(Photo: Pope Benedict XVI with African bishops in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, 4  Oct 2009/Alessandro Bianchi)

Roman Catholic bishops called on corrupt Catholic leaders in Africa on Friday to repent or resign for giving the continent and the Church a bad name. Around 200 African bishops, along with dozens of other bishops and Africa experts, also accused multinational companies in Africa of "crimes against humanity" and urged Africans to beware of "surreptitious" attempts by international organizations to destroy traditional African values.

Their three-week synod, which ends formally on Sunday with a Mass by Pope Benedict, covered a range of Africa's problems, such as AIDS, corruption, poverty, development aspirations and crime. But it had a very direct message for corrupt African leaders who were raised Catholics.

"Many Catholics in high office have fallen woefully short in their performance in office. The synod calls on such people to repent, or quit the public arena and stop causing havoc to the people and giving the Catholic Church a bad name."

The message did not name any leaders. The international community has for years called on Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who was raised a Catholic and educated by Jesuits, to step down, saying he had brought his once-prosperous country to its knees.

Another African leader who was raised a Catholic and has been accused of corruption is Angola's President Eduardo dos Santos. Both men deny any wrongdoing.

In a section on AIDS, the bishops' message repeated the Church position that the spread of the disease could not be stopped by the use of condoms alone. Last March, on his way to his first trip to Africa, the pope caused an international storm by saying that the use of condoms could actually worsen the spread of AIDS.

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Buoyed by recent discoveries of commercial scale oil deposits in Uganda, east African policy makers, foreign oil explorers and their local partners trooped to a five-star hotel on the Kenyan coast this week to reflect on the progress and chart future strategies.

Viewed as a frontier region for oil exploration, east Africa’s first major oil find was made by Tullow Oil and Heritage Oil companies in the Albertine Basin, which spans the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (whose improving relations are making the exploitation of the reserves look morel ikely).

Before that, Tanzania had found vast reserves of natural gas in Songo Songo and Mnazi Bay areas.

Just like Rwanda, which hopes to revolutionise electricity generation in the region through methane gas from Lake Kivu, Tanzania hopes to power cars from the gas and generate much needed electricity from its natural gas.

The regional economic power house Kenya has, however, had disappointing results so far in its search for oil.

Although 32 wells have been sunk here since the 1950s, only traces of oil and gas have been found. It is now reprocessing data gathered over that period in the hope new knowledge and technology will reveal hidden deposits.

Drilling, an expensive affair that prospectors say can cost a firm $200 million for one well, took a commercial break in the 1980s. But it has also seen a resurgence of interest, thanks to last year’s rise of crude in global markets.

Kenya issued 14 exploration licenses last year and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) is set to sink its first well in the second half of this year in the eastern province.

Kiraitu Murungi, the nation’s energy minister, told the meeting in Mombasa they were praying day and night for the new well and data reprocessing to show signs of oil.

On the other hand,  Uganda — long reliant on Kenya’s ageing oil refinery for its supply of petroleum products — has grand plans for its newfound oil resources.

They include the construction of a state of the art modern refinery at an estimated cost of $1.3 billion to process its oil as well as oil from any new finds in the region.

Uganda’s energy and mineral development minister, Hillary Onek, spoke of the plans with a grin and added that the region, believed to share common geology, could be headed for a better future as it taps its oil and gas reserves to power development.

However, as officials and oil prospectors retired to the hotel’s restaurants and beach bar for a drink in the evenings, they must have wondered if a few obstacles may not block the path to that prosperous future.

The global financial crisis is weighing heavily on the finance base of some companies prospecting in the region.

Lack of local skilled manpower in oil and gas industry is also worrying. So is the big question of how to equitably manage revenues from oil and gas so that oil and gas do not turn into a curse for the region as they have elsewhere on the continent.

Is east Africa ready to handle oil and gas? Will oil discoveries help local communities?

“Sub-Saharan Africa: Year of Regression”. That was the heading used by U.S.-based rights group Freedom House in its survey of political freedom in the world published this week.

