Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia, combines a matriarchal exterior with a sophisticated economist’s intelligence. First elected in to office in 2006, she has headed a process of national renewal and economic reconstruction in a country that only recently dragged

Read the rest of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: “Leymah Gbowee is too young to know what we’ve done to reach peace and security in our country” – By Magnus Taylor »

Mining is probably Ghana’s most established industry.  In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the as yet un-formed country was the world’s biggest producer of gold, constituting over one third of global output. The West African nation is still a major

Read the rest of Ghana: Security Forces and Civil Society Weigh in on Mining Sector – By Kissy Agyeman-Togobo »

I was in Kenya at the time of Barack Obama’s election to US President back in 2008. Actually, I was in Uganda on the night of his election – in a cheap Kampala hotel room with mosquitos buzzing my face

Read the rest of Kenya and the Obamas: a half sister and an election – By Magnus Taylor »

When Beatrice Atim Anywar received a call from a reporter to ask if her daughter had applied for a scholarship with an oil company, she laughed: “I had no idea,” she said. At over six feet, Anywar has a reputation

Read the rest of Uganda: battle over national oil company reveals strains of the sector – By Angelo Izama »

As you enter the region of Hoedspruit in South Africa’s Limpopo province – the gateway to the world famous Kruger National Park – you see big signs along the road warning that anti-poaching units will “poach the poachers”. The signs

Read the rest of Rhino poaching in South Africa: organised crime and economic opportunity driving trade – By Keith Somerville »

Rising demand fuelled by emerging countries, most notoriously China and India, has led to increased competition for natural resources. Despite recurrent volatility in the markets, the trend is a rise in prices, oil being the prime example. In this context,

Read the rest of Managing Risks in the Extractive Industries – By Lionel Badal »

Chinua Achebe’s latest book, There was a Country, has appeared fifty-four years after the author’s first novel, Things Fall Apart, today arguably the best-known novel ever written by an African. In the time between the two books, a remarkable literary and

Read the rest of There was a Country: Chinua Achebe makes peace with Nigeria – By Tolu Ogunlesi »

This piece is part of the Africa and the War on Drugs debate – a series of articles and reviews commissioned to coincide with the launch of the latest book in the African Arguments series:  Africa and the War on

Read the rest of Africa and the War on Drugs: Guinea-Bissau, Coups and Africa’s Cocaine Equation – By Joseph Kirschke »

Amentu, Ethiopia The Rift Valley in Eastern Africa is our hole in the ground, where we all come from. Not far from here our earliest ancestors stopped hanging out in the trees and started to use their rear limbs to

Read the rest of Ethiopia: a tale of two development models from the valley where we began – By Richard Dowden »

Things are changing in Tanzania. Large gas finds off the country’s coastline look set to shake up a country generally considered in continental economic analysis as stable but unexciting. With big players entering the Tanzanian market, the country finds itself

Read the rest of Tanzania: natural gas boom masks degradation in rule of law and social stability – By Tom Savory and Subiro Mwapinga »