Kenya's radically differing political styles were on show this week as respective presidential campaigns were launched. The opposition Orange Democratic Movement held an exuberant end-of-year rally on 9...

For three days at the end of November, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (now the armed forces of the Government of South Sudan) and Khartoum's Sudan Armed Forces...

Successive regimes in Khartoum have sought local allies against the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), especially since the National Islamic Front seized power in 1989. The NIF's most...

Like the Khartoum government's sponsorship of the Janjaweed in Darfur, its use of militias in the South has a political purpose: it wants instability in the South to...

Britain's Vodafone PLC and the Kenyan government face awkward questions about the establishment of Kenya's largest mobile phone company, Safaricom, following the discovery that a hitherto unknown company...

Growing tensions between Khartoum and the Government of Southern Sudan in Juba (see feature) may be linked to a new accommodation on the management of oil. Sudan is...

The arrest of three Italian journalists by the Supreme Islamic Courts Council on 2 December in Mogadishu points to growing sensitivity to the SICC's jihadist reputation and to...

The break in diplomatic relations between Paris and Kigali will not heal quickly. It came after France's Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière asked a higher court to issue international arrest...

If Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière obtains the international warrants issued in France, nine people will be targets for arrest if they enter the European Union and other countries ....

Four types of peacekeeping forces have been mooted for Darfur . . .

Western and African governments talk of a UN 'hybrid force' to protect civilians in Darfur but it is the National Congress (formerly National Islamic Front) regime which is...

Former President Daniel arap Moi's endorsement of Nicholas Biwott on 25 November as KANU Chairman instead of Uhuru Kenyatta was designed to scupper hopes for a broad-based opposition...

The draft resolution on Somalia to be put to the United Nations Security Council by the United States this week, proposes the deployment of a regional force to...

Ethiopia and Eritrea are the leading African states breaking the United Nations arms embargo on Somalia, according to an experts' report to the Security Council on 15 November....

Sheikh Hassan Abdullah Hamid Turki, leading radical in Somalia's Supreme Islamic Courts Council (SICC) and high on the United States' terrorist list, is reported to have been wounded...

The war now involves not only Chadian and Sudanese rebels and the two states' armies but is also drawing in Chadian civilians, communities who are arming and organising...

Khartoum's expulsion of UN Special Representative Johannes Pieter 'Jan' Pronk on 22 October has created a diplomatic diversion while it presses ahead with its latest military offensive in...

The Somali conflict poses a growing threat to neighbouring states. As the SICC and the TFG started their third round of talks in Sudan on 1 November, Ethiopia...

Embarrassing differences are emerging between the French judiciary and President Jacques Chirac's Cellule Africaine over the death in Djibouti in 1995 of French Judge Bernard Borrel. The Cellule...

Attorney General Amos Wako's dismissal of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission's (KACC) investigation into five state contracts will effectively block the cases until after next year's national elections. It...

The report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the activities of the so-called Armenian brothers - Artur Margaryan and Artur Sargasyan - uncovers a pattern of fraud...

An astonishing attack on Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir in the Saudi press signals a crack in Arab solidarity over Khartoum's policy on Darfur.

The government of Southern Sudan has finally deployed a battalion of the Sudan People's Liberation Army to the assembly area that 800 Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) fighters abandoned...

Military options were proposed on 1 October in the Washington Post by ex-President Bill Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice and National Security Advisor...

In Vol 47 No 16, Africa Confidential reported that the BBC Somali Service and its head, Yusuf Garad, had been criticised for supporting the Supreme Islamic Courts Council...

Intelligence officials have noted Khartoum's repeated threats to attack UN troops; Field Marshal-President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir has promised to lead the jihad. Yet the international community...

There will be no quick peace in Uganda. On 17 September, nearly 1,000 Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) fighters had assembled at the forest clearing of Ri Kwangba, on...

Despite two impressive-looking agreements on security in Somalia this week, the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the crisis are poor. For now there is little middle ground,...

