The leaking this week of two damning letters to President Goodluck Jonathan was surely no coincidence and fires a powerful broadside against his government and his plans to...

The idea that choosing a President and a Petroleum Minister from the Niger Delta would be the best way to tackle the crisis in the oil and gas...

After two seats controversially changed hands, the governing All People’s Congress (APC) is just one seat short of a two-thirds majority in Parliament. That’s the vote needed, if...

President Macky Sall arrived in Paris on 4 December for the African security summit with a diminished entourage. Although he brought a full complement of ministers and soldiers,...

With the national population reaching 174 million this year, the the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria estimates the housing deficit at 17 mn. units. However, talks led by...

The Shanghai-born pharmacist is standing in Mali’s 25 November and 15 December legislative elections and is the country's first candidate to hold Chinese citizenship.

Prime Minister Gabriel Costa is walking a fine line by encouraging investment from both China and Taiwan. Chinese oil companies play a crucial role in oil exploration, but...

São Tomé e Príncipe’s Agência Nacional do Petróleo signed a production-sharing contract with the Hong Kong-registered private oil company Sinoangol for Block 2 in its Exclusive Economic Zone...

President Yahya Jammeh’s decision to cut diplomatic ties with Taipei came as a surprise, according to Taipei’s diplomats. Other officials, however, believe the move was linked to an...

The defection of five state governors from his party to the new opposition alliance on 26 November can hardly have surprised President Goodluck Jonathan, who has been procrastinating...

The harsh realities behind Finance Minister Seth Terkper’s budget speech on 19 November suggest a turbulent year ahead for the government. Officials recommend some tough and unpopular corrective...

Nothing that President Ernest Bai Koroma has promised since coming to power in 2007 has excited as much hope as his pledges to improve the parlous state of...

The opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party is still struggling to find its feet in spite of a series of political and economic slips by the governing All People’s...

In the coming weeks, some statisticians in Abuja could shake up Africa’s economic and diplomatic hierarchy. The boffins look set to chart the rise of Nigeria’s economy to...

No official reason was given for the postponement of President Goodluck Jonathan's budget speech to the National Assembly, to 19 November. But it is safe bet to assume...

The governorship election in Anambra State on 16 November will kick off the race for the national polls in 2015, even if the formal opening may be six...

The biggest media crackdown since the civil war ended in 2002 is underway in Sierra Leone. Two editors of the Independent Observer newspaper, Jonathan Leigh and Bai Bai...

China Power Investment, which plans to build an alumina refinery at Boffa in western Guinea, is on the verge of succeeding where many other companies have failed or...

China’s Kingho Energy has clinched an agreement with the Ministry of Energy for the construction of one thermal and three hydroelectric power plants in Sierra Leone. Minister of...

It has taken six weeks for President Goodluck Jonathan to regain the political initiative after seven state governors walked out of his party’s national conference at the end...

The declared aim of President Goodluck Jonathan’s 23-29 October trip to Israel was for him to join another 30,000 Nigerians on a Christian pilgrimage and to preside over...

In 2005, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf inherited a battered country with no infrastructure and an annual budget of US$85 million. The budget she signed on 19 October stands at...

Delight at the safe release of French hostages Thierry Dol, Marc Féret, Daniel Larribe and Pierre Legrand on 29 October was dampened by suggestions that President François Hollande’s...

The process of deciding how much of ex-Delta State Governor James Ibori’s assets the Crown will confiscate will now continue in what promises to be high courtroom drama...

The spate of Islamist violence in northern Mali early this month confirms the warnings of French military and United Nations peacekeepers that the jihadists who had melted away...

The two sea captains arrested in São Tomé left for home last week but President Manuel Pinto da Costa seemed determined to squeeze some profit out of the...

Guinea’s long-awaited and long-delayed elections may well have produced a National Assembly with no party in control. That means disappointment for the opposition and deep relief for President...

Critical decisions over the future of legal action against Karim Wade are expected within days in Dakar, as Senegal’s anti-corruption court, the Cour de répression de l'enrichissement illicite...

Power-brokers in the governing National Democratic Congress and opposition New Patriotic Party are squaring up for a fresh courtroom battle after the Supreme Court upheld President John Mahama’s...

