There are many ways of measuring Omar Bongo’s rule. You could count the monuments: the Omar Bongo Triumphal Boulevard, the Senate Palace Omar Bongo and the university, football stadium, gymnasium and military hospital that all bear his name.

Grace Githuthwa heard the attackers before she saw them. They were singing war songs, running from two sides towards the church compound where she and 200 others were sheltering from outbursts of ethnic violence. She grabbed her four children and ran inside the Kenya Assemblies of God Pentecostal church.

Daniel Hailu promised to marry his girlfriend after the millennium. And now she eagerly awaits the arrival of her wedding ring. "She is so relieved that 1999 is nearly over," said Hailu, a 29-year-old television salesperson. Hailu is not living in a time warp, but rather in Ethiopia where, thanks to a quirk of history, the country’s calendar lags more than seven years behind the Western version.