Every day Nigeria's feistier newspapers remind their readers how long - more than three weeks so far - that President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has been out of Nigeria...

Should President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's health problems cause him to withdraw from office, a number of People's Democratic Party (PDP) notables are poised to ascend.

The politically charged battle over Kosmos Energy's attempts to sell its stake in the Jubilee field casts a shadow over Ghana's graduation as a serious oil producer next...

More military infighting looms following a shoot-out on 3 December in which junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara was hit in the head and then flown to Morocco...

The US$2.68 billion China Union plan to revitalise Liberia's Bong Mines has not taken off, almost a year after it was first signed. Initial concerns about the little-known Chinese mining company's...

In January, Liberian officials are set to finalise negotiations for a US$1.6 billion palm oil investment deal with Indonesia's Golden VerOleum. The past year has seen a number of feasibility studies...

Accra is leading the way forward on housing development, bringing in South Korean company STX Group to build 200,000 housing units over the next five years at a cost of...

Although Chinese companies have not yet bid for Kosmos's 30% stake in Ghana's Jubilee field, the China Development Bank has bought Beijing's companies a great deal of capital. The Ghana National...

After winning a court battle over the Nigerian government's attempt to cancel its oil production licences, South Korea's Korea National Oil Corporation is offering to finance billions of dollars of new...

South Korea's state-run Land and Housing Corporation is offering investments and technical cooperation in the oil-rich Niger Delta, a move that might help the ambitions of Seoul's energy companies and appeal...

The conviction in a Swiss Court on 19 November of Abba Abacha, son of former military leader General Sani Abacha, for participating in a criminal organisation together with...

General Sani Abacha is reckoned to have stolen over US$3 billion of Nigeria's public assets, of which at least $1 bn. and 900 million Deutsche Marks were deposited...

With national elections due by early 2011. The financial stakes are huge - control of some US$100 billion of annual oil and gas revenue. The last elections in...

No politician in Nigeria evokes reactions as intense and sharply divided as General Muhammadu Buhari. Many people think him incorruptible and a disciplinarian and accuse him of religious...

On 24 November, the Mega Summit Movement (MSM) disclosed plans to launch a Mega Party in 2010. Its three component groups had hitherto looked more like siblings squabbling...

Interpol is investigating the fate of a Boeing jet carrying some 10 tonnes of cocaine which landed in Mali on 2 November and may have been deliberately destroyed....

While some were left asking if the US$7 billion deal signed by the China International Fund and its sister company China Sonangol International in early October had actually...

The Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), which President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s supporters are trying to steer through the National Assembly, is meeting massive opposition from the major oil companies,...

The differences seem to be narrowing between the presidency and the critical stakeholders: indigenous and international oil companies, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Federal Inland...

China has expressed interest in buying 49% stakes in 23 soon-to-expire oil block licences. The London Financial Times reported in September that the China National Offshore Oil Corporation...

In the run-up to a fund-raising conference in London on 18 November, President Ernest Bai Koroma was pushing legal and business reforms, and making an example of corrupt...

For years, cowboy outfits have churned through Sierra Leone's red dirt for diamonds and gold, but now the government is getting serious about extractive industries. Listed companies already...

With an eye on the 2011 elections and with oil production now well under half of the installed capacity of 2.5 million barrels per day, President Umaru Musa...

Keith Jubah was shot dead, his body hacked and burned, in Kakata, 35 kilometres north of Monrovia, on 1 November. Nobody yet knows who killed him but he...

Christiana Tah, Justice Minister: Formerly a Professor in the Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice Department at Montgomery College, Maryland, United States, Tah is a member of the State...

International pressure is growing on Guinea's military junta, shut away with its weaponry in Camp Alpha Yaya Diallo in Conakry. France has cut off its military cooperation and...

The choice of Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaoré as chief mediator in Guinea's worsening crisis is curious, given that the Burkinabé leader, in league with Liberian warlord Charles...

President Yahya Jammeh is due at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Trinidad and Tobago in the second half of November. However, a televised outburst in...

For several years, Ghana has been praised internationally as a model of political pluralism and rational economic reform, even if some of its more introspective nationals dispute this...

Britain used to enjoy a reputation for relative decency in matters of bribes and commissions, in comparison to European counterparts such as France, Germany and Italy. That has...

