Preparations are now well under way for a liquefied natural gas plant to handle Mozambique’s massive offshore gas deposits. The Instituto Nacional de Petróleo has proposed a bill...

President Jacob Zuma has sent 40 hand-picked intelligence operatives to the African National Congress’s 16-20 December conference in Mangaung, we hear. They will be on the look-out for...

The governing SWAPO party surprised friend and foe alike by electing Hage Geingob, 72, as its presidential successor to President Hifikepunye Pohamba.

A delegation of Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front Provincial Chairmen was in Beijing ahead of the historic 8 November Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conference and seamless change of...

The row over Zimbabwe’s missing diamond revenues will be at the centre of political campaigning ahead of next year’s general elections. Anti-corruption activists are accusing Indian traders of...

Jettisoning their traditional reticence, Asian ambassadors to Zimbabwe are now advising the government on how to turn around the economy, build infrastructure and attract foreign investment.

South Africa will hold the Fifth Summit of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group on 27 March 2013 at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Convention...

In a three-horse race for the vice-presidency of the SWAPO party, Jerry Ekandjo, the Minister of Regional and Local Government, has emerged out of left field. The final...

President Jacob Zuma is tightening his grip on state-owned enterprises and purging boards and executives. His advisors say the SOEs often ignore his government’s objectives, behave too independently...

Food is short across the country and the rains are late. Zimbabwe used to be the regional breadbasket but now relies on Zambia, formerly a maize...

Foreign mining companies await clarification of the regulations after a bill goes before Parliament next month. The mining bill will also open the door to direct ownership...

The re-election of President Jacob Zuma as African National Congress (ANC) President is an ‘unstoppable tsunami’, say his backers, yet many members of his original coalition of trades...

Of the 4,500 voting delegates who will decide the African National Congress presidential election at the party conference, 4,103 (91.2%) will come from ANC branches, each of which...

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...

A spending splash by the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front is attracting increasing suspicion that the funds come from illegally diverted diamond sales. ZANU-PF will hold its annual...

A furious row has erupted in cabinet between the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, and her counterpart at National Planning, Trevor Manuel.

President Robert Mugabe opened the final Stakeholders’ Conference on the draft constitution on 22 October. When the audience dispersed three days later, nobody seemed clear on what substantive...

Amid much fanfare, Luanda formally launched its US$5 billion Fundo Soberano de Angola on 17 October. The Fsdea was formed from the Fundo Petrolifero set up by the...

South Africa’s Trade Minister Rob Davies gave a list of trade concerns to Beijing officials in October during his tour of East Asia. Davies’s government wants to reduce...

In October, Chinese companies were once again the target of Madagascar’s environmental groups for their role in illegal rosewood exploitation. Environmental umbrella group Alliance Voahary Gasy pointed ...

Rob Davies’s recent tour led to the strengthened economic relations with Indonesia and China. On 17 October in Jakarta, South Africa’s Minister of Trade and Industry...

African National Congress leaders are trying to stitch together a deal that would avoid a contest for the party Presidency between incumbent Jacob Zuma and Vice-President Kgalema Motlanthe...

The plan to secure President Jacob Zuma certain victory at the African National Congress’s leadership election focuses on one-to-one meetings with his main opponents. Zuma’s enforcers are concentrating...

One year after taking the helm, President Michael Chilufya Sata and his Patriotic Front (PF) face mounting pressure from electors upset at their apparent failure to deliver on...

The political landscape is changing and President Michael Sata’s Patriotic Front faces a new opponent. Having lost faith in his own party, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, former...

President Armando Guebuza has underlined his command of party and state by removing Prime Minister Aires Ali from his government job after he failed to hold on to...

The two main political parties are moving into campaign mode. The High Court has finally acceded to President Robert Mugabe’s request to delay the outstanding by-elections any time...

The tenth Congress of the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique ended on 29 September but President Armando Guebuza did not get everything he wanted: he won’t be able...

The new cabinet sees some surprising departures but like previous reshuffles, appears to be all about loyalty to President José Eduardo dos Santos.

In papers submitted to the High Court for yet another extension on setting by-elections in late September, President Robert Mugabe gave an effective commitment to general elections by...

China may advocate a policy of non-interference, but that did not stop it taking a pretty prominent place in Angola’s 31 August elections, from the campaign trail and...

Several recent court cases – some stretching across two continents – highlight the corruption and criminality that accompany the rapid influx of Chinese investment and workers into Angola....

State media proclaimed in mid-September that China International Fund was to begin building some of the infrastructure that it promised in late 2009 (AAC Vol 3 No 2)....

