When President Mwai Kibaki first came to power in Kenya in 2003 he put out an arrest warrant for the chief justice, among many other public officials, in a bid to stamp out a cancer that had taken hold of the country. One of his first legislative acts was to publish three anti-corruption bills. Just two years later, the media reported that corruption under Kibaki’s rule had cost the country about $1bn, nearly a fifth of the state budget. His anti corruption chief John Githonga left Kenya after receiving death threats. In Nigeria, the fight against corruption has been patchy…

The close relationship between South Africa’s new president, Jacob Zuma, and the country’s powerful trade unions had the private sector and investors worried. Would the payback for union support of his campaign, which helped sweep him to victory in April, be a leap to the left for a carefully charted, investor-friendly economic policy? Would there be rampant state spending to appease poorer sections of the population, for which Zuma’s promise of poverty alleviation was the answer to their prayers? Certainly Zuma has appointed leading members of the trade union federation Cosatu and the South African Communist Party to critical roles…

ZIMBABWE is currently swamped by investor conferences. The perception of rich pickings at rock-bottom prices and the search for new capital by the public and private sectors have raised the business profile of a country no one wanted to visit a year ago. And despite the flaws of the unity government, the economy is starting to turn around. The introduction of hard currency has been the biggest factor in restoring a sense of normality and is allowing companies to gear up for a new era. International companies that were forced to ring- fence their Zimbabwe operations as a result of…

WHY is it so often those with the biggest cars and smartest houses who complain about how iniquitous capitalism is? Smug claims about the death of capitalism in the wake of the global financial crisis have become commonplace in Africa, as elsewhere, and there seems to be real hope that a new world order will emerge that allows the continent half a chance of competing in it. Unfortunately for the Mercedes-Benz socialists among us, any new order is likely to be more about shifting the emphasis of global trade and investment flows, rather than any radical change in economic model.…

THERE was some angry talk last weekend in the Wellington Hotel in Warri, the commercial capital of Delta State in Nigeria. To pass the time while waiting for a meeting with the state governor, who presides over the largest chunk of Nigeria’s oil economy, I wandered into a public meeting of Niger Deltans in the hotel’s convention centre, where a heated discussion was taking place. As the entire gathering turned to look at me in surprise, I decided not to linger — my decision informed by the alarming headlines on the newspapers being sold on the hotel steps: “Army pounds…