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O’Connor is MD of the pan-African consulting firm Africa Risk Consulting. She is a University of Cape Town graduate and has spent 25 years assessing Africa’s political and business environment – Tara@africariskconsulting.com
Islamist militants a big nightmare for Sahel Alliance
In little over two years, military rule in West Africa’s three mining rich territories – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – has resulted in a sharp deterioration in the political, economic and security...
Islamist violence continues to threaten desperately needed Moz LNG projects
Islamist extremist attacks on Macomia, in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province, come just as the country’s political elite gets into gear for October’s Presidential and Parliamentary...
Shoddy episode in Senegal’s democratic history
The news on March if of Ousmane Sonko’s release from prison, paving the way for a strong opposition showing in Presidential elections that were held on March 24, unleashed spontaneous celebrations...
Kenya’s economy rebounds but ‘hustlers’ don’t feel it
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...
High drama awaits Africa in 2024
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...
Tanzania’s Hassan takes art of the reshuffle to new highs
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...
Latest coups bring to an end three decades of slow but consistent democratisation
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...
Niger coup completes Africa’s band of instability
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...
Zambia shows what a strong leadership can do
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...
Promise of democracy eludes many in Nigeria . . . but things are moving again
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 urges EU to designate Wagner as a terrorist entity
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...
Covid-19, spending, debt: now for the hangover
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...
Corruption in Zim’s use of almost $1bn from IMF
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...
A lot at stake in Nigerian poll
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...
Overarching threats and opportunities in 2023
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...
Glencore – Africa’s textbook case of corruption supply side
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)...
Zambia’s new dawn might just be a lasting new dawn
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...
Impact of Russia-Ukraine conflict on Africa
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...
Kenya’s election heralds a change in leadership
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...
Upcoming elections a test for Kenya’s new Constitution
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...
Elon Musk promises a return to social media Wild West
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...
Nigeria’s oligarchs face pressure as Presidential candidates emerge
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...
Ethiopian leader pushing ahead with economic reforms, despite the armed conflict in Tigray
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...
New Omicron variant takes volatility and uncertainty to new levels
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...
Angola – taking on the oligarch-kleptocrats
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...
From Francafrique to France-Africa
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,...
The corrupt’s horizons are narrowing
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...
Be careful what you wish for . . .
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...
Mining the DRC: after losing some battles, Tshisekedi is winning the war
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...
Kazungula: crossing into a new trade age
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...
It’s time to dare to plan anew
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...
After the dust settles: Uganda post elections
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...
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