Ghanaians surprised themselves on 7 December, when 84 per cent of the electorate turned out to return John Agyekum Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party to the presidency...

The government has yet to respond to the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which released a first version of its final report in October. There is...

Official diamond export earnings are set to reach as much as US$120 million for 2004 compared to just over $70 mn. in 2003. This is partly an effect...

President John Agyekum Kufuor's ruling New Patriotic Party can take nothing for granted ahead of the 7 December elections, although his party is favoured to win the presidency...

The big guns of the African Union have lost patience with President Laurent Gbagbo. South African President Thabo Mbeki was heading to Abidjan on 2 December to try...

Côte d'Ivoire is already split in two, but with refugees heading out of the former African success story to seek refuge in the ruins of Liberia, the question...

By bombing the French military base at Bouaké, chasing French citizens out of Abidjan, and burning down their schools in the capital, President Laurent Gbagbo has wrecked one...

There has been neither visible mention of nor comment on President Thabo Mbeki's recent posthumous decoration of the late President Ahmed Sekou Touré of Guinea.

A road crash recalled the bad old days, dramatically opening the race for presidential and parliamentary elections due on 7 December. The victim was Alhaji Mohamed Mumuni, set...

Africa Confidential has learned that California-based private military contractor DynCorp is about to be awarded a contract to restructure the Liberian national army. Industry sources say the company...

Mujahid Dokubo Asari's 'Operation Locust Feast' was supposed to begin on Independence Day, 1 October, and was effectively a declaration of war on President Olusegun Obasanjo's government and...

The appointment of Damião Vaz d'Almeida as Premier on 18 September marks the impoverished archipelago's sixth change of government in three years. It also calls a halt, at...

Halliburton, the United States' oil services company, was the prime mover behind a US$180 million slush fund linked to Nigeria's $10 billion gas export plant, according to several...

Operating out of a modest solicitor's office in the north London suburb of Tottenham, Jeffrey Tesler cuts an improbable figure as the multi-millionaire agent arbitrating among heads of...

The harmony may not last, but opponents of President Laurent Gbagbo are meeting in Paris to discuss uniting behind a single candidate in next year's elections.

Last week, a dozen customers at a restaurant at 10 Warri Street, Port Harcourt, were machine-gunned to death at their tables by a gang of youths, who then...

Questions are mounting about the involvement of United States' oil services company Halliburton in the distribution of US$180 million of allegedly corrupt payments on a $10 billion gas...

If President Laurent Gbagbo still worries about what people think of him, the row over the resignation of cocoa producers' leader Henri Amouzou has triggered some embarrassing revelations....

The race to the national elections on 7 December is getting closer and noisier. Despite the governing New Patriotic Party's mixed record on the economy, it remains a...

The government promised at talks in Brussels in mid-July to open a dialogue with the opposition and to improve its management of state finances. In a first gesture...

Death and destruction in the Niger Delta is driving ChevronTexaco and its insurers into a legal battle. After attacks on its oil wells and pipelines in April 2003,...

The Marcoussis peace accord appears deadlocked, but French President Jacques Chirac has one more ace up his sleeve: the Gabonese leader El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba. The presence...

While the spotlight shines on the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in the Hague and the indictment of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, the trial of some of those deemed...

Ghanaians call it 'going HIPC': signing up to debt relief as prescribed under the World Bank's and International Monetary Fund's Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative. President John Agyekum...

Breaking a deafening government silence since a controversial Chinese loan agreement was rushed through parliament at the end of its last sitting in April, the embattled Finance and...

Advanced Fee Frauds or '419s', have become as common in Ghana as in Nigeria, where they were invented. Ghanaian banks have published warnings in the press that their...

Officials in Abuja are intensifying a probe into commissions of more than US$180 million on a gas export plant following Africa Confidential's report last month that Nigeria's biggest...

Allegations that contractors building Nigeria's fast expanding Liquefied Natural Gas complex have paid over US$180 million in illegal commissions have prompted parallel investigations in France, Nigeria and the...

