It was a sea of white linen and handkerchiefs at a thanksgiving service in Accra on 8 December to mark the first anniversary of the 2016 election victory...

Liberia's Supreme Court has acceded to claims by four major political parties – including the governing Unity Party – that there was fraud during the first round of...

The government now acknowledges that more than 1,000 people were killed in Freetown when a massive chunk of Mount Sugar Loaf, long degraded by illegal construction and blasting,...

The faction of the ruling party opposed to President José Mário Vaz has joined forces with the opposition to organise mass demonstrations against him.

Youth, employment, migration, terrorism: President Emmanuel Macron of France hit all the right buttons during his speech at the University of Ouagadougou, where he showed his youthful side...

To run or not to run in 2019 – that was the question that President Muhammadu Buhari had been studiously avoiding. After a slow start to his tenure,...

The first warning came on 2 February last year. Niger Delta pirates in two speedboats boarded a Bulgarian tanker 160 kilometres off the Bakassi Peninsula, on Nigeria's south-eastern...

After much delay, President Ernest Bai Koroma has finally found a candidate he favours to take the nomination of the All Peoples Congress for the 2018 presidential election.

Although he is ten points ahead after the first round of the elections, George Weah has given few indications of what kind of government he would run, besides...

Such is the commanding lead built up by George Weah, the star footballer turned politician, in the first round of presidential elections on 10 October that his nearest...

It was a very Nigerian leak, appearing to serve the interests of none of the protagonists but to damage the reputations of players, institutions, the government and country.

Proponents of Biafra as an independent state in south-east Nigeria have seized upon the Spanish government's mishandling of the Catalonian secessionists to score propaganda points against President Muhammadu...

The third ordinary congress of the Rassemblement des républicains (RDR), held in Abidjan on 9 and 10 September, nine years after the second, was a mass rally to...

Opponents of President Faure Gnassingbé will stage protests in Montreal, Paris and Luxembourg on 7 October to add an international dimension to their campaign against the government's proposals...

Liberia still won't try its own suspected war criminals, so others have to. The latest to come to trial is Mohammed Jabbateh, a commander in the so-called United...

Igho Sanomi, the Nigerian oil trader who became a billionaire from contracts obtained while Diezani Allison-Madueke was oil minister, bought a £28.5 million (US$39 mn.) British Virgin Island-registered...

The assault on the Aziz Istanbul restaurant on 13 August which claimed 20 lives remains shrouded in confusion. A Special Forces detachment, the Unité spéciale d'intervention de la...

Whoever leads the Nigerian delegation to this year's United Nations General Assembly – President Muhammadu Buhari or his deputy Yemi Osinbajo – security concerns, national and regional, will...

Although the election to find a successor for President Ernest Bai Koroma takes place on 7 March next year, the country's two leading parties are yet to select...

Patrice Trovoada is a confident man these days. The Gabonese-born Prime Minister of São Tomé e Príncipe jokes, in private, about Donald Trump's slim chances of re-election as...

Freetown politicians, Western embassies and property speculators face some tough questions about responsibility for the Mount Sugar Loaf landslide on 14 August in which more than 500 died,...

One of the custodians of ex-President Blaise Compaoré's deepest and most dangerous secrets is no more. Salif Diallo, a consummate political operator who reinvented himself for the post-Compaoré...

As Britain's long-running investigations into Nigerian former Oil Minister Diezani Allison-Madueke move towards a finale in October, they have now snagged a clutch of ambitious Nigerian businessmen and...

Politicians from Chicago to China insist that lurking behind every crisis is an opportunity. Nigeria has been putting that adage to the test, first with the crashing oil...

Officially, campaigning for the seat shortly to be vacated by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first female President and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, began on 31 July. Yet...

Prime Minister Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne declared on 1 August that the presidential coalition Benno Bokk Yakaar, which he managed, had swept the electoral board, taking 42 of...

African Petroleum Corporation Limited, founded by Vasile 'Frank' Timis, risks losing its foothold in Gambia's growing oil and gas sector after failing to renew the exploration licences for...

The filing of a US$144 million assets recovery case in Houston on 14 July points to substantive progress in international investigations into tens of billions of dollars of...

Of all the fights to pick in Nigeria, attacking the Igbo people is probably the most incendiary. Perhaps that was the motivation of the northern Arewa Youth Consultative...

When the army chief warns politicians to stop approaching 'officers and soldiers for undisclosed political reasons', as General Tukur Buratai did on 16 May, and the government's top...

