of former dictator Mathieu Kérékou returning to power as elected President worries those who argue that economic liberalisation must go hand-in-hand with democratisation. In the first...

Who rules Liberia? At present, nobody. Since 1990, the nearest thing to a national authority has been the peacekeeping force of the Economic Community of West African States....

Next month's presidential election is important not just for the Beninese, who will give their verdict on five years of economic reform, but more widely as a test...