The ruling New Patriotic Party, with its national congress due on 17 December, is torn by claims of financial abuses by its Chairman, Haruna Esseku (AC Vol 46...

Accusations of gross humans rights abuses and corrupt deals with the late Nigerian military leader, General Sani Abacha, barely worry President Yahya Jammeh. The Commonwealth and others have...

Oil magnate Wale Tinubu, 37, and Oando PLC have made a big splash with the company's listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange last month. Oando's 3 billion Rand...

The first stage of President Olusegun Obasanjo's operation 'Restore Hope' against Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha is over with the impeaching of the beleaguered Governor by the State's...

'Thank heaven for the return of our father,' sang several thousand supporters of the Bayelsa State Governor, Diepreye Solomon Alamieyeseigha, on 21 November, the morning of his return...

After 18 years in charge of one of the world's poorest countries, President Blaise Compaoré has won five more, with a declared 80.35 per cent of the vote....

There is no challenger to President Blaise Compaoré's dominance of Burkina Faso's politics. If he chooses in 2010, he may amend Article 37 (2000) of the constitution and...

Donors pledged upwards of US$800 million in reconstruction aid over the next three years at the Sierra Leone Consultative Group in London on 30 November. This far exceeded...

Security, anti-corruption and political reconciliation top the agenda as Liberia prepares for its, and Africa's, first female president. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, 67, a former director of the United Nations...

Members of parliament are angry because the Chairman of the National Transitional Government of Liberia, Gyude Bryant, has refused to sign a bill allowing them to keep their...

The regime in Abidjan is threatened by northern rebels and allies of the sacked army chief, General Mathias Doué. President Laurent Gbagbo has told ruling party officials and...

The legacy of writer-campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa a decade after his execution is secure. Saro-Wiwa put the worsening political and environmental crisis of the Niger Delta, the country's key...

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a dangerous separatist 'who presented himself as an environmentalist and human rights activist before the international community', who was guilty of heinous crimes that demanded...

The big question about the presidential election on 13 November was the size of victory that incumbent Blaise Compaoré, 54, would choose to declare. In 1998, he won...

Violence looms again. President Laurent Gbagbo's five-year term in office ended on 26 October but he insists on staying on. National elections are blocked by the stalemate between...

Niger is at the centre of a row over intelligence used to justify the United States' invasion of Iraq and the deepening personal battle between President George W....

In the second round of the presidential election, due on 8 November, Liberians must choose between ex-AC Milan striker George Manneh Opong Weah and former United Nations Development...

Hopes of a ceasefire or even a deal between President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice-President Atiku Abubakar have evaporated despite high level attempts at reconciliation (AC Vol 46 No...

President Laurent Gbagbo and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan agree on one thing: elections cannot be held on 30 October. This is at once obvious and crushing....

Only a political avalanche could alter the dominance of the governing Sierra Leone People's Party before the elections in February 2007. Vice-President Solomon Berewa, also known as 'Solo...

Delegate conferences of the Sierra Leone People's Party and the All People's Congress last month produced new party leaderships, ready for the February 2007 elections. There were eight...

The international football star George Manneh Opong Weah leads the pack of 22 presidential hopefuls, in the last weeks of campaigning for the national elections due on 11...

Liberia re-entered the international system on 16 September after two decades of lawlessness. At a grand signing ceremony in the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the Chairman...

A central principle of Africa's bargain with industrialised countries is that its own governments should assess each other's performance and publish the results. In return for foreign investment,...

Locked in a deadly embrace, President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy Atiku Abubakar look like two men struggling on a cliff edge as they try to hurl each...

If the battle between President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, is fired by the presidential race in 2007, what will happen if neither of them runs?...

With over 10,000 peacekeepers in country, France and the United Nations are pressing President Laurent Gbagbo to demobilise his militias (AC Vol 46 No 14). He has been...

Nigeria's biggest ever oil licensing round this weekend will test President Olusegun Obasanjo's bold promises to fight corruption, which helped to secure a massive write-off on the country's...

Quarrels between aid agencies, politicians and United Nations organisations continue as Niger 's people starve. As UN Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived in Niamey for talks with President...

The world's largest steel producer, Indian-owned Mittal Steel, claims it has won the concession to develop Liberia's iron ore mines in return for an investment package of US$900...

Recounts in three regions are possible after losing candidate Malam Bacai Sanhá disputed provisional election results giving former military ruler João Bernardo 'Nino' Vieira victory in the 24...

Investigators searching for hundreds of millions of dollars of corrupt payments linked to Nigeria's gas export plant have uncovered new channels for the payments through Kenya's Transnational Bank...

Wojciech Chodan, an executive with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), has emerged as the Samuel Pepys of the Nigeria gas scandal. At many key meetings, Chodan...

Accusations that former Prime Minister Idrissa Seck is 'threatening state security' are heating up politics in the lead up to next May's parliamentary elections. Seen as a potential...