Of course the Freedom House survey pointed to the coups in Guinea and Mauritania as well as the situation in Zimbabwe, whose elections were condemned by many countries and where the crisis shows no sign of lessening, but there were plenty of other names on the list too:

Senegal - long held up as an example of democracy in Africa - dropped from “free to partly free” because of “a growing authoritarian trend”.

Nigeria suffered a drop “because of the ruling party’s increasing consolidation of power and marginalization of the opposition”.

Measuring freedom might sound like an abstract concept, but investors have cited improvements in governance and democracy, among other reasons, for increased interest in Africa as a whole in recent years. Countries that do better on those scores may find it helps to increase prosperity too.

Twelve of the 48 countries in the survey fell according to the group’s indicators. On the other hand, the report pointed to what it saw as positive developments in Angola, Ivory Coast, Zambia and Comoros.

“Sub-Saharan Africa has seen notable increases in freedom over the past generation, making these recent setbacks all the more disheartening,” said Arch Puddington, Freedom House director of research.

Is it fair to say freedom is on the decline in Africa? Ghana’s election seemed to get 2009 off to a better start that some of last year’s elections on the continent. Is there reason to think that this year may be better overall?

"Those who are thirsty need to seek the right fountain: the one without the spoilt water" -- Angolan Cardinal Alexandre do Nascimento

There seems to be quite a thirst for faith these days in Angola, which abandoned Marxism in the 1990s after three decades of civil war and is now experiencing a boom in religious sects that often mix traditional African belief in witchcraft with elements of the Christianity brought by the Portuguese colonialists.

Some 900 religious groups are waiting for the official registration required by the government, which has launched a campaign to stamp out illegal sects in the capital Luanda and provinces bordering Democratic Republic of Congo where witchcraft is believed to be widespread. Last week, an ailing 28-year-old woman died when her sect barred her from seeking medical treatment and 40 children were rescued from two other religious groups that accused them of possesing evil powers.

Cardinal Alexandre do Nascimento, the leading Catholic cleric in this mostly Catholic country, told Reuters in an interview (full story here) that he saw a bright side to the sect boom: "The positive side of this phenomenon is that it shows there is an increasing thirst for God. But those who are thirsty need to seek the right fountain: the one without the spoilt water."

The Roman Catholic Church has also grown since in the early 1990s, but is increasingly being challenged by evangelical churches and these syncretic sects, often supported by poor people lacking jobs and education. Maybe the cardinal shouldn't be so optimistic after all?

If anyone had a reason to paint the town red, it would seem to be Angolans after their first election in 16 years.

While certainly not perfect, the poll was peaceful and free of the strife that marred others recently in Africa.

But there have been no street celebrations or triumphant rallies and no chest-thumping on the part of the governing MPLA, which won nearly 82 percent of the vote in the two-day parliamentary poll. Former rebels UNITA were a distant second.

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, the MPLA leader, has not commented publicly about the results.

The best that officials have come up with to mark the victory is a motocross race on Sunday in Malange, 450 km (280 miles) east of the capital Luanda.

The sport is about as popular in this tropical country as ice hockey.

Although the UNITA opposition complained during the election campaign that its supporters were intimidated and state media was giving the MPLA free propaganda, it did concede defeat.

Many people are surprised at how quickly Angola has returned to business as usual.
But some Angolans are disappointed.

“Life is very hard here. We voted last week with dignity and that should be celebrated with a holiday,” said Vladimiro Dala, a 35-year-old MPLA supporter who earns $200 a month guarding and washing cars.

There was speculation the government, flush with money from booming oil production, would declare a holiday and light up the Luanda skyline with fireworks.

The government has dismissed the suggestion.

“We have work to do,” MPLA spokesman Norberto dos Santos told reporters when asked if Friday would be declared a holiday.

That and the government’s generally sober response to the election rout may be a recognition of the enormous challenge still ahead in governing a country gutted during nearly three decades of civil war that ended in 2002.

Might it also be a sign of growing political maturity in a country that has suffered so much?