Demonstrators demand political reforms before the 2010 elections
Anti-regime demonstrators from both North and South Sudan first joined forces on the streets of Khartoum on 7 December to demand sweeping reforms before the elections scheduled for...
Just a year ago, the European Union launched its first-ever patrol mission in foreign seas to combat piracy in the Gulf of Aden (AC Vol 50 No 21)....
New constitutional proposals would take powers from the presidency and give more to the regions but would not end the arguments
A draft constitution bill has at last been published by a committee of experts chaired by Nzamba Kitonga. Its main aims are to limit the power of Kenya’s...
This once-favoured destination for aid and investment is now struggling with financial scandals and budget shortfalls
The sheen is wearing off Tanzania's image as the friendliest East African country for investors and foreign aid agencies. Politics in the lead up to next year's legislative...
The credibility of the Tanzanian government's reform drive depends mostly on the Governor of the Bank of Tanzania, Benno Ndulu. The country is suffering both from a financial...
Protais Zigiranyirazo, brother-in-law of late Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, was acquitted on appeal by the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on 17 November (AC Vol 50 No...
A UN report says the Darfur war is far from over and Khartoum
is the main protagonist and procurer of arms
The opening sentence of the 27 October Report by the United Nations Panel of Experts on Sudan, released last week, demolishes the notion that the Darfur war is...
The President and the Premier are ambivalent about the ICC's
plan to prosecute some of the political violence cases
To the alarm of many in Nairobi's political elite, the International Criminal Court Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is determined to investigate and prosecute those involved in the outbreak of...
Vol 50 No 23 |
- ERITREA
- SOMALIA
Al Shabaab, Somalia's main Islamist insurgent movement, has a new country in its sights. Its Spokesperson, Suldan Mohammed Aala Mohammed, has announced the addition of Eritrea to the...
Amid a spreading feeling at home and abroad that Sudan may be at a crossroads, the United States announced its long-postponed policy. This departs from the usual cautious diplomacy of interested governments by leaving the National Congress Party in no doubt that it will be held responsible for most of the country's political woes. The only sanction that the NCP really fears is military action: this is included in a confidential annex. As elections and referenda draw near, the Khartoum regime pursues its own military action west and south and perhaps soon again in the east.
When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled the new United States' policy on Sudan on 19 October, press reports focussed on 'engagement', a concept beloved of President Barack...
Vol 50 No 21 |
- KENYA
- SOMALIA
As attacks by Somali pirates increase in the Gulf of Aden, the trials of those captured during the last ten months begin in Mombasa
The trials of suspected Somali pirates captured by United States and European Union navies began on 8 October in Mombasa. One hundred Somalis accused of attacks against cargo...
As neighbouring Ethiopia takes the unusual step of asking for food aid, for 6.2 million people, Kenya's Turkana Province members of Parliament are coming under pressure to force...
Vol 2 (AAC) No 12 |
- UGANDA
- CHINA
In Uganda, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation
has taken the pole position in discussions to buy out part of
Irish oil company Tullow's interests in more than one billion
barrels...
Vol 2 (AAC) No 12 |
- TANZANIA
- SOUTH KOREA
Seoul is trying to buy into Tanzania's farm sector shortly
after Daewoo precipitated a political confrontation over the same
issue in Madagascar
South Korea is desperately trying to manage the political fallout
as it negotiates the acquisition of 100,000 hectares of farmland
with the Tanzanian government. It is trying to avoid a...
Vol 2 (AAC) No 12 |
- ETHIOPIA
- CHINA
The Ethiopian government is launching one of Africa's most ambitious cooperation programmes with China to build several new power stations
Ethiopia has signed contracts with Chinese construction companies
to build two huge dams as part of a US$12 billion, 25-year Power
Sector Master Plan to harness the country's hydropower potential.
It...
Eighteen months after the murderous clashes, the government remains ambivalent about trying the sponsors of the post-election violence
Kenya's politicians continue to obstruct the efforts of the International Criminal Court to try those most responsible for last year's political violence. This comes despite the recent hopeful...
