Menas Associates Blog
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Who is really running Algeria?
Algeria is in an effective state of undeclared martial law. The country’s most powerful body is the Haut Conseil de Sécurité (HCS). It is only supposed to intervene when the country is threatened by: an insecurity crisis; a threat of foreign aggression; or major...
Presidential race intensifies following Tinubu’s return to Nigeria
Bola Ahmed Tinubu — national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and would-be successor to President Muhammadu Buhari — quietly returned to Nigeria on 8 October after a three-month sojourn in the UK where he was being treated for unknown health...
Parliament’s election law designed to favour eastern Libya
On 3 October the House of Representatives (House) announced that it had passed a law to govern the parliamentary elections which were originally expected to take place simultaneously alongside presidential elections on 24 December. The full text was not made public,...
What can Buhari win from the summit season?
Alone among the leaders of Africa’s big economies, President Muhammadu Buhari attended the UN General Assembly in person, in the week starting 19 September. It was Nigeria’s opening shot in a sequence of economic and political summits taking place between now and the...
Mahamat Déby moves to secure Chad’s borders
General Mahamat Déby — son of the late President Idriss Déby, and head of the Conseil militaire de Transition (CMT) which took over the country after his father was assassinated in April — clearly believes that Chad is threatened from almost all sides and possibly...
Iran’s new hardline Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani
Ali Bagheri Kani is Iran’s new deputy foreign minister for political affairs. He is a former diplomat and was deputy secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) from 2007 to 2013 under hardliner Saeed Jalili. He is closely affiliated with the...
Morocco’s new Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch
Morocco’s elections on 8 September delivered a shattering defeat for the ruling Parti de la Justice et Development (PJD) and brought an end to almost a decade of rule by political Islam. Although the party had been widely expected to fare worse in these polls...
Obituary: Abdelaziz Bouteflika – 1937-2021
Abdelaziz Bouteflika was a dominant figure in Algerian politics for more than six decades. Most notably, he was its longest-serving president, from 1999–2019. He died from cardiac arrest on 17 September at his medically equipped state residence at Zeralda at the age...
Will Nigeria soon become a one-party state?
The defection of another key member of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has increased fears that Nigeria may soon become a one-party state. Femi Fani-Kayode, a long-time critic of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), defected and claimed that he...
Are Chinese investors abandoning Algeria?
A measure of Algeria’s economic crisis is that Chinese investors are looking elsewhere in Africa to develop projects under less arduous business conditions. In 2020 there were around 1,100 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) cooperation projects in Africa but Algeria...