Africa News blog

Who among the seven longest serving African leaders will be deposed next?

By Isaac Esipisu

Several African leaders watching news of the death of Africa ’s longest serving leader are wondering who among them is next and how they will leave office.

Three of the ten longest serving leaders have fallen this year – Ben Ali of Tunisia ruled for 23 years, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt ruled for 30 years and the longest, the Brother Leader of Libya ruled for 42 years – all gone in the last six months.

Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea (32), Jose Santos of Angola (32), Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (31), Paul Biya of Cameroon (29) and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (25), King Mswati III of Swaziland (24), Blaise Campore of Burkina Fasso (24) and still going strong, and must be wondering whose turn is next.

Teodoro and Jose Santos take the number one spot as the longest serving Presidents with 32 years of ruling Equatorial Guinea and Angola respectively and from what has happened in Africa this year and to Gaddafi this week, it is a post neither of them would be proud off right now.

Although the revolts have so far been limited to North Africa, increasingly there are protests against regimes in other African countries. Whether triggered by economic conditions—food and fuel prices, poor job opportunities or service delivery failures, the mass protests are becoming important and have forced policy changes. Slowly but surely, these revolutions are heading south and, unless Africa ’s long-serving leaders pave the way for inclusive governance and relinquish their power, they are increasingly likely to face the same fate as the North African ones.

Equatorial Guinea’s PR crisis

Four months into a public relations offensive, Equatorial Guinea is still struggling to get good press.

The government of the tiny West African state, eager to shake a reputation as one of the most corrupt and repressive on the planet, hired a high-powered U.S. communications firm Qorvis in May in the hope of rebranding itself as a progressive nation and a good place to do business.

But, despite a volley of press releases since with headlines like “Equatorial Guinea Advances Public Health Through Education” and “Equatorial Guinea celebrates music festival”, the country continues to draw almost exclusively negative attention in the media.

Do a Google news search on Equatorial Guinea, and you’ll find stories like “Four executed in Equatorial Guinea coup plot” and “Equatorial Guinea:  Human Rights Drowning in Oil”.

Earlier this year, the country made international headlines when the United Nations’ culture and education body suspended a prize sponsored by President Teodoro Obiang, apparently to avoid tarnishing its own reputation.

When the country hired Qorvis, political analysts said the rebranding effort would only work if it was backed by genuine reform – a serious crackdown on the corruption that has prevented its oil wealth from benefiting the impoverished masses, for example, or an opening up of political dialogue in a country run by the same man since a 1979 putsch.

This week, Equatorial Guinea was faced with another barrage of unwanted publicity. Human rights group Amnesty International announced four men were executed in the country on the same day they were sentenced for their alleged role in a coup plot, after thugs abducted them from their hiding place in Benin.

Is the “wonga” running out for Africa’s mercenaries?

Africa’s infamous “dogs of war” may still be going strong, but it seems the rewards of the mercenary life aren’t quite what they used to be.  

Only this month, Britain’s Simon Mann won a pardon for his part in a foiled 2004 coup attempt on Equatorial Guinea, an old-style adventure whose glittering prize was the central African state’s multi-billion-dollar oil riches.

Contrast that to reports last week that a band of South African and other mercenaries had flown into the chaos of Guinea to train up a militia loyal to the incumbent junta leader — on a salary put at barely $3,500 a month. 

That’s not bad money in most parts of the world, and there were reports that the company involved would have won extra remuneration in the form of minerals from Guinea’s fecund soil.

But it would have been peanuts to Mann, whose Equatorial Guinea coup was known as the “Wonga Plot” after the English slang for the money they hoped to yield in buckets. 

While mercenaries are often seen as in the business of bringing governments down, it is not new that they should be trying to prop one up, as is happening in Guinea.

Mann himself is reported to have worked for the Angolan government in the 1990s to help it wrest back control of a key port from rebels, and again for Sierra Leonean authorities in the 2002 civil war there.

from MacroScope:

Big ambition for Equatorial Guinea

This week has seen a rush of key policymakers and business executives from Africa flocking to London. Apart from Sierra Leone, oil and gas executives have been discussing the outlook for Equatorial Guinea, a small central African state rich in oil.

