It has been a good month for the opposition All Progressives Congress. The APC's successful national convention in Lagos picked Muhammadu Buhari as its presidential candidate on 11...

On 12 December, President Ernest Bai Koroma issued an edict banning all Christmas celebrations, especially the street festivals and masquerades for which Freetown is famous. On 25 December,...

United Nations' investigators have warned the UN Security Council that Ivorian and Liberian fighters opposed to Côte d'Ivoire's President Alassane Dramane Ouattara are likely to multiply in the...

On 11 December, the International Criminal Court confirmed charges of murder, rape and other inhumane acts against Charles Blé Goudé, 42, a former Ivorian militia leader and Youth...

Prime Minister Domingos Simões Pereira's government is consolidating power and purging politicians and officials connected to the old regime. Efforts to restore the rule of law and prevent...

President Macky Sall's re-election campaign is already commanding his agenda. He has confirmed that a referendum on reducing the presidential mandate from seven to five years will take...

The trial of former President Abdoulaye Wade's son Karim Meïssa Wade, which began in July, has been adjourned until 22 December after briefly resuming on 1 December. The...

Crashing world oil prices and next February's elections – in which President Goodluck Jonathan must retain his grip on his base in the oil-producing Niger Delta – could...

Early in his new job, Interim Prime Minister Yacouba Isaac Zida sprang two surprises. The first was the 26 November announcement that the enquiry would be reopened into...

The candidate's declaration speech is, by tradition, a key moment in the theatre of Nigerian politics. President Goodluck Jonathan's rally in Abuja on 11 November to announce that...

The received wisdom on Nigeria's elections is that they are all about money and mobilisation. Despite sheaves of glossy manifestos rolling off the presses, acres of newsprint devoted...

Hopes that the government would agree a three-year programme worth US$1 billion with the International Monetary Fund this month have been thwarted by worries over debt, deficits and...

In the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of President Blaise Compaoré last week, no one knew who was in charge. Gradually, towards the end of the country’s most...

Former Prime Minister Patrice Trovoada has crowned an unlikely comeback with an emphatic victory in the 12 October legislative elections. One thing hasn't changed, however: his strained relationship...

One of Africa's canniest operators, Blaise Compaoré, was forced out of power on 31 October as over 100,000 protestors in Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso demanded his exit. Unable to...

Lethal attacks by jihadists on United Nations' forces and armed clashes among Tuareg factions take place against a background of another round of sluggish peace talks in Algiers....

Telephone taps of Italian middlemen in the deal over Oil Prospecting Licence 245 reveal extraordinary detail about the manoeuvring that led to the agreement between the Nigerian government,...

Relations between South Africa and Nigeria have plunged to new depths. South African ex-President Thabo Mbeki and Nigerian ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo are working behind the scenes to try...

Italian public prosecutors have asked Britain to freeze an account holding US$85 million in their preliminary investigation into whether top officials in the ENI oil company conspired to...

Accra's economic team is set to resume negotiations for a three-year programme with the International Monetary Fund after the IMF's annual meetings on 10-12 October. Prospects for a...

No elected government has yet served out a full term but Prime Minister Domingos Simões Pereira has formed a broad coalition to get Guinea Bissau back on the...

Tycoon Beny Steinmetz is using every device he can to contest the Conakry government's decision to take away his iron-ore mining licence. Steinmetz, who is under investigation, along...

Albert Gerard 'Bert' Koenders, the United Nations Secretary General's Special Representative in Mali, may soon be en route to the Hague, where he is seen as the favourite...

Almost in concert with the political parties' calendar for choosing their presidential candidates, the Jama'atu Ahlus Sunnah Lidda'awati wal Jihad, widely known as Boko Haram, is stepping up...

Fixing the worsening crisis in the oil, gas and electricity industries is a key issue in this month's finance negotiations with investors and the International Monetary Fund. Not...

As bidding opens on four offshore oil exploration blocks and President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf signals that long-awaited petroleum legislation is imminent, the National Oil Company of Liberia again comes...

The news that Western oil companies have finally offloaded over US$6.5 billion of assets to a fast-growing coterie of Nigerian oil and gas companies only six months...

A storm broke over President Alpha Condé's government after Senegalese customs seized US$8 million in US dollar and euro banknotes from a small aircraft that had flown from...

The fractious politics of Casamance are holding up President Macky Sall's grand economic plans as he tries to relaunch his battered government. He believes that a breakthrough in...

