Chadian authorities on Tuesday (November 15) insisted they had the situation under control a day after attacks on military camps in and outside the capital, N'djamena, that left at least two of the gunmen dead and 15 under arrest. "The city is calm. People have returned to work as normal," Communications Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor told IRIN from the capital. In the early hours of Monday, a score of armed men in civilian dress attacked an army training centre about 25 kilometres south of N'djamena, while a dozen assailants staged an attack against the National Guard and Nomad Camp in the capital, the government announced Monday evening.

President Eduardo Dos Santos used the occasion of Angola's independence day celebrations to deliver a speech promising elections and greater prosperity, but critics said he failed to outline a proper timetable for the polls. Thousands - including Portugal's president and several African leaders - turned up at Luanda's Cidadela football stadium on Friday for the festivities, the biggest celebrations since independence from Portugal 30 years ago. "The reality that the country is living today allows us to look with optimism to the realisation of the next elections," Dos Santos said in a rare address to the nation. "We are creating the material, institutional and psychological conditions for them to be free, transparent and with a high level of participation."

The Independent Electoral Commission of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced on Monday (November 14) that 150,199 people had been caught registering to vote twice. Commission Chairman Apollinaire Malumalu said 300,398 of the names on the voter list had been registered twice with the same fingerprints. "Any voter who deliberately registers more than once will be struck off the electoral list," he said, referring to the article 45 in the country's voter bill. So far, cases of fraud have been only discovered in Kinshasa where registration ended in July. Registration started there late and is still taking place in several provinces because of logistical problems particularly in Bandundu and Equateur.

A continuing economic crisis in Benin has left the government without funds to pay for presidential elections in March 2006, according to Finance Minister Cosme Sehlin. Unlike the heads of states of regional neighbours Chad, Burkina Faso and Gabon, President Mathieu Kerekou has agreed to step down next March when his second mandate expires. But Benin's cash crunch could harm this gesture of democracy. During parliamentary question time last week, Finance Minister Sehlin confirmed that government books are in the red to the tune of US $57 million, with no means of raising the US $58 million more to pay for elections.