The deadline for electoral alliances has forced some unlikely political bedfellows to tie the knot, however reluctantly
With barely three months to go before the general elections, the 4 December deadline on pre-poll deals forced Kenya’s promiscuous political class into a flurry of shotgun weddings....
As pressure builds in Khartoum, the grand old man of the Umma Party
tries to win back power
The Prime Minister that the National Islamic Front (NIF) overthrew in 1989, El Sadig el Sideeg el Mahdi, sees a chance to win back power as conflict deepens...
Reginald Mengi, a Tanzanian media tycoon who is a friend and backer of President Jakaya Kikwete, has been ordered to pay £1.2 million (US$1.94 mn.) towards the legal...
Petroleum Minister, Sudan
Awad Ahmed el Jaz is a stalwart of the National Congress Party (formerly National Islamic Front, NIF), Sudan’s ruling party since 1989. He has played a critical role...
Vol 53 No 24 |
- SUDAN
- ANALYSIS
Khartoum’s new gold mining operations may alleviate its worsening foreign exchange crisis but they will increase financial instability in the medium term. As the world gold price moves steadily upward, old workings are coming back to life. In Sudan, gold has been mined since the time of the Pharaohs, who shifted from silver and set the first international gold standard
Sudan’s economy is in a bad way since it lost 75% of its oil revenue in its quarrel with South Sudan. This week, it refused to implement September’s...
Vol 53 No 24 |
- EGYPT
- SUDAN
Last August, Egyptian billionaire Naguib Onsi Sawiris, 58, bought La Mancha Resources, owner of 40% of Sudan’s Ariab Mining Company. Naguib is a Coptic Christian and telecommunications captain...
Islamist-inspired violence is accelerating, alongside growing separatist sentiment as a crucial deal on oil exploration is reached
Riots, killings and crackdowns have shaken Zanzibar for most of 2012, as Islamist forces mobilise growing support. At the same time, an agreement for Zanzibar to manage its...
Zanzibar’s President Ali Mohamed Shein and national President Jakaya Kikwete reached ‘agreement in principle’ on 25 October that Zanzibar could manage its own oil and gas industry, said...
Indian Ocean piracy is down, thanks to naval patrols, armed guards and ‘panic rooms’, but the law governing ship protection is murky
The hijacking of merchant ships off the coast of Somalia has decreased dramatically in the last year. Yet the private military security companies whose armed guards are largely...
The former security boss, Lieutenant General Salah Abdullah Mohamed ‘Gosh’, a regular interlocutor with British and United States’ spies, was the best known person arrested for coup plotting...
Vol 53 No 23 |
- SOUTH SUDAN
The governing party cracks down on critics at home as its negotiations with Khartoum continue to frustrate
The prospect of oil exports resuming in the next few weeks and the economic boost that brings should have cheered President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s government. However, long-term improvements...
Vol 53 No 23 |
- SOMALIA
- ANALYSIS
After a long delay the new President, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, finally appointed a prime minister and a cabinet, all of them drawn from a tight circle of family, friends and his most trusted political allies. He risked appearing elitist and non-inclusive because he wanted to be sure of his team. He is signalling that this government is here to stay and in no mood for compromise on sovereignty. Kenya and its allies in Kismayo are providing him with an early test of his resolve and credibility
In the two months that it took President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to appoint the Premier and other ministers, he has attracted growing criticism for his aloof style. The...
Kenya’s defiance of the Somali government on the ban on charcoal exports from Kismayo threatens the cohesion of the African Union Mission in Somalia. It will also test...
Vol 53 No 23 |
- MALAWI
- TANZANIA
The two sides will return to the table to settle an old dispute
Malawi and Tanzania will return to the negotiating table on 15-17 November to seek a diplomatic resolution to their dispute over the border in the lake that divides...
China has quietly joined countries implementing sanctions against Khartoum, we hear. This may not reduce Beijing’s substantial arms exports to Khartoum but it is making life difficult for...
