confidentially speaking

The Africa Confidential Blog

• March 2010

Zimbabwe: Birthday Boy Blues

By Lion

Robert Mugabe's 86th birthday week started off with a party thrown by the Chinese Embassy and ended with an all night bash in Bulawayo of music and song aimed at the younger generation. In between there was a seemingly endless round of ca...

• February 2010

Africa Cup of Nations: Final thoughts

By Oscar Rickett

They may not be going to the World Cup, but Egypt have now won the African Cup of Nations three times in a row, cementing their position as the most successful team this tournament has ever seen as well as inspiring some observers to call them the best si...

• January 2010

Africa Cup of Nations: the Semi Finals

By Oscar Rickett

EGYPT 4-0 ALGERIAIt wouldn’t be hard to understand why a peace-loving character would have given the west-Angolan city of Benguela a wide berth on Thursday. The boys were back in town. A rivalry unmatched in world football was being re-i...

• January 2010

Truth and stereotyping: Goalkeepers in Africa

By Oscar Rickett

The stereotype of an African goalkeeper can be summed up in one word: bad. African goalkeepers are thought of as being unreliable, mentally unstable a...

• January 2010

Africa Cup of Nations, Part Two

By Oscar Rickett

So much for the rise of the small team… As we head into the quarter-finals of the African Cup of Nations 2010, it is the big names – with the exception of Zambia, who have qualified for the last...

• January 2010

The African Cup of Nations, Part One

By Oscar Rickett

The African Cup of Nations or, to give it its correct name, the Orange Africa Cup of Nations (the future’s bright, the future’s African football), began a week ago following the tragic killing of three me...

• November 2009

Congo V-Day at the Royal Albert Hall, London

By Billie

19 November 2009 marked the 100th anniversary of the Great Congo Demonstration held at the Royal Albert Hall, chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Randall Davidson and supported by other clergy, prominent acti...

• October 2009

Annkio on Amnesty: a Niger Delta activist speaks out.

By Dipo

On 16 October, the day a group loyal to Henry Okah broke from an amnesty and vowed to keep fighting in the creeks, another key figure in the armed struggle held forth in more rarefied settin...

• July 2009

Nigeria in crisis … and the band played on

By Aardvark

One of Nigeria’s biggest banks announced this morning that it wants to raise US$3 billion on the local stock market, my old friend Nduka Obaigbena has hosted the glitterati of Lagos in a characteristically grand birthday party and the Lagos go-slow was as...

• July 2009

Barack Obama beats the drum for democracy and dignity

By Aardvark

Accra12 July 2009Barack Obama's homecoming lived up to the billing. Ghanaians accorded President Obama the warmest Akwaaba! He returned the compliment, meeting with Ghanaian health workers, activists, politicians and traditio...