On the night of 11 December, while President Mwai Kibaki was preparing to celebrate 40 years of Kenya's Independence, his Minister for Public Works, Raila Amolo Odinga, was...

Coalition ministers have unhindered access to President Mwai Kibaki and latitude to make decisions. Ex-President Daniel arap Moi would sometimes reverse ministerial decisions via national radio and (with...

Armed opposition is on the rise again, as anti-government militias train in Sudan and politicians grow restless in N'djamena. The unrest puts at risk not only the ailing...

Ibn Omer Youssef Idriss, a Sudanese businessman, was shot dead at point blank range outside Chad's Foreign Ministry on 25 September. Six weeks later, on 6 November, four...

Military reform and a new national army are key to the South African-led peace efforts (AC Vol 44 No 16). They remain on a knife-edge. Since the 16...

After 18 years of the Lord's Resistance Army's murderous attacks on civilians, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni declares on 14 November that the LRA is 'nearly finished' ­ then...

In exile after claiming to have been targeted by government assassins, Colonel Kizza Besigye remains the opposition's most credible flagbearer. His strength is that he was for years...

Sudan's peace talks are rumbling to a probable conclusion imposed by the 'Troika' of interested Western governments the United States, Britain and Norway within a few months or...

Rwandan intelligence scores full marks for orchestrating the surrender of Hutu rebel leader Paul Rwarakabije on 16 November and wrongfooting both the United Nations and President Joseph Kabila's...

'Why hire a lawyer when you can buy a judge?' runs a well-worn Kenyan joke. It's a joke that reformers in President Mwai Kibaki's government want to make...

Somalia's peace process is close to collapse, according to regional leaders meeting in Kampala, Uganda, on 25 October. After the signing of the ceasefire a year ago in...

Usama bin Laden's Al Qaida network could be preparing to attack Western targets in Africa for a third time, a panel of experts warned the United Nations Security...

Colin Powell was disappointed. The expected signing of a partial Sudan peace agreement during the United States Secretary of State's trip to Kenya was replaced by the two...

Conflicting visions reign of what is really going on in the Machakos negotiations, with a large gap between Sudanese participants and many of the foreigners involved. Sudanese remember...

A final peace deal would be followed, eventually, by the lifting of United States' sanctions and an international aid package. Meanwhile, say banking sources, the Khartoum government is...

A Joint Military Commission (JMC) of government and rebel forces supervises the ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains (AC Vol 43 No 10). On 10 October, the government contingent...

President Paul Kagame claimed more than 95 per cent of the presidential poll in July, so it was hardly surprising that the coalition led by his Front Patriotique...

The killing of university don Crispin Odhiambo Mbai on 14 September has thrown President Mwai Kibaki's government into crisis. Kibaki's nine-month honeymoon is over as Mbai joins the...

At the apex of President Mwai Kibaki's coalition government, a Kikuyu cabal known as 'the Mount Kenya mafia' is tightening its grip. The group includes several former firebrands...

The advance of Joseph Kony's dreaded Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) towards Soroti, the main town of eastern Teso region, has shocked the government and caught the army by...

Uganda may be faltering as a model reformer but Western states and multilateral organisations still pay most of its bills: about 55 per cent of the national budget...

Worsening human rights abuses, including the apparent murder of an opposition leader's sister-in-law, have brought a threat from the European Parliament's Development Commission to suspend aid. The Commission,...

A growing minority within the ruling National Resistance Movement opposes another five-year term for President Yoweri Museveni in 2006 as well as the political reforms that his supporters...

The United Nations Security Council will renew the mandate of the UN Mission to Eritrea and Ethiopia next week but the border remains unresolved and there is concern...

General Paul Kagame was right when, a few days before the presidential election on 25 August, he told Africa Confidential: 'Most likely I am going to win. ...

Doubts about President Paul Kagame's landslide election victory are unlikely to bring a fall in Western aid to Kigali but funding will come under heavier scrutiny as concern...

After collapsing on 24 August, peace talks will resume on 10 September, with 'final agreement' due on 20 September. As the National Islamic Front tries to sabotage...

Somalia is no longer a country at war. However, fighting and killing continue, and it is not yet a country at peace. Its reconciliation conference has entered its...

Hopes that the installation in late April of President Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu, would hasten an end to the fighting have not been realised. Instead, the conflict has...

The death of Idi Amin Dada, prematurely reported several times by Kampala newspapers in recent weeks, may indeed be imminent. 'He is alive but remains in a near-death...

