Jump to navigation

South Africa

At last, the $8.5bn energy transition plan is ready

Pic: @GovernmentZA
Pic: @GovernmentZA

Delayed by the power crisis and fights with the coal lobby, the government says the green plan will launch at the UN Climate Summit

After two years of turf wars, the government's implementation plan for its US$8.5 billion (R160bn) Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) will be made public at the UN COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai in November as a template for climate finance and phasing out fossil fuels in developing economies.


Kremlin ponders its post-Wagner options

Portrait of Yevgeny Prigozhin and flowers laid in his memory at a cafe in St. Petersburg. Pic: Artem Priakhin/ZUMA Press Inc/Alamy
Portrait of Yevgeny Prigozhin and flowers laid in his memory at a cafe in St. Petersburg. Pic: Artem Priakhin/ZUMA Press Inc/Alamy

Moscow must dispose of the remnants of its most famous mercenary outfit and has some hard choices to make

The crash of Yevgeny Prigozhin's jet on 25 August was both expected and full of surprises. It was expected because no one believed President Vladimir Putin would do business as usu...

READ FOR FREE

Cash crunch tests Tinubu's top finance team

Olayemi Michael Cardoso. Pic: @PBATMediaCentre
Olayemi Michael Cardoso. Pic: @PBATMediaCentre

The government is hunting for foreign exchange to stabilise the naira and speed up growth after its reform shocks

The nomination of Olayemi Michael Cardoso, a former chairman of Citibank, as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) opens the next chapter of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's e...


Bawumia leads race for NPP ticket

Mahamudu Bawumia. Pic: @MBawumia
Mahamudu Bawumia. Pic: @MBawumia

President Akufo-Addo is helping his deputy in the succession campaign despite growing internal dissent

Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia's landslide victory in the New Patriotic Party's Special Delegates' Conference and the withdrawal of former Trade Minister, Alan Kyerematen, has put...


Cross-party talks open, carrots provided

Pic: @AzimioTv
Pic: @AzimioTv

A new cross-party committee will strengthen ambitious politicians and steer clear of the cost-of-living crisis

The prospect of a political deal between President William Ruto and opposition Azimio la Umoja leader Raila Odinga is unsettling some of their followers and allies who fear they co...


Mnangagwa keeps it in the family

Zimbabwe's Cabinet Ministers sworn in, September 2023. Pic: @edmnangagwa
Zimbabwe's Cabinet Ministers sworn in, September 2023. Pic: @edmnangagwa

An enlarged cabinet stuffed with relatives and loyalists is complicating international efforts to restart negotiations on the country's finances

International and regional concerns persist about the legitimacy of President Emmerson Mnangagwa's victory in national elections last month, particularly the failure of the Zimbabw...


Worst earthquake for 120 years could unleash economic and political tremors 

Amizmiz, Morocco, September 2023. Pic: SOPA Images Limited/Alamy

IMF and World Bank annual meeting in quake-hit Marrakech likely to go ahead next month

At least 2,900 people have been killed and 5,500 injured in Morocco's worst earthquake for 120 years, state television reported late on 12 September as anger was growing over delay...


Caught cold by the coups

Pic: @vonderleyen
Pic: @vonderleyen

Von der Leyen calls for a bolder strategy amid the wave of putsches and deepening crisis in the Sahel

European Union officials are scrambling to revise their approach to the Sahel and West Africa after being blindsided by the military coups d'état in Niger and Gabon.


Muse Bihi's political headaches worsen

Copyright © Africa Confidential 2023
Copyright © Africa Confidential 2023

After failing to conquer Dhulbahante rebels in Las Anod, which led to conflict within the Isaq clan, the President needs to repair the splits

President Muse Bihi Abdi is adding political problems to the military reverses he has suffered in his ill-judged confrontation with the Dhulbahante clan over Las Anod. That’s...