An American private security company, Select Armor, has been planning military operations in support of President Abdullahi Yusuf's Transitional Federal Government in Somalia and raising questions about an...

Efforts at national reconciliation are threatened by the arrest and maltreatment of opposition leaders after the government claimed that there was a plot to overthrow it and to...

As the Sudan government gears up for a massive new military offensive in Darfur, its intelligence chief Salah Abdullah 'Gosh' has again held secret talks in Britain, apparently...

Suddenly President Mwai Kibaki's political fortunes are looking up again, and the idea of him running for re-election next year looks less ludicrous. Back in January his government...

Kenyan politics is based on ethnic and regional support. No party can win outright, yet most presidential hopefuls dislike the notion of coalitions. With...

African Union and Western diplomatic strategy is being outpaced by military and political changes in Darfur. Their absolutist support for May's badly flawed Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) ties...

The UN Security Council and aid agencies are taking a more pragmatic approach to the talks between the Ugandan government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in South...

Somalia's domestic strife is nowhere near its end. The rival authorities, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Baidoa and the Supreme Islamic Courts Council (SICC) - until 24...

The Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) is in tatters, two months after it was signed in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. The two signatories, the Sudan government and Minni Arkou...

Opening peace talks with Kampala last week, Lord's Resistance Army representatives began with a broadside against President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni's government. It underlined the gulf between the...

When Yoweri Kaguta Museveni seized power in 1986, one of his aims was to end Uganda's political, ethnic and religious fragmentation. That he succeeded only partially was clear...

A United Nations-backed conference in Brussels on 18-19 July brought in delegations from over 70 countries and raised about US$200 million for peacekeeping and humanitarian work in Darfur...

A barnstorming campaign last December and victory with 80 per cent of the national vote left President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete with much to live up to. So far,...

Zanzibar has been tranquil since the fiercely fought elections of October 2005 and many find that surprising. After the 2000 polls, some 30 people were killed in widespread...

The lightning take over by the Islamic Courts Union on 14 June surprised almost everyone, not least the United States CIA. The warlords crumbled almost overnight and with...

Mary Wambui, President Mwai Kibaki's second wife, has been repeatedly embarrassed by reports of her links to two men with Armenian names, after a security breach at Jomo...

On 19 June, Justice Aggrey Muchelule is to hand down a verdict in the case of two Italians and five Kenyans charged with smuggling 1.2 tonnes of cocaine...

After four quiet months, mortar bombs fell again on the northern suburbs of the capital, Bujumbura, on 31 May, destroying a house near the home of Vice-President Alice...

'The Movement is dead! Long live the Movement!' This might have been a suitable refrain as President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni's new government went to work in Uganda's Eighth...

After the man his supporters call 'the Ayatollah' won the 14 May presidential poll with 58 per cent of the vote, people are waiting to see what President...

This month's fighting in Mogadishu has been the heaviest for years. Between 7 and 12 May, over 200 people died, at least 1,000 were injured and the price...

At the celebrations to mark the founding of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army on 16 May, Southern Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit told supporters that his fledgling government...

The new Government of Southern Sudan has to reconcile the rivalries of its many peoples, exacerbated for decades by Khartoum regimes. The mandatory disarmament is proving tricky –...

Raids, law suits and board-room reshuffles are putting the heat on Kenya's journalists. The governing coalition is accused of corruption and its parties are squabbling but until recently,...

The United States' decision to bar four prominent businessmen - Alfred Getonga, Jimmy Wanjigi, Deepak Kimani and Anura Perera - named in former anti-corruption czar John Githongo's dossier...

NATO had offered to provide 'substantial support' to the African Union in Darfur under new arrangements to strengthen its peacekeeping operation there, said a communiqué following discussions by...

The latest meeting of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission, in London on 17 May, started badly, with the Commission President, Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC of Britain, irritated by news...

In the Abuja deal, the victims barely figure. The document is long and detailed but offers little substantial or enforceable political or economic change. The Khartoum regime is...