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is fighting for his political life and his international reputation amidst growing internal dissent. The main issue remains the frontier with Eritrea, focus...

Since last December, when voters decisively rejected 39 years of rule by the Kenya African National Union, the victorious National Alliance Rainbow Coalition (NARC) has begun to do...

The National Islamic Front government may well return to the Machakos peace talks, on 3 August, after it stormed out on 11 July. This is not simple brinkmanship,...

Khartoum will never go back to being a secular capital and what forced us to execute the 30 June 1989 coup was the conspiracy against Sharia and the...

The National Islamic Front knows that, if it plays its cards right, the parameters set at Machakos will continue. Few now question the government's legitimacy; few now mention...

Commander of the Ugandan People's Defence Force Major General James Kazini was second only to President Yoweri Museveni in the military hierarchy. So continuing allegations of corruption against...

In June 1996 Major General Salim Saleh, Special Advisor to President Yoweri Museveni on Military and Political Affairs in the north of Uganda, was dispatched to Gulu, the...

The democracy bandwagon Rwandan style rolls on. President Paul Kagame is determined to win a multi-party election on his own terms and will probably do it. He has...

I will not be absorbed for the second time in my life!' John Garang told parliamentarians and aid workers in Britain's Portcullis House on 3 June. The Sudan...

Divisions in the governing coalition have grown sharper during the constitutional review conference, which opened on 30 April in the Bomas of Kenya park and promises to continue...

None of the three main players brimmed with confidence about better Rwandan-Ugandan relations after their mini-summit at Britain's Lancaster House on 8 May. No new measures were agreed...

The banning of the Khartoum Monitor deprives southerners of a voice in the north at a crucial period in the Machakos talks. On 10 May, the newspaper, run...

New President Domitien Ndayizéyé was sworn in on 30 April in Bujumbura, replacing President Pierre Buyoya for the last 18 months of transition to multi-party rule. Ndayizéyé, 49,...

Only a burst tyre and a forced landing made Uganda miss its 24 April deadline to pull its troops out of north-eastern Congo-Kinshasa. They set off in four...

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has given the National Islamic Front government a free hand to pursue its policy of human rights violations. By refusing to...

It was the sharpest of U-turns. President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who has vehemently defended his 'no-party system' of government since he won power in 1986, now wants to...

So it's war then. Uganda's daily Monitor was unequivocal: 'Rwanda, Uganda go to war in Kigali!' screamed the headline. In fact, the Monitor was reporting a qualifying match...

Two interlinked questions gnaw at the credibility of President Mwai Kibaki's government: will the presidency exert leadership in economic and political reform and will the ruling coalition stay...

A double tragedy of fighting and famine threatens drought-stricken Darfur (AC Vol 43 No 23). A major assault is expected by the National Islamic Front government which has...

After ten years of neglect, the United Nations arms embargo on Somalia is finally seeing action. The embargo was introduced in January 1992 but only last year did...

The National Islamic Front government aims to persuade the West it holds the smoking gun on Iraq, we hear. To attack President Saddam Hussein, the United States and...

The last Ethiopian leader to visit Britain was Haile Selassie in 1972. Last month, Premier Meles Zenawi also laid a wreath on the grave of a nineteenth-century Ethiopian...

Oil money is again exacerbating the war. A consortium operated by state-owned China National Petroleum Company has made a 'very significant' strike in Block 7 of east-central Sudan's...

Foreign Minister Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka's swing through Washington and London last week reinforced the aid-for-security cooperation trade-off dominating Kenyan policy. President Mwai Kibaki's government will get military training...

The contrast could not have been starker. On 30 January, Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha opened the first stretch of a road to Ethiopia, dispatching 25 lorries of...

As the Machakos talks stumble on, the National Islamic Front government's month-old offensive in Western Upper Nile (WUN) has occasioned only 'deep concern' from the United States. Yet...

Optimists have suggested that Kenya's wheelchair-bound President Mwai Kibaki is a metaphor for the national condition: physically constrained but spiritually indomitable or in Kenya's new political parlance, 'unbwogable'....

The businesslike buzz of President Mwai Kibaki's State House is a world apart from his predecessor Daniel arap Moi's more gregarious style. Kibaki's team is known as the...

While obstructing the Machakos talks by refusing to discuss the north-south buffer zone and other key issues, the National Islamic Front (National Congress) government is boosting its military...

Former President Daniel arap Moi's new project the Moi Foundation has already hit some obstacles.