LAGOS, Sept 5 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s central bank plans to
diversify its $33 billion in foreign exchange reserves away from
the dollar by switching a tenth of the stockpile into yuan,
underlining the momentum behind China’s drive to
internationalise its currency.

“We are looking at anything to start with from 5 to 10
percent of our reserves,” central bank governor Lamido Sanusi
said on Monday.

July 25 (Reuters) – Ivory Coast struck a deal with financers
and France’s Bouygues on Monday to build a third
bridge over Abidjan’s main lagoon costing 227 million euros
($325 million) to ease congestion, 15 years after the project
was first mooted.

The Ivorian commercial capital is home to five million
people sprawled over a web-like lagoon on the coast, but traffic
is choked because only two bridges cross it.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – The U.N. envoy to Ivory Coast urged the government Thursday to restore law and order by deploying police and sending former rebels who helped President Alassane Ouattara seize power back to their barracks.

Ivorian authorities are struggling to reimpose security to the West African state after a standoff between Ouattara and former president Laurent Gbagbo over a disputed election that re-ignited a 2002-3 civil war.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Ivory Coast’s justice minister pledged that no one who committed war crimes during a post-poll power struggle would escape justice, as he signed a cooperation accord on Tuesday with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICC’s deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda was in Abidjan on Tuesday to open an investigation into crimes committed by either side in a standoff between President Alassane Ouattara and former president Laurent Gbagbo after a November 28 election.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Investigating alleged corruption by Ivory Coast’s former president, Laurent Gbagbo, and his associates may take up to two years, although an initial inquiry is finished, the justice minister said on Tuesday.

Ivorian authorities are investigating allegations of serious abuses committed during a post-election power struggle between Gbagbo and current President Alassane Ouattara.

TUNIS (Reuters) – Tunisia’s revolution in January scared off enough tourists to halve arrivals and slash revenues by almost half to 1.8 billion dinars ($1.3 billion), the tourism minister said Wednesday.

Speaking to Reuters in an interview in Tunis, Trade and Tourism Minister Mehdi Houas also said Hilton Worldwide and Accor had agreed to resume operations suspended during the revolution.

EMILEKRO, Ivory Coast (Reuters) – At a clearing in an Ivory Coast forest, eight men sit round a pile of yellow pods several feet high, slicing them open with machetes and tipping the white resin-covered cocoa beans into plastic containers.

This lush, fertile region in the “Great West” of the world’s top cocoa grower saw some of the worst fighting during a five-month power struggle between President Alassane Ouattara and former incumbent Laurent Gbagbo over a disputed election.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Ivorian forces loyal to both former president Laurent Gbagbo and current president Alassane Ouattara committed war crimes during a violent standoff over a disputed poll, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

An investigation by the rights group details testimony from witnesses and victims of the violence perpetrated in the months following the disputed November 28 election, which plunged the West African nation back into civil war when Gbagbo refused to step down, despite U.N.-certified results showing he lost.

FENGOLO, Ivory Coast (Reuters) – World leaders have lauded the inauguration of President Alassane Ouattara as marking the end of the violence in Ivory Coast, but villagers in the volatile, cocoa-growing west are much less sure.

Ouattara was invested as head of state on Saturday in front of 20 other national leaders and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, an event they hope will enable the former economic star of West Africa to recover from the worst turmoil in its recent history.

YAMOUSSOUKRO (Reuters) – Alassane Ouattara was inaugurated as president of Ivory Coast on Saturday, in a ceremony most Ivorians hope will end a decade of conflict and mend a once prosperous economy.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, one of the guests of honor at the event, received a standing ovation after Ouattara thanked him for sending in French troops to end an impasse over his election win.