Southwark Crown Court witnessed a bizarre sight in late September when the former Governor of Delta State, James Onanefe Ibori, argued that property he had already admitted owning...

Protestors celebrated a victory in September after China Union, Wuhan Iron and Steel Corporation and the China-Africa Development Bank agreed to employ more local people and do more...

The Special Court for Sierra Leone's confirmation on 26 September of the 50-year sentence for war crimes of Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia, comes as African...

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta emphasised his inaugural message of reconciliation and tolerance with a major national celebration for the country on 19 September, with heads of state from...

Directors of Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), Africa’s biggest cross-border lender, are due to hold another emergency meeting on 20 September to resolve the crisis over claims that its...

The open brawl between rival factions of the governing People’s Democratic Party in the National Assembly on 18 September pointed dramatically to the failure of party leaders to...

The first major reshuffle of Goodluck Jonathan's presidency on 11 September looked more like a panic reaction to political revolt inside his party rather than a strategic move...

To the relief of many seeking a restoration of democracy, law and order, on 10 September parliament failed to pass a law granting amnesty to the leaders of...

The pressure would not let up. Human Rights Watch, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General Karin Landgren and a chorus of domestic voices clamoured for President...

Hopes of oil wealth seem to be in ruins now that oil company Total has decided to abandon Block 1 of the Joint Development Zone (JDZ) with Nigeria....

After the 29 August Supreme Court judgement, the political theatre will shift to economic policy and accountability issues. Oppositionists accuse the National Democratic Congress government of relying too...

Finance and Economic Planning Minister Seth Tekper has a tricky message for Ghanaians. The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has been in charge of the economy for nearly five...

As he started a three-day state visit to Kenya on 5 September, President Goodluck Jonathan might try to put his own government’s political disarray into perspective. His host,...

In an attempt to clear his name, former warlord Ibrahim Bah has been talking to Africa Confidential by telephone from a secret location. He has contradicted the government’s...

The final act lasted just 20 minutes. That is how long Justice William Atuguba, Chairman of the nine-member Supreme Court panel, spent on 29 August on delivering the...

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta approaches his 19 September inauguration as Mali’s new President backed by an overwhelming 77.62% of the vote, to Soumaïla Cissé’s 22.38%. The mandate sets him...

President Yahya Jammeh likes to be seen to be in charge, active and striking everywhere. This month alone he has sacked three ministers, while the former Chief Justice,...

Ibrahim Bah, the warlord and arms dealer who was living in Freetown in breach of United Nations sanctions (AC Vol 54 No 10, Impunity in Freetown), has gone...

President Goodluck Jonathan’s state visit to China delivered much-needed finance for infrastructure projects but the final amount was rather less than his officials had originally envisaged. Ahead of...

Political and financial concerns have stalled or forced the reformulation of many of the major projects trumpeted since 2008. Back in May 2010, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation...

Uncertainty hangs over three controversial deals with China that President Dioncounda Traoré’s outgoing transitional government had hoped to conclude before the first round of national elections held on...

China is sending troops to the new United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in late June that it would dispatch its...

Despite falling foul of local communities and environmentalists, in late June Malaysian palm oil giant Sime Darby finally won approval to cultivate rubber and palm oil on 5,000...

Chinese companies, both private and state-owned, are set to carve out major stakes in Sierra Leone’s economy. Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma ended a six-day trip to...

In July, Development and Planning Minister Albert Mabri Toikeusse revealed that negotiations are under way between the Abidjan government and China’s state-run policy banks that will provide the...

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK) had always looked the man to beat in the Malian presidential race and as Africa Confidential went to press, it was clear that he...

For many of those listening to Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s address to the Chatham House think-tank in London on 24 July, the speaker may have appeared just another ambitious...

No one seriously expects opposition complaints about electoral fraud to succeed. The opposition Collectif sauvons le Togo (CST) is challenging the victory of President Faure Gnassingbé’s ruling Union...

President Alassane Dramane Ouattara’s government is sending undercover agents to Ghana to abduct or assassinate supporters of former President Laurent Ggabo there, according to senior security sources in...

Freetown is full of talk that President Ernest Bai Koroma's closest allies are plotting to amend the constitution to scrap presidential term limits. Along with concerns about rampant...

