Blue Lines
The campaign to stop President Abdelaziz Bouteflika from running for a fifth term in Algeria's elections has provoked both shock and surrealism. Shock because the millions of young Algerians marching in Constantine, Oran as well as the capital Algiers is ...
Blue Lines
The gargantuan numbers aside – state power company Eskom has unserviceable debts of 420 billion rand (US$30bn) – the most pressing equation in South Africa's budget is a political one. Ahead of national elections on 8 May, President Cyril Ramaphosa has to...
Patrick Smith
This week we look at the delayed general election in Nigeria, a tough budget in South Africa, an oil rights dispute between Kenya and Somalia and the complexities of Ethiopia's plan to sell a large stake in its state-owned telecoms company.
NIGERIA ELECT...
Blue Lines
A year into his presidency and a quarter century after the first free elections in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa has to strike a balance in his State of the Nation address to Parliament on 7 February. On the one hand he wants to assure people th...
Blue Lines
Shakier economies and an accelerating youth revolt dominate our second special issue on the year ahead
There are clear parallels between the wave of protests demanding radical change across Africa this month with the early days of the North African revol...
Patrick Smith
Radical political change and peace-making in Ethiopia,
together with the signing of the African Continental Free Trade Area
agreement, lifted spirits in Africa as other regions became embroiled
in trade wars and a wave of nationalism in 2018.
But many of...
Blue Lines
Stripped of the spin from politicians seeking re-election and international financial institutions seeking to make more loans, it has been a dire year for Africa's economies and worse for its markets.
Buoyed by demographics and better policies, the likes...
Blue Lines
Those criticising the Trump Administration for its lack of interest in Africa may find themselves being more careful what they wish for. About two years late, a form of United States policy towards Africa is taking shape sometimes with the overt connivanc...
Blue Lines
Developments in Nigeria and South Africa point to the danger when political and business interests converge. President Cyril Ramaphosa's directorship of Lonmin, the company operating in Marikana when the police massacred protesting mineworkers, nearly san...
Patrick Smith
We start on the election bandwagons in Abuja, Nigeria for the beginning of the campaigns and move on to Pretoria where President Cyril Ramaphosa is facing a heavy challenge to his leadership of the anti-corruption campaign. And then to the Horn of Africa:...