General Ibrahim Babangida, Head of State, August 1985-August 1993. Presided over the formation of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas joint venture but insisted the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum...

17 May 1989: Incorporation of Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited. NLNG Board with representatives from the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Shell Gas BV, ENI International (formerly...

The investigations into Nigeria's Liquefied Natural Gas project span three continents and are a major test of international resolve to combat corruption. In France, it is the biggest...

Last year, the Shell Petroleum Development Company, Nigeria, employed consultants to clarify a 'peace and security strategy' for their troubled operations in the Niger Delta oilfields, where Shell...

After waiting all his life to be president, Abdoulaye Wade is making up for lost time (AC Vol 43 No 9). Since his triumphant defeat of Abdou Diouf...

The international community seems powerless to prevent the steady worsening of the crisis (AC Vol 45 No 11). A United Nations Security Council mission arrived on 22 June...

Ghana Airways, the bankrupt state airline, is to get a helping hand from an unlikely and controversial source ­ two Mormon-owned companies from Salt Lake City in the...

President Olusegun Obasanjo's suspension of Plateau State Governor Joshua Ariye and the State House of Assembly points to a growing constitutional crisis. As investigations continue into Dariye's personal...

A fresh military revolt could add to Côte d'Ivoire's woes. President Laurent Gbagbo's Bété andallied ethnic groups (Agni, Atié, Dida and Guéré) now dominate the security apparatus, which...

Few punches are pulled in a leaked United Nations report on the brutal suppression of a demonstration on 25 March. It concludes that the government used the opposition...

Plot accusations are common in Guinea. Yet the latest charges of plotting, levelled against former Prime Minister Sidya Touré and the deputy army Chief of Staff, Colonel Mamadou...

Confusion and recriminations followed the voter registration process for December's presidential and parliamentary elections, which took place over two weeks last month. Many voters blame the...

The United Nations military mission got off to an inauspicious start on 4 April with no new troops, no functioning government to support and no sign of disarmament....

In July the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is to re-categorise Cape Verde as a Medium Developed Country. While this reflects well on his economic management,...

Opposition parties and rebel groups have formed a common front against President Laurent Gbagbo and his militias after scores of people were killed when police fired on demonstrators...

The International Monetary Fund is unconvinced by President Yahya Jammeh's anti-corruption campaign and the trial of five central bank officials on foreign exchange offences

It is hotly disputed whether Aminasoari Kalu Dikibo, a chieftain of the governing People's Democratic Party in the oil-rich Niger Delta, died in a political assassination or an...

Gambians in search of hope after a decade of impoverishment and repression under President Yahya Jammeh's regime might have had their spirits momentarily lifted after he announced the...

Investigations in France, Nigeria and the United States into claims that the US company Halliburton was party to a US$180 million slush fund to bribe Nigerian officials are...

In 1982, a few months after Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings successfully staged a coup, three High Court judges and an army officer were brutally murdered and their...

The United Nations and the United States have a mutual interest in trumpeting the prospects for peace in Liberia. With 15,000 troops - the biggest peacekeeping force in...

Ghana's most popular song these days is 'Scent noo, agye bebiara' ('The smell is everywhere', in Twi). Its subject is corruption, still a key political issue three years...

It's election year and President John Kufuor wants to make the struggling economy look good. He promised his party's wealthy patrons a golden age for business; so far,...

Claims by Diamondworks, a South African-based, Canadian-registered company with a colourful history in mining and security (AC Vol 44 No 15), to have secured oil trading rights in...

Another round in the battle to liberalise the oil business goes to President Olusegun Obasanjo after the once mighty Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) backed down from its campaign...

President Olusegun Obasanjo's rival in last year's contest, retired general and former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari (1983-85) was in London last week for medical treatment and to drum...

General Gnassingbé Eyadéma has not appeared in public since the Liberation Day celebrations on 13 January, date of President Sylvanus Olympio's murder and Eyadéma's seizure of power in...