After 43 days in session and an avalanche of technical delays, the 2012 election petition hearings are crawling towards a climax. A ruling is likely within a month....

Politicians from both the governing National Democratic Congress and the opposition New Patriotic Party have developed an obsessive interest in the nine judges sitting on the Supreme Court’s...

The leading contenders in Mali’s presidential race are jostling to present themselves as the best defenders of national pride, as the date for the first round looms on...

After Africa Confidential had revealed that Ibrahima Bah, a warlord in Sierra Leone’s civil war now under United Nations’ sanctions, was living unmolested in Freetown, police arrested him...

Swedish firm Stena Oil accuses São Tomé of staging a show trial after it gaoled two ships’ masters for three years for smuggling and seized their vessels. This...

The Niger Delta faces a new round of turmoil as politicians and their business allies jostle for power at the centre of the country's oil industry. On 10...

The latest fire and pollution incident at Bodo may leave Royal Dutch Shell open to hugely costly damages. A landmark United Nations Environment Programme report in 2011 estimated...

Two factors – rampant factionalism in the governing People’s Democratic Party and a coherent opposition alliance are changing the calculus in Nigerian politics. For the first time in...

Quieter streets along with fewer attacks and bombings suggest the declaration of emergency rule in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states is holding back, for now, the momentum of...

President Macky Sall needs money. On his recent travels to Qatar, Gabon and Northern Ireland, where he attended the Group of Eight Summit in June as head of...

Homosexuality is illegal and subject to aggressive public hostility in Senegal, and with the United States having so recently legally enabled gay marriage, it was an elephant in...

Saïd Djinnit, the Algerian United Nations Special Representative for West Africa, is just about keeping the political dialogue on track between the government, its supporters and the opposition....

President Alpha Condé’s advisor and friend, the financier and philanthropist George Soros, hosted a meeting on 17 June to celebrate agreement that the development of the Simandou iron...

Ghana’s expulsion of some 200 Chinese accused of involvement in illegal gold mining and more delays in disbursements from the China Development Bank for the gas plant in...

President Alpha Condé has escalated his government’s row with Geneva-based Beny Steinmetz Group Resources over the legitimacy of its stake in the Simandou iron ore mine.

Foreign trips seem to hold a special magic for President John Mahama, who has spent most of his first six months in office struggling with chronic power and...

Bamako has signed a deal with the Mouvement national pour la libération de l’Azawad (MNLA) that will allow its army and civil servants to enter Kidal for the...

Jihadists launched an abortive attempt to break into a gendarmerie base in Niamey on 11 June. Alert guards chased away the small group of assailants and suffered no...

Militia leader Amadé Ouérémi has handed himself in for trial for the worst massacre of the 2010-11 post-election crisis, the slaughter of 3,000 people at Duékoué in March...

The aftermath of the suicide attacks on a French company and a military barracks on 23 May will test Niger’s security forces. With almost half of its military...

While Mali’s government is preoccupied with retaking the northern region occupied by Islamists and Tuareg rebels, Indian firm Sahara Mining is facing challenges of its own in Tienfala,...

China’s Kingho Energy has big ideas for Sierra Leone, but such plans could go the way of many other ambitious investments. The US$6 billion agreement the company signed...

Efforts towards comprehensive reform of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry are in tatters some five years after the first version of the Petroleum Industry Bill was presented to...

At face value, the declaration by President Goodluck Jonathan’s government, dominated by appointees from the oil-rich Niger Delta, of a state of emergency in north-east Nigeria and plans...

The conference hosted in Brussels by the European Union on 15 May was seen as a political and financial success. One hundred countries sent delegations and those from...

A Lagos court has sentenced Azim Aghajani, the Iranian convicted on 13 May of importing 13 containers of infantry weapons, to only five years, along with his Nigerian...

Partisan politics is back as the Bamako establishment focuses on the presidential election promised for 7 July. The transitional government of President Dioncounda Traoré, encouraged by the United...

A meeting with financial institutions, regional neighbours and external partners in Brussels, Belgium, on 15 May is the next main focus for the accelerating international drive to help...

Africa Confidential has discovered the whereabouts of one of the key financiers and middlemen who worked for the Liberian ex-President and convicted war criminal, Charles Taylor, during the...

Transcripts from the Special Court on Sierra Leone’s trial of Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor contain copious evidence about the central role of Ibrahima Bah in diamond trading and...

