Speakers: Jesse Salah Ovadia (Newcastle University), Ernest Nwapa (Pioneer Executive Secretary, Nigerian Content Development & Monitoring Board), Patrick Obath (Director, ASI Kenya Extractives Industry Development Programme), Isabelle Ramdoo (ECDPM)

Some 7,000km and three time zones separate Côte D’Ivoire and Tanzania. As they both go to the polls on 25 October 2015 to elect a new president, Nick Branson suggests seven intriguing commonalities.

There is a new catchphrase for Africa’s economy; “facing headwinds”. Paul Adams revisits Africa’s sovereign bond markets and predicts the return of fiscal conservatism.

Ahead of elections in Tanzania, Michaela Collord suggests that opposition candidates might have success in the Central Zone, traditionally a support base of the ruling party.

ARI Senior Researcher, Nick Branson, was cited in Tanzania’s biggest selling daily newspaper,

Nick Branson identifies constituencies in Tanzania where opposition chances of electoral success have been improved by local developments, political scandals or party defections since 2010.

Individual politicians have received much greater attention than the manifestos they are supposed to promoting to Tanzanians. So what do the manifestos of ruling and opposition parties promise? Nick Branson investigates.

Speaker: Edward Denison (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture)

In rural areas of Cameroon formal health systems are struggling to provide basic health care for citizens. Dr Tara Kelly asks if integrating traditional approaches can help.

Kilamba New City reportedly cost US$3.5 billion to build. Dr Chloé Buire interrogates the myth it is a “ghost town” and illustrates how the settlement has attracted young, upwardly mobile Angolans.