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...
Patrick Smith
This week we start in Kigali, which is hosting the summit of
the African Union, and stay in East Africa to hear that the region's
three biggest economies are putting their trade negotiations with the
European Union on hold. If the latest opinion polls in ...
Patrick Smith
This week we start with the fighting in South Sudan
and then look at the prospects for more anti-government protests in Zimbabwe.
In Zambia, tensions are rising ahead of what many
expect to be a very close election next month while Ghana
is channelling th...
Blue Lines
A new protest movement known as #ThisFlag is gaining momentum in Zimbabwe after one of the biggest
stayaways in cities for a decade on 6 July. At the head of #ThisFlag is
Evan Mawarire, a 39-year-old
pastor who launched a social media
campaign in April to...
Patrick Smith
A Brexit-dominated blog this week as Africa's economies count the
cost of the turmoil in Europe. In Zambia,
President Edgar Lungu's
government cracks down on the independent media and Mozambique's finance troubles
escalate after the secret loan scandal. F...
Blue Lines
From the start of the year, it's been clear that South Africa's local
elections on 3 August would be a critical test of President Jacob
Zuma's survival skills. There have been contradictory signs: it
looked increasingly likely that Zuma would be pushed to...
Patrick Smith
Over the weekend there were disturbing reports of fresh fighting in the border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia which ended with a peace treaty some 16 years ago. Ugandan security officials say they have been busy in the last few days roundi...
Blue Lines
If he's looking for evocative literature as well as a break from
Nigerian politics during his
ten-day visit to London, President
Muhammadu Buhari should read 'The
General in His Labyrinth' by Gabriel
Garcia Márquez. One of the late Colombian
writer's most...
Patrick Smith
This week, the political developments start in Kenya, with mounting protests for
electoral reform, then to the story of why some senior Nigerians are spending the week in
London and the private reactions to the appointment of the president's
daughter to h...
