Blue Lines
The 91-year-old President Robert Mugabe's State visit to his
stripling
of a 73-year-old counterpart, President Jacob Zuma, left
observers
wondering which of them was in better shape. Zuma is beset on all
sides: his popularity is plummeting. Unemployment, ...
Blue Lines
The government-elect taking shape in Nigeria under General Muhammadu
Buhari will have to contend with meeting not just the
expectations of
its own citizens but the high hopes of the wider continent. For almost
a decade, there is a feeling of an ideas vacu...
Blue Lines
Three issues – corruption, jobs and security – have dominated
campaigning in what promises to be Nigeria’s
closest ever presidential
election, on 28 March. All three put President Goodluck Jonathan’s
government on the back foot as it faced a resurgent nat...
Blue Lines
The chaotic conference on the Ebola crisis at the European Union’s Palais d’Egmont in Brussels on 3 March reflected the confused, ad hoc response to the emergency from national governments and international organisations. It wasn’t a fund-raising meeting...
Blue Lines
The crisis that has Libya
at its centre has been brewing since
oppositionists – backed by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation airpower
– overthrew Moammar el Gadaffi’s
regime in 2011. Despite hopes for a
transition to a stable and prosperous democracy unde...
Blue Lines
The scowl on the face of Nigeria’s
Foreign Minister Aminu Bashir Wali
spoke volumes as he emerged from a meeting at the Sheraton hotel
on 29
January. Earlier that day, Nigeria had suffered the indignity of its
internal security failings being scrutinised ...
Blue Lines
The Ebola epidemic in West Africa came as a bolt from the blue, an apparently natural disaster. And yet, as we approach the anniversary of the first diagnoses deep in the bush of Guinea, new facts are emerging about how opportunistic politics and bad gove...
Blue Lines
As shock-waves spread after the murderous attack on staff at the
Paris weekly Charlie Hebdo on
7 January, African security officials are weighing the implications for
their own countries. Given the global coverage earned by the attacks in Paris and on the...
Blue Lines
Big economic and political changes are emerging in Africa after a decade of strong Asian demand for its resources and the highest growth levels since the 1960s. That economic strength has allowed many governments to buy off discontent in the cities withou...
Blue Lines
Those literary gannets and prize committees taken aback by the waves of brilliant African fiction and poetry landing on their desks should look at the raw material served up to writers every day on the continent. It takes nothing away from these writers’ ...
