Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Associate Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. This week’s African Union summit—which brought heads of state to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Monday and Tuesday—featured debate on how best to accomplish one of the main recommendations from its reform commission: curb the body’s reliance on outside donors. Julian Hattem reported for WPR in February that the African Union’s expenses are expected to total $439 million this year, of which just 26 percent will be covered by African nations, undercutting leaders’ claims that it pursues “African solutions to African [...]
In December, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress will elect a new party leader to succeed beleaguered President Jacob Zuma and lead the party into national elections in 2019. Within the ANC, the campaign to replace Zuma officially has not started. But, in effect, it has been underway since the beginning of the year, with political maneuvering and jockeying behind the scenes. This is a product of the ANC’s arcane internal procedures, a hangover from its years of exile when members viewed elections for party positions with suspicion and preferred so-called consensus candidates in order to avoid “disunity.” The fiction [...]
Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Associate Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. In March 2007, a group of NGOs filed a complaint in France against the ruling families of a handful of African countries, alleging that property and other assets they owned in France were obtained via corruption. A decade of legal wrangling later, the first trial in the so-called “biens mal acquis,” or ill-gotten gains, affair is now in full swing, with hearings unfolding in Paris in the case of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the vice president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea [...]
