Delinquent debtors owe millions of shillings to more than a dozen troubled banks in Kenya. The list includes names from President Daniel arap Moi’s immediate family, that of...

Andrew Morton’s much-vilified biography of Daniel arap Moi (AC 39 No 23) has further lifted the veil on Kenya’s first family. Until now, Moi, divorced from his wife Lena...

A peace settlement still seems as far away as ever in Somalia, with no firm indication that any promised national reconciliation conference will take place in the foreseeable future. But decentralisation...

International pressure is growing to lift the embargo imposed on Burundi by its neighbours. Until now Tanzania and Uganda have been the main backers of the sanctions which...

Two years before the referendum asking Ugandans whether they want to return to multi-party politics, the ruling National Resistance Movement is taking no chances. It seems to have...

A great campaign of historical revisionism has begun. Led by President Daniel arap Moi and his sons, it presents Moi as a caring statesman who did great things for his...

Rebel gains on the eastern front, bordering Ethiopia, now threaten business interests crucial to the National Islamic Front regime. The local Sudan People’s Liberation Army commander, Malik Agar,...

As Eritrea and Ethiopia prepare for the much postponed Organisation of African Unity meeting to discuss their border conflict, in Ouagadougou on 7 November, a convoy of Ethiopian...

For now, hopes of agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia rest on the Organisation of African Unity. The former Director of the United States’ National Security Council, Anthony Lake,...

‘Top-down’ leadership conferences, such as Sodere and Cairo last year (AC Vol 39 No 8) are now out and seem to be being replaced, as many have long...

Just as the Congo rebels’ main backers had at last admitted their involvement in the civil war, a nasty row broke out between their military men. It began...

Pressure is mounting on President Benjamin Mkapa to reconsider cabinet approval for a 10,000-hectare prawn farm in East Africa’s biggest expanse of mangrove forest. Most controversially, the contract...

A leading advocate of sending an ‘independent team’ to investigate the bombed El Shifa pharmaceutical factory works out of Sudan’s London mission. Since the United States’ attack on...

The threat of a national strike by 260,000 teachers on 5 October appears to mark the end of the political calm which descended after the bombing of the...

Finance Minister Simeon Nyachae and Central Bank Governor Micah Cheserem will be lobbying hard at the 6-8 October annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank...

As the rains end and hardliners in Addis Ababa and Asmara threaten renewed fighting senior figures in both governments have privately been sending out peace signals. The differences...

War has weakened Premier Meles Zenawi but the conflict with Eritrea has certainly not brought him down. Rumours had run through Addis Ababa that he was under house...

With the guns mostly silent along the border, the war is being waged through local media. In Addis Ababa, ETV daily broadcasts rallies country-wide supporting the war, parading...

After four years of existence, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has reached its first two verdicts. On 2 September in Arusha it found Jean-Paul Akayezu, a former...

Last year’s abortive talks between the Ethiopian government and the Oromo Liberation Front precipitated changes in the OLF leadership. In April an extraordinary National Congress, held in Mogadishu,...

Ten years ago, no one could have imagined that a foreign power would bomb Khartoum and Sudanese would complain that the attack was not hard enough. After nine...

Televisionisation and the wish to personify have turned Usama bin Laden into a kind of Robin Hood. Many recall the United States manhunt for General Mohamed Farah ‘Aydeed’....

A vigorous debate ensued at the National Democratic Alliance summit in Cairo on 15-17 August over the initiative taken at the last meeting of the Inter-Governmental Authority on...

Ethiopia has been trying for some time to refurbish and upgrade the MiGs it inherited from Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam’s regime. The planes were properly ‘mothballed’ after Meles...

The Organisation of African Unity was working ‘flat-out to avert a full-scale war’, said Secretary General Salim Ahmed Salim at last weekend’s peace summit in Ouagadougou. Yet renewed...

United Nations' human rights staff are packing their bags following the government's categorical refusal to allow rights monitoring as part of the UN brief. Talks with a top-level...

Reports that both sides in the Ethiopian- Eritrean border war are rearming have dented hopes of success for Organisation of African Unity proposals for a ceasefire, a monitoring...

Western governments have a plan for the independence of southern Sudan. The proposals have the blessing of the Sudan government but bypass Sudan's neighbours in the Inter-Governmental Authority...

Since conflict erupted on 31 December 1955, the day before Sudan’s Independence, several million people have died in the war in the south.It’ shard,therefore,tofindasouthernerwhodoesn’ twant independence. It used...

