Leaders of the Ayakoroma community in Delta State saw the violence coming. They warned the military Joint Task Force in mid-November that their town was in the crossfire between...

The self-styled General of the Niger Delta struggle, warlord John Togo, emerged from the Itsekiri/Ijaw ethnic war of 2003, when rival tribal groups from Delta State spawned death,...

One of the wealthiest and most controversial businessmen in Britain, Vasile Frank Timis, has brought over $300 million of Chinese finance to Sierra Leone’s Tonkolili district to exploit what...

Whether Côte d’Ivoire erupts into a fresh conflict or joins a new world of parliamentary democracy depends mainly on money, the military and regional solidarity. As Africa Confidential...

The postponement of the presidential election until 9 April 2011 means another four months of intensive party politicking and the shelving of plans to reform the oil, gas and electricity sectors....

The fierce race for the presidency and National Assembly in next year's elections is worsening the violence in the Niger Delta and undermining last year's amnesty deal. Within the governing People's...

None of the official explanations - from either Tehran or Banjul - of why Iran was sending arms to Gambia via Nigeria make any sense. Gambia's President Yahya...

Of all West Africa's electoral battles, President Blaise Compaoré's fight for re-election after 23 years in power was the least in doubt. The 21 November poll saw him secure 80.21% of...

The first test started within hours of the announcement on 15 November of the victory of Alpha Condé in the second round of the presidential election with 52.5%,...

It has taken Alpha Condé three attempts, a long battle with military regimes and incarceration and torture by one of them to win his country’s presidency. Condé was...

The most critical point about the second round of the presidential election on 21 November, said a veteran Ivorian politician, is not who wins but getting everyone to...

A new coalition of fighters in the Niger Delta has emerged to oppose President Goodluck Jonathan’s amnesty and has launched a new round of violence. A younger generation...

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s decision to send all but one of her cabinet on ‘administrative leave’ was heavily influenced by her son Robert A. Sirleaf, say Monrovia insiders....

Opposition parties in Liberia are gearing up to challenge Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in the presidential election. The most significant alliance is between the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC)...

Critics of President John Atta Mills’s trade deals with China are claiming that two of the biggest financing arrangements are unlikely to go ahead as planned. These are...

Ivorians will have to wait nearly another month, until 28 November, to know the outcome of the presidential election. The first round of voting on 31 October was...

Security arrangements for the 31 October elections were largely directed by Kadet Bertin, President Laurent Gbagbo’s niece and his Special Advisor on Military Affairs, eclipsing the Army Chief...

Bomb blasts in Abuja on 1 October killed twelve people. They could foretell more trouble to come and it is still not clear who was responsible, despite an...

If the amnesty fails and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta resumes its armed struggle, figures from the past and future of Delta militancy will...

Having seized power in a relatively popular coup, vowed to hold elections and tackled a food crisis, Niger’s military junta, headed by Major Salou Djibo, looked to be...

President Abdoulaye Wade’s son, Karim Wade, already holds the Senegalese government’s most senior position, as what the Dakar press calls ‘Super-minister’ in charge of International Cooperation, Air Transport...

Former Finance Minister and chief statistician Joe Abbey has added his voice to those warning the Accra government to take action over spiralling debt liabilities ahead of the...

The stratospheric figures – all in billions of dollars – emerging from President John Atta Mills’s grand tour of Asia last month suggest the love affair between Accra...

In mid-October, a large, red container ship marked STX Pan Ocean berthed in Tema port and started offloading its cargo of tipper trucks, excavators, bulldozers, forklift trucks and...

As political candidates and generals were locked in negotations about the second round of the presidential elections due by the end of October, interim President General Sékouba Konaté...

In return for huge investments in housing and roads, the China Hyway Group has asked for several mining permits that would give it access to at least...

Security experts reckon that cyber warfare and espionage will be this century’s new battlegrounds. With that in view, Beijing is now considering whether to allow the Nigerian government...

Wherever China goes in Nigeria, India tends not to be too far behind. Chinese contractors may have landed all of the major railway deals in Nigeria (AAC Vol...