Despite everything, the ANC charts a path to victory

Fikile Mbalula. Pic: GovernmentZA
Fikile Mbalula. Pic: GovernmentZA

Beefed up local organisation and a public spending push could help the ruling party avoid a coalition next year

Unheralded, the campaign for next year's national elections started this month. The ruling African National Congress will be fighting on multiple fronts: to cut state spending and ...


How militias police the Mediterranean for Europe

Pic: fabian-berg.photo / Alamy
Pic: fabian-berg.photo / Alamy

Accused by the UN of heinous rights abuses, militias tied to Dubaiba and Haftar now run border control

Militias linked to the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) and its erstwhile rivals in the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by General Khalifa Haftar have taken over nat...


Bribes case on the rocks

Pic: Piotr Pawinski / stock.adobe.com
Pic: Piotr Pawinski / stock.adobe.com

The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has decided not to prosecute government officials who may have taken bribes so long as they return them to the state, according to leaks to the med...


Seck seeks DC clout

Pic: @idrissa_59
Pic: @idrissa_59

Former Prime Minister Idrissa Seck has beefed up his international lobbying and campaign team by hiring Bruce Fryer, a US advisor for the non-profit Vanguard Africa and Future Pact...


Heart of the migration storm

Pic: @GiorgiaMeloni
Pic: @GiorgiaMeloni

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni continues to exert diplomatic pressure on Tunisia and Libya as the Italian island of Lampedusa continues to receive unprecedented numbers of m...


Will Biya be next?

Pic: Paul Biya FB
Pic: Paul Biya FB

The nonagenarian President has been shaken by the coup against his Gabonese counterpart, whose relationship to the military was similar to his own

President Paul Biya has shuffled military posts and reorganised defence ministry departments to forestall any attempt by the army to take power. Whether he has done enough to avoid...

READ FOR FREE

An iron grip may be slipping

Paul Biya. Pic: Stephane Lemouton/Abaca Press/Alamy
Paul Biya. Pic: Stephane Lemouton/Abaca Press/Alamy

The case of a sacked general illustrates how the president's deft management of the military may be faltering

There's a chronic insurgency in Anglophone Cameroon, militant jihadists in the north, and democrats and civil society bodies yearning for relief from rigged elections and suppressi...


Kagame shakes up the army – just in case

Pic: @UrugwiroVillage
Pic: @UrugwiroVillage

The president's latest army reshuffle is part of a long-term plan to safeguard his regime and his family's role in it

The army reshuffle in Rwanda, announced on 31 August, was not a panicked response to the military coup in Gabon on the previous day as some have suggested. President Paul Kagame fr...


Museveni's divide-and-rule master-class

Pic: @StateHouseUg
Pic: @StateHouseUg

Having used violence to cow the opposition the President is working hard to bribe and co-opt oppositionists into irrelevance

Hard questions are being asked about the future of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), the second biggest opposition party after Bobi Wine's National Unity Platform (NUP), after...


After Tinubu opened Pandora's Box

Pic: @officialABAT
Pic: @officialABAT

The President's policy experiments – on subsidies, the naira and the military – have raised questions about his ministerial team

A mass of contradictory signals greeted Bola Ahmed Tinubu's first hundred days in the presidency on 6 September. The day before, the National Labour Congress had called on its memb...


Nairobi vies for green capital status

Pic: @WilliamsRuto
Pic: @WilliamsRuto

William Ruto advances his own, and Kenya's interests, but fails to pull in much climate finance from industrial economies

Having spent much of the first year of his presidency staking out the ground as one of Africa's leading voices on climate change and energy policy, Kenya's William Ruto was the nat...


Legitimacy questions may spur talks

Pic: @edmnangagwa
Pic: @edmnangagwa

Regional and international critiques of election rigging have undermined ZANU-PF amid calls for a transitional authority to be set up

Regional leaders, like the four million Zimbabweans in exile, voted with their feet when invited to attend Emmerson Mnangagwa's inauguration for his second presidential term on 4 S...