Vol 53 No 22 |
- SUDAN
- ISRAEL
Israel’s attack on a Khartoum arms factory highlights its tougher line in Africa and Sudan’s growing ties with Iran
Taken by surprise, Khartoum officials at first offered contradictory explanations for the devastating attack on the El Yarmouk arms factory in Khartoum at around midnight on 23-24 October....
Africa Confidential has identified five operational military factories in or near the Three Towns capital of Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum North (Bahri).
A new UN report accuses both Uganda and Rwanda are running the M23 rebellion: foreign support for Kampala could soon be suspended
The United Nations Group of Experts on eastern Congo-Kinshasa has indicted the Ugandan government as co-sponsor of the Mouvement du 23 mars (M23) rebellion in Kivu alongside Rwanda....
Disputes over politics and money, especially income from Kismayo and Mogadishu ports, threaten the new President’s new order
Political rivals, warlords and some regional officials are already testing the mettle of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, just over a month after his election. Relatively untarnished by the...
Vol 53 No 22 |
- SOUTH SUDAN
Security is still being tightened after coup rumours, along with discontent triggered by the 27 September agreements with Sudan. The arrest of a senior Sudan People’s Liberation Army...
A packed court in Addis Ababa saw 29 protestors face charges of ‘terrorist acts’ on 29 October. Ethiopian law defines ‘terrorism’ as including serious damage to property and...
Vol 6 (AAC) No 1 |
- ETHIOPIA
President, Adama Science and Technology University, Ethiopia
Following an invitation from the late Premier Meles Zenawi, Lee Jang-gyu went to Ethiopia to take the reins of Adama Science and Technology University in...
Indirect talks between the M23 rebels in North Kivu and the Kinshasa government are finally taking place in Uganda, sources in Kampala have told Africa Confidential. Yet this...
Khartoum’s National Congress Party regime wants to use the diplomatic plaudits following its compromises on the oil-sharing deal on 17 September with South Sudan to win...
The nine agreements signed between the Khartoum and Juba governments on 27 September will throw the focus back on to the appalling living conditions in both states. The agreements include a deal on resuming oil production in South Sudan. Economic conditions in both countries worsened sharply after Juba halted oil production in January in protest at what it said was massive cheating by the Khartoum regime on arrangements to share oil revenue and the charges that Juba paid to export its oil via Port Sudan
Expectations are high that restarting oil production in South Sudan will provide an economic boost to both Sudans. How much of a boost depends on how far governance...
Vol 53 No 20 |
- SOUTH SUDAN
A serious campaign to stem corruption will require a regulatory framework. In December 2009, the Government of the Republic of South Sudan (GRSS) published the Southern Sudan Anti-Corruption...
Kenya takes Al Shabaab by surprise but raises questions about its choice
of leaders for the port city and its ability to manage the politics
The battle for Kismayo was anything but the decisive contest many expected, we can report, now that more details of the fighting have emerged. Al Haraka al Shabaab...
Vol 53 No 20 |
- SOUTH SUDAN
The Khartoum regime was air dropping supplies to rebel militia in South Sudan as its negotiators prepared to sign the 27 September peace agreements with Juba, the United...
After months of talks, Sudan and South Sudan have signed agreements that should allow South Sudan to resume oil production. The 27 September deal came after...
Vol 5 (AAC) No 12 |
- BURUNDI
President, Burundi
President Pierre Nkurunziza was in India 17-19 September to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pranab Mukherjee. He left with a US$80 million credit line...
Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame take their battles over the Kivu provinces to the UN General Assembly
Congolese ministers have been energetically lobbying in New York ahead of a high-level meeting on Central Africa at the United Nations General Assembly which opens on 25 September....
The mass killings in the Tana River Delta presage an upsurge of violence ahead of elections next March
As two mass graves are discovered in the Ozi Forest, acting Internal Security Minister Mohamed Yusuf Haji is at the centre of claims of official involvement in the...
A rush for the rich resources of one of the world’s most biologically diverse environments is entangled with the politics of the Tana River Delta. Most intriguing is...
