Qatar Airways is already active in Rwanda, and Doha is now considering basing its Africa fund there after first studying the Ivorian option.
The blocks, which were held until recently by businessman Dan Gertler have awakened the appetites of several oil companies with money to spend. A takeover by Israel's Delek Drilling would fit in neatly, however, with the company's diversification strategy.
The Ivorian defence minister recently awarded a $25m contract to the US firm Score Technologies to monitor the northern border of Ivory Coast in order to prevent attacks by armed groups. A setback for France's Thales, and a decision that was encouraged by Lacina Koné, Ouattara's former adviser on new technologies.
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Defence The Ivorian government has opted for the offshore solution of the Turkish firm Karpowership over the onshore power plant option proposed by the UK's Aggreko.
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Energy The Chinese construction giant, already well-entrenched in Ivory Coast, is gaining a foothold in Burkina Faso with help from Arnaud Jean-Claude Soumah, the godson of the late Ivorian founding president Félix Houphouët-Boigny.
Swedish General Dennis Gyllensporre will step down from his role as force commander of MINUSMA in 2022. He was appointed in 2018 after Belgian General Jean-Paul Deconinck.
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Diplomacy 
Power Resources' first coltan refinery in Kigali has entered its final construction phase. The plant will turn Rwanda into a key global supplier of this strategic mineral used in the telephone and electronics industries.
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Mining Gideon Moi, the chief presidential campaign backer of Uhuru Kenyatta's protégé Raila Odinga, has deployed his sidekick Nick Salat to sound out potential members of the government that will run the country until next August's elections.
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Politics While the White House was publishing an executive order paving the way for sanctions against Ethiopia's warning parties, 11 US-based Ethiopian Orthodox archbishops arrived in Washington to champion the cause of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
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Diplomacy 
Halted in its tracks in March 2020 just three months after its launch by Covid-19, Ylias Akbaraly's GS Airlines is preparing for a fresh start.
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Business Botswana may have the largest uranium reserves in Africa, but many obstacles stand in the way of its ambition to produce yellowcake. The lack of an appropriate legal framework is one of them. The country's science minister used a visit to the IAEA to try to boost cooperation between his country and the organisation to get the country on the road to producing the prized ore.
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Mining 
France's former ambassador to Tunisia is continuing to take a keen interest in the Forum mondial de la mer being organised by his friend Rym Benzina.
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Diplomacy Casablanca's powerful real estate sector is unlikely to be perturbed by the election of Nabila Rmili as the city's mayor. She got the job following an agreement between her RNI party, PAM and Istiqlal.
