Vol 4 (AAC) No 2 |
- SUDAN
- CHINA
Usually a supporter of territorial integrity, Beijing is making plans to adapt to the prospect of an oil-rich and independent Southern Sudan
Sudan is set to split into two next year, and China – the Khartoum regime’s most important international backer – is stuck in the middle. Under the 2005...
President Mwai Kibaki’s government is in turmoil following the naming of some of its ministers as responsible for the post-election violence in 2008
Two days before the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, named the six men he wants to prosecute for their role in the political violence, President Mwai...
A day after Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo’s 15 December naming of the six people wanted by the International Criminal Court, Kenya’s Parliament was debating a private member’s bill....
A military company run by President Museveni’s brother and some South African mercenaries is being financed by a mystery donor in the Gulf
Saracen International, a Ugandan-based private security
firm, is the latest armed party to intervene in Somalia’s civil war.
Speculation abounds about its true role. Just as intriguing are its
covert financiers,...
Khartoum’s deadly bombardment of a border village shows growing
desperation at the prospects of Southern succession next year
Three weeks before the referendum on Southern Sudan, it is clear that the scheduled simultaneous vote on the Abyei area’s future will not go ahead on 9 January....
Sacked from the cabinet and accused of involvement in the 2007 election violence, William Ruto comes out fighting
The point of William Ruto's voluntary mission to the Hague to meet investigators at the International Criminal Court
on 4-6 November became clear when he returned to Nairobi. Throngs
of...
Abyei is still waiting, while Southerners register for their own referendum
The National Congress Party (NCP) carried its brinkmanship
beyond the 30 November deadline set by Abyei's Dinka Ngok leaders
– and the requisite Referendum Commission had still not been set
up....
Khartoum fights its corner over the Abyei referendum and outflanks the
SPLM and the United States
The devastated foundations of former buildings and burnt out lorries dot the town of Abyei, a haunting reminder to residents of the May 2008 attack which razed it...
More than a billion barrels of oil under Lake Albert may help transform
the country’s economy but will not determine outcome of the 2011
elections
The tussle between the government and the oil companies wanting to exploit Lake Albert’s oil fields has hit deadlock over US$404 million which the government says is owed...
The political stakes in the oil issue are high, not least because President Yoweri Museveni is facing his most serious electoral challenge. However, Colonel Kizza Besigye, presidential...
The election puts corruption centre-stage
Only 42% of eligible voters went to the polls. Many are taking it as a sign that the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi government needs to tackle corruption or...
Vol 4 (AAC) No 1 |
- SUDAN
- CHINA
China has breached the United Nations arms embargo on Darfur by failing to ‘take the necessary measures to prevent the supply of arms and related materiel of all...
Vol 4 (AAC) No 1 |
- TANZANIA
- ZAMBIA
- CHINA
China’s flagship African railroad project continues to lose money, and Chinese management may be brought in to avoid throwing more good money after bad. Built in the 1970s,...
Chaos in the Kivus has given Kigali a pretext to send its soldiers back across the border in pursuit of political and economic objectives
The Rwandan Defence Force is back in Congo-Kinshasa but trying to keep a low profile. Presidents Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame agreed on the move at a 6...
Talk of war might be in the air but Juba is booming. Building sites are around every corner of South Sudan’s capital and so are foreign delegations and contract-wielding business people. Expecting independence next year, the South is marketing itself as a virgin land rich in oil, minerals and fertile soil. As one of the last remaining markets to open up to a world economy battling for natural resources, commercial and diplomatic interest is growing fast in the new state.
The National Congress Party regime in Khartoum wants to delay January’s referenda on the status of the South and Abyei. Discussions about oil revenue and borders are unresolved...
Last year, in Africa’s biggest land deal, Jarch Capital leased 400,000 hectares in Mayom County, Unity State, from one-time warlord Paulino Matiep Nhial’s family (AC Vol 50 No...
The prospect of losing most of its oil income if the South becomes independent next year has galvanised the National Congress Party. As the Sudanese pound hurtles downwards...