The Northern opposition and the SPLM combine to pressure the Khartoum government on elections and human rights
The Sudan People's Liberation Movement's unprecedented hosting of Northern opposition parties in Juba last week points to some important shifts in political alignments. The Juba Declaration on Dialogue...
Vol 50 No 19 |
- KENYA
- AFRICA
The reappointment of the anti-corruption chief opens a rift between Parliament and President Mwai Kibaki as top politicians come under fire
For the first time in Kenya's history, Parliament has voted to reject a presidential order, duly noted in the official Gazette. At stake is the survival both of...
A spirit of amity, barely two months old, appears to have stabilised the coalition government. It was ushered in by President Mwai Kibaki's trip to Nyanza, Prime Minister...
The Baganda people and their monarch are turning on the government
and hurting its election prospects
The most serious challenge to Yoweri Museveni's presidency was always going to come from within his own coalition and that seems to have started in Kampala this month....
There are no credible challengers to President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni within the top ranks of the governing National Resistance Movement. The respected Foreign Minister James Wambogo Wapakhabulo, who...
The African Union Panel of Experts is to propose the establishment of 'hybrid courts' - which would include both Sudanese and international judges - to try those...
When United States special forces landed near the Shabaab-held Somalian town of Barawe to assassinate and carry off several members of the Al Shabaab jihadist group on...
Vol 2 (AAC) No 11 |
- SUDAN
- CHINA
Scrutiny of oil figures from CNPC suggests that the Khartoum government has been cheating the South of substantial revenues
Beijing faces a new round of criticism over its heavy investments
in Sudan's oil business following the publication of a report
by British lobbyists Global Witness(1) on 7 September pointing
to...
Oil figures suggest that Khartoum is cheating the South of revenue and threatening the increasingly fragile peace
Concern is growing about the economic and political conflicts which threaten the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in January 2005. Many of these conflicts stem from the opacity of...
There are mismatches between Khartoum's oil figures and those of the CNPC
Global Witness found mismatches between the Sudan government's figures and those of the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and other company figures on oil production for all blocks...
The most dangerous corner of Africa is its north-eastern Horn, where instability reigns and terrorism thrives on the antagonisms of its governments
The fate of Somalia is in the balance, as the Transitional Federal Government struggles for control against Islamist insurgents. Eritrea and Ethiopia are engaged in an unremitting struggle....
Election rules seemed to have been agreed but the President wants new ones to make sure he wins
With a year to go before presidential, parliamentary and local elections, President Pierre Nkurunziza is trying to ensure that he and his party win. Diplomats are worried as...
The good news for Burundi is that 80% of the cost of next year's elections - US$45 million, about 5% of the budget - will be paid by...
The 13 August move of Lieutenant General Salah Abdullah
Mohamed 'Gosh' from Director of the National Intelligence and
Security Service (NISS) to Presidential Security Advisor comes
at a critical time for the National Congress Party (aka National
Islamic Front) regime. President Omer el Beshir is fending off
arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International
Criminal Court and the party's leading tacticians are determined
to secure total victory in national elections and a referendum
on the future of the South, both due in the next two years.
In the eyes of Western intelligence agencies, Salah Gosh was an important figure to cultivate. He was, according to British, French and United States officials, a source of...
The road to Sudan is littered with the United States' special envoys and the most criticised, Scott Gration, is determined not to join the list of those who...
A fair trial for murderous politicians seems as unlikely as
ever, despite the latest proposal
The effort continues to keep the post-election violence of 2007, and those responsible, out of the International Criminal Court. One favoured way of doing that is to set...
Western governments responded swiftly when last month Kenya failed to set up a special tribunal to try those responsible for the 2007 post-election violence and suggested it might...
On 3 August, the government swore in nine commissioners for its Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, including six Kenyans and three foreigners.
The return of former United Nations Under-Secretary General Olara Otunnu to Uganda this month after 23 years in exile could galvanise the country's fractious opposition parties against President...
Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) will ask the United States to release a Somali terrorist suspect from Guantánamo Bay. Ismail Mahmoud Mohamed was a friend of and former...