Behind the smiles in Washington when President John Mahama and United States Secretary of State John Kerry signed a US$500 million credit on 5 August, lay growing concern...

A clever campaign against worsening economic conditions – known as Red Friday – is gaining momentum after several thousand activists marched through Accra on 24 July. The date...

Far from cruising to an inevitable electoral victory in 2016, the opposition New Patriotic Party has been left looking flat-footed, even as the government's troubles have multiplied. In...

The environmental devastation, lawlessness and grand corruption have not stopped in the oil-producing Niger Delta but the situation looks far less forbidding when set against the horrific insurgency...

Despite a security crisis and a poor public image, President Goodluck Jonathan's People's Democratic Party has engineered a startling political recovery. Much of the turnaround is the responsibility...

Richard Konteh, the State House Chief of Staff supposedly fired for corruption, is claiming that he was in fact the fall guy for President Ernest Bai Koroma’s inadvertent...

President François Hollande’s visit last week to Côte d’Ivoire was full of fanfares for regional security and doing business with France but behind the scenes intense manoeuvrings in...

President Macky Sall responded to his coalition’s poor showing in the 29 June local elections by sacking Prime Minister Aminata Touré and several other ministers. The local elections...

The victory of Ayo Fayose, candidate of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), in the governorship elections in Ekiti State on 21 June held some harsh lessons for modernising...

From any angle, the appointment of Sanusi Lamido Aminu Sanusi as the 57th Emir of Kano is bad news for President Goodluck Jonathan and his government. Sanusi emerged...

In what bears the hallmarks of a backroom political deal, Liechtenstein is to return 167 million euros (US$228 mn.) stolen by General Sani Abacha in the 1990s. This...

First it was President Blaise Compaoré's opponents who filled up the 35,000-capacity Stade du 4 Aôut in Ouagadougo on 31 May, and then it was the ruling Congrès...

The deepening security crisis in northern Nigeria and along the borders with Cameroon and Niger has galvanised more attention internationally than in Abuja. This week, it was Britain's...

In defiance of a 2010 law stipulating equal numbers of both sexes, the candidates' list for the 29 June municipal elections in the holy city of Touba includes...

President Ernest Bai Koroma sacked his chief of staff Richard Konteh for alleged corruption over mining and timber deals on 9 June. The dismissal casts a cloud over...

As retired air force Colonel Major Ba N'Dao settles in as the new Defence Minister, a parliamentary investigation begins into the rout of the army at Kidal on...

In March last year Africa Confidential reported that disagreements among the trustees over the Kiisi ('progress' in Ogoni) Trust had prevented any disbursements.

Alongside its terrible human cost in north-eastern Nigeria and the Middle Belt, there are signs that the Boko Haram insurgency is seriously damaging the government's political standing. A...

As social media resonated with reports that the government was about to offer an amnesty to Islamist insurgents Boko Haram, on 28 May President Goodluck Jonathan vowed again...

The Malian army suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Tuareg rebels at the northern town of Kidal on 21 May and the aftershocks are taking a...

In the short term, the crisis triggered by Boko Haram's kidnapping of more than 230 schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno State damages all those involved in addition to...

The Metropolitan Police's Proceeds of Corruption Unit (POCU) in London has confirmed to Africa Confidential that it is investigating allegations of money laundering through Britain linked to Nigeria's...

Observers are examining Liberia's record on gender equality. No woman has appeared on President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's list of potential successors and she has said she wants the dour...

President Ernest Bai Koroma’s loyalists in the governing All People’s Congress are again clamouring for him to stand for a third term. That would require a change to...

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has never shied away from appointing her children and relatives to public office when she thought it right. Opposition objections were often muted by the...

No sooner had the Guinean government cancelled the licences of Beny Steinmetz and Brazil's Vale for the Simandou iron ore deposit than Rio Tinto sued them in New...

The report draws devastating conclusions about the deep roots of corruption and blames public servants 'at all levels'. Revelations include a statement that 4,100 schools do not exist,...

Within the last week, Nigeria’s economy was confirmed as the biggest in Africa. At US$510 billion, it is well over $100 bn. bigger than South Africa’s. The first...

The latest development plan from President Macky Sall, the Plan Sénégal émergent (PSE), has won praise from leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and pledges worth US$4.5...

If the Guinean government cancels the licences of the Beny Steinmetz Group Resources to exploit Blocks 1 and 2 of the Simandou iron-ore reserves, the BSGR will continue...

The positive verdict on the conduct of the elections and the high turnout are but the first steps on a tricky road back to the rule of law...