More troops for Amisom, perhaps, but no air or naval blockade for Somalia as the African Union tries to link Al Shabaab and piracy
The African Union has made a bold attempt to yoke the issue of Somali piracy to the Shabaab problem in the hope of getting United Nations Security Council...
The shadow-boxing is at an end. Uganda has its eight candidates for the 18 February presidential election after two fraught days of nominations at Namboole Stadium in Kampala...
The general elections were won, as predicted, by the Chama cha Mapinduzi, which did however suffer some setbacks. Exit polls showed President Jakaya Kikwete in the lead but...
Khartoum plays the national unity card to crack down on its many opponents in the North as a new movement is launched
The prospect of independence for Southern Sudan after the referenda due in January is sharpening the cleavages in the Northern opposition. Many Northern oppositionists say their movement...
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, now in his fourth consecutive term, uses his claimed economic policy prowess to counter critics
Just before May’s general elections, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi attributed his expected victory to seven years of double-digit growth. Yet the figures are controversial and pose questions about...
The rise of the opposition Chadema party will not threaten the CCM’s majority but it will make the election battles fiercer
The majority of the governing party, Chama cha Mapinduzi, is unlikely to be overturned at the 31 October election. There are nevertheless widespread expectations of good results for...
The political parties expected to do best in the 31 October general elections are the governing Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), with Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema) probably...
The suspension of Higher Education Minister William Ruto, 43, from cabinet on 19 October marks the second phase of the Kalenjin leader’s political isolation. Although State House said...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 12 |
- ETHIOPIA
Prime Minister, Ethiopia
Positions are hardening in both Washington and Khartoum
in the lead up to the referenda in the South and Abyei, due in
January
Within days of the United Nations' New York meeting on Sudan, the 15-member UN Security Council set off for Kampala, Juba and Khartoum. The 4-10 October trip, led...
The International Criminal Court is blocked at every turn
as it tries to investigate political violence
At last President Mwai Kibaki's bluff has been called. The pious hopes in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month about peace, democracy and development...
As outsiders worry about terrorism and piracy, social breakdown
in Somalia gets worse
Nobody knows what to do about Somalia. In Madrid in September, the International Crisis Group held the latest of a series of international meetings that included the United...
With all eyes on the South and preparations for January’s referendum,
Khartoum has stepped up its attacks in Darfur
As attention from Juba to New York focuses on January’s referenda in Abyei and the South, Khartoum is trying to build a new reality in Darfur, away from...
President Yoweri Museveni will run for a fourth term after the ruling National Resistance Movement elected him as its candidate – unopposed – on 12 September. The NRM...
Indian and Chinese companies have joined the race for Uganda's oil assets in the Lake Albert Basin, where at least 2 billion barrels of oil have been discovered....
Vol 3 (AAC) No 11 |
- SUDAN
- CHINA
Whatever the outcome of next January's referendum on Southern independence, China wants its oil to keep flowing
Beijing hopes that business and non-interference will win the day in Sudan. Liu Guijin, China's highest-ranking Africa envoy, told Africa-Asia Confidential that in Sudan China's 'overall concern is...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 11 |
- KENYA
- SUDAN
- CHINA
The International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir continues to cast clouds over China's Africa policy. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki invited Omer...
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon held an emergency meeting with President Paul Kagame in Kigali on 8 September after the Rwandan government threatened to withdraw from UN peacekeeping missions. Kigali’s logic was unassailable. A draft UN report had suggested that Rwandan troops might have committed ‘crimes of genocide’ in eastern Congo-Kinshasa in 1997; if the UN endorsed those claims, Kigali said it would have no choice but to withdraw its 3,500 troops from the UN force in Darfur, Sudan.
The credibility of the United Nations is on trial again after the leaking of its draft 545-page report mapping human rights violations in Congo-Kinshasa in 1993-2003. It seems...
Relations with the United Nations in general have taken a heavy hit. Kigali accuses the UN of leaking the report to distract attention from the inadequacies of its...
Vol 51 No 18 |
- KENYA
- SUDAN
In one fell swoop, the Khartoum government strengthens President Omer el Beshir and undermines the Nairobi government’s new constitution
With arrest warrants for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over his head, Sudan’s President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir does not often get the chance to...