India's Ambassador to Ethiopia (Retired)
Long-serving diplomat Gurjit Singh distinguished himself
as one of the most activist ambassadors in Addis Ababa and personally
raised the substance and profile of Ethiopia-India
relations. Singh has just ended a...
President Mwai Kibaki's 23 July appointment of Bethuel Kiplagat to chair Kenya's newly created Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission is problematic. Some suspect the government will use the TJRC to exonerate any senior politician convicted of election violence and Kiplagat, a senior aide to President Daniel arap Moi, lacks support and credibility, as do some other TJRC members. Furthermore, the TJRC's remit stretches back to 1963. Far from resolving postcolonial crises, this may prove yet another lengthy, expensive inquiry whose conclusions are seen as just another cover-up.
Many regard the question of Bethuel Kiplagat's independence as fundamental. He was a leading coordinator of Daniel arap Moi's survival strategy (AC Vol 31 No 24) and critics...
The fractious coalition government of President Mwai Kibaki and Premier Raila Odinga may have finally agreed on something: to let impunity reign. Kenyans speak of the transition from...
Even before President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed of Somalia met United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the first leg of her seven-nation African tour, Washington had...
Options narrow after the International Criminal Court receives the list of suspects
The Kenyan government has until the end of September to set up an independent special tribunal on the post-election violence of December 2007. On 9 July, former United...
Kofi Annan, the former United Nations Secretary General, made his announcement about handing over the envelope containing the list of the accused to the International Criminal Court just...
Recommendations from the Waki Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence (CIPEV), Part V, Chapter 13.
The current array of international tribunals has its roots in the 1990s. With the Cold War over, a spate of atrocious wars broke out in areas that no...
The Permanent Court of Arbitration's 22 July ruling, which redrew the boundaries of the disputed Abyei area, affirmed that all the area's major oil fields and the Nile...
The search for justice lumbers on in a costly UN tribunal and national and community courts, but the convictions are relatively few
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was set up by the United Nations Security Council in November 1994 to try those responsible for genocide or other serious offences...
Thirteen more genocide suspects are sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The United States government's offer of a US$5 million bounty for their arrest has...
As the NCP/NIF celebrates 20 years in power, the 'democratic transformation' stipulated by the CPA looks optimistic
A momentous year awaits Sudan. Amid fighting in the South and Darfur, elections are due in February and the Southern referendum on independence is scheduled for 2011. The...
Vol 50 No 13 |
- TANZANIA
- ECONOMY
Tanzania, the second largest of the big-three members of the East African Community, has presented a budget with a bullish message designed to spend its way out of...
This week's meeting in Washington of the two signatories to the 2005 CPA is unprecedented. Both the National Congress Party (aka National Islamic Front) and the Sudan People's...
Hassan Abdullah el Turabi may watch mainly from the wings but the party he nurtured lives on, albeit renamed. The core group of his National Islamic Front is...
Three main groups should do well out of Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta's maiden budget: Kenya's 210 elected members of parliament and its millionaires and commercial bankers. Kenyatta,...
Uganda's first female Finance Minister, Syda Namirembe Bbumba, was big on optimism with her $3.6 bn. budget, which had no tax increases. With economic growth expected to slow...
A series of mathematical blunders complicates preparations for the budget and suggests a government cover-up
A political and economic storm battered Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta before his maiden budget speech on 11 June, as the effects of last year’s political crisis feed into...
The Eritrean opposition’s struggles to be heard may be harder since its main news site got into difficulties last week. The Awate.com website claimed that a film crew...
An alliance between Al Shabaab and the Hizbul Islam militias looks determined to seize the capital but their arms suppliers face UN sanctions
More than 200 people have been killed and over 50,000 people chased from their homes in this month's offensive by insurgents against President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed's regime...
When Southern Sudan's President Salva Kiir Mayardit said this month that he was 'unhappy and unsatisfied' with the census results, he was pointing to the next major clash...
Vol 2 (AAC) No 7 |
- SOMALIA
- ASIA
The international anti-piracy mission off the coast of Somalia is the type of cooperative mission that the United States sees as helpful to reduce the strain on its...
