On winning the election a year ago, President John Kufuor promised Ghana a 'golden age of business.' His commitment to market economics is being sorely tested. Jerry John...

Ghana's privatisation efforts have so far done little more than cut the public payroll. State assets were often sold at cut price to politically connected companies operating under...

Opus Dei, a secretive organisation favoured by Pope John-Paul II, hopes to sign up more followers in Africa, where only 1,500 of its 80,000 members are estimated to...

Against all tradition, President Charles Taylor has turned taciturn. He and his advisors have made almost no denial of or other reaction to a long list of serious...

Despite all its domestic troubles, Liberia is host to the world's second-largest maritime open-registry, better known as a flag of convenience. Until 1994, when it was overtaken by...

When Nigerian soldiers slaughtered more than 200 civilians in Benue State, they called into question the moral basis of President Olusegun Obasanjo's government. The Obasanjo regime, in contrast...

Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaoré is the latest in a series of African leaders on overseas visits to be harried by human rights organisations. He spent mid-October in...

Almost no one expects a free vote on 18 October, when President Doctor Alhaji Yahya Jammeh (Colonel, Retired) is up for re-election (AC Vol 42 No 6). His...

P>Almost everything that could go wrong for President Laurent Gbagbo's national reconciliation conference in Abidjan is doing so (AC Vol 42 No 18). None of the three main...

By the end of October Mali's national hero, General Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT), will almost certainly announce that he'll stand in next year's presidential election. ATT is said...

'There is no political crisis in Côte d'Ivoire,' President Laurent Gbagbo assured diplomats and politicians on 7 September. He was inaugurating the National Reconciliation Forum, which is meant...

With 34 years in power and reason to fear retirement, President Gnassingbé Eyadéma shows signs of joining the club of presidents seeking to hang on in power. Premier...

Guineans believe President Lansana Conté is also eager to join the 'third term' club. Territorial Administration Ministry officials are behind the 'spontaneous demonstrations' for a referendum on another...

General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida is once more at the centre of Nigerian politics. As he celebrated his 60th birthday in Saudi Arabia on 17 August, many northern Nigerians...

Nigerian advocates of Sharia – governance according to the norms, principles and rules laid down by Islamic law – face a reckoning this year. The poverty and frustration...

North-west Nigeria, with probably more than 30 million people, is the country's most populous zone - overwhelmingly Muslim, with significant numbers of Christians only in southern Kaduna and...

Eight months into his first term, the glister is coming off John Agyekum Kufuor's presidency. Glad-handing his New Patriotic Party government and demonising the outgoing National Democratic Congress...

Poisoned by Liberia's support for the rebel Revolutionary United Front, relations between President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah's government and President Charles Taylor face a new test. They are...

Two years before the next national elections, decision-making comes a poor second to political manoeuvring - and that threatens the few recent successes in reforming the mismanaged and...

The ruling People's Democratic Party, with 209 of the 348 seats in the National Assembly and 59 of the 103 seats in the Senate, enters the electoral race...

Mountains of facts, many of them highly inconvenient to present and past governments, are emerging from Nigeria's Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, the home-grown copy of South Africa's...

The following dramatis personae have key roles in events scrutinised by the Oputa Panel...

Friendlier to President Laurent Gbagbo than most donors, Paris has persuaded the European Union to offer vital budget support to Abidjan. This may tide Côte d'Ivoire over to...

Has Sierra Leone's war run out of steam? Many rebel fighters, as well as their opponents, want a break, if not an end to the war. Their warlord...

Ukrainian businessman Leonid Minin, named by Africa Confidential and the United Nations sanctions committee as a leading arms supplier to the Revolutionary United Front, was rearrested by Italian...

Most of Côte d'Ivoire's leading politicians will not be at President Laurent Gbagbo's national reconciliation conference, planned for 9 July. Former President Henri Konan-Bédié and his old rival...

General Amadou Toumani Touré's snap appointment as United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy to Central African Republic (see Feature: Plot and panic) has delayed the expected...

As a row simmered over security for former President Jerry John Rawlings, President John Kufuor jetted off to speak at the African Development Bank's 29-31 May meeting in...

The first year of 'transition' in partnership with Prime Minister Moustapha Niasse was difficult. Niasse's dismissal in March and now the parliamentary elections of 29 April have given...

No one can blame President John Agyekum Kufuor for the economic chaos he inherited on 7 January, when he took over from Jerry John Rawlings. However, plenty of...

Did they jump or were they pushed? The retirement on 24 April of the Chief of Army Staff, General Victor Malu; Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Ibrahim...

France, at least, backs President Laurent Gbagbo. The head of a team it sent to help draw up aid requests (AC Vol 42 No 4) is none other...

Niger has calmed down since the elections of November 1999 put it back on the road to democracy, after several turbulent years. Politics were stabilised by the 59.9...

After 100 days in office President John Kufuor and his New Patriotic Party have problems with corruption - mostly involving their predecessors, the National Democratic Congress. Outgoing NDC...

It is easy to break Western precepts of good governance and still haul in international aid. President Yahya Jammeh's regime shows how. In December, the International Monetary Fund...

The presidential election has turned to farce since two leading candidates pulled out of the second round of voting claiming fraud. President Mathieu Kérékou emerged from the first...

President Abdoulaye Wade has shuffled the deck ahead of the legislative election that is due on 29 April. On 3 March, he sacked his Premier, Moustapha Niasse, whose...

In Senegal's troubled southern region, the pro-independence Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance (MFDC) is deeply split it and its veteran leader, the Abbé Augustin Diamacoune Senghor,...

That consummate survivor President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah has done it again. He has persuaded parliament, if not the voters, that his increasingly unpopular government should be given another...

Prime Minister Pascal Affi N'Guessan told journalists he was happy with his talks in Brussels on 15 February. The European Union would continue the political dialogue and would...

As the war slows down in Sierra Leone, it is heating up in Guinea. In essence, it's the same war. The Liberian and Burkinabè sponsors of the Revolutionary...

The rest of the world congratulated Ghanaians for two well-run rounds of voting and a credible transition from one elected government to another. The New Patriotic Party's victory...

Negotiators from giant Nigeria and tiny São Tomé e Príncipe hope to conclude a landmark agreement to settle a border dispute at talks due to begin in São...

After his chaotic inauguration ceremony on 7 January, new President John Agyekum Kufuor has earned the local sobriquet of 'Jak'. With a transition period of just eight days...