Vol 51 No 18 |
- KENYA
- SUDAN
Was the invitation to Sudan’s President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir for the promulgation of Kenya’s new constitution another attempt by the securocracy to frustrate a new dispensation?...
The President’s enthusiasm for an onslaught in Somalia is not shared by US officials
In the wake of the Al Shabaab bombings on 11 July in Kampala, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni expected a massive boost in funding from Washington for the regional...
When the wealthy Foreign Affairs Minister was appointed in 2003, President Yoweri Museveni had just won a disputed election and was amending the constitution to run again.
Just before this year’s elections, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi promised an overhaul of the party leadership. the next generation of politicians is edging up the hierarchy in the...
Khartoum is determined to block January’s referenda; the South is
determined to hold them
Four months before the scheduled referenda that would decide Sudan’s future borders, the ruling National Congress Party in Khartoum is now openly saying that a ‘credible’ referendum is...
The National Congress Party employs a variety of tactics to sabotage January’s referenda. Because a 60% quorum (of a still undefined electorate) is needed and a 51% vote...
A grenade attack greets President Kagame’s reelection – and
another army officer heads to gaol
Assassination attempts – failed and successful – have tarnished Paul Kagame’s second landslide election victory. Nobody was surprised when, on 9 August, Kagame was reelected to the seven-year...
With only six months before Ugandans go to the polls, opposition parties are mired in disagreement after Olara Otunnu made a bid to undermine attempts to field a...
Kenya is euphoric again. After barely averting civil war following the 2007 elections, the approval of a new constitution by referendum marks a dramatic turn in the country’s...
After a decisive referendum, Kenyans have a constitution that
will shake up both the political system and the party fiefdoms
Kenyans voted overwhelmingly for the new constitution at the 4 August referendum. The process was orderly and voters turned out in impressive numbers to voice strong support for...
Such was the tension in the Rift Valley as the referendum neared that a drunken brawl in a shebeen in Nandi District between a Nandi man and his...
African leaders ask why the West prefers to help the Kabul
regime but not the even shakier one in Mogadishu
Behind the general condemnation of the 11 July bombings in Kampala, for which Harakat al Shabaab al Mujahideen (Mujahideen Youth Movement) claimed responsibility, Western governments are wary of...
Somalia's new Information Minister, Abdirahman Omar Osman, wants African Union troops to defend more aggressively the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and its 'moderate' Islamist vision. The AU should...
Activists in the opposition coalition Medrek met on 31 July to form a single party after their disastrous performance in the May elections (AC Vol 51 No 11)....
When Awad Ahmed el Jaz told a National Congress Party youth meeting on 1 August that the separation of the South 'cannot be allowed under any circumstances', it...
An attempt by MPs to vote themselves a fat pay rise comes unstuck – the Treasury is running out of money
Last month’s vote by Kenyan members of parliament to augment their already handsome salaries is hitting political and financial roadblocks. Treasury officials say it is not affordable and...
Vol 51 No 15 |
- SOMALIA
- UGANDA
The United States’ containment policy has failed and, with its regional ambitions strengthened, Al Shabaab is back on the front foot
President Yoweri Museveni welcomes African Union leaders to Kampala on 25 July playing a role he has made his own: military leader and regional policeman. Ugandan opposition politicians...
Vol 51 No 15 |
- SOMALIA
- UGANDA
Al Shabaab’s political tactics and internal dynamics are deliberately, systematically opaque, on the classic Islamist model. It is both nationalist and avowedly part of the global jihad. Shabaab’s...
Vol 51 No 15 |
- SUDAN
- BRITAIN
The first test for the International Criminal Court's 12 July arrest warrant for genocide against President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir is his visit to Ndjamena this week....
Vol 51 No 15 |
- EGYPT
- SUDAN
Egypt has quietly accepted that Southern Sudanese may choose independence in January's referendum in return for assurances that the Juba government will not abandon the 1959 Nile Waters...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 9 |
- SUDAN
- CHINA
The coming referendum is concentrating minds - Sudanese, Chinese
and Western - on how the oil wealth will be shared
China's oil interests in Sudan will come under heavy scrutiny
again as Khartoum and Juba start negotiations on sharing oil revenues
after the independence referendum due in January 2011. Backed
by...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 9 |
- SUDAN
- CHINA
When asked about the 12 July reinstatement by the International
Criminal Court of genocide charges against Sudanese President
Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman
Qin Gang did not...
