Sierra Leone

President Ernest Bai Koroma avoided a potentially contentious second-round in the presidential poll by defeating Julius Maada Bio outright on 17 November. It was announced on 23 November...

Ahead of the 17 November elections, the country is starkly split between the two main parties, the governing All People’s Congress and the Sierra Leone People’s Party. These...

The youth of Freetown helped to swing victory for Ernest Bai Koroma in 2007, runs the conventional wisdom. Overwhelming support in the capital was decisive in convincing even...

President Ernest Bai Koroma has decided to keep his Vice-President, Samuel Sam-Sumana, on the governing All People’s Congress ticket in the 17 November general elections. Koroma spent most...

A major electoral controversy came to an end in mid-September when President Ernest Bai Koroma reversed the decision of the National Electoral Commission Chairwoman, Christiana Thorpe, to raise...

Frank Timis’s Tonkolili iron-ore project has problems running its trains on time – and even on the line, Africa Confidential has learned. In early September, his firm, African...

United States businessmen are accusing Vice-President Samuel Sam-Sumana of diverting commercial investments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars into campaign funds for the All People’s Congress (APC) in the 2007 elections....

Freetown's pre-election politics have been so fractious that diplomats, including United Nations representatives in the country, fear that it would take a miracle for the country to avoid...

The country won a respite from the increasingly bitter pre-electoral campaigning among the major parties as all sides united in sympathy for President Ernest Bai Koroma after the...

Private foundations such as those run by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and financier George Soros can marshal funds in Africa to rival the aid budgets of agencies such...

Trial Chamber II of the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone on 30 May sentenced Charles Ghankay Taylor to 50 years in prison for his central role...

When the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) chose Julius Maada Bio to compete against President Ernest Bai Koroma last year, the pro-government media reckoned the November 2012 polls...

As Sierra Leone absorbs the guilty verdict on Liberian former President Charles Ghankay Taylor for ‘aiding and abetting’ Revolutionary United Front rebels, the Revolutionary United Front Party, a...

The atmosphere is warming up, even though elections are still over six months away. Worries are growing that President Ernest Bai Koroma’s All People’s Congress (APC) is ramping...

Correspondence on the recall of the United Nations chief, Michael von der Schulenburg, indicates an almost irrational hatred of him by President Ernest Bai Koroma.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon closed the door on a bitter dispute with the government of President Ernest Bai Koroma by recalling his Executive Representative for the...

The presidential and legislative elections due in November 2012 will be close-run, pitting President Ernest Bai Koroma and the All Peoples’ Congress (APC) against Julius Maada Bio and...

China International Fund, a Hong Kong-based outfit which works closely with Beijing’s state corporations, will become one of the Freetown government’s most privileged business partners following the signing...

China is Sierra Leone’s largest foreign investor. However, you would not know that from the chaotic state of Sierra Leone’s mission in Beijing, which has had to change...