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.

"Oil Industry Has Brought Poverty and Pollution to Niger Delta"

Amnesty International recently issued a damning report on the manner in which the oil industry has destroyed Nigeria's Niger Delta Region. The title says it all: "Oil Industry Has Brought Poverty and Pollution to Niger Delta."

The Amnesty report notes: The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) describes the region as suffering from “administrative neglect, crumbling social infrastructure and services, high unemployment, social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and squalor, and endemic conflict.” This poverty, and its contrast with the wealth generated by oil, has become one of the world’s starkest and most disturbing examples of the “resource curse”.

Oil has generated an estimated US$600 billion since the 1960s. Despite this, many people in the oil-producing areas have to drink, cook with and wash in polluted water, and eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins.

“More than 60 per cent of people in the region depend on the natural environment for their livelihood,” said Audrey Gaughran “Yet, pollution by the oil industry is destroying the vital resource on which they depend.”

Oil pollution kills fish, their food sources and fish larvae, and damages the ability of fish to reproduce, causing both immediate damage and long-term harm to fish stocks. Oil pollution also damages fishing equipment.

Oil spills and waste dumping have also seriously damaged agricultural land. Long-term effects include damage to soil fertility and agricultural productivity, which in some cases can last for decades. In numerous cases, these long-term effects have undermined a family’s only source of livelihood.

The destruction of livelihoods and the lack of accountability and redress have led people to steal oil and vandalize oil infrastructure in an attempt to gain compensation or clean-up contracts.


Black Looks blog has written quite extensively on the catastrophe as well...

Why corruption kills

Last week, the world's longest serving president, Omar Bongo of Gabon, passed away in a hospital in Barcelona, Spain. It struck me how often African leaders have died in hospitals in Europe or North America or sought treatment there for illnesses.

For all the anti-western rhetoric of Guinea's Sékou Touré, dictator for 27 years, where did he seek treatment for the heart problem that eventually killed him? Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Félix Houphoët-Boigny ran Ivory Coast for 33 years but ended up in French hospitals for his prostate cancer. Zambia's Levy Mwanawasa died in a hospital near Paris. Mobutu Sese Seko was in charge Zaire for 30 years but got treatment for prostate in Europe.

It's a scathing indictment of the incompetence of misrulers like Bongo and Mobutu that they can have absolute power for decades but can not find a single hospital in their own country fit to address common conditions like heart problems and cancer. It's disgraceful that these thieves can jet off to Europe or the US at whim for their treatments but ordinary citizens are stuck with virtually non-existent health care systems at home.

Transparency in emergency humanitarian aid delivery

The UN's IRIN news service reports on a call by the anti-corruption non-governmental organization Transparency International for increased transparency in the delivery of emergency humanitarian aid.

"There remains little knowledge about the extent or consequences of corruption in humanitarian assistance, little shared knowledge about preventing corruption under emergency circumstances beyond a few standard practices, and a degree of taboo about confronting it publicly", noted the TI, which researched the practices of seven major international NGOs.

The report states that problems range beyond simple financial misappropriation. These problems include many forms of “abuse of power”, such as cronyism, nepotism, “sexual exploitation and coercion and intimidation of humanitarian staff or aid recipients for personal, social or political gain, manipulation of assessments, targeting and registration to favour particular groups and diversion of assistance to non-target groups”.

The report added that humanitarian aid delivery is particularly vulnerable to corruption due to NGOs' difficulty in retaining institutional memory and the difficult circumstances in which such aid has to be delivered.

Konaré rebukes Sarkozy

A spat has erupted between African Union head Alpha Oumar Konaré and French president Nicolas Sarkozy. The Namibian newspaper has a good resumé of the debate.

Sarkozy asked university students in Dakar, "Do you want to end the arbitrary corruption, violence? That money is invested instead of being embezzled. Do you want the rule of law? It is up to you to take the decision and if you decide so, France will be by your side like an unwavering friend."

This, of course, would be a first for France in Africa.

Konaré hit back at the condescending attitude of the French leader. The AU chief said he agreed with Sarkozy on corruption, violence and immigration, 'young people are aware of that and many of them have been fighting these things for a long time'.

A top leader in the French Socialist Party attacked Sarkozy for giving patronizing lectures to Africans on development while at the same time 'stealing Africa's best minds through the policy of selective immigration'.