The shadowy joint venture between Angola's state-owned
oil company and the nebulous China International Fund has reached
a new stumbling block in its three-year-old pursuit of a major
stake in Tanzania's...
The opposition unites, but not entirely – the president and his party will be
hard to beat at next year’s elections
Dissent is growing against a leader and party that have dominated the country for 24 years. On 23 August, Uganda’s diverse opposition parties aim to announce their joint...
Kizza Besigye, Olara Otunnu, Norbert Mao, Hussein Kyanjo and Abed Bwanika.
Violence and intrigue – at home and abroad – overshadow the impending
elections
Someone is trying to kill the opponents of General Paul Kagame ahead of the presidential election on 9 August. A group of armed men bungled an attack against...
Maina Njenga’s evolution from gang leader to born-again Christian
to aspiring candidate highlights the breakdown of Kenyan politics
The once unthinkable has happened: Maina Njenga, the much-feared leader of Kenya’s Mungiki militia, is carving out a new career as a mainstream politician. After his release from...
Mungiki started as a Kikuyu quasi-revivalist religious cult in the Rift Valley’s Laikipia District in the late 1980s. Many Mungiki members lost their land in the 1990s when...
This month, President Yoweri Museveni has approved a face-saving deal to break the impasse over the US$360 million in capital gains tax that his government is claiming from...
Campaigning for next month’s constitutional referendum is a mixture of ideology, religion and personal ambition – and now the thugs have moved in
The main open disagreements in the lead up to Kenya’s constitutional referendum on 4 August are about abortion, Muslim kadhi courts and land. The battle between the green...
A few weeks ago, Prime Minister Raila Odinga declared that securing a new constitution was a government project, which therefore deserved state funding while the campaign against the...
Police and politicians are struggling to work out who hoped to gain from the grenade attack which killed six people at an evangelical Christian rally in Uhuru Park...
The new teams in Khartoum and Juba will face a tense six months before the referendum – and the threat of a war that some want and many expect
The message from the new government in Khartoum is that the National Congress Party is in full control and intends to stay there. The message from the new...
The most dramatic military-security appointment is of Ali Ahmed Kurti as full Foreign Affairs Minister (he was previously State Minister). He is best known for establishing the Popular...
Democracy has not been established despite international encouragement and the presidential election is a one-horse race
The one-party state is back. President Pierre Nkurunziza will be the only candidate in the 28 June presidential elections. The opposition’s right to hold meetings has been suspended,...
The would-be killers who bungled an attack on dissident Rwandan General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa seem to have thought that the World Cup would divert police attention from their...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 8 |
- ETHIOPIA
- INDIA
The Addis government shows scant regard for the potential local impact of massive Indian investment in floriculture and biofuels
Ethiopia is renowned more for its famines than for its fertile
fields but land leasing has become a burgeoning business in some of the most
unlikely locations. Vast swathes of...
The constitutional referendum is splitting parties, creating bizarre alliances and foreshadowing the 2012 elections
Amid complaints of Khartoum’s meddling and the SPLM’s betrayal, how South Kordofan reacts will be critical to the referenda in January
The rerun of the population census in South Kordofan next week will highlight another flash point in Sudan’s shaky North-South peace agreement ahead of the referenda on self-determination...
In the seven short months before January’s independence referendum, militias in the South’s oil-producing areas – Upper Nile, Jonglei and Unity states – will be one of the...
A new oil consortium operating in Darfur brings together private Arab, Gabonese and Libyan state interests and companies close to Khartoum’s ruling National Congress Party. It also raises...
In 2005, all of Addis Ababa’s federal parliamentary seats went to the opposition; this time, preliminary results suggest that all but one have gone to the Ethiopian People’s...