Opaque flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Mauritius to India look set to continue – despite the eight rounds of negotiations over the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement...

Plans by two Thai companies – PTT Asia Pacific Mining and Italian-Thai Development Company (Italthai) – to develop rich coal deposits at Sakoa have stalled amid...

A rousing welcome at a national trades union conference and a belated wage deal at the Marikana platinum mines are the first signs that President Jacob Zuma is...

A political fix negotiated on 16 September allowed the leaders of the Congress of South African Trade Unions to paper over their differences as Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi...

Angola has spent £220 million (US$356 mn.) from funds ostensibly intended for long-term investment in the national infrastructure on a ‘trophy’ property in Mayfair, London. Plaza Global Real...

The Constitutional Court has rejected the challenges by opposition parties claiming fraud during the 31 August elections and has endorsed President José Eduardo dos Santos’s first formal electoral...

Amidst a confetti shower of court orders, affidavits and writs, the nuptials between Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Elizabeth Macheka on 16 September were down-sized from a full-blown...

The Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola won the general elections with 72% of the vote after spending more than US$75 million on its campaign. The opposition, which...

Eight years after it was first proposed, the government is bringing in a law that will force oil companies to pay their suppliers through banks inside Angola. The...

As parliamentary elections approach in 2014, Botswana’s divided opposition parties cannot complain about the economy. The biggest gesture of confidence came from diamond giant De Beers, which began...

To diversify the economy away from its almost total dependence on diamonds, Botswana is pinning its hopes on coal.

The once prestigious Harare Annual Agricultural Show, a shadow of its former self, gamely goes through the motions of being opened by an international figure. On 24 August,...

The 23 to 28 September congress of the governing Frente de Libertação de Moçambique will be the field of the battle to decide whether President Armando Guebuza can...

After the military coup of March 2009, the plunder of Madagascar’s vast resources went into overdrive, under high-level political protection. It shows no sign of abating and concern...

New opportunities for plunder are opening up in minerals, oil and gas as shadowy businesses discover fresh resources. A few big companies have joined the voluntary Extractive Industries...

The killing of Wu Shenzai on 4 August and the wounding of his two compatriots by Zambian mine workers demanding the implementation of the newly revised minimum wage...

Despite the travails in Zambia's relations with China and fears that changes in mining regulation and taxation would scare off Asian companies, the flow of investment continues. Officials...

Proof continues to mount about the role of Chinese business interests in the illegal trade of rosewood from Madagascar. Rosewood is harvested from protected areas in Madagascar and...

Mainland Mining, a subsidiary of China Geo Engineering Corporation, faces opposition as it tries to mend its ways and restart activities on its ilmenite (titanium-iron oxide) exploration permit...

A corruption trial involving managers of Chinese construction companies has fizzled out, at least for now. The three – erstwhile China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation General Manager...

Industry and Commerce Minister Welshman Ncube appears to have cleared the hurdles blocking the rehabilitation of the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company. India's Essar Africa Holdings agreed in...

Despite the fact that China has no chrome reserves of its own, it became the world's top producer of ferrochrome in the first half of 2012. It...

Senior politicians, not least of all President Jacob Zuma, are failing to deflect public anger about the massacre of 34 miners by police on 16 August at Lonmin’s...

The dispute at the Lonmin mine is as much about rivalry between the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union and the National Union of Mineworkers as about wages....

The Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) is pouring millions into a lavish campaign to ensure overwhelming victory in the general elections on 31 August. The team behind President...

After 2008’s electoral drubbing, the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) is now far better organised, winning respect for its sustained pressure on the electoral commission, and surprising...

Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) were pleased with the outcome of the Southern African Development Community summit in Maputo on 17-18 August. It had just begun...

On 17 August, the Southern African Development Community failed in its third attempt to reconcile feuding Presidents Marc Ravalomanana and Andry Rajoelina. Rajoelina overthrew Ravalomanana in March 2009 and is now...

Ex-President Thabo Mbeki has taken issue with South Africa’s push to get Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma elected Chairwoman of the African Union. She defeated the incumbent, Gabon’s Jean Ping, prompting criticism that South...

The Supreme Court has finally forced President Robert Mugabe to hold long-outstanding bye-elections in three Matebeleland parliamentary seats. He had argued that the polls would be too expensive....

So far, Matebeleland's special concerns have not been fully addressed by the political reform process. The Human Rights Commission will deal only with matters since 2008, leaving the...

In spite of the serious split in the Botswana Democratic Party in 2010, opposition parties cannot form a broad electoral alliance, the only way to end the BDP’s...

