China has a new competitor for oil resources in Nigeria, according to company leaks and media reports. Royal Dutch/Shell is understood to be looking to sell a 49.8% stake in...

Reforms in Nigeria’s oil sector, promised by Minister of State for Oil Odein Ajumogobia, will mean that some of the multibillion dollar deals with Asian companies will be reviewed...

The paradox at the heart of Nigeria's latest political drama is that President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua credibly presents himself as a politician who is serious about reinstating the...

Former Governor of Delta State James Ibori was arrested in the early hours of 12 December by officials from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) who have...

For a day, peace broke out among the governing New Patriotic Party's (NPP's) presidential hopefuls. It happened at a grand rally at Kosua on 2 December: this was...

With new promises of debt relief, road-building deals, new power stations and Chinese credit, President Ernest Bai Koroma's government has been buoyed by overseas support since his election...

The race to pick the New Patriotic Party's next presidential candidate is turning nasty, as millions of cedis are spent on the primary election campaigns and arguments over...

For many Ghanaians, the economics of the elections are more important than the politics. Most of the responsibility for these matters falls on the shoulders of the effervescent...

Two months after his election, life for Sierra Leone's new President Ernest Bai Koroma has been full of pageantry and confusion. Three hours late for his own inauguration,...

Octogenarian President Abdoulaye Wade and his 65-year-old South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki seem to disagree about many things, especially the African Union and the New Partnership for African...

Power-brokers on all sides in Abuja seem encouraged by the surprise announcement by the Independent National Electoral Commission on 8 November that the People's Democratic Party convention would...

The octogenarian President has just begun his second five-year term and ambitious politicians in Dakar are already worrying about the succession, due in 2012. They have two main...

It has been a good week for the many Nigerians who like reversals of fortunes. On 30 October, the free-spending Speaker of the House of Representatives, Patricia Etteh,...

President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua talks about the rule of law while his own party remains populated by politicians and godfathers widely suspected of corruption, electoral fraud and violence....

Sierra Leone's promised turnaround is beginning to take shape. Incoming President Ernest Bai Koroma of the All People's Congress (APC) has appointed 20 ministers to his new cabinet....

Renaissance Capital has a new Chairperson for its advisory committees on Nigeria and Africa. The World Bank has a new Managing Director. And both institutions have secured the...

Fresh from celebrating their successful floating of a US$750 million Eurobond last month, President John Kufuor and Finance Minister Kwadwo Baah Wiredu face growing scrutiny over the government's...

Both government and rebel politicians extol the virtues of the peace accord which they negotiated in March. Côte d'Ivoire is moving determinedly towards free elections next year, they...

When the war broke out in 2002, those soldiers who defected from the national army to the rebels were rewarded by promotion; they now insist they should keep...

Nigeria's President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's maiden voyage to New York to speak at the United Nations General Assembly was choreographed by an improbable band of bankers, publishers, itinerant...

Karim Wade, the son of President Abdoulaye Wade, is the subject of complaints about the award of Senegal's third mobile phone licence to Sudatel, whose closest competitor, Celtel...

Sierra Leone joined an African elite on Monday when its opposition party was voted into power. Ernest Bai Koroma of the All People’s Congress (APC) becomes President, with...

Niger’s latest rebellion is getting worse, although President Mamadou Tandja refuses to acknowledge its existence (AC Vol 48 Nos 8 & 18). The recently formed Mouvement des Nigériens...

It has been the worst of times in the oil capital of Port Harcourt in the 100 days since President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua was elected. And it has...

New developments in the investigations into Nigeria's $US10 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project on Bonny Island could have serious political ramifications in Washington and Abuja. Britain's...

Cocaine has been, after oil, West Africa's highest value export to Europe in recent months, according to regional police reports. The coca which forms the basis of the...

Praised for their peaceful and credible conduct at first, the elections turned violent when rivals clashed a week before the presidential runoff on 8 September.

President Mamadou Tandja has declared a state of alert in the north, the base of Niger's fast growing uranium industry, after attacks on key targets killed some 50...

A decade ago, President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was driven from power and Sierra Leone was gripped by a military junta. The entire region faced destabilisation. Troops were sent...

The presidential and parliamentary elections on 11 August have turned out to be closer and more credible than expected. Now they will be decided in a run-off vote...

Horse-trading aside, front running presidential candidate Ernest Bai Koroma and the People's Movement for Democratic Change's (PMDC) Charles Margai say their alliance will produce an inclusive government offering...

