Bits and pieces - Africa edition

AFRICAN CORRUPTION NUMBERS TRUMP DEVELOPMENT AID
Foreign Policy's blog has a piece on Africa's missing billions and the tax havens that aid and abet these crimes. Each year, more than $1 trillion exits developing countries, and more than $140 billion of comes from Africa. That's almost four times as much as the continent gets in official development aid... The key players in this shadow economy are corporations. Globally, more than 60 percent of capital flight comes from multinationals operating in resource-rich regions.


THE RISH AND FALL OF A VILLAGE HOUSING MARKET
The Wall Street Journal has an article on a small village in Guinea's Forest region that saw a housing market develop around investment from giant Rio Tinto only to crash when the controversial mining giant shuttered two-thirds of its operations only a short time later.


FILM FESTIVAL IN THE SAHARAN SANS
The New York Times had a feature on a film festival held in the Algerian desert.


UNCLE TED RETIRES
A story I must've missed earlier: Ted Roberts, the much loved Sierra Leonian news presenter, retired in February from the Voice of America. He worked at the VOA since 1964 and spent the last 14 years as host of the weekend news program Nightline Africa.


KENYAN NOBEL LAUREATE INTERVIEW
The American channel C-SPAN had an excellent hour-long interview with Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. Wangari Maathai, who spoke, among other things, about her book The Challenge for Africa.


PRO-MONARCH POLL BANNED IN MOROCCO
You know freedom of the press is pretty limited when media outlets are banned from publishing polls that are 'extraordinarily favorable' toward the head of state. That's what happened in Morocco recently. The Moroccan magazine Tel Quel and the French daily newspaper Le Monde collaborated on a poll to measure the popularity of King Mohammed VI, on the 10th anniversary of his accession to the North African country's throne. Publication of the results were banned in Morocco. "The monarchy can not be put into the equation, even via a poll," explained Khalid Naciri, the government's spokesman and information minister. Daring ask people if they approve of their head of state would sent a terrible precedent, apparently. The irony? The banned results were overwhelmingly favorable toward the king, who is the 7th richest monarch in the world. 91 percent admitted to having sensed some positive change, since Mohammed became king. The further irony? 51 percent said that the overbearing royal protocol had lightened.

Western Sahara phosphates: the raison d’etre of Moroccan domination

A friend of this blog pointed out this interesting report from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the link between the illegal Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara and Australian agriculture.

Anti-gay witchhunt in Morocco

American theocrats aren't the only ones who whip up irrational homophobia (oops, that's redundant) for political ends. Reuters reports a half dozen Moroccan men were jailed for homosexual acts.

The six were arrested in late November after rumours spread that a party they had held in the northern town of Ksar el Kebir was really an illegal gay wedding. The national press pounced on the story, and Islamist groups condemned what they saw as an attack on public morals and demanded an official investigation. Hundreds of angry residents marched through Ksar el Kebir to demand "justice" and put pressure on the authorities to hand out harsh sentences.

All were sentenced to several months in prison. "We're also concerned for their safety," said Benedicte Goderiaux of Amnesty International, who declared them prisoners of conscience. "Some of them should get out of prison within about 15 days -- what will happen to them after all the public threats against them?"

A local journalist told Radio France Internationale that the public hysteria whipped up about this affair was a worrying sign, as Morocco had always been a conservative culture but had eschewed radical Islam. He noted that this might be changing as some Arab satellite channels being beamed into the country pound home more hardline Islamist messages.