One of the shrewdest and wealthiest militant leaders in the Niger Delta, High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, faces a legal battle that could provoke a new political...

The Speaker of the Ivorian Parliament, former rebel leader and ex-Prime Minister Guillaume Soro, made a lot of telephone calls to the men responsible for September's attempted coup...

Britain's Standard Chartered Bank is caught in the middle of an increasingly bitter feud between the Sierra Leone government and the heavily-indebted Octéa Limited, owner of the country’s...

Bankrupt iron-ore mining company African Minerals Limited is being sued for millions of dollars by 142 Sierra Leonean villagers in the High Court in London claiming human rights...

The days since Islamist gunmen attacked the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako on 20 November, killing 20 civilians, have confirmed both the scale and complexity of the security...

The government has reopened the can of worms known as Oil Prospecting Licence 245. President Muhammadu Buhari has sent investigators after the beneficiaries of the US$1.1 billion that...

In one of the continent's most peaceful transitions, Burkina Faso has elected a new President. Roch Marc Christian Kaboré romped home in the first round with 53.49% of...

It is called 'Buhari Mean Time' in Abuja. It started as a jocular description and then became a warning: President Muhammadu Buhari will not be rushed into decisions,...

President Ernest Bai Koroma's government informed the International Monetary Fund it had abandoned his flagship project, the Mamamah international airport, during its team visit in September, Africa Confidential...

A ten-strong team led by Mines Minister Minkailu Mansaray is in London for crisis talks set for 16 November, on the future of the Koidu diamond mine, which...

Although the threatened rebellion in the Niger Delta against Muhammadu Buhari's victory in March's presidential election didn't materialise, political and economic discontent in the region is mounting. There...

The Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission, Youssouf Bakayoko, had an easier time of it last month than five years ago. That's when one of ex-President Laurent Gbagbo's...

Despite the opposition parties' simmering anger and protestors clashing with police this week in Conakry, President Alpha Condé looks set to hold on to his first round victory...

'One Strike – Knockout!' That was the message from those who engineered President Alpha Condé's first round victory in the 11 October presidential election, with 57.9% of the...

At his self-imposed eleventh hour, President Muhammadu Buhari submitted his list of 21 ministerial nominees to the Senate on 30 September. On 8 October, the Senate was to...

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta is in the midst of another big public spending row after making a supposedly personal gift of 1,000 tractors to rural communities, just in...

'We have the black box of the Compaoré regime,' said Nestor Bassière , Vice-President of the Union pour la renaissance-Parti sankariste (Unir-PS), to Radio Omega. He...

President Alpha Condé faces a growing barrage of attacks as presidential polling day looms on 11 October. So far, so normal, in a hotly-contested election except for an...

The presence of coup leader General Gilbert Diendéré, flanked by soldiers from the Régiment de sécurité présidentielle (RSP), to welcome West African leaders at Ouagadougou airport on 23...

In a decision mourned in Freetown's legal and political circles alike, the Supreme Court has ruled that President Ernest Bai Koroma did indeed have the power to sack...

Smiling broadly and sporting his trademark northern smock, on 7 September John Mahama submitted his application in Accra to stand again as the governing party's presidential candidate in...

The governmental crisis has rapidly become a constitutional crisis as the battle lines are drawn between supporters of President José Mário Vaz and those of the Prime Minister...

The operations of entrepreneur Vasile Frank Timis in Senegal have come under scrutiny from the United States Department of Justice, Africa Confidential has learned. US federal prosecutors are...

Fighters of a pro-government militia, the Groupe d'autodéfense touareg imghad et alliés , have agreed to withdraw from the northern town of Anéfis but appear to be in...

Expected in Paris on 14-15 September for a regional security conference, President Muhammadu Buhari will attend a series of bilateral meetings with President François Hollande, Foreign Minister...

It hasn't all been plain sailing. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's government was rocked by the social and political side-effects of the Ebola epidemic, with some in the country openly...

An enquiry into Guinea's most notorious mining deal has been stepped up. Swiss investigators travelled to Conakry in July to interview key witnesses in the Simandou mining rights...

