Patrick Smith
This week we start in Lusaka where the dispute between the government and First Quantum Minerals is still simmering. And then to Mali, where French President Emmanuel Macron has been outlining a tougher military policy. In South Africa, President Jacob Zu...
Patrick Smith
This week we start in Addis Ababa for an international conference on development finance. And then to Côte d'Ivoire where the government is insisting the army mutiny is over. In South Africa, the African National Congress is divided over the reappointment...
Blue Lines
Data-mining is coming to an African election near you. President Uhuru Kenyatta's re-election campaign has contracted Cambridge Analytica, the data company widely credited with having swung last year's United States' presidential poll for Donald Trump and...
Patrick Smith
This week we start with the celebrations greeting the newly-elected President of France and look at some implications for Africa. Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari is back in London for more medical treatment as his deputy puts the finishing touches on...
Patrick Smith
It was a harsh May Day for South Africa's beleaguered President Jacob Zuma, who was chased off the podium by an angry crowd in the Free State. From the UN in New York, there are signs of movement in the deadlocked Western Sahara dispute. In Zambia, Presid...
Blue Lines
Caught between a more slowly growing China and the nationalist and protectionist reflexes of President Donald Trump's United Statesgovernment, Africa is in pressing need of an economic boost. Last year marked a harsh coda to the commodity boom, with the c...
Patrick Smith
This week we have a whistle-stop tour of international meetings, negotiations and even court cases. We start with the spring meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions in Washington, and then on to South Africa, reeling from a ratings agency downgrade. Ou...
Blue Lines
Among the most stubborn collateral damage wrought by the West's financial crisis of 2008 was the cutting of international credit lines to Africa. The initial rationale for severing the lines was knee-jerk and computational: if Western banks and ratings ag...
Patrick Smith
This week we start in Milan, Italy, where the state prosecutor is to open preliminary hearings on two multinational oil companies accused of massive corporate fraud in Nigeria's oil industry. Then to Nairobi where a committee of the opposition alliance ha...
Patrick Smith
Again, we start in the week in South Africa as the country and its politicians react to President Jacob Zuma's sacking of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. A different level of power play is going on in Abuja where the head of Nigeria's anti-corruption org...
