Patrick Smith
This week, there could be more political fall-out from the Och-Ziff corruption case in the United Statesand Africa. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's Independence day speech in Abuja will trigger more financial negotiations. France is leading calls fo...
Blue Lines
This week President Joseph Kabila's bid to hang on to power in Congo-Kinshasa has finally triggered the violent clashes that opposition parties had long predicted. At least 44 people are reported by Human Rights Watch to have been killed after police trie...
Patrick Smith
This week Mozambique's President arrives in the United States to placate creditors and woo investors while South Africa's opposition parties start to audit the African National Congress's management of local government finance. Public sector workers in Zi...
Blue Lines
Reports that Nigeria's economy shrank by 2% in the second quarter of the year and is officially in recession – its worst performance for 25 years – has fuelled speculation about negotiations between the government and the International Monetary Fund. Unti...
Blue Lines
Predictions that President Jacob Zuma will redouble efforts to regain control over policy and patronage after the African National Congress's losses in the municipal elections (see Feature, Zuma carries on regardless) are fast proving accurate. On 22 Augu...
Patrick Smith
This week elections dominate our list of things to watch: the recent past, in the case of South Africa, where the ANC comes to terms with its loss of power in the big cities; the present, in Ghana, where the governing National Democratic Congress has just...
Patrick Smith
This week we consider the recent elections in Zambia and South Africa and a new opposition alliance in Ethiopia, while President Salva Kiir changes his mind again about the prospect of more foreign troops to keep the peace in South Sudan.ZAMBIA: Lungu win...
Patrick Smith
This week we have important election stories – before and after – in Zambia, South Africa and Congo-Kinshasa. And there are new international efforts to get the two sides in South Sudan to implement their peace agreement ,while Nigeria's finance officials...
Blue Lines
A year before next year's general elections, Angola is balanced between a 'promising' and a 'problematic state', according to Abel Chivukuvuku, leader of an opposition coalition which claims to be the country's fastest growing political movement, the Conv...
Blue Lines
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma's extended swan song as chairwoman of the African Union Commission has been more productive than the rest her of four-year term. Dlamini-Zuma doesn’t want a second term and will return home to South Africa. There, she’s likely to ma...