Beijing's Foreign Ministry officials are energetically distancing themselves from a US$7 billion minerals deal announced on 9 October by the increasingly isolated military regime in Guinea with the Hong-Kong based China...

The business people, politicians and state officials behind the China International Fund (CIF) and China Sonangol International (CSI) entered the public eye in 2008 with the purchase of the publicly traded...

The China International Fund (CIF) was born in the aftermath of Angola's civil war as the Luanda government embarked on Africa's costliest post-war reconstruction, fuelled by oil, gas and mineral resources....

Two years into his presidency, Ernest Bai Koroma of the All People's Congress (APC) can claim some successes. The Bumbuna hydroelectric dam will soon supply the capital, Freetown,...

Britain has spent millions helping to create Sierra Leone's security apparatus from scratch. The army and police protected the elections in 2007 and triumphed over smugglers in July...

Oppositionists lambast Ernest Bai Koroma's government for favouring the north-west region in its appointments, specifically the President's own Limba people and their Temne and Krio allies.

More than 157 unarmed demonstrators were shot down on 28 September by soldiers using rifles, daggers, machetes and iron bars. It was a straightforward massacre. Those killed...

The introduction by the Central Bank of Nigeria of polymer banknotes on 1 October has been blighted by accusations that millions of pounds in illegal commissions have been...

After six weeks of billion dollar bail-outs, high-level sackings and the arraigning in court of five top executives, Nigeria’s financial sector is still robust enough to prompt paeans...

Oil industry officials in Accra are linking Finance Minister Kwabena Duffuor's 18 September statement that Ghana had applied for a US$2 billion concessional loan from China to...

The targets of Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Lamido Sanusi's banking purge are beginning to fight back. Four bank chief executives have been arraigned on criminal charges and...

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Toxic Waste, Okechukwu Ibeanu, is challenging claims by oil-trader Trafigura and its Ivorian subcontractor Tommy that the waste they dumped in Abidjan...

Like a family of latter day Medicis, Nigeria's top bankers have been prospering thanks to their acute political instincts and abilities to exploit their dominance in a tightly...

The surrender of about 1,000 militants in the Niger Delta was superbly choreographed. With hundreds of guns behind him, Ebikabowei Victor Ben - better known as 'General Boyloaf...

For his Council of Economic Advisors, President John Atta Mills has picked a team with wide experience of Western financial and academic institutions. They are academics, more used...

Swiss-based oil trader Trafigura will have an eventful September before it goes on trial on 6 October in Britain's largest class action lawsuit. At the centre of this...

The latest grand projet from President Abdoulaye Wade - the US$30 million Monument de la Renaissance Africaine - has quickly become an extreme parody of bad government in the eyes of...

In mid-August, Nigeria's Federal High Court overturned President Umaru Yar'Adua's revoking, in January, of Seoul-based Korea National Oil Company's rights to 60% of Oil Prospecting Licences 321 and 323 in a...

Within days of a truce being declared between militants in the Niger Delta and the government, serious fighting broke out in Nigeria's poverty-ridden north (AC Vol 50 No...

The late Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf's Boko Haram group had about 2,000 members, some of whom had first attacked police stations in 2003. The group's rhetoric grew increasingly violent,...

A tangled web of financial holdings stretching from South Africa to Ghana and Lebanon could delay plans for a US$20 billion merger of India's Bharti Airtel and South Africa's Mobile Telephone...

Malaysian timber conglomerate Samling, which faces accusations of illegal logging, is at the centre of a storm over the bidding by foreign companies for 25-year contracts in Liberia's timber sector. The...

The Niger Delta militants take an unorthodox approach to public relations. In the morning of 12 July they launched 'Operation Moses', detonating a bomb which devastated part of...

Since Lieutenant Yahya Jammeh led a succesful coup just 15 years ago on 22 July 1994, he has managed his small country against strong domestic complaints, but without...

At last, Charles Taylor gets his day in court. He took the stand before the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) for the first time on 14 July...

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf looks set to seek a second six-year term in the 2011 elections. This is despite a recommendation from Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)...

The current array of international tribunals has its roots in the 1990s. With the Cold War over, a spate of atrocious wars broke out in areas that no...

The wet and windy weather of Ghana's rainy season will not dampen the warm welcome for United States President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle on 10-11 July....

Expectations are high in Accra that its hosting of President Barack Obama will prompt a rush of United States investment and assistance for Ghana and the region. Even...