The brief interest shown by President Goodluck Jonathan's government in economic reform seems to be waning in favour of a concentration on short-term tactics that might help his...

Whoever was responsible for the car bombs that killed 12 people in Abuja during the 50th anniversary of Nigeria's Independence on 1 October and whatever their motives, they...

Former Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo is no longer the favourite to win the second round of the presidential elections, due on 24 October, after several sackings at...

The tight election timetable announced at the beginning of the month is now being questioned again by election officials, civil activists and most of the contesting candidates (AC...

There is no shortage of candidates or political parties contesting the presidential election due early next year; the exact timetable (AC Vol 51 No 18) is under review...

The enthusiastic reception accorded to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at the United Nations summit this week must come as a welcome relief from the political roughhouse in Monrovia....

Buoyed by debt deals and new investors, Liberia’s economy is strengthening. It won debt relief of US$4.6 billion under the World Bank’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries scheme on...

For Niger, the crisis with Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) comes as the military regime that overthrew President Mamadou Tandja last February approaches the return of...

The sudden postponement of the 19 September second round of the presidential election raises fresh doubts about the military’s commitment to handing over power and the prospect of...

President John Evans Atta Mills, his government and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation are entertaining offers for cooperation and a stake in the Jubilee oil field from all over Asia. Since...

Everyone, in and out of government, acclaimed the appointment in June of academic and trades unionist Attahiru Jega as Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission. Now with...

Opposition parties, trades unions and civic activists are protesting against the breakneck schedule announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for presidential elections on 22 January 2010....

Two politicians enter the second round of the presidential election, the most open contest since Guinea won Independence in 1958 – thanks mainly to the apparent lack of...

Several mining companies took advantage of Guinea’s political transition to sign contracts in exchange for shining promises of future wealth. Both the candidates in the second round of...

The announcement on 17 August by ExxonMobil that it is abandoning its campaign to buy a 23.5% stake in the Jubilee field, Africa’s biggest offshore oil field, is...

President John Evans Atta Mills has remained above the fray throughout the dispute between the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and Kosmos Energy but has set up two...

>Defying those who say the government is not politically or administratively ready, Prime Minister Guillaume Soro announced that elections for president and Parliament will be held on 31...

Political activists of all tendencies are increasingly frustrated by the old guard of Laurent Gbagbo (65 years old), Henri Konan Bédié (76) and Alassane Dramane Ouattara (68). Calls...

Members of Ghana's opposition are demanding more due diligence on the government's US$1.5 billion housing deal.

The arithmetic is not right yet but Goodluck Jonathan is making steady progress in his bid for the candidacy of his party in next year's presidential elections. Last...

Delays over cash payments, the coming national elections and rising concern over oil pollution are behind the latest wave of protests and attacks in the Delta. Scores are...

In the Nigerian tradition of irrepressible optimism periodically suffused with brutal realism, Father Matthew Hassan Kukah argues that the last decade's attempts at democracy in Nigeria have been...

President Goodluck Jonathan's government is taking on the United States' oil services giant Halliburton and its Nigerian associates for organising bribes to secure contracts for the $6 billion...

The grand launch of Ghana’s commercial oil production this year has begun inauspiciously with a bruising battle between the government and the state oil company on one hand...

Aside from the party political rivalries, geopolitics and diplomatic jousting involved in the Kosmos Energy debacle in Ghana, there is a central concern: that the government stands to...

At 84 and still looking chipper, President Abdoulaye Wade plans to run for the presidency again in 2012. His advisors insist he is full of ideas and enthusiasm...

Power is concentrated in the hands of President Abdoulaye Wade; development strategy is led by his son, Karim Wade. There are 41 ministers (plus a new Vice-Premier, a...

The presidential succession of Karim Wade is far from a fait accompli, not least because his father, Abdoulaye Wade, does not yet want to step down. One French...

The enforced celebration of 'Freedom Day' on 22 July, the 16th anniversary of President Yahya Jammeh's coup, prompted protests by exiles and human rights groups, who say the...