After 18 years in power, serious moves are afoot to renew the
leadership of the ruling EPRDF
Change is coming to Ethiopia, says Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. It was time the country's political old guard stepped down, he told Africa Confidential in an interview on...
While no names have yet been put forward, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's proposals for change have prompted much discussion behind the scenes. Africa Confidential lists the potential successors...
In diplomatic bartering this week, Khartoum offered limited access in Darfur to some affiliates of the 13 Western aid agencies it expelled on 4 March. Yet, at the...
Just as an international conference promises more peacekeepers, an Islamist leader returns to Mogadishu to drive them out
The return of Sheikh Hassan Dahir 'Aweys' to Mogadishu on 23 April may prove extremely dangerous for the shaky coalition government under Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed (AC Vol...
The regimes in N’djamena and Khartoum are preparing for another proxy war, this time with more guns and better technology
On the Chad-Sudan border, everyone is asking who will fire first. As the mandate of the European Union Force (EUFOR) in eastern Chad ran out last month, Sudan's...
The coalition government looks irreparably split but Speaker Kenneth Marende has offered a temporary fix
Kenya's coalition squabbles have spilled over into Parliament (AC Vol 50 No 9). The latest, and worst, row between the coalition partners, President Mwai Kibaki's Party of...
International concern is rising over the North-South peace deal and the national elections due under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. This week, the head of the CPA's Assessment and...
The arrest of 35 members of Ginbot 7 on 24 April, accused of plotting a coup against Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government, increases the pressure on opposition groups...
Vol 50 No 8 |
- UGANDA
- ANALYSIS
With his eyes on another five-year presidential term in
2011, President Yoweri Museveni has shaken up his cabinet, touted
Uganda's future as an oil exporter and pressed for a military
resolution to the conflict with the LRA. The only thing that could
stop him from extending his 23 years of rule is infighting between
the factions of the ruling National Resistance Movement. Museveni's
long-term allies benefit from his grip on power, but a new generation
in the ruling party wants changes to policies and leadership.
President Yoweri Museveni has two main power centres. Firstly, the National Resistance Movement which still enjoys popular support across Uganda, especially in the vote-rich rural areas. The NRM...
The drama surrounding oil reserves on the Ugandan and Congolese sides of Lake Albert came to an end in April with London's Heritage Oil and Gas and Ireland's...
A year after the power-sharing accord, political change is faltering and the police are shooting human rights activists
Politicians gathering in Nairobi and Geneva this week candidly admit that time is fast running out for the Grand Coalition to implement its promised reforms, without which Kenya...
A sealed envelope with the names of ten people judged by Justice Philip Waki's Commission to be the most important financiers and organisers of last year's post-election violence...
Raila Odinga’s office is not running smoothly: his small staff are at odds and are holding up the reforms
The 14th Floor of the Treasury Building that Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his modest staff occupy has been the office of Kenya's finance minister since the 1980s...
Why was Khartoum so reluctant to admit that its arms transhipments had been hit by Israeli air strikes?
Khartoum said nothing about Israel's air strikes on north-east Sudan in January and February until the news leaked out through an Egyptian newspaper last week. It then blamed...
Khartoum’s expulsion of 13 international non-governmental organisations has provided an opportunity for asset stripping (AC Vol 50 No 6). Instead of handing over premises, equipment and data to...
Vol 2 (AAC) No 5 |
- SUDAN
- CHINA
The ICC's issuing of the arrest warrant for the Sudanese President exposes the contradictions in China's 'business is business' policy
The arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir issued by the International Criminal Court on 4
March comprehensively overshadowed the golden jubilee of Chinese-Sudanese relations. March...
Vol 2 (AAC) No 5 |
- RWANDA
- SINGAPORE
Chief Executive Officer,
Singapore Cooperation Enterprise (SCE)
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has secured Singapore's
interest in Rwanda's future. Singapore Cooperation Enterprise's
Chief Executive Officer, Alphonsus Chia, was in Kigali
in February to talk up investment opportunities. This is...
