Patrick Smith
We start this week with another high-stakes battle between a multinational mining company and an African government, this time in Tanzania. The Ethiopian government is celebrating Tedros Adhanom winning the leadership of the World Health Organisation; and...
Blue Lines
The appointment of regional security specialist Peter Pham as the United States' Assistant Secretary
of State for African Affairs has been welcomed by African diplomats in
Washington. 'We have an appointee with knowledge and a certain affinity
with Africa...
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 States
government, Africa is in pressing need of an economic boost. Last year
marked a harsh coda to the commodity boom, with the ...
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...