The election of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is seen as a sign of stability but the new government’s foundations are far from strong. Meanwhile, Kenya’s military policy is worrying other members of the Amisom alliance. The election process was marred by vote-buying but Western commentators welcomed the outcome, often warmly. However, Ethiopia has concerns about the Islamist background of the new leader
Somalis welcomed the election of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, an outsider with a better reputation than his predecessor, as the first critical test of the new constitution. The...
The campaign against Al Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen is suffering from divisions within the African Union Mission in Somalia and fears over poor tactics, military observers have...
Rebel forces have stepped up attacks on government positions ahead of a critical aid conference in Geneva
The United Nations officially classes Burundi as a ‘post-conflict nation’ but chronic low-level violence persists. At the beginning of September, a dissident offshoot of the main opposition declared...
Another round of talks may stave off hostilities but is unlikely to yield a credible border security agreement by the 22 September deadline
Much hard negotiating lies ahead between Juba and Khartoum after talks restarted on 4 September, following a month’s delay for the funeral of Ethiopian Premier Meles Zenawi and...
Estimates of the offshore deposits are now so vast that there is major concern that bribery will affect the next round of bidding
Tanzania is raising its estimates of gas reserves to around 30 trillion cubic feet, and with them, worries about whether the anticipated flood of cash can be managed...
Vol 53 No 18 |
- SOMALIA
- BRITAIN
Britain’s Department for International Development has taken no step towards setting up the Joint Financial Management Board promised at February’s London Conference on Somalia, Africa Confidential has discovered.
A 14-member team investigating the 27 August shooting in Mombasa of an Al Shabaab-linked Islamist, Sheikh Aboud Rogo Mohammed, will exclude police officials. Director of Public Prosecutions Keriako...
Vol 5 (AAC) No 11 |
- SUDAN
- SOUTH SUDAN
- ASIA
Chinese oil companies have been involved in the talks between Juba and Khartoum but Beijing still prefers quiet, behind-the-scenes pressure
There is a surprising mood of optimism amongst politicians and oil company officials in Juba as South Sudan and Sudan enter the latest round of negotiations on oil...
Vol 5 (AAC) No 11 |
- KENYA
- CHINA
Kenyan politicians are battling over the controversial award of a contract for a coal mine in Eastern Province by the Energy Ministry to a little-known Chinese...
The Premier’s death removes one of Africa’s most prominent leaders and will test the unity of the country and the ruling party
The death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on 20 August has triggered a constitutional succession mechanism which he personally designed, having led the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic...
Hailemariam Desalegn is a technocrat, a water and environmental engineer, and a former Dean of Arbaminch Water Technology Institute. He is from the Welaita nation in the Southern...
The hopes are high and the dangers are clear: Kenya’s politics fail to match its economic success
With eight months before President Mwai Kibaki retires, Kenya faces several major challenges, all of which it must meet in order to negotiate a peaceful and legitimate transition...
Prime Minister Raila Odinga has had an awful year. He has lost his key ally, Wycliffe Musalia Mudavadi, in Western province and other supporters on the Coast. He...
Vol 53 No 17 |
- SOUTH SUDAN
Economic crisis has fuelled anti-government protest in Sudan
but in South Sudan, it has fuelled hostility to outsiders, real and
imagined. Police in Jonglei State descend on aid agencies and
businesses...
The elders are warming to their constitutional role, while Kenya weighs up the taking of Kismayo
The 135 Somali elders whose role is to appoint a Constituent Assembly have responded to the warm international welcome they have received by showing they want to take...
Negotiations are likely to drag on, despite UN efforts to pressure both Juba and Khartoum and the threat of a return to all-out war
As the 2 August deadline imposed by the United Nations Security Council loomed, Khartoum and Juba vied to be seen as the least obstructive government at their...
The killing of several student demonstrators in Nyala, the South Darfur capital, on 31 July has given Sudan's opposition its martyrs. That was what Khartoum had wanted to...
The most anticipated literary event in Nairobi in years – the launch of Miguna Miguna's tell-all about his five-year working relationship with Prime Minister Raila Odinga and their...