A surprise guest turned up at the United States’ Independence Day festivities in Nairobi’s Ruaraka suburb on 4 July: President Daniel Arap Moi. His presence reflected his blossoming...

There is a growing rift between Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short and British-based aid agencies which have in recent years become increasingly dependent on government...

Amid massive publicity for Sudan’s famine, the Khartoum government agreed in May to full access for the United Nations’ Operation Lifeline Sudan. Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail assured...

Mediation and fighting were both going on as we went to press: Eritrea and Ethiopia both accept the need for demarcation and demilitarisation and have even indicated they...

The fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which initially caused between six and 20 deaths, took everyone by surprise, not least the United States, a close ally of both...

"I am not a dictator. I just say what is good. I say things direct. I do not have money overseas. If I am to sink, I will...

President Moi's Kenya now has a lousy reputation in Washington DC. At a White House press briefing before President Clinton's Africa visit last March, an American journalist asked...

Seth Sendashonga was shot dead on 16 May while leaving a United Nations building in Nairobi. His family says the Kigali government organised his killing. Kenyan police, however,...

As the world briefly noticed the famine in southern Sudan, President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir presented 5,000 tonnes of grain - to Niger. On 6 May, he...

The opposition National Democratic Alliance has spent months giving a free run to the ruling National Islamic Front. But this is a lull in the conflict, not a...

This month, as the international media began noticing the famine in Bahr el Ghazal, the SPLA leader, Colonel John Garang, was touring in Eastern Equatoria. Bordering Kenya and...

When Tanzania's founding President, Julius Nyerere, went to China in 1965, he came home and tried to build his country on Chairman Mao Tse Tung's model. The result...

The 19 April election of Alhaji Nasser Sebaggala as Mayor of Kampala tests President Yoweri Museveni's tolerance of dissent (AC Vol 38 No 23). It will be a...

The leaders of Mogadishu's three main factions are still trying to avoid a real peace settlement. Nearly three months after the Cairo agreement that was meant to bring...

The main armed opposition, the Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie, has split. On 22 March, its Conseil de Guerre Général Populaire (Popular General War Council)...

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin chose an odd day to condemn outside interference in Somalia: 18 March, the day Ethiopian troops again crossed into Somalia's Gedo Region to...

The tactical war between President Daniel arap Moi's government and the National Convention Executive Council is on again. This time it is driven by popular anger at the...

A hotel-keeper at Butare in southern Rwanda, asked in late January about a convoy of trucks bearing number-plates from Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania, replied: ‘C’est l’embargo qui passe!’...

The signs are that President Daniel arap Moi’s final term in office will be as troubled as the last two. His victory in the December elections (AC Vol...

Simeon Nyachae’ s promotion to Finance Minister and his predecessor Musalia Mudavadi’s demotion to Agriculture Minister have been accompanied by a thorough-going reorganisation of senior civil servants in...

Kenya’s Electoral Commission and Western diplomats have responded with a deafening silence to a confidential report on the 28 December elections by the Democratic Development Donor Group. This...

he 12 February plane crash which killed First Vice-President Major General El Zubeir Mohamed Salih is one of the biggest blows to the National Islamic Front since it...

Stable politics may be about to produce radical economic changes. On 20 March, the presidential and parliamentary elections are unlikely to upset President France-Albert René or his ruling...

The Defence Minister’s death on 28 January is a hard blow for regime and army. Colonel Firmin Sinzoyiheba and four others died when their helicopter crashed during a...

p>General Anthony Zenny paid his first visit to Ethiopia as Commander, United States Central Command (which includes Ethiopia), on 22 January. A marine who served with US forces...

Premier Meles Zenawi maintains his personal friendship with Eritrean President Issayas Aferworki and recently told television viewers that bilateral relations remained 'strong and satisfactory'. Yet he also said...

It is clear that if the presidential and parliamentary elections had been free, fair and properly organised and if the opposition had not been chronically divided (AC Vol...

All eyes are on the south and east in expectation of major fighting between the National Islamic Front government and the opposition National Democratic Alliance. Yet also crucial...

The first Nuba Advisory Council was convened by Sudan People's Liberation Army Commander Yousif Kuwa in 1992 after 400 of his troops died trying to bring ammunition into...

Somali faction leaders have been meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week to try to salvage the agreement reached in Cairo on 22 December. Signatories to the Egyptian-...

Contrary to our article in AC Vol 38 No 25, Sudan is a signatory of the international treaty banning anti-personnel landmines (APMs) agreed in Ottawa in December. However,...