After two years of drift, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua and his government seem to be trying to arrest the slide. Recent appointments have bolstered the administration's competence. The...

After decades of coups and assassinations, Nigeriens had hoped that President Mamadou Tandja would stabilise the country and peacefully hand over to his successor. Instead, he decided to...

Niger is the world's third-largest uranium producer, extracting about 3,300 tonnes per year. Prices rose to US$55 per pound in June, up more than 35% since April; nuclear...

By gaoling opposition journalists, President Yahya Jammeh makes himself look insecure. The President, who seized power as a mere lieutenant fifteen years ago, now entitles himself President Sheikh...

Many Guineans like Captain Moussa Dadis Camara's tough talk on state television and his increasingly tough actions, such as the mass arrests of suspected drug traffickers. Yet the...

National Assembly politicians are investigating reports that tens of billions of dollars in revenue from the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation's (NNPC) foreign subsidiaries, which have accrued over...

Kawsara in the Koran is one of the heavenly gardens promised to virtuous Muslims. In Dakar, it is the name of an ambitious property development, the Cité des Affaires Kawsara, which...

Western investors are waiting around on the sidelines, nervous that the outcome of Côte d'Ivoire's elections, scheduled for 29 November, may bring more instability, but Chinese investors are heading straight for...

The rebel commander High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, is on the run from government forces, and the war in the Niger Delta is intensifying (AC Vol 50...

The latest government offensive in the Niger Delta is the heaviest for several years, with 3,000 troops, two warships, 14 boats and at least four helicopter gunships moving...

In the two years since it was elected, the National Assembly has approved just five bills, including two budget appropriations covering members' salaries.Yet representatives of constituencies outside the...

At long last, a date has been set for the overdue election. On 17 May in Ouagadougou, President Laurent Koudou Gbagbo promised that 29 November was 'sure', but...

President Laurent Gbagbo (59) is a doctor of history of the Sorbonne, France, and a prolific author. He is Bété (and wrote a book about his people)...

The 10-11 July visit to Accra of the first African-American President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama,is a massive public relations coup for President John Evans...

The junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara's order that all mining licences are subject to immediate revocation if the government does not approve of their development plans has added more confusion...

The political stand-off continued this week in Ekiti State after the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) announced the results of the governorship election on 5 May, which had...

Chief Anthony Anenih is Nigeria's ultimate political survivor. In March, 30 years after entering national politics, he was appointed Chairman of the Nigeria Port Authority, the government's second-biggest...

By promoting his son Karim Wade into the government of new Prime Minister Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye on 1 May, President Abdoulaye Wade has revived his project for a...

Against a background of heightening inter-party violence, President Ernest Bai Koroma has been re-elected leader of the governing All People's Congress at the party's national conference in Makeni...

The two most powerful sons of the late President Gnassingbé Eyadéma have fallen out. Kpatcha Gnassingbé was arrested on 12 April (AC Vol 50 No 8), charged with...

'Politics is a do or die affair,' according to a founder of the ruling People's Democratic Party and former head of state Olusegun Obasanjo. Some of his party...

To mark his hundredth day in office on 17 April President John Evans Atta Mills gave his government eight out of ten for trying to fight corruption, protect...

Perhaps the toughest job in President John Atta Mills's government is the Finance and Economic Planning portfolio, held by Kwabena Duffuor. Having, by reducing duties and levies, brought...

Disaster has struck President Abdoulaye Wade’s coalition, led by his Parti Démocratique Sénégalais, at the polls on 22 March. The rural, municipal and regional elections marked his first...

Weeks after Information Minister Dora Akunyili announced a campaign to rehabilitate Nigeria’s international image, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s government faces the strongest test of its corruption-fighting credentials in...

The arrest of former Defence Minister Kpatcha Gnassingbé while pleading in vain for asylum outside the gates of the United States Embassy in Lomé on 15 April appears...

On closer scrutiny, the agreement between China Union and the Liberian government to resume iron ore production at Bong Mines hugely favours the Chinese company with only a minimal share...

The Minerals Development Agreement between China Union and the Liberian government, which Africa-Asia Confidential has seen, offers China Union royalty payments and tax exemptions that are far more generous than the...

Almost all Nigeria's countertrade deals with Asia have been abandoned after investigations by President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's officials into their viability.