The trial for theft of Tanzania's former Ambassador in Rome, Costa Ricky Mahalu, has been postponed to 9 August. The alleged offence was committed in 2002 and...
Those attending the African Union summit in Addis Ababa on 14-16 July had their own theories for the riot police surrounding them and the generally heavy...
Vol 5 (AAC) No 10 |
- SEYCHELLES
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Seychelles
Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Paul Adam was in South Korea in early July. He attended his country’s national day at the Expo 2012 in Yeosu before meeting his counterpart,...
The mutineers hold the cards and are setting the agenda: they may strike
Goma soon
Although six governments signed an agreement in Addis Ababa on 15 July to promote security in eastern Congo-Kinshasa, rebels still threaten Goma, the base of the United Nations...
Vol 53 No 15 |
- SOUTH SUDAN
Despite the high hopes of the nearly 99% of electors who voted for secession in the 2011 referendum, few outsiders expected South Sudan’s transition to Independence to go smoothly. Some – including many journalists – sourly predicted the world’s ‘first pre-failed state’. However, the prospect of a substantial ‘peace dividend’, with development driven by oil exports and substantial post-war reconstruction assistance, held out the promise of a better future for its war-ravaged and poverty-stricken people. A year later, this promise has clearly not materialised.
At Independence in July 2011, South Sudan had an estimated per capita gross domestic product of over US$1,500, almost twice that of Kenya. The government’s 2011 budget...
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the ostensible host of the African Union summit on 14-16 July in Addis Ababa, was nowhere to be seen. In the absence of official...
The power of civic activists to get people on to the streets worries an already paranoid government
Government attempts to silence criticism by non-governmental and civil society organisations is escalating. The Internal Affairs Minister, Hilary Onek, is threatening to de-register Oxfam and the Uganda Land...
Rwanda not only supports the M23 rebellion, it may be helping create a new state on its border with Congo
After a protracted delay and much discussion, at the end of June the United Nations finally published its investigation into Rwandan involvement in the rebellion in eastern Congo-Kinshasa...
The National Congress Party spent the 23rd anniversary of the 30 June coup, which brought it to power as the National Islamic Front, suppressing public...
Vice-President, Kenya
In Beijing in late May, Kenyan Vice-President Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka called for more investment in services. Vice-President Xi Jinping, who is likely to become China’s next leader at...
A UN report on Rwandan backing for mutineers sparks a diplomatic row in New York as the rebels gain ground
As fighting escalates in eastern Congo-Kinshasa, pressure is mounting for the publication in full of a United Nations’ investigation into the links between Rwanda and a new militia...
While Congo-Kinshasa’s Foreign Minister, Raymond Tshibanda N’tungamulongo, demanded that Rwanda immediately withdraw its support for militia in eastern Congo, Rwandan President Paul Kagame told a press conference on...
While Al Shabaab suffers reverses, the government that replaces the TFG in August may turn out to be little different
There is a mood of broad optimism among many commanders from the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) about recent military successes. Al Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen,...
The former Vice-President is remembered as a political creature of Moi and a hugely wealthy political operator
About 40,000 people gathered in Kitengela, on the south-eastern outskirts of Nairobi, on 16 June for the funeral of the powerful Internal Security Minister, Professor George Kinuthia Kiarie...
The shock government audit and cabinet reshuffle prompt a push for major change in the energy sector
Although Jakaya Kikwete sacked Energy and Minerals Minister William Ngeleja, one of eight to go in April’s reshuffle, many of the power sector’s problems remain.
Prior to Sospeter Muhongo’s appointment, the conventional wisdom in Dodoma was that an ambitious young Chama cha Mapinduzi member of parliament, January Makamba, would get outgoing Energy and...
Though this week’s protests in the capital were ostensibly against austerity measures, demonstrators were calling for the government’s overthrow: ‘Khartoum rise up, rise up, we won’t be ruled...
Mutinous factions along the border are exploited by both governments, and Hutu-Tutsi quarrels live on
No one watching the fighting in eastern Congo-Kinshasa was surprised when the United Nations reported in May that Rwanda was directly involved.