Solomon Berewa wants a first-round victory on 11 August. As more than 2.6 million Sierra Leoneans prepare to elect a new president and 112 members of parliament, the...

In these elections, the proportional representation system is replaced by voting in first-past-the-post constituencies. This makes personalities more important and increases the sway of paramount chiefs, almost all...

Essentially, the new presidency started last week. President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua appointed his cabinet on 26 July and followed this four days later with a sweeping shake-up of...

Murky reports of coup plots and corruption are tarnishing President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s government. Local political scheming undermines her high international credibility and that of her Finance Minister, Antoinette...

The race for Ghana's presidency is heating up at last after eight ministers and presidential hopefuls walked out of President John Agyekum Kufuor's government on 6 July. They...

Who's where in the government reshuffle?

The Special Court for Sierra Leone is well past its sell-by date. Intended to last only three years, until 2005, the SCSL now aims to wind up at...

By local standards, the 13 judges serving on the Sierra Leone Special Court are well paid. Critics say this explains why the trials are dragging on.

From their heydays in Nigeria in the 1980s, Latin America's druglords are diversifying their business in Africa. Nigerian traders still play a key role: they are regarded as...

At a subdued and well guarded inauguration ceremony in Abuja's Eagle Square parade ground on 29 May, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua talked about reforming Nigeria's rotten political system....

At Government House in Port Harcourt last week, waiters scurried around pouring bottles of Cristal champagne as a white jacketed crooner sang Frank Sinatra's 'My way' in honour...

Chocolate sales could dive after a report that Ivorian rebels may earn more from taxes on cocoa beans than from 'blood diamonds'.

The shooting dead of a Nigerian driver and kidnapping of six Russians from their compound in Ikot Abasi, Akwa Ibom, looks like an escalation in a complex feud...

Gunfire in the night was only the start of it. After a relatively calm April, discontent has spread again. Soldiers have continued sporadic shooting to warn President Lansana...

The main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress, has threatened to reject the results of the December 2008 elections if Ghanaians living abroad are allowed to vote. NDC...

One of the best tests of the peace accords is whether they prompt the African Development Bank to return to Abidjan. It moved to Tunisia in June 2003,...

The gulf between the aspirations of the new political team under President-elect Umaru Musa Yar'Adua and the consequences of last month's disastrous elections is widening dangerously. Many around...

Mallam Nasir el-Rufai's student friends called him 'Giant'; he stands some five foot seven inches tall. These days he is more commonly known as 'Bulldozer', because of his...

Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré's electoral triumph ends 'the politics of consensus' in place since 2002. Results from the Minister of Territorial Administration, General Kafougouna Koné, give ATT...

The governing Sierra Leone People's Party is coming under fire for postponing this year's elections, which its candidate, incumbent Vice-President Solomon Berewa, is expected to win.

Time is pressing President-elect Umaru Yar'Adua ahead of the planned inauguration on 29 May. By then, he will have to put together his government transition team from the...

Bayelsa State's head of security, Bola Igali, barked orders into his mobile phone. 'We have a security situation developing,' he told Africa Confidential, breaking off the interview. Shooting...

Emmanuel Uduaghan, the winner of the heavily disputed governorship elections in Delta State, will have a critical economic and political role in the coming months. He is the...

President Amadou Toumani Touré ('ATT'), has been campaigning for takokélén in the presidential election on 29 April. That's Bambara for 'taking all at once' - a first-round win....

Born in Mopti, Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT, 52) is backed by over 30 parties and myriad civil society organisations, along with the nebulous, 'apolitical' Mouvement Citoyen (Citizen's Movement),...

Rapidly rising oil earnings could help to restore Côte d'Ivoire's status as the economic giant of Francophone West Africa.

Failing a cataclysmic reversal in the next week, President Olusegun Obasanjo's governing People's Democratic Party is likely to chalk up another victory at the state and federal elections...

Opposition to the governing People's Democratic Party (PDP) is split between 24 different parties, most of which cannot even dream of winning a governorship, much less the Presidency.

We examine the main contestants and predict the probable winners of the elections

The key political issue at stake is how well President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah has managed the post-war transition. He pledged to bring political stability and economic recovery and...

If President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah has his way, Sierra Leoneans will be voting for a revised constitution as well as a new government this year.

The appointment of Lansana Kouyaté as Prime Minister could be a turning point in Guinea's long crisis, or an attempt to shore up a crumbling dyke. Kouyaté's nomination...