The Italian businessman who claims to have been cheated by Ibrahima Bah over gold deals, Vittorio Narciso Ruello, made other interesting connections through Bah in the region. In...

President Blaise Compaoré must leave office by the end of 2015, when his constitutional term of office ends. Yet he and his brother François, his sister Antoinette and...

President Blaise Compaoré is married to Chantal Terrasson de Fougères, a protégée of the late Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny. She runs several businesses and charities.

Burkina Faso is enjoying a mining boom which provides the ruling clan with wiggle room. Gold is now the leading source of export earnings, followed by the traditional...

Top politicians and military officers are nervously looking over their shoulders after the detention of former navy chief José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto and the indictment of Army...

The Forces Nouvelles plundered the area they controlled when they were confined to the north of the country, says the latest report by the United Nations Panel of...

The Ghana Immigration Service is to tighten up security at the country’s borders to stop the illegal entry of Chinese artisanal and small-scale miners (ASMs). Police Commissioner Peter...

Sinopec, the lead contractor on Ghana’s US$850 million gas project, halted work on 30 April citing payment delays and disputes with Ghana National Gas Company (GNGC).

The newly united opposition parties – the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) – have joined forces to condemn soldiers for what...

The economic and political prospects may be bright in the medium term but on 17 April John Dramani Mahama reached his first 100 days in office without much...

On 16 April, the Supreme Court began hearings on the petition from the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to annul John Mahama’s victory in December’s presidential election. This...

The latest round of courtroom battles in the West and arrests in Conakry have one certain result: that the plans to invest US$10 billion to produce iron ore...

The 65% of the vote which carried President Macky Sall to victory over Abdoulaye Wade in March last year was always about who he wasn’t, not who he...

Late in the evening of 17 April, Karim Wade, son of former President Abdoulaye Wade and ex-Minister for International Cooperation, Infrastructure, Air Transport and Energy, was taken...

The United States Supreme Court decided on 17 April to back a lower court’s refusal to hear a suit brought by Nigerians against Royal Dutch Shell ...

The official version is that France’s Mali operation has achieved all its objectives – the expulsion of jihadist forces from main northern towns and the destruction of several...

As the military operation in Mali continues, fresh complications arise. Early reports from the European trainers suggest that progress in restoring the discipline and effectiveness of the Malian...

At least half of the candidates which the Commission électorale indépendante (CEI) has accepted for the regional and municipal elections on 21 April are running as independents. On...

In Abidjan’s large suburb of Yopougon, seven of nine candidates are standing as independents, with one candidate from the Parti démocratique de Côte d’Ivoire-Rassemblement démocratique africain and the...

In a sting operation off the coast of Cape Verde on 2 April, United States agents arrested the former head of the Navy, Vice-Admiral José Américo Bubo Na...

On 15 March, Guinean President Alpha Condé sent a message of congratulations to China’s new leader, Xi Jinping. Apparently, the President had not yet fully digested the bad...

Guinea’s former National Director of Large Mining Projects, Tidiane Diallo has been sidelined by President Alpha Condé and problems are now besetting the most advanced Chinese mining project...

A Liberian politician has accused a presidential appointee – who secretly recorded him making comments suggestive of corruption – of misappropriating government funds. Representative Edward Forh of the...

China Development Bank is lending a hand to the agricultural investment plans of Golden Veroleum, controlled by Singapore-based Golden Agri-Resources. In March, the CDB extended a US$500-million loan...

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi wrote an op-ed in London’s Financial Times in March that compared Chinese involvement in Africa to that of the Europeans in the colonial era....

As computer software billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates visited child health projects in Ghana on 26 March, controversy raged in Nigeria, where he had cancelled...

Claims are bitterly disputed that seven hostages have been murdered by their jihadist captors in the north after a rescue attempt by Nigerian and British forces. Abuja and...

Two years after President Alpha Condé came to office, the promise of a new era of accountability and transparency now lies in the ruins of police shootings, arson...

This year, President Alpha Condé has consistently attempted to reassure investors that major projects, especially in mining, will go ahead as planned. ‘We are doing our best to...

Last year was not the year it was meant to be for Sierra Leone’s economy. The International Monetary Fund initially predicted growth at a staggering 51.4%. As the...

