Blue Lines
We are all democrats now, at least up to a point. That point has been reached in a raft of West and East African states where the regional economic groupings were meant to be upholding higher standards of accountability and governance. The Economic Commun...
Blue Lines
It is a tragic paradox that African states, with experience of managing epidemics, are better placed than many other countries to contain the spread of Covid-19 nova coronavirus. Yet Africa is likely to be the region hardest hit by the indirect economic e...
Blue Lines
If African leaders were confused by the US government's attitude towards their countries and continent, they were surely left none the wiser by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who visited Senegal, Ethiopia and Angola on a whistle-stop tour of the continen...
Blue Lines
The traditional reluctance to speak ill of the newly dead is serving Daniel arap Moi well. The death of Kenya's President from 1978-2002, on 4 February aged 95, has been greeted with accolades from African and Western officials in the media. Moi dominated...
Blue Lines
The arrival of South Africa's former President Thabo Mbeki in Harare this week for talks with Zimbabwe's leading political figures points to the depth of the country's crisis. Strikes and protests are set to intensify, despite a violent crackdown by Presi...
Blue Lines
Sudan's Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok will probably come away empty-handed from his first trip to Washington DC since replacing the overthrown Omer el Beshir as Sudan's leader. Top of Hamdok's wish-list is that the United States end its economic sanctions...
Blue Lines
Suddenly the stakes in Sudan have been raised – between the revolutionaries and the supporters of Omer el Beshir's ousted regime. For weeks, rumours have been swirling about an impending coup by die-hard Islamists in state security, militias and Beshir's ...
Blue Lines
Multilateralism might get another lease of life if some of Africa's top bureaucrats have their way. One of the few advantages of Africa's balkanisation into 54 states is the voting power that this gives the continent in such organisations as the UN Genera...
Patrick Smith
This week we are covering South Africa's budget, Botswana's election, the repercussions of the killing of the Islamic State leader, a mooted referendum in Kenya, talks on the dam on the Nile between Egypt and Ethiopia and the World Bank's Doing Business r...
Blue Lines
Although he pulled in dozens of Africa's leaders to the first Russia-Africa summit in Sochi on 23-24 October, Russia's President Vladimir Putin is years behind the competition in courting Africa. Russia-Africa trade has doubled to US$20.4 billion over ...