Vol 51 No 11 |
- ERITREA
- ETHIOPIA
In a spirit of reconciliation not always seen from Asmara, Eritrea’s Ambassador in London, Tesfamicael Gerahtu, told AC that the people of his country and Ethiopia were ‘bound...
Despite UN sanctions against Asmara and the support of Ethiopia,
Eritrea’s fractious opposition is struggling to build a united front
Eritrea’s opposition is planning an all-inclusive National Conference for Democratic Change in July. The prime mover, the Eritrean Democratic Alliance (EDA), has secured support from Ethiopia and is...
On 23 December 2009, the United Nations Security Council voted 13 to 1 (Libya) with one abstention (China) to impose sanctions on Eritrea because it supported extremist opposition...
With elections due on 23 May, Premier Meles Zenawi’s government is looking forward to another five years in office. Amid sporadic violence with several deaths, opposition and government...
Vol 51 No 10 |
- SUDAN
- WORLD BANK
The World Bank is looking for new printers following its decision to bar publishers Macmillan from all Bank contracts for six years. This follows the admission by a...
The 8-13 May visit of International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to Kenya allowed President Mwai Kibaki’s government to maintain the pretence that it is cooperating with...
Vote-fixing in an election lacking any credibility has galvanised opposition in the North and may undermine the ruling party
A beaming President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir waved his stick triumphantly as his victory was announced in Khartoum on 26 April. Yet the ruling National Congress Party...
Free, fair and good-humoured. They were organised and monitored entirely by Sudanese and their results were widely accepted as free and fair. Those were Sudan’s landmark elections of...
There was plenty of rigging and fixing of votes across the country but sometimes the best laid plans went awry.
The people behind the post-election political violence are threatening witnesses and trying to derail the international investigation
Claims that a senior official in the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) has been handing over information to politicians about witnesses to the 2007 post-election violence...
Betty Murungi’s resignation from the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission on 19 April may trigger its disbanding. Two weeks earlier, Murungi had withdrawn from her post as TJRC...
Western governments accept the regime’s rigged victory in exchange for what they hope will be a Southern referendum
Long before voting started on 11 April, it was clear that the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in Khartoum would maintain its iron grip on power and that...
Interested governments may turn a deaf ear but the opposition is making sure no one, at home or abroad, can credibly claim the 2010 elections were free and...
There was no election boycott in Darfur by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, Ibrahim Agboola Gambari told Jimmy Carter on 10 April. The United States’ ex-President then told...
The ruling party is set to win next month’s elections amid growing criticism at home and abroad
The government is determined to win by a landslide in the 23 May elections, to make up for the question marks over those of 2005 (AC Vol 46...
Vol 51 No 8 |
- KENYA
- GERMANY
News that Oku Kaunya, a former deputy Commandant in the Administration Police, has gone into exile in Germany will concentrate the minds of the investigators from the International...
The International Criminal Court is to probe election violence
and may put some leading politicians and business people on trial
for crimes against humanity
The 31 March decision by the judges of the International Criminal Court to approve an investigation into the 2007 election violence follows two years of obfuscation and ambivalence...
The politicians' failure to agree on serious reform of the
government risks a repeat of the 2007 election crisis
The 20-year quest for a new constitution looks set to end in a dangerous compromise. At the end of March, when Parliament debated the Harmonised Draft Constitution, it...
Vol 51 No 7 |
- SUDAN
- ANALYSIS
Sudan is set to become the first country to elect an indicted war criminal as president. Yet the elections are deemed so unlikely to be free and fair that, as AC went to press, the focus was on the extent and effects of the opposition boycott. Oppositionists argued there was little to be gained by participating and lending credence to the elections as the regime had rigged a victory with a manipulated census and elector registration, gerrymandered constituency boundaries and used state funds to buy loyalty.
In the face of blatant preparations for election rigging, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement decided on 31 March to boycott the national presidential election and all elections in...
The combination of one of the most elaborate and time-consuming electoral systems and mass illiteracy across most of the country virtually guarantees chaos in Sudan's elections on 11-13...
Independent analysts identify Khartoum's efforts to rig the polls and logistical difficulties (which the regime can exploit).