Australian mining firm Chalice Gold Mines announced on 27 April that it would sell its 60% stake in the Zara gold mine in Eritrea to China Shanghai Corporation...
Juba scrambles to regain the diplomatic initiative ahead of a new round of talks on oil and security with Khartoum
Economic and diplomatic pressures will probably push the governments of Juba and Khartoum back to negotiations on oil and border issues before the end of May. This follows...
Khartoum blames Israel for bombing Port Sudan again while the opposition gets on with some planning
The airstrike that killed the driver of a four-by-four vehicle in a Port Sudan suburb just before 8 a.m. on 22 May added to the pressure on the...
Parliament becomes an arena for the increasingly tense contest for the presidential succession
A third leadership hopeful, Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga, has joined Prime Minister John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, the governing National Resistance Movement Secretary General, and the Justice Minister,...
International financial institutions rank Ethiopia as one of the fastest growing economies but debates rage over its political strategy and regional role
As business and political leaders descend on Addis Ababa for the World Economic Forum on 9-11 May, Premier Meles Zenawi’s government will be trumpeting its economic achievements. Visitors...
Four big hydroelectric projects are in operation, with another four under construction. They include Gilgel Gibe III on the Omo River, a dam which, say critics, will significantly...
Although he resigned over the Richmond scandal, the former prime minister doesn’t believe his career is over
Chama cha Mapinduzi’s party machine is receiving its five-yearly overhaul. The governing party’s elections for leadership at neighbourhood, branch, ward and district, regional and national levels are spread...
The Interior Minister, Edouard Nduwimana, ordered Human Rights Watch to cancel a news conference in Bujumbura on 2 May at which the campaigning organisation had planned to release...
Pressure is mounting on President Hu Jintao’s government to use its commercial ties with Juba and Khartoum for constructive diplomacy
South Sudan’s government and ruling party have welcomed the billions of dollars in promised investment that resulted from President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s April visit to Beijing, but they...
Border clashes between Sudan and South Sudan brought an early close to Salva Kiir Mayardit’s trip to China, originally due to end on 28 April. After a session...
Conflict between the Sudans, lack of consultation with local people and regional politics could undermine the massive project
As the conflict between the two Sudans escalates, plans continue for the oil pipeline and new port at Lamu. Japan’s Toyota Tsusho Corporation, the leading investor and the...
Khartoum is fighting on three fronts: a determined Southern army, confident armed oppositionists and a hostile population
When President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir told the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), ‘Either we end up in Juba and take everything or you end up in...
Vol 53 No 9 |
- SOUTH SUDAN
Church peacemakers and SPLA troops try to end a complex conflict
Conflict on the border with Sudan may have calmed things in Jonglei, where South Sudan’s worst fighting had long been under way. Phase One of the government’s Disarmament,...
Tanzania’s peaceful reputation could suffer as politicians mobilise unemployed young people in their campaigns
A pattern of slowly mounting civil unrest is emerging as a major theme in Tanzania’s political landscape as an increasingly restive young generation ponders its limited opportunities. The...
The Tanzania Police Force’s effectiveness in dealing with civil unrest is questionable. It is not properly equipped or trained for public order and the focus of commanders is...
The parliamentary caucus of the governing Chama cha Mapinduzi is demanding that eight cabinet ministers resign after the Controller and Auditor General issued a damning report on...
UN experts’ reports differ over Darfur arms violations
A seismic diplomatic row is rumbling at United Nations headquarters in New York over the circulation of a damning report by former UN experts pointing to the supply...
Small bands of the Lord’s Resistance Army are going into eastern Congo and employing new methods to terrorise local people
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) fighters have left Central African Republic for Garamba, in Orientale Province in north-eastern Congo-Kinshasa. They are now concentrating on theft and looting rather than...
Threats, rivalries and renewed ethnic tensions befoul the air as the international court’s suspects try to close down the case
The two declared presidential candidates facing charges of crimes against humanity at the Hague are determined to ward them off. An unexpected cabinet reshuffle at the end of...