Party leaders face a new challenger for the 2012 succession to retiring President Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT). The Parti pour le développement économique et solidaire (PDES), launched on...

The Lagos State government, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the China State Construction Engineering Corporation signed an US$8 billion deal this month for a 300,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery and a...

Plans to sell the state-owned Nigeria Telecommunications (Nitel) have floundered after China Unicom announced it would not be contributing to the front-running New Generation Consortium comprised of China Unicom Europe, the...

The continuing power of Mines Minister Mahmoud Thiam and the prospect that he will wield influence after the second round of the presidential elections next month is good news for the...

As one of the anchors in the proposed trans-Guinea railway, the China International Fund may consider its position in Guinea unassailable. However, the Bellzone/CIF deal is already persuading other companies that...

Former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo and long-time oppositionist Alpha Condé will battle it out in the second round of the presidential elections, due on 18 July. Political...

Mahmoud Thiam, the energetic mines minister and former senior staffer at Union de Banques Suisses, insists that his decisions over the past 18 months are not reversible –...

Eighteen months after the coup led by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, the military Conseil National pour la Démocratie et le Développement (CNDD) is keeping its promise of a...

Ahead of the 27 June elections (see Feature), the military regime has warned Rio Tinto to accept formally that it has lost two blocks of the giant Simandou...

There are two big problems with the new deal between the China International Fund and the small Australian mining company Bellzone announced in Conakry on 24 May to...

Britain’s Metropolitan Police have told Africa Confidential that they are confident they will secure the extradition of Nigeria’s former Delta State Governor James Ibori from Dubai, ‘by the...

President Goodluck Jonathan has a year to make good on his promises to tackle the electricity crisis, lead a credible anti-corruption campaign and implement the electoral and political...

Three groups are emerging within the governing People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

Of the 20-odd candidates running in the 27 June presidential election, two veterans stand out. They are Alpha Condé, the pugnacious leader of the Rassemblement du Peuple de...

Guinea’s interim government has seen through several big developments in the mineral sector, in spite of an agreement that no new deals be ratified until after June’s elections....

The eagerness of the United States-based private equity firm Blackstone to talk up the value of Nina Bracewell Smith’s 16% stake in Arsenal Football Club may have prompted...

Equal measures of optimism and scepticism greeted China’s announcement of an agreement to build three oil refineries worth US$23 billion. The terms of the memorandum of understanding are clear; the...

The Ghanaian government is proposing to put up US$1.5 billion of its future oil revenues to finance the first phase of a controversial housing project with the South Korean construction...

Five years after Senegal’s break in diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the island state which only has 23 diplomatic allies continues to haunt political life. At the heart of the affair...

Burnishing a stellar international reputation, Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is steeling herself for a tough campaign for a second presidential term in elections next year. Since winning...

The colourful Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz has finalised two remarkable deals this year: he has sold 51% of his iron ore mining operations in Guinea to Brazil’s Vale...

The Niamey junta is tinkering with its transition programme but it is better at handling a food emergency than the previous regime Aid workers have been warning for...

The resignation on 7 May of Abdul Tejan-Cole as Commissioner and Chief Prosecutor of Sierra Leone’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) signals a growing malaise in the government of President...

Nine months after he ordered the sacking of six bank chief executives and took their institutions into state management, the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Sanusi Lamido...

The latest military coup to rock the tiny state of Guinea Bissau began on 1 April, when a pickup truck full of armed and drunken soldiers arrived at...

Fifty years of independence, with no break in democratic rule, might seem a sufficient cause for celebration in Senegal. Yet President Abdoulaye Wade chose instead to celebrate his...

A mining company in which the British government is the biggest shareholder is using Mauritius-registered front companies to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes on its mineral...

A US$3.3 million loan offered by the China International Fund has drawn renewed criticism of the company’s activities in Guinea. On 1 March, Abdoulaye Yéro Baldé, a member...

The mixture of military officers, bankers and feisty female politicians in Acting President Goodluck Jonathan’s new cabinet has just over a year to make an impact in five...

