In both Angola and Congo-Kinshasa, public works produce surprising profits for well-connected cement producers, but an oil-fired building boom requires a lot of cement. Angola's Minister of Public...

Western mining houses are pulling out of Zambia due to the copper price slump, leaving Chinese and Indian investors to battle over the abandoned assets. As the copper price crashed...

The combination of lower world oil prices, tighter credit and production cuts has increased Luanda's reliance on its countertrade credits with China. As Angola holds the presidency of the Organisation of...

Just before President Jacob Zuma's inauguration on 9 May, India's state-owned National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) signed a commercial cooperation agreement with the Congress of South African Trade Unions' (Cosatu)...

The battle for supremacy within the power-sharing government is taking second place to wrangling for power within the three main parties (AC Vol 50 Nos 8 & 9)....

Security officers still gaol human rights activists. Jestina Mukoko, Director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, was re-arrested on insurrection charges on 4 May, along with 14 other activists,...

A night of haggling preceded President Jacob Zuma's 10 May announcement of a new cabinet, which includes people from the left, the centre, black business, populists and even...

President Jacob Zuma's ally Siphiwe Nyanda, a former head of the defence force, was appointed Communications Minister; his numerous defence-related business interests disqualified him from the Defence Ministry....

With national elections due in December, President Armando Guebuza may feel he has achieved most of what he hoped for when he took office nearly five years ago....

The global economic downturn has hit Botswana hard. Decades of diamond-led economic expansion have ground to a halt, as people buy fewer gems (AC Vol 49 No 8)....