Khartoum mobilises against South Sudan and breaks off all negotiations
The seizure of the oil town of Heglig by South Sudan’s armed forces on 10 April ratchets up Juba’s confrontation with Khartoum’s National Congress Party (NCP) regime, which...
Vol 53 No 8 |
- SOMALIA
- TURKEY
Turkey is underscoring its engagement in Somalia through development projects in Somaliland and Puntland. It sees the projects as proving to the United States and European Union the...
Regardless of the recent defeats of Al Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen, senior African Union Mission in Somalia commanders privately admit that the next phase of military operations is fraught with potential difficulties. Since forcing Al Shabaab out of Mogadishu in August, five years after Amisom first came to Somalia, the Ugandan People’s Defence Force’s 5,500-strong contingent is slowly moving out to assume control of new territory beyond the capital. Any bolder moves to occupy territory further afield, however, depend on leaving currently-occupied zones to Transitional Federal Government (TFG) soldiers and police, whose competence and reliability are in some doubt. Amisom commanders also worry because communications are scant and coordination absent with the Ethiopian forces to the south. Now that the Kenyan forces have been re-hatted as Amisom, links with them should improve.
Lack of trust in the TFG forces who have to take over the Ugandan and Burundian positions when Amisom moves out of Mogadishu is making Amisom tread...
Uganda’s political and military elite is content with a long conflict in Somalia, while its Ethiopian and Kenyan allies prefer as short an involvement as possible.
The outgoing head of Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, Richard Alderman, has spoken out about the shortcomings of the British criminal justice system in relation to corporate...
The former Chief Executive Officer of troubled Air Tanzania Corporation Limited, David Mattaka, and two others appeared in court on 21 March to answer charges of abuse of...
A fast-growing economy, grand hydropower schemes and one of Africa’s biggest armies all reinforce Ethiopia’s regional dominance
Leaders from China, India, Europe, Japan, Turkey, the United States and across Africa are expected at what the government plans as a show of Ethiopia’s regional leadership. The...
Civilian and military opponents of the Khartoum regime win more battles in their campaign
Over a hundred people tried to storm a police station in Khartoum’s Ed Deim area on 6 March after Awadia Agabna died in clashes with police. Protests then...
Despite bombing civilians, the National Congress Party (NCP) has some success abroad in the propaganda war, persuading governments to accept its version of events: that the Sudan People’s...
President Kikwete remains aloof from party strife, so the anti-corruption faction and its enemies keep on fighting
Bitterness is growing in the disputes within the governing Chama Cha Mapinduzi and government and CCM skeletons are refusing to stay in the closet. The latest row concerns...
In mid-February, the governing Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s old guard and their well-connected business friends experienced a collective shudder when the former Bank of Tanzania (BOT) Governor, Daudi Ballali,...
The latest intake of MPs from Museveni’s party is causing ructions over oil and corruption as jockeying starts for the presidential succession
A group of truculent members of parliament in the governing National Resistance Movement has forced ministers to resign and is obliging President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni to contemplate sacking...
After over a year of political and commercial disputes, Ireland’s Tullow Oil has signed for its production licence in Uganda, which means mid-2013 is now a realistic date...
The work of a former government accountant again exposes financial confusion and crime on a grand scale
While February’s London Conference on Somalia sought ways out of the military and political quagmire, a former civil servant in the Transitional Federal Government was documenting how its...
Privately, diplomats in Mogadishu agree that the reports by Abdirizak Jama ‘Fartaag’ are the best source of financial information about the Mogadishu government.
Vol 53 No 5 |
- SOMALIA
- BRITAIN
Whispers of possible negotiations with Al Shabaab were drowned out by the drums of war
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) may have been hosting the London Conference on Somalia but there was no doubting that Downing Street was in the driving seat.
Standing alone as the last of the Kikuyu Big Men, Kibaki has to reassess his plans for succession
It was a tough week for President Mwai Kibaki, 80. While he was attending the Somalia Conference in London, two of his closest friends died.
John Stanley Njoroge Michuki had a hero’s send-off in his native Kangema constituency on 28 February, testimony that the idea of the Big Man is alive and well...
