It was Muhammadu Buhari's military credentials that persuaded many Nigerians to trust him on security issues in 2015, at a time when insurgents had taken over more than...

Although final details of a controversial constitutional reform are yet to be confirmed, President Patrice Talon has maintained a hardline stance on controversial constitutional reforms and rebuffed an...

Listening to the political class in Abuja, Lagos or Port Harcourt, you might be unaware that the country is locked in an epic battle over the direction of...

The granting of the much-coveted multi-billion-dollar Simandou South iron ore concession in Guinea to a Chinese-backed consortium promises to shake up regional mining industry dynamics and the political...

One of two prime ministers fired by President José Mário Vaz will replace him as Guinea Bissau's president in a run-off on 29 December.

With national elections a year away, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta tried to combine political bullishness and banker's caution when he read the 2020 budget statement in parliament on...

The Nigerian government plans to raise an extra US$1 billion next year in royalties from the oil majors as it struggles to fund a record budget and curb...

President José Mário Vaz's latest attempt to dismiss a government, four weeks before the presidential elections, now due on 24 November, collapsed in ignominy after the Economic Community...

With economic growth failing to keep pace with population growth, and the country far too dependent on oil and gas exports, President Muhammadu Buhari is trying to deal...

The idea that President Alpha Condé would get the required two-thirds parliamentary majority to change the constitution to allow him to seek a third term has always been...

The death of at least 49 Malian soldiers in an attack on their base at Indélimane on 1 November confirms the continued potency of Islamic State in the...

'Environmental genocide' was the label the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, hung on the decades of multinational oil company operations in Nigeria's Niger Delta at the 1 November...

After their boycott of the 2018 legislative polls failed to extract concessions from the regime of President Faure Gnassingbé, most of the opposition is returning to the electoral...

Soldiers, civilians, worshippers at a mosque were but some of the dozens of victims of Islamist guerrillas in Burkina as the pace of jihadist attacks on civilians and...

This year the country has experienced more violent attacks in six months than the whole of the previous three years, causing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes...

The government's cancellation of a contract with a business consortium to manage the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has put it at odds with the United States government...

Most of the big opposition parties boycotted the political dialogue called by President Patrice Talon on 7 October to defuse the crisis triggered by his exclusion of some...

Ten months after its inauguration the new integrated frontier crossing between Nigeria and Benin at Sémé Kraké on the key Lagos-Cotonou corridor was closed to most trade on...

Unphased by mounting security threats, weakening international oil prices and an unresolved US$9 billion judgement debt demand, President Muhammadu Buhari's unveiled an ambitious new budget on 8 October,...

For pan-African economic alliances and security cooperation much is riding on the summit between Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa and Muhammadu Buhari, due to hold on 3 October in South...

Final preparations are under way for an 'Inclusive National Dialogue' widely seen as Mali's last hope for progress towards resolution of the seven-year-long political crisis. Some see it...

When Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah announced on 20 September that three men had been arrested for coup plotting, some Ghanaians felt they had entered a time warp,...

The delays seemed at an end in 2015, when President Muhammadu Buhari formally launched the clean-up operation and endorsed the composition of the structures supervising the operations –...

Ex-President Abdoulaye Wade's imposition of his son Karim as his number two and de facto leader of his Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS) has provoked a deep split in...

After an 18-month trial, the Military Tribunal in Ouagadougou has handed down heavy sentences to the ringleaders and accomplices of the failed military coup in September 2015.

Just days after President Muhammadu Buhari allocated the portfolios and swore in his 43 ministers on 21 August, regional leaders of the ruling All Progressives Congress started staking...

Of the myriad security threats in Nigeria, herder-farmer clashes which have killed more than 4,000 people and seen at least 250,000 chased from their homes in the past...

In the piracy-riven Gulf of Guinea, there is doubt as to whether one particular vessel, the Indian-registered MT Apecus, was a victim of pirates or a pirate ship....

With an extra five members, stuffed with party loyalists and an average age of 60, President Muhammadu Buhari's new ministerial team cannot be accused of exuding dynamism or...

Hopes that the 10 March elections would usher in a new era of reconciliation and dislodge President José Mário Vaz's limpet-like grip on power have again proved vain...

The Ogoni area of the Niger Delta is one of the world's most severely contaminated stretches of land and water, and yet no relief is in sight. Eight...

The Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) is only the latest iteration of Nigerian government agencies charged with using oil revenues to compensate for the effects of its extraction...

The importance of Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, to President Muhammadu Buhari's plans was clear as he set out his agenda for the next...

At first sight, it looked like ethnic cleansing by communiqué. The predominantly Dogon militia Dana Ambassagou, led by Youssouf Toloba, issued a statement on 17 June to the...

Burkina Faso's National Assembly voted in a new law on 21 June heavily restricting freedom of speech. Human rights organisations and press freedom advocates are up in arms....

A reckoning is due in the battle for Oando, one of the country's biggest independent oil companies, after the market regulator barred its CEO and his deputy from...

Ever since BBC television's Panorama current affairs programme revealed apparent evidence that controversial British-based Australian/Romanian businessman Vasile Frank Timis made massive payments to President Macky Sall's brother Aliou...

Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana are threatening to suspend the sale of cocoa beans to the open market for the 2020/21 crop season in a bid to secure higher...

It may have been lack-lustre economy or the deepening national security crisis but President Muhammadu Buhari's swearing-in on 29 May was a morose affair. It was also short...

While the jihadists register notable successes and violence increases, attention begins to turn towards the conventional politicians and what they can offer the people in the elections of...

Investors and contractors were invited to attend a conference on 3 May in Freetown to express interest in the proposed bridge over Tagrin Bay which is intended to...

BP has cemented its interest in the Senegal basin by sweeping up two disputed oil blocks off the coast of Gambia previously held by Norway-listed Africa Petroleum as...

While dethroned Prime Minister Patrice Trovoada was able to leave São Tomé for his luxury home in Lisbon after losing power, one of his most prominent ministers has...

A much-anticipated 'Save the State' protest, which is scheduled for 7 June, seems to be gaining momentum as citizens challenge President George Weah and his government on critical...

President Patrice Talon continues to rebuff calls for a rerun of the 28 April parliamentary polls, which were marked by a meagre 23% turnout after opposition parties were...

A new claim for damages by the Federal Republic of Nigeria, linked to a historic scandal over the controversial award of the OPL 245 oil licence, is set...

After almost three decades as an admired pioneer of democratic freedom in francophone Africa, Benin has just conducted a parliamentary election from which all parties were excluded save...

Jihadism was concentrated in northern Mali at the time of the launch of Opération Serval, France's emergency military campaign to stop jihadist columns pushing south in 2013....

President Alpha Condé's campaign to change the constitution to get himself a third term has now reached full steam, as he exhorts his party's rank-and-file to 'prepare for...

Atiku Abubakar is sticking by his claims of fraud in the Nigerian presidential election. He is spending $30,000 on Washington DC lobbyists Fein and DelValle to try to...

Four years after imposing a ban on economic activity along the shores of Lake Chad aimed at staunching the flow of funds to the Nigerian Islamist militia Boko...

Although President Julius Maada Bio was an enthusiast for Chinese investment in infrastructure at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation last September, the government has cooled on some major...

The revelations pouring out of three judicial commissions of inquiry into public corruption under former President Ernest Bai Koroma have the country agog. Live on national radio and...

The UN-mandated clean-up of oil-polluted Ogoniland is becoming mired in allegations of pay-outs to politicians to rig elections in Rivers State. Violence and vote-rigging over two successive weekends...

Members of Côte d'Ivoire's National Assembly have been in session this week for the first time under the new Parliamentary Speaker, Amadou Soumahoro, installed by the ruling Rassemblement...

Promising to call evidence from forensic scientists, statisticians and psephologists, the People's Democratic Party presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar filed his petition challenging the official results of the 23...

The Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) of Domingo Simões Perreira won the 10 March parliamentary elections but fell short of the absolute...

Although Muhammadu Buhari comfortably defeated his main challenger Atiku Abubakar in presidential elections on 23 February, voter turnout was just 35.6%, the lowest since the return to civil...

Israeli mining magnate Beny Steinmetz has made a surprise re-entry into Guinea, after reaching an apparently amicable settlement in his lengthy dispute with the Guinean government over allegations...

President Macky Sall took 59% of the vote in the presidential election, making a second round unnecessary. Veteran politician Idrissa Seck came a poor second with 21% and...

In an election campaign that has failed to capture the nation's imagination, the announcement that voting would be delayed by a week, less than six hours before it...

When the world shifts its attention away from Nigeria's headline-making presidential election, the country's provincial politicians will be shifting into high gear. On 9 March, Nigerians trudge back...

President Macky Sall may be about to pick up an unlikely gift from an old foe. In protest at the exclusion of his son Karim as a presidential...

A fortnight of political drama in Côte d’Ivoire began on 26 January when President Alassane Dramane Ouattara and family appeared before a capacity crowd at the main stadium...

A wave of jihadist attacks and retaliatory measures by the army is shaking up politics and endangering social stability. Prime Minister Paul Kaba Tieba and his government resigned...

The run-up to the 2019 presidential elections has seen unprecedented amounts of fake news and smear campaigns against all the candidates, but none have been quite as bizarre...

Chief Justice Walter Onnoghen, suspended by President Muhammadu Buhari on 25 January, is fighting for his professional life in a partisan battle that casts a shadow over presidential...

If confirmed at a review hearing set for 1 February, the acquittal of ex-President Laurent Gbagbo at the International Criminal Court (ICC) will inject further momentum into a...

As he marks the halfway point for his government, President Nana Addo Akufo-Addo wants to push ahead with ambitious economic modernisation plans before campaigning for the 2020 elections...

Mali ended 2018 better than many expected. On the national political front, the presidential election went smoothly and President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta was re-elected for a second term....

What should be an epic battle of ideas and policies in Africa's biggest democracy to address recurring economic and security crises is turning out to be one of...

President Macky Sall is unlikely to need a second round to secure re-election in February. He has the advantage of incumbency in a much-reduced field of candidates, following...