Just as Africa seems ready to come to the dance floor, the lights come up, the bar runs dry and everyone starts looking for their coat.

The game of thrones and succession planning in Africa was jolted by the spectacle on 31 October of Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaoré fleeing the mass street demonstrations in Ouagadougou on a French helicopter for exile in neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire.

Despite having being ranked second and sixth among the 10 top countries with the highest economic growth rates in the world in 2013, Sierra Leone and Liberia are among the world's poorest. The Ebola epidemic has exposed the weakness of healthcare systems that have been neglected in many African countries for so long.

The Africa Report reviews trends in the commodity sector to see which prices will rise and fall in the year ahead, as forecasts point to a global oil surplus.

The Lima text was accepted by all parties - after the Africa group was conveniently excluded from consultations on a particular version of the text - even though it did not adequately address key issues that deadlocked the talks and the entire course of the discussion on the Durban Platform.

While diverging finance priorities among countries call for convergence among proposals to allow for a Lima draft of the 2015 agreement, ahead of the Paris conference, the real question is whether tedious processes to access climate funds will benefit developing country institutions?