Patrick Smith
We start in Harare – in the throes of economic and
political crises – with the funeral of Robert Mugabe,
and then to the first-round upsets in the presidential election in Tunisia.
Tanzania's leader gets cash from the World Bank
despite attacking civil ri...
Blue Lines
President Emmerson Mnangagwa's hopes that the death of independence leader Robert Mugabe would lead to a helpful outbreak of nationalistic fervour are proving forlorn. Mnangagwa implored Zimbabweans 'to show your love of the great leader who has left us....
Patrick Smith
This week we start with a move to dampen down tensions between South Africa and Nigeria and a political row over President Mugabe's funeral. Also on the agenda are China debt talks, the political succession in Botswana and repression ahead of elections in...
Patrick Smith
This week we start in the East, picking up the pieces from the Japan-Africa summit, and then to Zambia where an opposition politician is being hauled before the courts accused of insulting the President. In Kenya, fresh battles are breaking out over budge...
Blue Lines
This week's Tokyo International Conference on African Development, held confusingly in Yokohama, shows the growing competition between foreign powers on the continent. Although Japan's commercial ties with Africa – some $10 billion of trade a year – are m...
Patrick Smith
We start this week with the new government in Sudan, then to Kenya for a contested census, and to the next steps after elections in Jubaland, Somalia. Despite the best efforts of Angola's President Joaõ Lourenço, the latest diplomatic deal between Preside...
Patrick Smith
This week we start with a new government in Sudan, then one in Nigeria, and then to Zimbabwe's economic and political crises. The propaganda battle over China's Huawei intensifies, new warnings about the severity of Southern Africa's drought and a controv...
Patrick Smith
This week a Nigeria-South Africa
summit is in prospect, a new power-sharing government in Sudan,
and more mining rows. Also ahead, big protests loom in Zimbabwe,
opposition complaints about the election come to court in Malawi,
and yet more presidential ...
Blue Lines
The first reaction to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change's plans to mount national protests next week against Zimbabwe's economic meltdown might be: what took them so long?
It also follows the last wave of protests in January when the MDC lagg...
Patrick Smith
This week we have another step towards a political transition in Sudan, a surprise presidential contender in Kenya, a storm in Nigeria over the arrest of a protest leader and another in Tanzania over a journalist's detention. Zimbabwe's Finance Minister t...