Russian-Israeli billionaire Arkady Gaydamak failed to convince the London High Court he had a case against diamond-dealer Lev Leviev in mid-June. Ever since, analysts have been poring over...

Lev Leviev's interests in neighbouring Namibia could suffer as a result of the British High Court proceedings in June, especially from the judge's critical remarks about his credibility...

Mauritius and India are gearing up for another confrontation over the 1983 Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement. The DTAA allows Indian investors to avoid paying tax by funnelling their...

Disappointing diamond revenues and other factors forced Finance Minister Tendai Biti to slash predictions for Zimbabwe’s gross domestic product growth in 2012 from the expected 9.4% to just...

Since he was widowed in March 2009, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been involved in a series of romantic escapades that have drawn...

Anjin Investments is attracting even more attention from the authorities after a Global Witness report released in late June highlighted the company’s links to the security services and...

In the 29 June listing of China Nonferrous Metal Mining Corporation (CNMC) on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Zambia’s Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda saw ‘a legitimate cause for...

Security crises in five countries and pressing economic problems confront the new Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Although she has three months to wind up...

Just hours before voting began for the new chairperson of the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa on 15 July, veteran diplomats were predicting a repeat of the...

Angola’s habit of compelling foreign oil companies to work with secretive local companies that belong to top government officials is attracting increasing criticism – and compliance risks at...

Growth forecasts of 9.4% for this year have been halved. Thishighlights the policy limitations of abolishing the Zimbabwean dollar.It was replaced in 2009 by a range of solid...

The authorities have tried to hush up a break-in that took place at South Africa’s largest nuclear research centre, the Pelindaba facility near Pretoria, on 28 April. The...

Policies were not changed nor presidents toppled when the African National Congress met last week. Yet everyone – supporters of President Jacob Zuma and of his two main...

There is logic behind the timetable suggested by the UN experts who, chaired by Akinyemi Adegbola, visited the island in April-May. Time is needed to establish a credible...

• Andry Rajoelina, 38, Chairman of the Haute autorité de la transition (HAT), is a former Mayor of Antananarivo and leads the Tanora MalaGasy Vonona (TGV) party.

In public, diplomats in Antananarivo talk up the chances of a settlement of the political crisis. In private, though, they confess to doubting the value of the sanctions...

The battle of the oligarchs in London’s High Court ended on 29 June. Arkady Gaydamak and Lev Leviev fought over millions of dollars in Angolan diamond sales.

The Southern African Development Community, anxious to free its financial operations from domination by the large, state-owned Development Bank of Southern Africa, plans to set up a rival...

European officials expressed anger in early June about the governing African National Congress’s new strategy to sideline South Africa’s traditional trading allies and forge closer ties with India...

Despite the billions of dollars in investment that President Jacob Zuma’s ‘Look East’ policy could potentially deliver, Asian investment in South Africa has already yielded many promises, few...

China’s new Ambassador Lin Lin takes up his post in Harare this month. Ambassador Lin follows the outgoing Xin Shunkang, who completed a highly successful two-and-a-half-year tour of...

Prime Minister Jean-Omer Beriziky says that Chinese investors are angry about the treatment they have received from the government. Wuhan Iron and Steel Corporation executives vociferously point out...

The Guinean government’s decision this week to shut down a bid by South African businessmen who wield high-level political connections, to run its national mining company follows growing...

• Walter Hennig, Chief Executive Officer of Palladino, a South African. The considerable fortune enjoyed by the Hennig family comes mainly from diamond trading and farming, though Walter...

The most extraordinary thing about the extraordinary summit of the Southern African Development Community on 31 May-1 June was the performance of Zambia’s President Michael Sata. At 74...

The mid-May visit to Zimbabwe by the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Navanethem Pillay, was disastrous. She came at the invitation of Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who...

President Michael Sata has sparked a political storm by forcing out Zambia’s most senior judge, Chief Justice Ernest Sakala, on 15 June. The opposition accuses Sata of politicising...

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Mutembo Nchito, has his sights on Henry Banda, son of ex-President Rupiah Banda, over his role in the US$257 million sale of most...

Acclaimed at home and abroad as a breath of fresh air when she took office on 7 April, President Joyce Banda is being severely put to the test....

An attempt to meet the political requirements and the economic self-interest of factions in the governing African National Congress has produced a plan for super-taxes on mining profits,...

The nucleus of a proposed state-owned mining company would be the existing African Exploration Mining and Finance Company (AEMFC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Central Energy Fund (CEF)...