The war of words between two non-governmental agencies and French nuclear energy company AREVA escalated last week, with public accusations of malpractice in the extraction of uranium in...

The first round of celebrations of 50 years of Independence from Britain was a modest success although many Ghanaians lament that the government has not made the most...

Monrovia's political tug-of-war is getting tougher and President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is in the middle as reluctant arbiter and sole referee. At one end of the rope, Liberia's political...

Liberia's troubles affect its whole region. During the civil war, Liberian mercenaries joined the fight in Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is now warning ex-fighters...

President Laurent Gbagbo likes the 4 March peace accord signed with rebel leader Guillaume Soro, under the auspices of Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaoré. Under the deal, Gbagbo...

Vice-President Atiku Abubakar insists that he remains a candidate in April's presidential elections despite what he describes as 'every effort to destroy' him. Behind that campaign is President...

If Atiku Abubakar has been correctly indicted for embezzlement, he is not eligible to stand as a candidate in April's presidential elections. Section 137 (i) of the Nigerian...

The death of Chief Sam Hinga Norman, former Defence Minister and leader of the Civil Defence Forces (CDF), is a hammer blow to the Special Court of Sierra...

Security in Sierra Leone has been managed much better than the economy and politics. A British-led international training team has sharply improved the professionalism and dependability of the...

Two days after the 25 February election, President Abdoulaye Wade's supporters were celebrating noisily in Dakar's Place d'Indépendence and claiming victory. By 28 February, with most votes counted...

President Yahya Jammeh is unhappy when foreign journalists betray scepticism about his proclaImed cure for AIDS. Since he cannot reach into the studios of Sky Television, he turned...

The political truce which greeted President Lansana Conté's appointment of Lansana Kouyaté as Prime Minister will be short-lived unless there is a speedy transfer of power. The appointment...

As oil trader Trafigura pledges to pay the Ivorian government CFA 100 billion (US$198 million) in compensation for a deadly toxic spill last August, Africa Confidential has uncovered...

More than 60 deaths during the January general strike failed to soften President Lansana Conté who is embroiled in another - perhaps terminal - round of confrontation with...

Too many Ghanaians suspect that their judges administer the law in favour of the New Patriotic Party government. Their mistrust was increased by the gaoling for ten years...

Irregular war-time army recruits mutinied in five towns in early February in a protest over pay. President Laurent Gbagbo has bought some time, but may not have enough...

Voting was colourful in the city of Thies, 70 km to the east of Dakar and Senegal's second most populous city. Men and women, young and old, turned...

Voters are less worried about the upcoming elections than the would-be candidates, now battling for territory before the campaign proper starts later this month. On 29 January, the...

At the heart of policy-making for much of President Olusegun Obasanjo's two terms, the reform team of Nigerian technocrats is breaking up, raising doubts about the continuity of...

As he elegantly stretches out in a rented Mayfair apartment and insists on discussing 'policy issues not personalities', it is easy to forget that General Muhamadu Buhari headed...

Union strikers and opposition demonstrators have secured a tactical victory against President Lansana Conté's regime after three weeks of protests, during which, in January, more than 60 people...

El Hadj Mamadou Sylla, a businessman, and Fodé Soumah, formerly Deputy Governor of Guinea's Central Bank, vigorously protest their innocence of the corruption charges pending trial on which...

The election of President John Kufuor to the Chairmanship of the African Union was a personal victory for his Foreign Minister and presidential aspirant, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Edwin Melvin Snowe's battle to keep his position as Speaker of the House of Representatives is becoming an embarrassing cause célèbre as he claims the plot against him...

Some might consider it risky for a Nigerian bank to issue a US$300 million Eurobond on the international capital markets for the first time - just three months...

After weeks of negotiations, many expected President Abdoulaye Wade to announce the return of former Prime Minister Idrissa Seck to the governing Parti Démocratique Sénégalais and an electoral...

General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua's shadow looms large over Nigeria's April presidential elections. Soldier-turned-politician Yar'Adua died in gaol nine years ago on trumped up charges of coup-plotting against the...

The three main parties all have their candidates, with Vice-President Atiku Abubakar the last to take a running mate in the shape of former Anambra State Deputy Governor,...

Two gendarmes and a customs agent dead, a supposed assaillant killed by an angry mob and fears of a wave of new attacks: this is the aftermath of...

A general strike launched by two trades unions, the Confédération Nationale des Travilleurs de Guinée and Union Syndicale des Travailleurs de Guinée, on 10 January is threatening President...