Who's who

President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s tenure, once praised for its democratic reforms, has taken a sharp authoritarian turn. After initially reversing some of the repressive policies of her predecessor,...

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has been weakened after the three-month budget dispute that brought President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Government of National Unity to the brink of collapse. Ramaphosa is...

Finance Minister Vera Daves de Sousa was one of the few African star turns at April’s spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank,...

The arrest and detention of three opposition leaders in Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan points to concerted attempts by government to both crush their opponents and undermine the...

Edwin Sifuna, Secretary-General of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and Senator for Nairobi County, has cut a frustrated figure during the political manoeuvring that followed last June’s...

Tidjane Thiam, a minister under former President Henri Konan Bédié, left Côte d’Ivoire for a lucrative business career after Bédié’s ouster in a 1999 military coup. During that...

The appointment of Yusuf Maitama Tuggar as President Bola Tinubu’s Foreign Minister in May 2023 was one of the more imaginative cabinet choices. A former journalist and ambassador...

At her first press conference after being appointed as Congo-Kinshasa’s Foreign Minister last July, Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner said that she aimed ‘to use diplomacy for more peace in...

After seizing control of the opposition Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema) party, Tundu Lissu now faces the gargantuan task of taking on President Samia Suluhu Hassan and...

The investigation into former EU Justice Commissioner and pillar of the Belgian establishment, Didier Reynders, linked to a wider probe of money laundering via state-owned institutions, has triggered...