Kenya is almost broke. And the International Monetary Fund, which has been expertly teased with promises of reform by President Daniel arap Moi's government several times before, is...

To enliven Kenya's official anti-corruption campaign comes the bizarre saga of the cellular telephone licences. The licence to operate a second cellular system was awarded last month to...

Tracking down the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide continues to dominate Rwandan politics. At home, an anti-corruption drive is running alongside fresh allegations of complicity in the genocide...

Vice-President Paul Kagame is said to be seething after four of Rwanda's best footballers, including team Captain Jean-Paul Nsengiyunva, absconded while on tour in Germany.

Allegations of Ugandan complicity in supplying arms to the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola rebels are always met with flat denials from President Yoweri Museveni's...

The opposition's swift rejection of the 25 November agreement between the National Islamic Front and Umma Party has surprised both signatories. National Democratic Alliance leaders were 'unanimous' in...

The National Islamic Front's bid to smash the opposition while convincing outsiders it seeks reconciliation has provoked the normally taciturn Saudi Arabian government into denying reports that it...

Ethiopia and Eritrea are set to start fighting again (AC Vol 40 Nos 4 & 9). Neither trusts the other and each accuses the other of preparing for...

Badme, taken by Eritrea in May 1998, has this year been the focus of several deadly battles. In February, Ethiopia attacked with artillery, then aircraft and tanks, then...

Ethiopia is angry at what it sees as the international failure to condemn Eritrean aggression. When receiving the new United States' Ambassador to Ethiopia, Tibor Nagy, in early...

Saddened by the death of their founding President, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, in London on 14 October, Tanzanians face a difficult run-up to the elections due next year without...

The loss of Tanzania's Julius Nyerere on 14 October coincided with a serious worsening of Burundi's internal conflict. Since 18 August, when they made several raids on the...

While many in Somalia push for peace (AC Vol 40 No 19), Ethiopia is pressing its allies for quicker military results against Eritrea's ally, Hussein 'Aydeed'. The 'Somali...

A major row is brewing over the political independence of the Communications Commission of Kenya, the regulatory body meant to oversee the privatisation of Kenya's beleaguered telecommunications sector....

The opposition fighters who blew a hole in the government's new oil pipeline on 19 September also blew apart its campaign to convince the world that it has...

The 19 September attack on the brand new, 1,600-kilometre export pipeline proves two points: firstly, the falsehood of the claim by the National Islamic Front government that the...

Countless peace conferences have failed to pacify Somalia, including the latest, in Cairo in December 1997, whose collapse seemed to condemn the country to yet more clan wars...

In the late 1970s, the old Front Patriotique Rwandais (then exiled in Uganda and Tanzania) had joined forces with Museveni's National Resistance Movement to help oust two Ugandan...

There has also been bitter fighting in Bujumbura itself, where about 60 people died on 28 August including, according to the army, 20 of the Hutu rebels who...

Only the desks were reshuffled in President Daniel arap Moi's 6 September cabinet changes, billed as a move to cut costs and boost efficiency. The World Bank and...

Ten years after the National Islamic Front government agreed that the United Nations could carry relief to all 'war-affected populations', the UN's Operation Lifeline Sudan has taken its...

Even Bujumbura's early morning groups of joggers are being stopped and searched by gendarmes posted around the city by order of Burundi's ruler, Major Pierre Buyoya (AC Vol...

Once more, President Daniel arap Moi has confounded his critics and surprised everyone else. On 23 July, he appointed his political adversary, palaeontologist and wildlife enthusiast Richard...

A growing flirtation with the Umma Party is one sign of the National Islamic Front's continuing charm offensive. At our press-time, NIF leader Hassan el Turabi and Umma...

Vice-President George Saitoti survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament on 30 June, which is good news for his political godfather, Nicholas Biwott, now Minister of East African Cooperation...

Last week in Khartoum, where mixed student outings have been common for decades, 25 students who went on a picnic were publicly flogged for 'immoral' behaviour. The girls...

Hassan el Turabi heads a team of sometimes quarrelling but always committed people. The key NIF people in government have been there since the 1989 coup. A number...

French officials were taken aback by the success of the visit to Paris on 24-29 May by Djibouti's new President, Ismael Omar Guelleh. They were particularly pleased...

A consignment of notes for Hussein Mohamed 'Aydeed' with a face value of 35 billion Somali shillings (Sosh) due at Baidoa airport has been held up by an...

Once again, the two parts of the not-very-United Republic of Tanzania are heading in different political directions. In Zanzibar, a Commonwealth mediator has forged an agreement (AC Vol...

The main beneficiary of the Eritrean-Ethiopian war (AC Vol 40 No 4, Pride and prejudice & My enemy's enemy) is Sudan’s National Islamic Front government. A year ago,...

The odds are stacked against Eritrea. Ethiopia has a bigger and better equipped army and airforce, and a bigger population and economy to sustain a long war....

After four years of political stalemate, and three years of hard work by the Commonwealth Secretariat, a new agreement - still not formally signed - lays the groundwork...

A series of opposition victories against the National Islamic Front government has prompted Khartoum to delay 'negotiations' in Nairobi under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development....

The government reshuffle of 18 February was, as usual in President Daniel arap Moi’s Kenya, announced by radio during the lunch hour, catching unaware the ministers and top...

With more than half a million troops deployed along the disputed border and tens of thousands of casualties in fighting so far this year, the Ethiopia-Eritrea war is...

The ruling National Islamic Front has started a major new offensive against the Sudan People's Liberation Army in the Nuba mountains. Apparently alarmed at the success of opposition...

The ruling group reckons it is sure to win the presidential election on 9 April; the opposition keeps up its spirits by claiming the result is open. The...

Five years after Rwanda’s holocaust, in which some 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were slaughtered in 100 days, those blood-soaked events reverberate across central Africa and the international...

On 6 February, Ethiopia launched the first of several attacks to test how deeply Eritrean forces were dug in along the disputed border areas which they had taken...

Each side hopes to support the other’s dissidents - even when this means helping Khartoum’s National Islamic Front government, its Islamist protégés and its own enemies’ enemies. Eritrea...

Nomination by the ruling Rassemblement Populaire pour le Progrès on 4 February has formally set Ismael Omar Guelleh on the path to succeed Hassan Gouled Aptidon, who steps...

A key reason why the United States bombed El Shifa factory on 20 August (AC Vol 39 No 17) was because of its links to Iraq,...

The Pinochet effect persists in Britain with the trial, now expected this March, of a Sudanese doctor who is charged with committing torture and omitting to prevent it...

The moratorium on air attacks agreed after June’s raids on Asmara and Makelle (and after phone calls by President Bill Clinton to Premier Meles Zenawi and President Issayas...