With less than two months before Kenyans head to the polls for what is shaping up to be the most competitive and polarised general election in the country’s history, many fear that this East African country of over 40 million has not seen the last of electoral violence.
Egyptians are returning to the polls this weekend to choose between Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq, ousted president Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister, in a hotly-contested presidential runoff.
Candidates competing in Egypt's first presidential election since Hosni Mubarak was ousted are vying for a prestigious position whose job description – oddly enough – has not yet been written. An unresolved dispute over who will write a new constitution for post-Mubarak Egypt has put the country in the unusual position of voting for a president with undefined authority.
As Egyptians head to the polls Wednesday and Thursday to elect the country's first post-Mubarak president, local analysts say that voting results - even on the very eve of the balloting - remain impossible to predict.
As Egyptians prepare to elect their country’s first president since the uprising that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak, the military junta that has ruled for the last 15 months has shown little sign it is prepared to accept civilian oversight.
Thousands of people suffered rape, torture and other violence during the post- electoral crisis in Côte d'Ivoire beginning in December 2010. But many survivors of rights violations have been afraid to seek justice for fear of reprisals by the perpetrators. An initiative by the International Federation of Human Rights aims to support 75 such victims as they bring their cases to court.
More than 15 months after Egypt's Tahrir Square uprising and four months after free parliamentary polls, many Egyptians say that daily living conditions are worse now than they were in the Mubarak era.
One is a conservative Islamist attempting to reinvent himself as a pragmatic liberal, the other is a secular statesman trying to distance himself from the authoritarian regime he once served. Both aspire to be Egypt’s first civilian president.
When the verdict against Liberia’s former President Charles Taylor for war crimes in Sierra Leone is handed down on Thursday, it will be of no help to the many former combatants of the country’s brutal civil war who have not been reintegrated into society. Instead, they will continue to pose a threat to Sierra Leone’s future stability.
It was the middle of the day when Tabisou, 72, suddenly saw people from her town of Amderamboukane in Mali fleeing for their lives. Her family had no time to pack their things; the fighting had already begun.
It would be too simplistic to think that Malawi’s problems have ended with the death of President Bingu wa Mutharika. But it is an opportunity for newly appointed President Joyce Banda, who is also leader of the opposition People’s Party, to step up and offer a new and more responsive style of leadership.
Analysts say that Senegal’s outgoing President Abdoulaye Wade was made to pay for his failure to respond to popular demands, particularly arising from the high cost of basic commodities, a lengthy strike by teachers, and high youth unemployment, by losing his bid for a third term of office.
Rights groups and activists are warning of a rapidly deteriorating political climate in Angola following a police raid on a private newspaper and a violent crackdown on anti-government protests.
There are two women among the 14 candidates contesting the first round of Senegalese presidential elections that will be held on Feb. 26. But according to several analysts, this overwhelmingly Muslim West African country is not ready to be governed by a woman.
When Cameroon’s President Paul Biya announced that the 50th anniversary of the reunification of French and British Cameroon will take place later this year, it resurrected bitter feelings among Anglophone Cameroonians who say they do not feel like equal partners with their Francophone counterparts.
Under a new gender quota law introduced in Mauritius, at least one-third of the candidates in local elections must be women. But the adoption of a national quota is not yet on the horizon, even though just 18 percent of legislators are women and there are only two female cabinet ministers.
Fears of violent demonstrations against the provisional results of the presidential elections - released on Dec. 9 by the electoral commission - have given way to terror in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has crackled with the sound of gunshots and the firing of tear gas canisters since Friday afternoon.
While the Congolese are awaiting the official results of the late November presidential elections, three of the eleven candidates have already called for them to be annulled.
Adolfo Andre knows what he wants for his country and says he will fight on until he gets it.
It is a hot and humid morning in the village of Fube in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Dust and smoke from morning fires and low-lying clouds mingle to give the horizon a distinctively fuzzy look.
Liberians cast their ballots Tuesday in an election that has so far been described as orderly and peaceful, though concerns persist that a disputed result could anger voters and fuel minor unrest.