South Korea: Nigeria is South Korea's third largest trading partner and the largest market in Africa for Korean construction companies. In January 2006, Korean companies were working on 60 projects valued...

The uncertainty about the future of Central Bank Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo reflects the drift in Nigeria’s policy over the past 18 months. Soludu, who was appointed in...

Ghanaian economist Victoria Kwakwa starts her job as World Bank Country Director for Vietnam in April. It is an important posting, given Vietnam's economic record over the past three...

The worst political violence to hit Sierra Leone since the 2007 election left dozens wounded this week, when supporters of the governing All People’s Congress and the opposition...

Western donors think well of Burkinabè President Blaise Compaoré. On 11 February, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the wife of the French President, made Ouagadougou her first port of call as...

P>After President Blaise Compaoré and Prime Minister Tertius Zongo, Burkina Faso's most senior politician is Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, National Assembly Speaker and Chairman of the National Executive...

The Special Court for Sierra Leone completed its last trial on 25 February, convicting the three most senior leaders of the reviled Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of a...

President Ernest Bai Koroma has finally shaken up his government, before a vote to determine if he will continue to lead the All People's Congress (APC). In all,...

Officers from Britain’s Serious Fraud Office arrested lawyer Jeffrey Tesler, 60, at his offices in Tottenham in London on 5 March in a move that will widen the...

The main threat to peace in Bissau is a coup d’état following the fatal bombing of the Army Chief of Staff, General Batista Tagme Na Waie, on 1...

Time is running out for the small group of reform-minded ministers around President Koroma, if they are not to lose the battle against the criminal and corrupt elements....

Sierra Leone's rumour mill is dependably strong and outrageous, but the case of African Minerals is impressive even without its wrapping of gossip. The Chairman of the company,...

The US$2.68 billion agreement signed by China Union's Chief Executive Yin Fuyou and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on 19 January to restart iron ore production at the old...

The US$2.68 billion Bong Mines deal hands the Chinese consortium led by Yin Fuyou and China Union a 25-year concession for the formerly German-owned Bong Mines in Bong Country, north-east of...

The Korean National Oil Company may take legal action in response to Nigeria's revoking last month of two lucrative concessions awarded to the company in 2005. KNOC won operating rights to...

Global financial chaos and falling demand for oil and minerals are prompting recalculations on all sides. The IMF and World Bank have revised down their gross domestic product forecasts...

Despite a show of insouciance after December's putsch led by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara in Conakry, China's diplomats and business leaders are closely watching the new regime's policies,...

The first half of December saw the town of Jos burn, as gangs of youths took to the streets for targeted killing, criminal bloodletting and wanton destruction. By...

Three weeks after being sworn in as President in succession to John Agyekum Kufuor, Professor John Evans Atta Mills has completed his cabinet line-up and set about formulating...

The doings and sayings of former President Jerry John Rawlings always fascinate the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) as well as journalists. Rawlings likes nothing better than to...

The Beijing-Accra axis, which dates back to the heady Independence days of President Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana, is an important one for both sides. Beijing wants a strong economic relationship with Ghana...

There was little time for Ghanaians to luxuriate in the praises heaped on them for another peaceful transfer of power on 7 January before having to confront some...

Loyalists of the outgoing National Patriotic Party (NPP) government reacted angrily to World Bank Country Director Ishac Diwan's dire warnings about Ghana's economy. Estimating the government's budget deficit...

Oil Minister Rilwanu Lukman and Finance Minister Mansur Mukhtar are leading Nigeria's management of its worse economic crisis for two decades. The steep fall in world oil prices,...

Oil Minister Rilwanu Lukman is preparing to present a 175-page bill to the National Assembly on the restructuring and management of the oil and gas sector. The contents...

Guinea's new leader, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, faces formidable difficulties in holding together the junta as rival military factions circle in search of largesse and political influence. Camara's...

Some of the Comité National pour le Développement et la Démocratie junta's appointments have been heavily criticised. Chief among these is military leader Moussa Dadis Camara's old friend,...

Forgiveness and tolerance are key to Gambia and Senegal's celebration of the Islamic holy day of Yom Ashura (the tenth day of the Islamic New Year), this year...

Ghanaians start the year with a collective sigh of relief that the close-run parliamentary and presidential elections did not descend into political mayhem (AC Vol 49 No 25)....