Social tension has twice erupted into violence around African Minerals Limited’s Tonkolili mine. In late 2010, AML caused alarm when it started to build a dam on a...

The Anti-Corruption Commission charged 29 officials, most of them in connection with over US$1 million from the Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunisations that went missing in the...

After he made a host of startling coup plot accusations, some worry that President Thomas Yayi Boni may be displaying signs of paranoia. Since 2006, Benin has...

It doesn’t look good for President Goodluck Jonathan as he prepares his campaign for a second term in the 2015 elections. His close advisors concede that he could...

A lavish launch on 21 February for Eko Atlantic City brought the political and business elite into an awkward communion. On reclaimed land adjacent to the upmarket Victoria...

The leaders of the main opposition New Patriotic Party are stepping up their campaign to delegitimise December’s presidential election, in which John Dramani Mahama was declared winner with...

Concern is growing in the Niger Delta over the fate of the charitable trust set up with US$5 million of the 2009 $15.5 mn. settlement...

The strange pact under which President Dioncounda Traoré appointed the serial putschist Captain Amadou Sanogo as head of the military reform committee in a grand ceremony in Bamako...

The war against the jihadists is winding into the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains on the Malian-Algerian border. Last week, French and Chadian forces retook Tessalit, some 90 kilometres...

The Khartoum regime’s ties with Islamists in the region are under scrutiny again following the arrival in Darfur of jihadists retreating from the French military campaign in northern...

Only several months after President Ernest Bai Koroma’s re-election are the winners and losers in the post-electoral division of spoils becoming clear. Most prominent among them is Usman...

Uncertainty over land rights is stirring controversy for palm oil developers in Liberia. Local and international non-governmental organisations have targeted two agribusiness giants, Sime Darby and Golden Veroleum,...

China Union is embroiled in land-rights disputes as it struggles to rehabilitate the Bong iron-ore mines and begin exports (China Union under fire in Bong County). In 2009,...

Japan promised US$120 million, India $101 mn. and China $1 mn. These headline pledges in emergency aid to Mali graphically illustrate Beijing’s unease at a crisis-management strategy spearheaded...

Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Lamido Sanusi took to the stage at the World Economic Forum (23-27 January) in Davos, Switzerland, to argue that Africa’s relationship with China...

The political questions facing Mali are more formidable than the diplomatic and logistical challenges facing France when it intervened on 11 January. After jihadists fled from Gao and...

Last June, as jihadists consolidated their grip on northern Mali, Alghabass ag Intallah joined Ansar Eddine, to the surprise of many in the region. His father, Intallah ag...

The 50th anniversary on 13 January of the assassination of Togo’s first President, Sylvanus Olympio, passed while several important events in Lomé played down the landmark day. On...

The trial of soldiers accused of attempting to assassinate President Alpha Condé is not going well for the prosecution. The principal defendant, an officer called Alpha Oumar Boffa...

As France pours men and money into the battle against jihadists, the contours of Mali’s crisis are rapidly changing. Bombing raids may have ended the militants’ hegemony over...

The 900 troops sent this week to fight alongside French and local forces in Mali are joining an operation which the Nigerian government sees as an extension of...

The novelty of being invited at all times of the day and night to turn up at the Gendarmerie in Colobane wore off long ago for former ministers...

‘Serious concerns’ about the management of funds granted by the Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunisations (GAVI) to a health programme in Sierra Leone is causing embarrassment for...

The arrest in Tema port of Ivorian militia leader Charles Blé Goudé on 17 January will do much to improve relations between Ghana’s President John Mahama and Côte...

Newly elected as President in December 2012, John Dramani Mahama will continue to deepen Ghana’s ties with its Asian trading partners. When former Vice-President Mahama served...

Election billboards in the business district of Abuja calling for President Goodluck Jonathan to stand for election again in 2015 opened the political season of the New...

The year started with the presidential inauguration of John Dramani Mahama on 7 January and then consideration by the Supreme Court of a petition claiming his election had...

The grand plan for Mali’s army to wrest the northern provinces of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu from jihadist militias is due to swing into operation in the...

New Prime Minister Django Sissoko has started well, winning support for his government with his consensual style. A member of the nominated Transitional Assembly before his promotion, he...