Blue Lines
Two G20 meetings have broken up this year without agreeing a final communiqué – first in Washington in April and then in Bali, Indonesia, this month – raising fresh doubts about the organisation's value. Yet African Union officials are pushing to join the...
Blue Lines
Officials from governments and international financial institutions are organising a series of planning sessions to raise finance ahead of the COP27 Climate Summit in Sharm al Sheik in November. The latest meeting brought together Africa's finance ministe...
Blue Lines
The spectre of an institutional crisis hangs over Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Kigali from 20-26 June as the organisation tries to manage the first challenge to a Secretary-General seeking a second four-year term.Support for incumbe...
Blue Lines
When Belgium's King Phillipe, visiting Congo-Kinshasa from 6-11 June, returned the Kakungu mask, one of more than 84,000 artefacts looted during colonial rule, he reinforced a trend among Europe's former imperial powers. Belgium is the latest state to tak...
Blue Lines
The African Development Bank opened its annual meeting in Accra on 23 May with dire projections of accelerating inflation, faltering growth and mounting debt service costs. Most of this interruption in what had been the continent's pandemic recovery was t...
Blue Lines
A badly timed Eurobond issuance, interest rates chasing roaring fuel and food inflation and a treasured national carrier split in two then sold for three US dollars. Those are the alarming developments in three of Africa's most important economies.Kenya's...
Blue Lines
With bizarre timing, a report forecasting that private wealth in Africa will balloon by 38% to over US$3 trillion by 2031 has emerged as the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank warned that tens of millions would be thrown into poverty by roaring foo...
Blue Lines
Foreign aid from rose to an all-time high of US$179 billion in 2021, up 4.4% in real terms from 2020, according to preliminary data collected by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann ...
Blue Lines
The axis of authoritarians, fuelled by geopolitical tensions, was on parade in Cairo on 30 March when Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el Sisi received Sudan's military leader General Abdel Fattah al Burhan. Aside from a mutual distrust of democracy, these ...
Blue Lines
European states are competing to offer the most generosity to the more than 3 million refugees who have fled Ukraine since Russia's invasion. But it has prompted some activists and officials to look more closely at the plight of the thousands of Africans ...