Two vital promises were made during President Muhammadu Buhari’s trip to Washington last month. Firstly, Nigeria would actively seek to recover some US$150 billion of stolen funds reckoned...

The giant iron and steel producer ArcelorMittal has dragged Guinea and Liberia into its quarrel with Sable Mining over access to the rail export route. The line runs...

Questions remain about the nature of Sable Mining’s relationship with the government of President Alpha Condé. How an inexperienced iron ore mining company with limited cash managed to...

President Macky Sall prides himself on his regional profile and holds the presidency of the Economic Community of West African States to prove it. The antithesis of the grandstanding...

The latest round of the angry confrontation between ex-President Blaise Compaoré’s elite bodyguards, the 1,300-strong Régiment de sécurité présidentielle, and its former deputy commander, has gone the way...

It was organised rapidly but President Muhammadu Buhari’s first official visit to the United States on 19-22 July made serious progress on security, anti-corruption and energy agreements.

In his haste to make new mining deals with Chinese bauxite companies, President Alpha Condé has stepped on some toes, including those of the British government.

This month, packed with critical meetings, appointments and policy changes, marks the real launch of President Muhammadu Buhari's government. He is due to name the main ministers who...

Three days after presiding on 20 June over the signing in Bamako of a peace agreement between northern rebels and President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, Mongi Hamdi was in...

A full explanation of why Vice-President Samuel Sam-Sumana was summarily removed from office in March has just emerged. President Ernest Bai Koroma feared he was building support for...

New cases of Ebola are still turning up in Port Loko and Kambia districts, over a month after the World Health Organisation declared neighbouring Liberia Ebola-free. A lack...

Post-election euphoria is turning to impatience as Nigeria waits for its new President to form a government and announce its policies. In fact, President Muhammadu Buhari has spent...

As the government and various northern-based rebels prepare to sign another 'final agreement' in Bamako on 20 June, alarm is growing about the deterioration of security across the...

Once President Alassane Dramane Ouattara had announced last year that he would seek a second term, he was the clear favourite to win the election due this October,...

'Crabs in a bucket' is one of the descriptions used to describe the new alliance, the Coalition nationale pour le changement. Signatures under its founding charter include those...

The idea was simple, attractive and at one with the socialist sensibilities of the country's liberators 40 years ago: the President would earn no more than, say, a...

Popular expectations of new President Muhammadu Buhari were stratospherically high before his 29 May inauguration in Abuja – all the more so because chronic fuel shortages, increasing power...

Security, crime and migration topped the agenda when Nigerian President-elect Muhammadu Buhari met United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron at 10 Downing Street on 23 May. Aside from...

Student protests at inadequate facilities are reminding many of the long-running and still unresolved campaign for Casamance's independence from Senegal. The University of Assane Seck, in Ziguinchor, was...

January saw the birth of a new party – Forces patriotiques pour la démocratie et le développement (FPDD). The similarity to the name the last military junta gave...

The Swiss lawyers who brokered Nigeria's much-criticised immunity-for-cash deal with Mohammed and Abba Abacha last July are major beneficiaries, it has emerged. The two sons of the late...

The main Tuareg secessionist group, the Mouvement national de libération de l'Azawad, has been losing ground – literally and politically – to pro-government forces. The government-backed Groupe autodéfense...

It could hardly have been more cordial when a combined team of government and opposition economists from Nigeria arrived in Washington for the Spring Meetings of the International...

At their Spring Meetings in Washington, officials at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank expressed surprise that Nigeria's incoming officials were willing to cooperate with their outgoing...

Supporters of the ancien régime are resisting a new electoral code which bans many of them from standing for election. The National Transition Council has excluded from October's...

One of President Goodluck Jonathan's campaign advisors had it all figured out a few weeks before the presidential election on 28 March. 'Nigerian elections are all about regional...

It has been a bad month for the Niger Delta in both personal and political terms. The death of activist lawyer Oronto Douglas on 9 April, after a...