Two new ministers are the main beneficiaries of the government corruption saga (AC Vol 47 Nos 6 & 8). Amos Kimunya was promoted from Lands to Finance, Martha...

More is emerging about the state of health of Intelligence Director General Salah Abdullah 'Gosh', who visited Britain in March for medical reasons and talks with the government....

Since 2003, Paris has both backed President Idriss Déby and tried to prevent its allies discussing Chad. This has weakened Chad's unarmed opposition, which has anyway been manipulated...

We hear that at high-level diplomatic meetings in London, Paris and Washington in December 2005, intelligence officers from Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, the United States' Central Intelligence Agency...

Disquiet is growing over President George Bush's policy in Somalia amid reports of an executive security order to arm a local 'antiterrorist alliance' in contravention of the United...

There was a 'deliberate and concerted effort' to award a US$10-million pre-shipment inspection contract in September 2005 to Switzerland's Société Générale de Surveillance and Britain's Intertek International in...

Mediators at talks on Darfur are scrambling for a rapid peace deal that would allow United Nations' troops to deploy in the region, where murders and rapes perpetrated...

Darfur's troubles are fuelled by violence flowing both ways across the Chadian border, some of it orchestrated by the Sudanese regime. Meanwhile, President Idriss Déby Itno clings to...

A spate of attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army over the last two months on the region around Yei in Southern Sudan has put the international focus back...

The clumsy midnight attack by government agents on The Standard and KTN Television, both owned by the family of former President Daniel arap Moi, on 1 March looked...

'If you prod a rattlesnake, you must be prepared to be bitten', is how Kenya's Internal Security Minister, John Njoroge Michuki, explained the police raids on the night...

Secret talks in London on 10 March between American lawyers may help unblock the border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia, that killed 50-100,000 people in 1998-2000. Both governments...

Who brought Sudan's security boss, Salah Abdullah 'Gosh', to London last week? He is number two on the United Nations Panel of Experts' list of 'individuals identified' for...

There is no love lost between those political and personal foes, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and his former friend, colleague and physician, Warren Kizza Besigye Kifefe, the President's only...

The National Resistance Movement bigwigs whom voters rejected include 17 government ministers - one quarter of President Yoweri Museveni's cabinet. The most senior was First Deputy Prime Minister...

How did the United Nations Panel of Experts on Sudan pick its candidates for sanctions over Darfur war crimes? The confidential annex of 22 names, leaked last week,...

Did President Mwai Kibaki know about illicit political funding? Africa Confidential has listened to a covert recording of a conversation between anti-corruption czar John Githongo and the then...

Nine months after May's controversial elections, Addis Ababa's councillors have still not taken their seats. The four-party opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) won the capital by...

Just as Western governments begin to note the regime's lack of financial transparency, the ruling National Islamic Front-National Congress has another bonanza. On 6 February, Kuwait-based Mobile Telecommunications...

The election campaign of Forum for Democratic Change leader Kizza Besigye has been seriously disrupted by spurious charges of treason and terrorism, both in the High Court and...

The momentum behind the anti-corruption drive, sparked by press reports of a dossier of investigations into more than US$1 billion of fraudulent government procurement deals, now looks unstoppable....

Why did the lawyers of Cyprus-based businessman Anura Perera try to arrange a private meeting with anti-corruption czar John Githongo in a London hotel in late 2004? This...

The cheering was almost as loud as the jets of two MiG-21 fighters that flew low over Kampala on 26 January. The flypast crowned a military display to...

Only President Yoweri Museveni's die-hard supporters expect him to win many votes in northern Uganda, where he is blamed for failing to end the 18-year insurgency by the...

As the plight of civilians in Darfur worsens, United Nations' troops may take over from those of the African Union later this year. Yet will they have the...

On 17 December, a naked and mutilated corpse turned up in a Brussels canal. Five days later, after DNA tests, it was identified as that of Juvénal Uwingiliyimana,...