Equatorial Guinea made a relatively rare foray into the global news earlier this month for a presidential pardon of  former British army officer Simon Mann, who was serving a 34-year prison sentence in the country for his role in a failed coup d'etat in 2004.

Gabriel Obiang Lima, vice minister of mines, industry and energy, was in London to talk about his ambition for the country. "Our aim is not to be the Kuwait of the region. It's to be the Singapore of the region," he told dozens of business executives in a conference in London on Wednesday.

"Equatorial Guinea has to have other industries that are not dependent on oil and gas."

But it has a long way to go towards establishing a Singapore-like country. The U.S. State Department says application of the laws remains selective and corruption among officials is widespread, and many business deals are concluded under nontransparent circumstances.

The vice minister says Equatorial Guinea is investing heavily in ports, health care and infrastructure.

from The Great Debate UK:

Squandered oil wealth, an African tragedy

-Arvind Ganesan is the Director of the Business and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. The opinions expressed are his own.-

Equatorial Guinea is a tiny country of about half a million people on the west coast of Africa, but is the fourth-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa.

Most of the investment in the country’s multi-billion dollar oil industry comes from the United States. ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon are all there. Right now, the U.S. imports up to 100,000 barrels of oil a day from Equatorial Guinea, or about a quarter of the country’s oil production.

Oil money gives the country the means to be a model for development and human rights. The economy is nearly 130 times as big as it was when oil was discovered in 1995. But as a report released by Human Rights Watch today details, the government has squandered or stolen much of the money at the expense of its people.

It is a sad contrast, since the country has a per capita income comparable to Spain’s or Italy’s and development indicators more like Afghanistan’s. For just one sad example, infant and child mortality actually has increased -- from an already-dismal 103 deaths per thousand in 1990 to 124 per thousand in 2007. Similarly, under-5 mortality rates increased from 170 per thousand in 1990 to 206 per thousand in 2007.

The president and his family are doing just fine, though. They lead lavish lifestyles while most people live in crushing poverty.

A series of corruption scandals involving government officials and their families will give you some idea of how bad it is.

A question of scale

For days now Britons have been regaled with newspaper stories detailing the dubious expense claims of their Members of Parliament.

The Honourable Members, it seems, have been charging for everything from a few thousand pounds for clearing a moat to a few pence for a new bath plug. An outraged nation has risen almost as one to denounce its greedy lawmakers.

But while the various schemes devised by the members of the Mother of Parliaments are ingenious in the way they exploit the generous rules laid down by the “Fees Office” of the House of Commons, they do lack a certain scale.

When it comes to separating the state from its money, politicians in Africa, for example, show none of the inhibitions of their British colleagues.

In Nigeria this month two senior lawmakers investigating corruption in the power sector were detained in connection with a scam involving electricity contracts. How much money involved? $41 million.

In March, Nigerian police arrested a former state governor who is under investigation for misappropriation of funds totalling $170 million.

Enormous sums of money compared with the thousands of pounds involved in Britain, but still small change compared to the billions stolen by Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko and Nigeria’s Sani Abacha.

Is justice being done in Simon Mann’s trial?

Eton-educated British mercenary Simon Mann has gone on trial in Equatorial Guinea for his role in a 2004 coup plot to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.   The state prosecutor is seeking a jail term of nearly 32 years for Mann, who has admitted in a British TV interview this year that he plotted to topple Obiang.   Mann’s defence lawyer has argued that his client was a “mere instrument” in the plot, but not one of the main organisers. The prosecution has named Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as one of the businessmen conspirators who invested in the coup plot. Mark Thatcher denies knowing about the coup and is not on trial in Malabo.   So, with Mann’s trial and the death of notorious French mercenary Bob Denard last year, is the era of the “dogs of war” over in Africa? Or will Equatorial Guinea’s huge oil riches soon tempt others to hire foreign guns for a violent takeover of power?   Is justice being done in the case of Mann, or should others be with him there in the dock?   The rule of President Obiang, who overthrew his dictatorial uncle Francisco Macias Nguema in a 1979 coup, has been sharply criticised by international human rights groups who accuse him of abuses and restricting political freedoms. Some might argue that a “regime change” such as the one plotted by Mann might have been good for Equatorial Guinea. What do you think?