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Andrew Harding Africa correspondent

This is the home of my reports, updates and analysis from across the world’s liveliest continent

Taking on Uganda's LRA rebels

Seven years ago Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni confidently assured me that the war against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) would be over in months.

It has not worked out quite like that.

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SA's highest crime - the cover-up

It's not the crime - it's the cover-up. What was true for Richard Nixon three decades ago seems to be equally applicable in South Africa today.

As the establishment here sweats beneath a particularly cumbersome stack of scandals, what is most striking is not the alleged crimes themselves but the nonchalance with which the accused have shrugged off the very notion that they might be publicly accountable for their actions.

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Burma's Zargana is still laughing

It's not my "patch" any more, but I couldn't resist writing about the news that Zargana - Burma's best-loved comedian - has been released from prison. I wrote about him when I was based in Asia, and below is the report I've just put together for the BBC's From Our Own Correspondent programme.

The prison guards woke Zargana early on Wednesday morning. No explanations. No chance to say goodbye to the other men sharing his cramped, windowless cell.

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South Africa's missing billions…

It's the sort of scandal that should bring down governments, and leave a nation's collective chin dragging on the floor in shock.

And yet this week's announcement that 30bn rand ($3.8bn; £2.4bn) goes missing each year from the South African government's procurement budget, has been greeted with little more than a shrug here. What does that say about this country?

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Leadership prize: A worthy cause?

I appreciate the logic and the intentions behind Mo Ibrahim's generous annual award for African leadership. How can you argue with the idea of encouraging and rewarding good governance? Not least on this particular continent.

And yet, something about the $5m (£3.2m) prize has always bothered me.

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Somalia: Aid and accountability

In the aftermath of Tuesday's spectacularly ruthless bomb attack in Mogadishu, I wanted to direct you towards this powerful article examining al-Shabab's "twisted ideology, repressive methods, and indifference to the suffering of its own people" in the face of Somalia's worsening famine, and calling for aid and accountability to go "hand in hand".

The author, a senior and experienced United Nations official, focuses on the importance of dismantling "Somalia's deadly culture of impunity".

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Rainbow nation flags over Dalai Lama saga

So, democratic South Africa has chosen to put its crucial trading relationship with China above its commitment to free speech and an old friend.

The decision was hardly a surprise. Nor was the furious reaction from supporters of the Dalai Lama - and many others here - who called it "the darkest day", and a cowardly, hypocritical pandering to Beijing's bullying.

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Back to whose reality?

How is one to take the news - or rather the muddled, vaguely mysterious, sort-of-announcement here in Johannesburg - that three of Nelson Mandela's grandchildren are planning to star in their own reality television show?

I must admit that my mind lurched, glibly, back to 1987 and to the alarming spectacle of another nation's "First Family" deciding to let their hair down.

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My unexpected trip to a Libyan hospital

It was a strange night.

I was woken by two Filipina women in starched nurses' uniforms at the foot of my bed. One was holding a razor.

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Somalia famine: World's response 'unforgiveable'

Take a look at this new report on Somalia's famine.

Calls to arms do not get much more urgent, or more emphatic.

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Libya: MI6 torture claim interview

I've interviewed Sami al-Saadi, the Libyan man who accuses Britain's MI6 of arranging to send him home to be tortured in Colonel Gaddafi's jails - read the full details in this news story.

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Libya's interim PM feels the heat

Libya's interim prime minister has been branded "an obstacle to the revolution" by some of the armed groups that are furiously jockeying for power in post-Gaddafi Tripoli.

On Sunday, Mahmoud Jibril outlined plans to put the various informal military units that have fought against Col Gaddafi under the control of the Transitional National Council.

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Bani Walid: Gaddafi loyalists fight on

I'm writing this beside our car in a small patch of shade outside Bani Walid. Journalists are being halted at a checkpoint here and so a small caravan park of vehicles and satellite dishes has formed in this dusty brown, sweltering valley.

Occasionally there is a roar of a Nato jet in the cloudless sky, and half an hour ago three Grad missiles smashed into the hills about four kolometres (2.5 miles) away.

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Battle for Bani Walid begins

The battle for Bani Walid has begun, and with it the familiar jittery confusion and adrenalin of Libya's rollercoaster rebellion.

Trucks packed with ammunition and fighters have been racing through the makeshift checkpoint where journalists have been told to wait, some distance north of the town.

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Libya's interim PM says battle 'not yet over'

"There are tensions. But no problems."

That was the neat but rather elusive conclusion of a senior military official here in Tripoli, when I asked him about reports of growing friction between Libya's transitional civil administration - which is moving surprisingly slowly to fill a power vacuum in the capital - and the patchwork of rebel military units - some with hints of a pronounced Islamist agenda - that seized the city from Col Muammar Gaddafi's forces and now seem reluctant to abandon control.

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UK 'declined Libya rendition apology'

Britain's senior diplomat in Tripoli declined to offer an apology during a meeting on Thursday with the man at the centre of allegations of rendition, torture, and collusion between the former government of Col Gaddafi, London and Washington.

I understand from a Libyan source at Thursday's meeting between Dominic Asquith and Abdel Hakim Belhaj, now in charge of Tripoli's military council, that Mr Belhaj raised the issue of an apology directly with the British envoy but was politely turned down.

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Return to a different Libya

There were polite queues, and giddy children waving flags in the back of their parents' cars, and obliging border guards, and smiling men with guns proffering advice to new arrivals.

Libya's violent revolution many not be over quite yet, but when I crossed into the country from Tunisia a short while ago, a mood of excitement and optimism seemed well entrenched.

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Behind the face of famine

As the famine spreads across Somalia, aid agencies are frantically trying to work out the implications of America's new "flexibility" when it comes to allowing its dollars and aid to enter famine-stricken regions controlled by the Islamist group al-Shabab.

For some groups it may mean more money. But how quickly? With what strings attached? Who is first in line? And is there a risk that by accepting American funding aid organisations could jeopardise their own access to al-Shabab regions?

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Mogadishu machinations: Is the famine an opportunity?

I have just swapped the despair, chaos and ruthless pragmatism of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, for the surreal claustrophobia of the African Union's heavily fortified peacekeeping base at the city's airport.

There are big waves crashing on the nearby coast, rain showers blowing in from the Indian Ocean, lots of building work and resolute talk about "liberating Somalia from famine and international terrorism".

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Welcome to tough, unpredictable Mogadishu

We've got eight gunmen in the pickup in front of us, another seven are watching our backs in the vehicle behind. Welcome to the rough, unpredictable streets of Mogadishu.

The last time I was here, we were embedded in the Green Zone security bubble of the African Union peacekeeping operation at the edge of the Somali capital, with its Ugandan and Burundian troops, its heavy mortars and armoured convoys.

About Andrew

Africa correspondent since 2009, covering the continent's highs and lows - from the World Cup, Africa's economic boom, and the literary treasures of Timbuktu, to the pirates of Somalia, the conflict in Ivory Coast, and the struggles of Zimbabwe.

20 years as a foreign correspondent, based in the former Soviet Union, Africa, and Asia.

Reported on the 1993 parliamentary rebellion in Moscow, two Chechen wars, the Asian tsunami in 2004, and conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, Congo, Sudan, Liberia and beyond.

Born in the UK, grew up in Belgium and boarding school. Married with three children.

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