The President fears he may not be re-elected in June; his opponents fear they may be eliminated
Twelve worried opposition parties got together on 24 March to issue a joint communiqué denouncing a 'macabre plan' by President Pierre Nkurunziza's government, in the lead-up to the...
Amid corruption concerns, a power struggle is growing within the governing party
It is an overwhelming certainty that the governing Chama cha Mapinduzi will win elections on the mainland again in seven months' time. Yet behind the scenes, there is...
Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, fourth President of Tanzania, has deep roots in both the ever-governing Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the armed forces. His first challenge as he ends...
Blatant corruption could jeopardise substantial aid funds for Tanzania's government. About a third of its 2009/10 budget of 9.51 trillion Tanzanian shillings (US$7.29 billion) comes from cheap loans...
The mounting pressure on Bethuel Kiplagat, the Chairman of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, after the resignation of its deputy head Betty Murungi on 29 March, raises...
Some former allies of President Kagame lead a campaign against him as grenades explode in Kigali and dissidents are accused of terrorism
The ruling party faces a challenge from within. On 19 February, as people were on their way home from work, three grenades exploded in Kigali, killing three people...
Lieutenant General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa has often been seen as a potential rival to President Paul Kagame. He enlisted among the Inkotanyi Tutsi exiles in Uganda who formed...
The government has new allies against Al Shabaab but the facts on the ground remain much the same
The Transitional Federal Government has a new component. On 15 March in Addis Ababa, the TFG signed an agreement with Ahlu Sunna wal Jama’a, the council (and militia)...
No one was left in any doubt about the purpose of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s four-day trip to Britain last week. He wanted, he told a 9 March...
The prospect of the opposition uniting behind a single candidate against President Museveni in next year’s election is diminishing
A year ago, opposition politicians agreed to form a national alliance, the Inter-Party Organisation for Dialogue, to defeat incumbent President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, now in his 24th year...
Vol 51 No 6 |
- SUDAN
- BRITAIN
British police are investigating whether the murder of Sudanese human rights activist Abdel Salam Hassan Abdel Salam in south London on the night of 12-13 March was political...
A new battle for oil blocks has started in the troubled north-east after France’s Total announced that it was seeking acreage in the Lake Albert basin, in alliance...
Vol 51 No 5 |
- ERITREA
- SOMALIA
UN experts identify Asmara’s troublemaking in Somalia but the Security Council may not do much about it
A new United Nations investigation, still under wraps but seen by Africa Confidential, will lead to further quarrels in the UN Security Council over what to do about...
Foreign governments welcome claims of a peace deal in Darfur but many Sudanese see it as another pre-election trick by Khartoum
The latest Darfur peace deal announced on 23 February meets the strategic aims of the ruling National Congress Party (aka National Islamic Front, NIF): to consolidate a fragmented...
BAE Systems could face another round of legal problems on its arms contracts in Africa, Eastern Europe and Saudi Arabia following an injunction obtained by British lobbyists Corner...
Vol 51 No 5 |
- RWANDA
- FRANCE
The meeting between Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Paul Kagame in Kigali on 26 February enables France to regain a foothold in central Africa and allows Rwanda to normalise...
The position of Bethuel Kiplagat, Chairman of Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, is under serious threat since the calls for his resignation by South African Archbishop Desmond...
The Kibaki-Odinga courtship is over again and presidential contenders head for the brink before the 2012 elections
Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s 16 February call for his allies to boycott cabinet meetings until the furore over his right to suspend ministers is settled shows how quickly...
A plea bargain deal in the UK and USA has set back investigations into arms trade crookery in South Africa and Tanzania
The US$450 million in fines that BAE Systems agreed to pay on 5 February to halt investigations into corrupt payments on arms deals adds to its financial woes....
Vol 51 No 4 |
- RWANDA
- BELGIUM
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has asked Belgian Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere if he will issue a visa for Protais Zigiranyirazo, known as ‘Monsieur Z’ (AC Vol...
The National Congress Party (aka National Islamic Front) wants to stop the world challenging its planned April election victory. A quiet push last month on debt relief and...
