Nigeria votes on Saturday in a presidential election beset by fears that abuses and violence will wreck a milestone in African democracy. Concern that Nigeria’s first handover from one civilian leader to another would be compromised was underlined only hours before the vote when militants attacked government buildings in Nigeria’s oil region with dynamite and assault rifles.
Nigeria holds a presidential election on Saturday that is widely seen as a democratic watershed for this country and the whole of Africa. But two days before the vote there are serious doubts over whether it will be seen as a valid, democratic election.
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/ 12 February 2007
A 79-year-old American missionary and her daughter, the wife of a United States diplomat, are cut down by automatic gunfire on the edge of town. A top Kenyan HIV scientist and two other people, one on crutches, are killed when teenage gunmen indiscriminately spray vehicles on a highway with AK-47 fire. Baghdad? Mogadishu? No, Nairobi, capital of East Africa’s richest economy.
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/ 30 January 2007
An African Union summit on Tuesday discussed raising thousands more troops for a peacekeeping force in Somalia after defusing a potentially damaging row over Sudan. The force, essential to avoid a dangerous vacuum when Ethiopian troops leave Somalia within weeks, needs 4Â 000 more troops to bring it up to projected strength of almost 8Â 000.
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/ 7 December 2006
Major oil companies are scrambling for oil off the shores of Madagascar, which has rich mineral reserves and huge quantities of gemstones, including an estimated 70% of the world’s sapphires. The former French colony is the world’s biggest exporter of vanilla and occupies a strategic position off the volatile African coast, 400km to the west.
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/ 29 October 2006
Landing in Johannesburg from anywhere else in Africa can be a deeply disorienting experience, no matter how many times you do it. In fact the contrasts are so great, you can end up wondering if you are still in Africa at all. Confusion sets in as soon as you head into town along a network of fine roads that would put London to shame.