Arriving in Kenya from South Africa, the business visitor immediately feels the benefit of Kenya’s long-term incremental and consistent improvements in the business operating environment.  This is... 

Would Thomas Sankara be turning in his grave at the events occurring in the country he renamed Burkina Faso – the land of uncorruptible people? Sankara, the intellectual powerhouse of... 

If all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players with their exits and their entrances, Africa is headed for high drama – a heart-stopping and pulse-racing 2024. The backdrop is... 

With war between Israel and Palestine, centred on Gaza, the ring of fire that has engulfed the Sahel now appears to reach up to encircle the Mediterranean, stretching as far as Jordan, with Egypt... 

Attacks in Israel, its counterattacks in Gaza and the war in Ukraine have sent global tensions to highs not seen for a generation or more. This, combined with a rush of military coups in West... 

The cries of “contagion”, “epidemic” have died down after Gabon became the latest in a string of countries to suffer a military takeover. As the Sahelian dust begins to settle, we see that this... 

The military coup that has taken place in Niger completes a band of malleable instability that now stretches from the port at Conakry in Guinea, in West Africa, to Sudan’s Port Sudan, in East... 

Scanning global international news can be relentlessly depressing as the world faces multilayered transitions. Firstly, from a largely bipolar world that a colleague cruelly named “the West and the... 

As I sat down to write a column on Nigeria on 12 June, I had a flashback to ‘The June 12’ – the name Nigerians gave to the country’s failed first post-Cold War attempt to restore democratic rule.... 

France’s Parliament has unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution encouraging the European Union (EU) to designate Russian paramilitary company the Wagner Group as a terrorist organisation.  The... 

The publication in April of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) global growth report makes for sobering reading.  Much of Africa has a massive hangover after the institution encouraged a... 

A Nairobi-based friend and business colleague reminisced with me last week about how representatives of then Eskom International beat a path to his door in the late 1990s with promises of how Eskom... 

Elections are fast approaching in Zimbabwe, giving rise to popular expectations and international hopes for change but equally to a blatant increase in government corruption from the last remaining... 

It is hard to overstate the importance of Nigeria’s February elections. The country’s security, social, economic and business environments are in a parlous state.  The army has lost control of... 

As most of sub-Saharan businesses race towards the end-of-year close and the prospect of a summer or festival break, it is time to reflect on yet another year hurtling by at breakneck speed. Why... 

Diversified commodity trading and mining multinational Glencore has taken up tenth place in global corruption’s hall of shame.  In the first week of November, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO)... 

Surveying Africa for the latest trends can be dispiriting. West Africa has been sucked into the mire of a fresh round of military coups d’état as Russia extends its neocolonial project to the... 

  The success of the recent Ukrainian counteroffensive, the routing of Russian forces occupying Ukraine and the recapture of key eastern cities and surrounds of Kharkov and Izyum may prove to be a... 

When a UK politician known equally for her religion as for her politics said of her own party leader that “there’s something of the night about him”, it stuck. The same could be said of William... 

Sudan’s Islamist-led military is seeking to consolidate its control of the country, assumed in an October 25, 2021, coup d’état, through deception, extreme violence, abduction, suppression and... 

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same – comes to mind when casting a casual eye over Kenya’s August Presidential and Parliamentary... 

Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema is famous for his expert use of social media platforms. His opponents taunted him as the President only on social media – until the quiet crowds of his young... 

As international businesses scurry to close off any links to Russia’s sanctioned political and oligarch class, some of Nigeria’s politicians and would-be politicians may start to feel a little... 

“You can focus on the details of contracts and modelling in risk management but it’s the big events – like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – that can literally wipe out your balance sheet.” These... 

I recently received a horrifying message from a friend in Guinea-Bissau. She had narrowly escaped death while working in the Presidency during the failed coup on February 1. “When the shooting... 

The end of the year is traditionally when we muse about the year gone by as we look to the one ahead. This is difficult at the best of times, but the Covid-19 pandemic has taken volatility and... 

As Angola takes on the oligarch-kleptocrats and makes meaningful reforms, investors start to notice, but is it too late to woo voters? Rio Tinto’s signing in early October of a diamond mining... 

That France’s special relationship with Frenching-speaking nations, known as Françafrique, is undergoing a fundamental transformation would not have been obvious at the 28th Afrique-France Summit,... 

What links a military coup in the ‘wildest west’ of West Africa and the less media-glamorous landslide election victory in Zambia? West Africa has turned back the regional political clock to the... 

Do three significant events in the subregion signify a trend? First, although the trial of South Africa’s former president, Jacob Zuma, may have been postponed to September 9, the so-called Arms... 

In this opinion piece, African Risk Consulting's Tara O’Connor and Raphael Korber-Hoffman review recent security developments across the African continent Two events pointing to a significant shift... 

Political transitions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) do not happen too often. When they do, they are invariably violent, and the consequences of external intervention or internal... 

In aimless surfing on Twitter a couple of days ago, up popped a picture of the new Kazungula crossing. The name resonates: Kazungula. One of my earliest memories of the Kazungula was of my family... 

A year ago, in the face of the first Covid-19 death in Egypt, I wrote that the time for governments to act was immediately and that the time for corporates to plan for a pandemic was yesterday. The... 

In this opinion piece, Africa Risk Consulting’s Tara O’Connor and Fiona Grant assess the post-election picture in Uganda, where long-serving President Yoweri Museveni won a sixth term at the helm... 

The most significant casualties of Brexit are the 112 000 British people who have lost their lives to Covid-19.  It was the greatest misfortune of all that they should have fallen prey to a deadly... 

As the first year of the plague closes out, a second year threatens a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Africa has seen fewer infections and deaths, but the virus has had other lasting... 

When I think of Nigeria at 60, I cannot shed the image of a waking giant tied down by a myriad of criss-crossed ropes, and at the end of each rope a member of Nigeria’s elite, too many of whom are... 

Something in the stars must have misaligned in 2016 to set the political world off kilter and bring in its wake the wanton destruction that is populism. In the UK it brought Brexit, in the US it... 

Tara O’Connor and Leonard Mbulle-Nziege investigate Côte d’Ivoire’s critical October Presidential elections, in which the incumbent, Alassane Outtara, will be seeking a third term in office Its... 

Poor Zambia. What did it do to deserve such unwanted attention to be misspoken of in such a manner – and in the so-called mother of all Parliaments?  UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced in... 

As South Africans emerge blinking into the winter sunlight, they do so to a ‘new normal’, including an emerging new order. Great plagues throughout history have accelerated fundamental changes that...