Work will begin soon on the long-awaited new
Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway. The two governments and their Chinese contractors are creating a US$1.5-billion trade corridor from Addis Ababa to the Djibouti...
Vol 53 No 4 |
- SOMALIA
- BRITAIN
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s grand conference will bring together many parties but no one is forecasting a breakthrough
After two decades of political mayhem, Somalis and more perspicacious foreign diplomats are intensely sceptical about high-level conferences. Many approach the London Conference on Somalia on 23 February...
Oil rows and workers caught in the crossfire force Beijing to develop political and military tools to accompany its ever-growing economic muscle
Sudan and South Sudan are dragging a reluctant China into their smouldering relations at a time when both sides say the situation is on the brink of open...
Tension in Sudan and South Sudan boosts the Kenyan backers of the Lamu port and corridor projects. South Sudanese officials had already been in talks to join their...
Juba turns off the oil and turns up the pressure in its fraught negotiations with Khartoum over oil, cash, security and citizenship
Few outside the Juba government had expected it to start shutting down oil production on 22 January. Warnings from the Government of South Sudan had been widely seen...
Whatever the outcome of the oil talks between the Khartoum and Juba governments, the current crisis has focused thinking on southward leading pipelines. Industry and diplomatic opinion is...
The ICC is forcing the elite to rethink the old certainties of ethnic politics and redraw the battle lines
By approving the indictment of four very important people, the International Criminal Court has begun to unravel Kenya’s ruling networks of ethnic patronage. This is happening just as...
Tanzania arrested a Burundian seen by many as a man of peace but UN experts say he supports armed rebellion
Tanzania released the Burundian opposition leader Alexis Sinduhije on 24 January in what is widely seen as a serious diplomatic and political setback for the government of President...
Vol 53 No 2 |
- RWANDA
- FRANCE
Relations between Rwanda and France have received another boost. On 11 January, French judges Nathalie Poux and Marc Trévidic cleared the ruling Front patriotique rwandais (FPR) of shooting...
A letter to the National Congress Party has emerged this week from some 1,000 Islamist activists, including Salafists, secretly egged on by Hassan el Turabi, we hear. It...
In Africa Confidential Vol 52 No 25, we said Wubishet Taye of the Awramba Times had fled Ethiopia (‘Critics still not welcome’). In fact, it was Awramba Times...
In Africa Confidential Vol 53 No 1, we wrote that Al Qaida commander Fazul Abdullah Mohamed had been killed by a United States drone in June 2011 (‘The...
Vol 5 (AAC) No 3 |
- SOUTH SUDAN
Secretary General, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, South Sudan
Pa’gan Amum Okiech is South Sudan’s top negotiator in its row with Khartoum over oil after Southern Independence in July 2011. China, the main producer and buyer of...
Vol 5 (AAC) No 3 |
- RWANDA
- EAST AFRICA
Secretary General, EAC
In December, East African Community Secretary General Richard Sezibera rejected Sudan’s bid to join the regional bloc. The application failed on geographic grounds – on South Sudan’s secession...
Rival politicians in the power-sharing government are battling for votes but have failed to deliver on their promises of land reform
The grand coalition staggers on, costly and unwieldy. All the top politicians and most of the contenders for the presidential election due in December 2012 are part of...
For a decade, President Mwai Kibaki’s government has focused on growth and efficiency, and it has largely achieved its goals. Yet as Kibaki faces his final year in...
Intervention by Kenya and Ethiopia will drive Al Shabaab from its strongholds but won’t produce a viable government
Military successes by African forces against the Islamist militia Al Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen have changed the dynamics of the conflict. However, they are far from tackling...
The main question this year is how far Khartoum will pursue militarism to compensate for its loss of the South
Billboards in Khartoum celebrate the regime’s military prowess and its increasingly bellicose tactics against the newly independent South. Massive pictures of the President, Field Marshal Omer Hassan Ahmed...
Vol 53 No 1 |
- SOUTH SUDAN
The problems of a new state plague South Sudan but the biggest challenges are from the old state to the north. South Sudan and north Sudan now celebrate...