The prime minister has over the last three years restricted political decision-making to an increasingly narrow circle of loyal followers. His office is now the core of Ethiopian power, leaving government ministers out in the cold.
Italian major ENI is pursuing its drive to rid itself of its smaller assets in Congo, leaving those in charge of the country's oil policy and the SNPC with difficult decisions to make.
With the Paris Court of Cassation due to hand down a ruling in early February, the Falcon 7X jet belonging to the Congolese president's office looks like it will not be going on sale before July.
In Bissau on 15 January to meet with President Umaro Sissoco Embaló, the former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has offered to help Guinea Bissau raise Chinese funding for infrastructure projects.
Following the murder in early October of Ekow Quansah Hayford, an MP for the president's New Patriotic Party (NPP), in the midst of the general election campaign, the Ghanaian parliament has decided to beef up the security arrangements for MPs by deploying an additional 200 police officers.
Arbitrators are in the process of being appointed to handle actions filed at ICSID against Tanzania by Montero Mining, Indiana Resources, and Winshear Gold over the withdrawal of their mining permits in 2019.
Several big guns in the Kenyan government who hail from the region bordering Somalia are urging President Uhuru Kenyatta to revive dialogue with his Somalian counterpart Farmajo.
More than six years after announcing a wind farm project in Limuru to the north of Nairobi, the Kenyan firm Aperture Green Power has finalised its environmental and social impact assessment for the construction of a power line.
Foreign Minister Sibusiso Moyo, one of President Mnangagwa's staunchest supporters, has succumbed to Covid-19. His death leaves Zimbabwe's diplomacy in turmoil at a critical time for its international relations.
To help win a contract to assess opportunities in Angola's oil sector, the Scottish consultancy Belltree has turned to the well-connected businessman Bráulio de Brito, president of the UK-Angola Chamber of Commerce.
With the setting up of a parliamentary friendship group, the former journalist Sofiane Makhloufi will be trying to reactivate links with France, which have become somewhat more distant since Kais Saied came to power.
Long-time regime critic Prince Moulay Hicham, whose renewable energy projects have fizzled, wants to improve his relations with the kingdom, where he owns land and a very profitable agricultural estate.
Although Israel's ex-ambassador in Cairo David Govrin arrived in Rabat on 26 January to take up the reins of the liaison bureau in Morocco, Mohammed VI is taking his time to designate a counterpart in Tel Aviv.
