Patrick Smith
This week there are some sobering warnings from the IMF and some rambunctious election-campaign launches in South Africa. Pressure continues to increase on Nigeria's President Buhari to devalue the naira or set up a new exchange rate for specified transac...
Blue Lines
Unencumbered by the African Union's need to reach a consensus among
its
54 member states, the Tana Security Forum, which also meets each year
in Ethiopia, is expanding its
influence as it confronts some of the
more unpalatable realities of political stabi...
Blue Lines
This year’s flurry of ostensibly competitive elections is prompting
some activists to rethink their assessment of the forward march of
democratic politics in Africa. After the unprecedented victory of the
opposition presidential candidate in Nigeria,
Afri...
Patrick Smith
This week, there is some better economic news for Nigeria after President Buhari's trip to Beijing but more worries about pressure on banks in Kenya. Although Chadian President Déby looks confident of victory after general elections on 10 April, another ...
Patrick Smith
This week the leak of the details of over 10 million account documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca dominates the news and African activists start to probe the list to track their politicians and business people. Then there is the drama of co...
Blue Lines
Despite pressure from the doom-sayers amid the commodity price crash, some big battalions in Africa are fighting back with ambitious new projects that could create growth and jobs – if they go ahead. Most significant is the US$5.42 billion deal between Ke...
Blue Lines
It was Kenya's
graft-buster-in-chief in 2002, John
Githongo, who
observed that anti-corruption was good politics. And so it proved until
he stumbled on the wrong political skeletons in the closet. President
Mwai Kibaki did nothing to
defend Githongo, who ...
Patrick Smith
We have commercial and political diplomacy in Nigeria and South
Africa, a crowded field of presidential hopefuls in Benin,
and a last and very ambitious bid at conflict resolution by UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
SOUTH AFRICA: Finance Minister Gordha...
Blue Lines
Zimbabwe's political scene
has opened up this week as former
Vice-President Joice Mujuru
launched her new party, Zimbabwe People
First. ZANU-PF is riven by factionalism as the race to succeed
President Mugabe intensifies.
Mujuru's new party is the most im...
Blue Lines
As the campaign for the next Secretary General of the United Nations
heats up, the career of Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, who died on 16 February,
should prove instructive. The Egyptian
who held the UN’s top job in
1992-96 was one of the most experienced diplom...