As some SLM factions regroup, the Justice and Equality Movement tries to position itself for a new order
The political crisis in Khartoum after the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir has fostered new hopes among the opposition, not least...
President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir made a long and inflammatory speech at a 16 March ceremony in Khartoum's Green Square. The Sudan Armed Forces, security, militia and...
The murder of an activist and the police reaction to a criminal conspiracy reveal another dark side of Kenyan politics
Oscar King'ara was murdered a day after he had pointed to a cabinet minister and the Kenyan police as being directly responsible for a two-year wave of extrajudicial...
Expensive naval alliances have formed to deter the sea raiders
who prey on ships off the Horn
Millions of dollars, hundreds of troops and over two dozen ships from around the world chase pirates off the Somali coast (AC Vol 49 No 24). Yet the...
Ransom payments range from US$500,000 to $3 million. The total since January 2008 is about $50-80 mn. Legal fees for a typical case are around $300,000, plus $100,000...
President Joseph Kabila’s worsening rivalry with the Speaker of the National Assembly, Vital Kamerhe, is dividing the ruling Parti du Peuple pour la Reconstruction et le Développement (PPRD),...
The Islamist regime shows its true colours as the ICC issues
the arrest warrant for President Omer el Beshir
The arrest warrant for President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir, which the International Criminal Court issued on 4 March, is a landmark event (AC Vol 50 Nos 2...
Kenya’s long-serving Attorney General, Amos Shitswila Wako, has been targeted for special censure by United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions Philip Alston, who has...
Tales of corruption deepen and the coalition partners seem to be protecting each other from the fallout
The disgraced former Finance Minister, Amos Kimunya, is back in the cabinet, reinstated by President Mwai Kibaki in mid-January during a mini-reshuffle. His return went almost unnoticed amid...
The Triton saga highlights the resurfacing of the Daniel arap Moi-era briefcase tycoon - young, brash and politically protected. Kenyan politicians prefer to work with Asian-origin businessmen: the...
Goodwill accompanies the new President but few people look at the small print
The outsiders who drive Somalia's uncertain peace process do not always see things as Somalis see them. This became apparent with the election on 31 January of Sheikh...
Al Shabaab looks weak and divided as the new regime takes hold in Mogadishu. This is only half true, though. The departure of Ethiopian troops is a strategic...
Instead of going down in history as the man who prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic for genocide, Sir Geoffrey Nice may be remembered as the man who tried to save...
Ethiopia's troops are gone and another transitional government is installed but the new order is tenuous
On 25 January, the last Ethiopian troops withdrew, only three weeks later than planned, from Somalia. They had originally intervened in Somalia in December 2006, at the request...
President Kabila's improbable deal with Rwanda could unravel and further weaken his authority in Kinshasa
Kinshasa's sudden embrace of Kigali may cause as many problems as it solves. President Paul Kagame's troops have been spearheading joint operations against the Hutu militiamen of the...
Vol 50 No 3 |
- KENYA
- BRITAIN
Britain's Serious Fraud Office announced on 4 February that it is closing its 'investigation into contracts secured with the Kenyan government by Anglo-Leasing finance and related business'. This...
Three new developments will shape Sudan's politics this year: the International Criminal Court's (ICC) issue of an arrest warrant for President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir; the planned elections under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement; and the inauguration of President Barack Obama's government in the United States with a clear commitment to act against Khartoum's mass murder in Darfur.
New politics, new threats The ruling National Congress (NC, aka National Islamic Front) is struggling to adapt to new realities. A dozen years of meticulous planning and patient...
In the last months of President George Walker Bush's reign, US officials pressed the Khartoum regime over Darfur and Abyei by telling leaders, 'If you think we're tough,...
Southern Sudan is still run like a feudal state, with President Salva Kiir Mayardit appointing people from among competing factions and ethnic interest groups in a complex balancing...
Lloyds TSB, recently bailed out by the British government, has had to pay fines of US$350 million for breaking United States' sanctions on Sudan, Libya and Iran, following...
Young Tanzanians conscripted for their military National Service may find themselves doing commercial security work. The government says it wants to reduce youth unemployment and increase competition in...