Insights

The Russian invasion of Ukraine’s impact is far-reaching, having effects well beyond the Eurasian continent. Amid a backdrop of COVID-19 and climate change, the war is contributing to historic levels of global inflation, with food and energy prices reaching record highs in recent weeks. Both Russia and Ukraine are key exporters of wheat, natural gas,…

Ghana has outwardly solved many of the problems that were plaguing the power sector as recently as 2016. Customers are no longer facing load shedding popularly known as ‘dumsor’ and the government claims to have cleared its debts to the state energy distributor, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). Negotiations on outstanding debt to independent…

On 17 February, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa delivered his sixth annual State of the Nation Address (SONA) since taking office in 2018. For the first time in the country’s democratic history, the speech took place outside of parliament due to a fire earlier in the year. It was a precursor to Finance Minister’s Enoch…

As Africa enters its third year of COVID-19, the long-predicted ripple effects of the pandemic are coming to bear on its political structures. The myriad impacts – including peaks in the cost of living and unemployment – will fundamentally alter the political landscape across the continent over 2022. At AML, we will be closely monitoring…

As the eighth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) began at the end of November, African leaders travelled to Senegal to participate in the triennial summit. The conference – a cornerstone of Sino-African relations – saw Beijing pledge USD 40 billion to the continent, marking the first time since 2000 that Beijing reduced its commitment, which…

The COP26 meeting of world leaders wrapped up in mid-November with a number of critical action points that will set the tone for the clean energy transition, particularly in relation to reducing road transport emissions. Among these action points are the need to increase available charging infrastructure ports, the implementation of fuel efficiency standards and…

As the COP26 Summit begins in Glasgow this week, the world’s attention is squarely centred on climate change. Leaders from multilateral institutions, national governments, and the private sector will come together to make new commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mobilise climate finance. From an African perspective, COP26 has particular significance: no continent has…

Many investors in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) anticipated a new dawn for investor regulation early this year, as President Félix Tshisekedi shed the yoke of his predecessor, Joseph Kabila, and broke from their uneasy power-sharing alliance. Under President Kabila, mining companies faced opaque tendering and were subject to punitive taxation changes that ignored…

On 27 July 2021, Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara welcomed his predecessor Laurent Gbagbo to the presidential palace in Abidjan. Remarkably, the two political heavyweights were meeting for the first time since their rivalry triggered a civil war in 2010 – marking an historic moment in Ivorian politics. President Ouattara initiated the meeting as part…

July in South Africa has been dominated by eight days of “anarchy and mayhem”, in the words of President Cyril Ramaphosa. The imprisonment of ex-president Jacob Zuma lit a tinderbox among citizens of the world’s most unequal society, instigating widespread looting and violent protests from 9 July, concentrated in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. The ruling…