Elected in triumph last August, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta faces growing criticism over failures to broker a settlement in the north and boost the national economy. The government's...

In spite of the testy relations between some African politicians and Europe, President Mahamadou Issoufou has cultivated strong support from top officials in Brussels and Paris. Indeed, as...

General Sani Abacha's son, now seeking political office with the governing People's Democratic Party (PDP), is building a coalition to obtain his part of the plunder. Middlemen are...

The children of the late dictator General Sani Abacha are making headlines. The oldest, Mohammed Sani Abacha, operates a political network based in Kano, where his father was...

President Blaise Compaoré is in growing political difficulty. Mass protests greet any attempt to prolong his rule, something he would attempt by amending Article 37 of the Constitution...

Beny Steinmetz, the Israeli billionaire whose stake in Guinea's giant Simandou iron ore deposit is in dispute, is having a bad year. Last month, Beny Steinmetz Group Resources...

Feted by his supporters in Abidjan's tough suburb of Yopougon as ‘the General of the Street’, the former Youth Minister Charles Blé Goudé landed on 22 March in...

Procedural errors in the arrest and prosecution of Malian coup leader General Amadou Haya Sanogo may be enough to see his trial collapse, legal sources in Bamako have...

Swept to power on a nationalist platform in elections last September, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta intends to make peace on his own terms or not at all. That...

In what regional financial experts describe as striking a blow for good governance, on 11 March the board of Ecobank pushed out its Chief Executive Officer Thierry Tanoh,...

The much-postponed general elections are now scheduled for 16 April but there is little chance of resolving the political crisis or even that the polls will take place...

To those who know both men, President Goodluck Jonathan's appointment of veteran spymaster General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau as Defence Minister on 5 March may be a case of...

Plain speaking, combative and ubiquitous, Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Sanusi Lamido Aminu Sanusi was never going to work well with the taciturn and cautious President Goodluck Jonathan....

Nigeria's most sensational political row for a decade began with a dispute over arithmetic. The figure in question was US$49.8 billion: that was the oil sales revenue between...

He was feted as a reformer after winning the 2011 election that reversed the 2010 coup and seen as a beacon of stability during the Mali crisis (AC...

The fraud and embezzlement case against Karim Wade, son of ex-President Abdoulaye Wade, has changed from an open-and-shut case into a legal labyrinth, thanks to the defendant's lawyers....

Côte d’Ivoire’s Great West region has been the site of deadly violence since civil conflict followed President Alassane Dramane Ouattara’s election victory over Laurent Gbagbo in November 2010....

Opposition activists like to portray President John Dramani Mahama as a kind of latter day Wizard of Oz, appearing to preside over a functioning government and thriving economy...

The United Nations Mission, the Mission multidimensionnelle intégrée des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation au Mali, hopes to draw encouragement and a renewed sense of purpose from the...

The three main defectors from President Blaise Compaoré’s ruling Congrès pour la démocratie et le progrès (CDP) launched their own political party on 25 January (AC Vol...

President Alpha Condé’s 21 January reshuffle removed politicians left over from the days of General Lansana Conté, although Naby Youssouf Kiridi Bangoura remains Presidency Secretary General. Nanténin Chérif...

Côte d’Ivoire will enjoy robust economic growth in 2014, although against a background of political conflict rooted in the lingering divisions of the post-election crisis of 2010-11. Two...

The rumour which flashed around Monrovia late last year that President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf had died was a harbinger of unsettled times ahead. As she reaches the midpoint in...

Guinea completed the transition to democracy late last year, when it confirmed its first elected National Assembly in over a decade (AC Vol 54 No 21, Troubled polls...

Scheduled for 29 June, the local elections will be the first popularity test for President Macky Sall’s government since his election in March 2012. The mayor’s job is...

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves le Drian was the most notable guest at the ceremony on 20 January to mark the 53rd anniversary of the national armed forces, the...

Tens – the opposition says hundreds – of thousands of people took to the streets of the capital and other towns over the weekend in the biggest protests...

With some 170 million people, 250 different languages and an economy about to overtake South Africa’s as the continent’s biggest, Nigeria is in many ways a symbol for...

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta has passed the key electoral tests. He holds a decisive presidential mandate and the National Assembly is in place (AC Vol 54 No 17, IBK's...

This year started with a row between President Goodluck Jonathan and former President Olusegun Obasanjo; and it is ending with a second and bigger row between the two....