A third soldiers' mutiny this year ended on 15 May with the government promising 8,400 men would get the remainder of an €18,000 ($20,000) bonus. The bonus had...

President Emmanuel Macron of France used his debut overseas visit to troops at the French military base in Gao to send a blunt message for two audiences. To...

If the management of news about President Muhammadu Buhari's illness had been deliberately designed to sow fear and despondency in the nation, its authors could hardly have done...

Rapid manoeuvring by some of the world's largest oil producers to take advantage of Senegal's resource boom appears to have removed maverick businessman Vasile Frank Timis, the self-styled...

All the lawyers defending 34 ministers in ex-President Blaise Compaoré's last government have walked out after challenging the legitimacy of the Ouagadougou court. The defendants are accused of...

After a six-day trial, former Mining Minister Mahmoud Thiam was convicted in a New York court on 3 May of laundering US$8.5 million in bribes relating to mining...

All the masked vigilantes in comic books have secret identities but few expected a member of the Niger Delta Avengers, one of the region's most effective militant groups,...

Three years after general elections that were widely hailed as free and fair and which ended two years of post-coup transitional government, and two years after a promising...

Dakar's Mayor Khalifa Sall is in prison only because President Macky Sall fears his growing challenge to his power, say his supporters. The President's far more charismatic namesake...

In the four weeks since his return from medical leave in London, President Muhammadu Buhari has struggled to regain the initiative. This comes against a background of intensifying...

When nursing assistant Salome Karwah, an Ebola fever survivor who had appeared on the cover of America's Time Magazine as a Person of the Year in 2014, died...

The career of the governing party's youth leader came to an abrupt end in late February when the latest in a series of sex tapes which have been...

Despite promising the International Monetary Fund and World Bank that he would not go through with it, President Ernest Bai Koroma has still not given up on the...

Oil industry experts calculate that Nigeria may have lost US$100 billion from 2010 to 2015 from outright theft and excessively disadvantageous production and trading deals. Audits by international...

At the last minute – and helped by United Nations pressure – Mali's government has persuaded the former separatists of the Coordination des Mouvements de l'Azawad (CMA) to...

The involvement of the maverick businessman Vasile Frank Timis in Senegal's oil industry and his cosy relationship with President Macky Sall's government has attracted renewed interest from international...

There was an air of festive predictability about the Second National Congress of the governing Mouvement du peuple pour le progrès, held in Ouagadougou on 10-12 March. Among...

Hopes for Africa’s biggest economy are yo-yoing as policy-makers argue over radical reform of the naira exchange rate and the sale of government stakes in oil and gas...

Urbino Botelho, Foreign Minister of São Tomé and Príncipe, has made his bid for posterity by breaking off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and restoring relations with the People's...

Harsh financial realities are starting to impinge on the bold programme to modernise the economy, and boost education and health, which swept the new government to power after...

The tribulations of the Nigerian currency, the naira, might offer some respite to President Muhammadu Buhari, currently in London under doctor's orders. The prospect of a change in...

Protests organised by teachers' unions on 20 February left eight people dead and more than 50 injured, said reports from Conakry. The protesters' demands for salary increases were...

A scramble to replace Africa's first elected female president, Nobel Prize winner Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, at elections in October has led to strange alliances and the intervention of Charles...

Africa Confidential has obtained a recording of a phone call of Charles Taylor giving political advice to his supporters in Liberia. The call appeared to use a landline...

The new Prime Minister, Amadou Gon Coulibaly, will need to deal quickly and decisively with the raft of problems that have exploded in the first weeks of the...

Jubilation at the departure of ex-President Yahya Jammeh was stained with suspicion and anger as the story spread that he had been granted immunity from prosecution and had...

Its contours recently redrawn by the local elections and the nomination of interim authorities in northern regions, Mali's political landscape will become even more complex in coming months....

Guinea will finally hold its local elections in February, almost seven years late. It is the first major test of the governing coalition of President Alpha Condé since...

For an essentially apolitical President, Muhammadu Buhari faces a nightmare 2017 as party rivalries loom larger and larger, obstructing many of his economic and social reforms, as well...

The clear victory of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo by over 900,000 votes in the 7 December presidential election triggered a business-like transition, with most new ministers due to...

The Gambia is edging closer to high noon as the presidential handover date of 19 January looms. Yahya Jammeh has until then to step down, and there are...