Proposals for anti-corruption legislation are causing severe anxiety in the governing Frente de Libertação de Moçambique. Frelimo is scrambling to bury reforms.

A secret report by the Zambézia Province command of the national police on why the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique so resoundingly lost the mayoral election in Quelimane...

The arrival of a new private jet for King Mswati III has brought fresh turbulence to the virtually bankrupt country. The future is more uncertain than ever now...

Ex-President Thabo Mbeki is again reinventing himself: his latest struggle is against corruption, leading a campaign to recover some of the hundreds of billions of dollars extracted from...

Jockeying for position to succeed President Hifikepunye Pohamba is rising following confirmation that SWAPO’s elective congress will be held on 28 November to 2 December.

Luanda has finally announced that general elections will take place on 31 August. They’ll be the first where the winning party chooses the president directly: the head of...

China's grand plans for special economic zones across Africa to emulate the success of its coastal manufacturing regions have hit problems in Mauritius and Algeria, showing that the...

A wage dispute at an Angolan building site in Chindonga, a sleepy town in Kwanza Sul, is causing a storm in India.

Zambian President Michael Chilufya Sata (aka ‘King Cobra’) used anti-Chinese rhetoric to whip up populist sentiment and win power in 2011, since when he has changed his tone.

The battle for succession in the African National Congress is getting nastier as its outcome looks more uncertain. Supporters of the main protagonists fight their battles, firstly within...

President Jacob Zuma’s allies are trying to arrange the state security and financial apparatus to protect him from future prosecution. They also want security officials to pursue his...

Politics are fast becoming a heady mix of military muscle-flexing, metaphysics and Machiavellianism, especially the politicking of those who would succeed President Robert Mugabe. The President’s visible ageing...

‘I detect a Satanic hand at work,’ said the excommunicated Anglican Archbishop Nolbert Kunonga. The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front apologist was talking about the latest pirated draft...

Joseph Stiglitz, a United States Nobel prize-winning economist, has become an unlikely guru of the left wing of the governing African National Congress in its battle with...

Efforts to negotiate a compromise between Gabon and South Africa over the contest for the presidency of the African Union Commission are faltering. This is unlikely to...

Civic activists and concerned citizens are threatened by a steep drop in charitable donations. The funding model of voluntary donations for good works is a victim of the...

Even before his famous victory in last year’s presidential election, Zambians heard rumours about Michael Sata being unwell. When he unexpectedly flew to India in March for medical...

The growing influence of the Patriotic Front Secretary General, Wynter Kabimba, constitutes the starkest example of the PF’s statist tendencies. He has been a source of controversy both...

President Joyce Banda has formed an inclusive government, appointing former enemies as well as allies in an effort to maintain a united front on economic problems. ‘The economy...

President Bingu wa Mutharika’s heart stopped during a meeting on 5 April with a member of parliament, Agnes Penemulungu. ‘He just stopped talking and tipped over and the...

Essar’s deal for rehabilitating NewZim Steel (formerly the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company) is teetering on the brink of collapse.

A prophet has aroused some unchristian comment in Zimbabwe’s media, official and independent alike. Temitope Balogun Joshua, a popular Nigerian televangelist, had foretold the imminent death of an...

The Independence Day theme was ‘Indigenisation and Empowerment’. The Movement for Democratic Change objects that this will probably be the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front slogan whenever elections...

Energy resources lie at the heart of foreign direct investment commitments worth $28 billion. This is more than double 2011’s total gross domestic product of $12 bn. and...

The government has announced that it will tax mergers and acquisitions in the resource sector. The first is Royal Dutch Shell’s proposed purchase of Britain’s Cove Energy, holder...

Joyce Banda, accepting promotion from Vice-President to President on the death of Bingu wa Mutharika, inaugurated her rule on 9 April by sacking the police chief, Peter Mukhito....

Bingu wa Mutharika was Malawi’s third President, after Hastings Kamuzu Banda and Bakili Muluzi. Born in 1934 in the Thyolo district of southern Malawi, he was educated...

After four decades of the struggle for independence in the oil-rich Cabinda enclave, the last fighting faction has launched an offer of peace talks. The octogenarian, exiled leader...

President Jacob Zuma is struggling to carry fellow leaders of the African National Congress with him in his campaign against dissident ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema. On...

Six months after their sweeping election victory, President Michael Chilufya Sata and his Patriotic Front (PF) are struggling to live up to their promises. They are in danger...

Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda and President Michael Sata spent the first two months of 2012 meeting key shareholders in foreign-owned mining companies to reassure them that the government...

