Officials are hyping the threat of a potential Chinese naval base facing the Atlantic to get yet more funding for military operations.
U.S. Cold War with China: First Stop, Equatorial Guinea
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Equatorial Guinea
Chinese Fossil Fuel Investments in Africa
African countries need investments, China needs raw materials, and African activists are fed up with the resulting corruption and environmental damage.
Equatorial Guinea Briefly Disappears Dissident
Per capita the nation is one of the world’s wealthiest, but its citizens live in grinding poverty.
Obiang: The Sham Humanitarian
This past October, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) suspended a three million dollar research prize funded by Teodoro Obiang, one of the world’s worst dictators. Shamed by an open protest letter signed by over 60 leading global activists, UNESCO was compelled to distance itself from a man who has long ruled Equatorial Guinea with an iron fist. Precisely how a leader cut from the same cloth as Idi Amin, Omar al-Bashir, or Nicolae Ceausescu came to finance a UN prize in the first place is a truth stranger than fiction.
Equatorial Guinea: The good, the bad and the ugly
Agustín Velloso looks at Obiang’s controversial effort to obtain wider global respect and appreciation through the creation of an international prize in partnership with UNESCO.
Straight Talk: Revealing the Real U.S.-Africa Policy
Editor’s Note: A press booklet, created by a coalition of organizations, on recommendations for U.S.-Africa policy can be found here.
It’s time for some straight talk on U.S. foreign policy as it relates to Africa. While Obama administration officials and the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) representatives insist that U.S. foreign policy towards Africa isn’t being militarized, the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. While Africans condemned U.S. military policy in Africa under the Bush administration, the Obama administration has not only mirrored Bush’s approach, but has in fact enhanced it. President George W. Bush established Africa as a foreign policy priority in 2003, when he announced that 25% of oil imported to the United States should come from Africa. Like the Cold War, the Global War on Terror establishes a rationale for bolstering U.S. military presence and support in Africa. Yet official pronouncement of U.S. policy is routinely presented as if neither of these two developments occurred. Unfortunately, the more evasive we are about our intentions on the continent, the more we invite not only skepticism, but even resistance.
Propping Up Africa’s Dictators
"We cannot assure our development on our own," stated France’s pet dictator and Africa’s longest-serving ruler, Omar Bongo. The Gabonese leader was talking about national economic development, but he might just as well have been talking about his own personal economic development. Transparency International’s French chapter singled out Bongo, who died this month at 73 after ruling his country for 41 years, for a spectacular misappropriation of state funds. The lawsuit, lodged via civil party petition, charges Bongo, Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Congo, and Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea of acquiring vast patrimonies in France including expensive real estate, capital, villas, and cars that cannot be justified by official income.