The accolades heaped on Attahiru Jega and his team at the Independent National Electoral Commission for organising the country's most credible elections to date make much of the...

The euphoria that greeted the pledge of some US$1.5 billion at the 25 March donor conference in Brussels has not stifled all doubts about the political future. There...

Senegal's visa requirement, in force since 1 July 2013, will end on 1 May, President Macky Sall announced at the 4 April Independence celebrations. It may be a...

A five-member court martial headed by High Court Judge Emmanuel A. Amadi, a Nigerian, on 30 March sentenced six Gambian soldiers convicted of the 31 December attempted coup....

One of the first acts of President-elect Muhammadu Buhari's new government will be to establish a clear regime of accountability and transparency in managing the country's oil and...

Lekia Nkirine didn't stand a chance. He was shot in the chest at close range at six in the morning on election day when 50 thugs attacked the...

The repercussions of December's failed coup against President Yahya Jammeh are still being felt in Gambia and in the United States. One of the most prominent democracy campaigners,...

The most difficult dossier that the new Supreme Court President, Mamadou Badio Camara, has to deal with is the appeal by Karim Wade against his conviction for illicit...

Anyone following the opinion polls for a guide to the outcome of tomorrow's presidential and parliamentary elections will be disappointed. Yet they have played an important role in...

December's law governing the oil sector has not prevented it from attracting the attention of the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC). Ten arrest warrants were issued late last month...

The once ruling Front populaire ivoirien has confirmed it prefers the past to future by replacing Pascal Affi N'Guessan as FPI leader with Aboudrahmane Sangaré, an unreconstructed Gbagboiste....

President Ernest Bai Koroma has removed Vice-President Samuel Sam-Sumana from office even though he does not apparently have the powers to do so. Koroma claimed that Sam-Sumana's action...

Election campaigning for the opposition All Progressives Congress in the Niger Delta, the home base of President Goodluck Jonathan, was always going to be fraught. However, even the...

Addressing a packed auditorium at Chatham House in London on 26 February, General Muhammadu Buhari may have mused about his last big encounter with the British establishment. Thirty...

Potential can be a heavy burden. That is the feeling in Conakry as President Alpha Condé and his advisors watch the prospects of economic development financed by minerals...

Almost every African country has its power crisis. Lack of electricity from Angola to Zimbabwe holds back economic growth, education and health services. In some states such as...

Leaders of the Tuareg armed groups fighting for the recognition of northern Mali as an autonomous or independent Azawad face the challenge of keeping supporters on board following...

Such is the febrile mood in national politics that President Goodluck Jonathan felt compelled to tell delegations from the European Union and the Economic Community of West African...

There is another way to influence election results, without tampering with the actual vote: to encourage or discourage turnout by using the security organisations. Opposition parties claim that...

The mass movement that toppled President Blaise Compaoré last October is at increasing odds with the Régiment de sécurité présidentielle (RSP, AC Vol 55 No 22). The elite...

Freetown's redoubtable Auditor General, Lara Taylor-Pearce, has struck again, publishing a damning report on the misuse of public funds between May, when the Ebola epidemic broke out, and...

The risk of violent clashes in the Niger Delta is increasing as the political contest heats up ahead of the presidential and governorship elections, scheduled for 14 and...

President Ernest Bai Koroma has called off the national housing and population census planned for April after criticism that members of his All Peoples' Congress (APC) were over-represented...

New doubts about the timing of the presidential and governorship elections, currently due on 14 and 28 February respectively, will complicate national security. Because some 30 million out...

The main opposition Front populaire ivoirien appears unable to accept that it must replace its leader, ex-President Laurent Gbagbo, to contest the elections in October. The International Criminal...

In its last report on Ebola, the United Nations World Health Organisation offered Sierra Leone some good news. The incidence of infection appeared to be decreasing, the WHO...

Deadlock in the peace talks with Tuareg rebels promises continued instability and paralysed development for northern Mali this year – unless Algerian mediators step up the pressure for...

Dismantling the political and economic system built around ex-President Blaise Compaoré is political, military and economic. Politically, the transition is about preparing the way for new presidential and...