In the run-up to the African Union summit on 6 and 7 February in Addis Ababa, Turkish diplomats are pulling out all the stops to ensure that the third Turkey-Africa summit, scheduled for September, features prominently on the agenda.
As Denis Sassou NGuesso seeks a fourth term as president, Aksa Enerji, a firm owned by a Turkish oligarch close to Ankara's ruling party, is speeding up its plans to increase electricity supply to Pointe-Noire, a city that has traditionally been hostile to the Congolese leader.
Recently hit by revelations about his business ties with the ex-head of the electoral commission, the businessman Roger Abotome Bekabysia has turned his association with ex-president Joseph Kabila's political movement into a veritable business model.
The Anglo-Dutch major Shell has taken advantage of the deterioration in relations between the state-owned GNPC and its longstanding partner ENI, whom the government has accused of manoeuvring it into signing an unfavourable contract on Sankofa.
Enjoying a strong network of connections within the Ugandan army and US Department of Defense, Kampala Executive Aviation is deploying its helicopters in Mogadishu.
The Ethiopian government has announced the end of hostilities in Tigray province, but the TPLF, several of whose top leaders are still on the run, has formed pockets of resistance in mountainous areas in the centre of the country.
President Salva Kiir has appointed a Padang Dinka as deputy governor for Upper Nile state, home to over 70% of the country's crude oil output. Though intended as a conciliatry gesture towards this community, it could well spark fresh clashes with Shilluks and Nuers.
At long last, French president Emmanuel Macron will meet with his Djiboutian counterpart Ismaïl Omar Guelleh (IOG) on 12 February.
The magnate Kuda Tagwirei, who is an advisor to President Emmerson Mnangagwa, has been granted a substantial tax exemption on one of his mining companies. He is already suspected of being the éminence grise behind Harare's new parastatal, Kuvimba Mining House.
The Russian fertiliser giant has opened two warehouses in Cape Town and plans to soon do the same in Durban so it can directly sell its products to South African clients and boost its presence in the country.
Sahrawi business baron Dahmane Derham is asserting his control over his oil tankers that bring fuel imported from Spain to the entire kingdom.
Determined to leave his mark before the change in government, particularly in Rome and Washington, the minister of foreign affairs has placed 171 diplomats in new positions.
Abdelmadjid Tebboune and his military chief of staff Said Chengriha want to erase the legacy of Chengriha's predecessor Ahmed Gaid Salah, who had put the intelligence services under the control of the army. This major overhaul could take place as soon as the president returns from Germany.
Petrofac had no other choice but to bring the courts into its dispute with the oil trio Equinor-BP-Sonatrach but may end up paying a high price for the move.
