One evening in late 2015 at the Mail & Guardian Africa office in Nairobi, I got an intriguing call from a consultant friend who was doing some work in Libreville, Gabon’s capital.
He said he was due to meet President Ali Bongo Ondimba in a few days, and the big man had told him he wanted to “speak to Anglophone East Africa” and had asked him if it was possible to get him an interview. A few days later one of our senior writers was in Libreville, and in the company of my friend, at Bongo’s palace.
