Blue Lines
For a few weeks Africa is shrugging off its marginal role in international affairs.After the tours of Africa by China's President Xi Jinping and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi in mid-year, Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May and German Chancellor A...
Patrick Smith
This week we start in Johannesburg with the Constitutional Court order to dismiss the top prosecutor and then to Harare where Zimbabwe's Constitutional Court is considering the opposition's petition against last month's presidential election. Then, to Mal...
Blue Lines
Emmerson Mnangagwa is sending out invitations to his inauguration on 12 August. That shows how much confidence he has that the judges of the Constitutional Court will throw out a challenge to the results which gave him 50.8% of the votes, avoiding a run-o...
Patrick Smith
This week, the action starts in Abuja where the ruling party is splitting at the seams, and then to Harare where its counterpart is celebrating an election victory no one else believes in. In Accra, President Akufo-Addo has just sacked his energy minister...
Patrick Smith
This week, it's votes galore – national elections in Zimbabwe and Mali, and a constitutional referendum in the Comoros. All of them are high-stakes votes whose effects will reverberate beyond national boundaries. And as the debt crisis deepens in Zambia, ...
Blue Lines
It is the conflict that gets conveniently buried, by the African Union, by its neighbour Nigeria and by the UN. Yet the deepening rebellion in western Cameroon against President Paul Biya's regime could explode his bid, announced last week, for a seventh ...
Patrick Smith
This week, Zimbabwe's elections due on 30 July top the political agenda, while business groups consider the commercial implications of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's reforms in Ethiopia. There was high drama in the Nigerian capital this morning (24 July) whi...
Patrick Smith
More dramatic developments in Ethiopia this week, with the arrival of Eritrea's President Issayas in Addis Ababa. Kayode Fayemi's victory in the Ekiti State governorship election boosts the Buhari government and is a blow to opposition plans. Despite the ...
Blue Lines
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's call on Nigeria to speed up consultations on joining the African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) reminded officials of the complexity of economic integration, at a time when the United States has launched a tr...
Patrick Smith
We start in Kinshasa with the cancellation two high-level meetings and what this tells us about President Joseph Kabila's political plans. Then to Asmara for a breakthrough meeting between Eritrean President Issayas Aferwerki and Ethiopia's Prime Minister...