The next stage of the political plan mapped out by Acting President Goodluck Jonathan and his advisors is taking shape, following the Senate's confirmation of the list of...

No end is in sight to the row between the government and the United States' Kosmos Energy over Kosmos's efforts to sell its equity stake in Ghana's Jubilee...

The 18 February coup was almost surgical and was popular with the many people who wanted President Mamadou Tandja ousted, but the follow-up appears more improvised and chaotic...

Opposition politicians say the results of the 6 March elections were fraudulent but show little stomach for confronting the heavily militarised regime in Lomé or elsewhere. France and...

* Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé, 44, won a second five-year term, on a platform of economic development and reform, with few details. He will be sworn in on 3...

The energetic Director of the Anti-Corruption Commission, Abdul Tejan-Cole, is scoring some success, with the suspension of the third minister in President Ernest Bai Koroma’s government on charges...

Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is taking African advocacy directly to Asia, as he takes up his appointment as Li Ka-shing Professor at the Lee Kuan...

On 3 March, the state governors decided to block a vote that could have set in motion President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s enforced resignation on medical grounds. This has...

Wits in Abuja have taken to referring to First Lady Turai Yar’Adua as ‘Her Majesty’ and her coterie of apparatchiks as the ‘Secret Service’. She organised the clandestine...

In a year’s time Ghana should be producing 150,000 barrels of oil a day and its economy should be growing at well over 10% a year (AC Vol...

A bizarre series of fires at government buildings has led to a whispering campaign reminiscent of the spate of brutal murders before the 2000 election campaign, which...

Once again, President Laurent Gbagbo has driven democratisation off the rails. On 12 February, he used Article 48 of the Constitution, which allows him to take exceptional measures...

So far, Niamey’s new military leaders have played by the new-model putschists’ book. They ousted controversial President Mamadou Tandja on 18 February, then promised a rapid restoration of...

Salou Djibou, commander of the main armoured unit in Niamey, led the assault on the Presidency which culminated in the capture of President Mamadou Tandja and his ministers...

Blamed for the massacre of over 100 civilians last September, the junta in Conakry is trying to improve its image via a United States-based public relations company run...

Whatever the constitutional doubts that remain, the 9 February resolution by the National Assembly, citing the ‘doctrine of necessity’, to recognise Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan as Acting President was...

Now a man in a hurry, Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has to stamp his authority on Abuja and quickly decide which ministers and officials can help him and...

President Faure Gnassingbé is set for an easy victory against a divided opposition in the 4 March national elections: the main opposition parties plan to boycott the vote...

The on-again off-again plan to renovate the railway linking coastal Lagos to Kano in the north may formally start up this year, but questions about the validity of any contract...

More than a year and two amendments later, progress is finally being made on little-known China Union’s US$2.68 billion deal to redevelop Liberia’s Bong Mines. In her apologetic New Year...

On 16 January, the Vice-President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, began to sound like a Nigerian President. His many supporters across the country say it's not before time: they are...

Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan is trying to build a broad consensus across political parties and ethnic regions, with advisors outside party and government circles who are mostly from Bayelsa....

After hours of bitter negotiation in Burkina Faso, soldiers from the junta and their civilian counterparts have agreed on a plan that will bar all members of the...

General Sékouba Konaté had tried to escape the corridors of power during the 2008 coup but destiny caught up with him a year later, following the December 2009...

Sporting a sharply-pressed black and white dashiki, President John Evans Atta Mills welcomed journalists into the well-guarded grounds of the Castle in Osu, Accra, on 7 January. One...

There will be two cheers on 31 October when Ghana is due to produce its first crude oil for export: the missing cheer reflects concern that the country...

Politicians in Abuja currently have two main imperatives: to forestall a military coup and to prevent war restarting in the Niger Delta (AC Vol 50 No 25). They...

Nigeria’s military, though much diminished, still sees itself as the last truly national institution and the final custodian of the state. If the current crisis unravels, senior officers...

This was meant to be the year that Côte d’Ivoire returned to constitutional order after the years of chaos since the civil war broke out in 2002. Elections...