Western governments publicly back Somalia’s ‘moderate Islamist’ government but have not disbursed the promised funds. The Transitional Federal Government (TFG), now besieged in its capital by Al Shabaab,...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 4 |
- TANZANIA
- INDIA
The renovation of Tanzania’s dilapidated railways stalls due to a dispute between the government and its Indian partners
The Rail India Technical and Economic Services buyout
of 51% of Tanzania’s national railway company is set to collapse this
month. In March 2006, RITES agreed to buy part of...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 4 |
- TANZANIA
- INDIA
A US$40 million concessionary loan from the Indian
government is mired in delays, a legal review and accusations of
corruption. Moreover, the mix of army-owned enterprises, tied aid and
squabbling agents...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 4 |
- UGANDA
- CHINA
The Ugandan government has approved Tullow’s bid for Heritage’s stakes in Lake Albert, allowing the Irish company to work with CNOOC
In February, after months of political jockeying,
Tullow gained control of all of the oil under Lake Albert, allowing it
to bring in its preferred partner, the China National Offshore...
Vol 51 No 3 |
- SUDAN
- ANALYSIS
There are fears that the thrice-delayed national elections, now due on 8 April, could trigger an escalation of fighting in Darfur and the South, given the probability that few will accept the results as free and fair. The Khartoum regime has failed to implement most of the key democratic reforms agreed under the 2005 peace deal. The 2008 census and the constituency boundaries lacked credibility and the Islamist government has done nothing to promote an independent judiciary or independent electoral administration.
referendumA new wave of violence and fraudulent elections could block any chance of progress on Darfur and undermine the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) led by Salva Kiir...
Salva Kiir Mayardit, President, Government of South Sudan, Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon, GOSS Vice-President, and Paulino Matip Nhial, Lieutenant General, SPLA-SSDF.
After a decade of arguments over sharing power at the centre, the politicians now agree they want a US-style presidential system
Kenyans are puzzled by the sudden agreement on the role of the presidency and devolution of power by 26 members of the Parliamentary Select Committee. The PSC was...
Uganda and the European Union are combining to train security forces for Somalia’s shaky Transitional Federal Government.
The row over the fate of Jamaican Islamist Abdullah al Faisal points to political and security failures in Africa and the West
On 15 January, some five people died in clashes between demonstrators and police in Nairobi after protests against the detention of Jamaican Islamist preacher Abdullah al Al Faisal....
Despite President Kagame's rapprochement with both France and Congo-Kinshasa, he faces dissent among some of the former faithful
The new year started well for President Paul Kagame's international standing. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is encouraging a rapprochement. An independent inquiry (see Pointer) has scotched the...
The divisions in the Conseil National pour la Défense du Peuple infuriate Rwandan President Paul Kagame, as he struggles to balance the interests of rival party factions with...
The governing Rwandan Patriotic Front has been quarrelling about money as well as politics. In recent years the RPF has been privatising its assets, notably Tri-Star Holdings, a...
Two years of inquiries by a Rwandan committee of experts have ended in the conclusion widely accepted at the time: the Falcon 50 carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana was...
A heavily contested referendum and trials at the ICC are likely to divide the shaky coalition as it tries to agree on key reforms
Two events will critically affect the ambitious policy agenda for 2010. This comprises devolution and electoral reform, land reform, resettlement rights and reviewing administrative boundaries. The first event...
The economy’s prospects will be deeply influenced by the constitutional referendum and probable political violence trials at the Hague. Political ructions could set back the fragile recovery and...
This year’s elections and constitutional negotiations will test the Islamist clique which has held power since the 1989 putsch
Bolstered by its formidable security organisation, the ruling National Congress Party (NCP, aka National Islamic Front, NIF) is widely expected to win the national elections due in April...
The government faces elections against a divided opposition: its biggest enemies are the weather and Eritrean President Issayas Afewerki
The political calendar will be dominated by national elections on 23 May. The government wants to avoid a repeat of the violence that followed the 2005 elections, when...
Somalia and Eritrea will dominate Addis Ababa’s security concerns (AC Vol 50 No 18). New United Nations’ sanctions against Eritrea will have little immediate effect on President Issayas...