Basking in the glory of securing a two-thirds cut in Nigeria's US$34 billion foreign debt and the more ambiguous achievement of being British Prime Minister Tony Blair's new...

Another crisis, another timetable for peace. Disarmament must now get underway by the end of this month. The mediators are reluctant to admit that elections cannot be held...

The World Bank has postponed indefinitely a donors' meeting on Sierra Leone, which had initially been scheduled for 6 June, as concern grows about high-level corruption in President...

In the second round of the presidential elections due on 17 or 24 July, Malam Bacai Sanha of the ruling Partido Africano da Independência de Guiné e Cabo...

Gizelle Yazji, a Florida-based Iraqi financial consultant, claims that she negotiated the purchase of a US$3.5 million hotel in Accra's upmarket Airport district on behalf of President John...

Ministerial resignations and dismissals in São Tomé and indignant denials of corruption in Nigeria follow the 31 May award of five blocks in the two countries' Joint Development...

In the badlands of the Niger Delta a dispute over an oil-loading contract shows the often corrosive relationship between multinational oil companies, government officials and local militia fighters....

Bamako is worried about security, and awaiting a cabinet reshuffle by President Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT). Prime Minister Ousmane Issoufi Maïga may not survive. Some call him 'Pinochet',...

Deep in the oil-rich Niger Delta, the Ijaw people are fighting over the ghost of nationalist hero Isaac Jasper Boro. At stake are the political allegiances of the...

A list of the Federalists and the Militants

The vultures are gathering as President Lansana Conté is reported to be slipping in and out of a diabetic coma. A mass prison breakout in Conakry on 15...

Closely watching the succession in Conakry are West African presidents, warlords and diplomats. Their central calculation is that what's good for Liberia's exiled warlord Charles Taylor will be...

The army had crushed the opposition uprising and the Constitutional Court had rejected claims of electoral irregularities well before Faure Gnassingbé was sworn in on 4 May. Hospital...

Little did a royal Belgian foundation expect that by bestowing a prize on Mali's shy, soft-spoken former Territorial Administration Minister, it would reignite controversy over the 2002 elections....

A secret deal signed in February by government ministers in Monrovia would give a mysterious mining company a ten-year monopoly on Liberia's diamond production, according to contract documents...

Charles Taylor, Liberia's exiled warlord, stands accused of crimes across the region. A 30-page confidential report to the internationally financed Special Court in Sierra Leone alleges that he...

'If they declare Faure the winner, this place is going to go up in flames', predicted a much quoted opposition supporter in Lomé. And right on cue, the...

A strange silence from Accra greeted the sudden death, on 5 February, of Togo's (and Africa's) longest-serving leader, Etienne Gnassingbé Eyadéma. The subsequent events have upset neighbouring Ghana's...

Calming Nigeria's murderous ethnic tensions and reducing its chronic corruption are the chief declared aims of President Olusegun Obasanjo, half way through his second and last term. There...

The sudden sacking on 22 March of Education Minister Fabian Osuji was well timed to show Nigeria's creditors that President Olusegun Obasanjo's anti-corruption policy is working. Osuji is...

There is no power or running water in Oloibiri, the town that hosted Nigeria's first oil well, and few visible signs of progress after five decades of oil...

United States Vice-President Dick Cheney could face questioning by a US Grand Jury about his knowledge - or lack of it - of US$180 million of illegal payments...

Top Ivorian politicians will be under pressure to agree terms for the October elections and to implement commitments already made in fresh talks in South Africa on 3...

The Gnassingbé clan will do all it can to win Togo's presidential election, scheduled for 24 April. Some think heir-apparent Faure Gnassingbé, son of the deceased dictator Gnassingbé...

Efforts to find out who murdered Deyda Hydara, Editor of The Point newspaper, on 16 December become more bizarre by the day. Gambian police arrested Wally Hakim Mahmoud,...

Faure Gnassingbé's resignation as acting Head of State on 26 February is a provisional victory for both Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo, Chairman of the African Union, and Mali's...

President Olusegun Obasanjo and his team of economic reformers face a moment of truth this year. A long list of economic reforms on state accountability and the structure...

Togo's succession was never going to be an easy matter. When he died on 5 February, President Gnassingbé Eyadéma had been in power for 38 years, resisting pressure...

After years of affording President Gnassingbé Eyadéma the respect due to Africa's longest serving head of state, the international community has come down hard on the machinations that...

Guinea's President Lansana Conté regularly claims to be the target of plots. This time, he was actually shot at. The regime has found a convenient opposition figure to...

West African diplomats were very relieved that Niger's President Mamadou Tandja beat Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh to win the chair of the Economic Community of West African States...

President Laurent Gbagbo is heading for another showdown with France. He is rebuilding his modest airforce, bombed to cinders by French jets on 6 November after loyalist forces...

President Olusegun Obasanjo is due to step down when his term ends in 2007. The succession that he is planning has been upset by a public falling out...