Youth, Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere’s campaign to compel foreign-owned companies to sell majority stakes to Zimbabweans has stalled amid questions about how the government and local...

President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai have failed to pay huge electricity bills over the last two years, according to documents from the state...

The announcement of these grandiose schemes in Parliament last month coincides with leadership contests within the governing African National Congress, which will choose its presidential candidate at...

The cabinet is split three ways over control over the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and infrastructure spending.

Infrastructure investment is financed partly from the National Treasury or appropriations by Parliament. Yet a large share of the finance comes from the budgets of state-owned enterprises (SOEs),...

The process of drafting the new constitution is teetering towards collapse. So the various factions are honing their plans for what could be a bruising election campaign under...

Tendai Biti has been the star both of the Movement for Democratic Change as its General Secretary and of the Government of National Unity as its Finance Minister....

Afrikaners complaining of a ‘Boer genocide’ are joining forces with far-right members of the European Parliament to protest the murder of white farmers in South Africa. In 2010,...

President Michael Sata is cheering donors and his supporters by relaunching the fight against corruption begun under the late President Levy Mwanawasa but curtailed under President Rupiah Banda.

Ralph Kasambara is voicing the concern of many when he warns of a campaign of intimidation against civil society activists by criminals hired by the party in power.

The debate about whether to devalue the kwacha has moved on and become ‘by how much?’ President Bingu wa Mutharika remains determined not to devalue, though the International...

South Africa seeks a global role and is standing up for democracy – in Madagascar, anyway.

The former scourge of Chinese investors, President Michael Chilufya Sata, has reshuffled his Patriotic Front government to placate Asian and other investors and to streamline economic policy. On...

Chinese investment in Zambia continues to boom under President Michael Sata’s Patriotic Front government, despite the rhetoric of his unruly ministers.

A group of 33 Malawian merchants in Karonga has petitioned the government to oust the Chinese nationals whose businesses, the traders complain, are increasing competition in the northern...

Human rights campaigner Desmond Tutu is not winning many friends in Beijing. The Archbishop drew China’s ire in October last year by inviting the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, to his 80th...

President Jacob Zuma gave his third, and best, State of the Nation Address to a joint session of Parliament on 9 February. To show their growing power, the...

Central to President Jacob Zuma’s plans for 2012 is a massive infrastructure development programme. It is to be driven and overseen by the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission (PICC),...

The inquest into the death of General Solomon Mujuru has closed on 6 February after hearing 39 witnesses. The evidence left after the raging inferno that killed him...

The presidential ambitions of Hage Geingob appear holed beneath the waterline after he admitted taking a US$300,000 consultancy fee from French nuclear power company Areva in 2008 (AC...

The government is under pressure to speed up construction projects to meet its promise to build a million houses in four years, ahead of September’s elections. The Nova...

The Beijing government and China International Fund may be separate entities but the multiple links between the two become clearer with each new project. Two of the CIF’s...

The two-day state visit of India’s Commerce Minister Anand Sharma in mid-January gave Indian investors the opportunity to complain about the restrictions and obstacles that – despite decades...

Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma visited Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika on 21-24 January en route to last month’s African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Secretary General...

A doughty campaigner, Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, has launched a formal complaint against three top officials close to the presidency for taking personal stakes in oil...

In its annual disclosures (also known as the 10-K Form) to the Securities and Exchange Commission in New York on 31 December 2010, United States-registered Cobalt reported that...

The security officers around President Robert Mugabe like to shroud his movements in mystery. During the congress of his Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in Bulawayo...

By snubbing the African National Congress centenary celebrations and their host, South African President Jacob Zuma, President Robert Mugabe wanted to make some political points. He is furious...

In the coming political battles, Vice-President Hage Geingob is best placed to succeed President Hifikepunye Pohamba as leader of the governing SWAPO, previously the South West African People’s...

The United States is making little headway in its bid to get Mozambique and other coastal states to beef up their anti-piracy laws and their military response. It...

The coming battle between two gemstone plutocrats in London’s High Court could embarrass Angola’s secretive diamond marketing organisation, Angola Selling Corporation (Ascorp). Uzbekistan-born Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev,...

The election that matters is the one within the governing African National Congress, whose December conference in Mangaung in the Free State will pick its presidential candidate for...

Foreign investors will find the political climate discouraging. Exports, apart from gold, are likely to slow. The fall of the rand against the US dollar will help some...

Both President Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) want elections as soon as possible. Each...

The early economic successes of the power-sharing government are sputtering (AC Vol 52 No 25). A decade after the land reform battles, agriculture will be the main source...