[Italy’s Berlusconi and Libya’s Gaddafi. Reuters]
Reparations in action. This actually went down a couple of weeks ago, but it’s a very interesting deal that bears further study. Italy has agreed to pay Libya five billion over the next 25 years to make up for about 40 years occupation and then colonization. $200M will go to infrastructure projects. Libya and Italy have a history that’s a bit unique, in that the colonization was relatively recent, unlike Dutch colonization of South Africa or French colonization of the Ivory Coast. I suspect this means we won’t be seeing many more deals of this kind.
But, what’s in it for Mugabe? This is the question that kept coming to mind with the power-sharing deal he’s making with Tsvangirai. None of the stories I’ve read in U.S. papers or news machines have addressed why Mugabe would go from not recognizing Tsvangirai’s election win and killing his supporters, to letting the man become what is essentially PM of the country. South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki apparently brokered the deal. The obvious reason probably has to do with Mugabe’s age, and pressure from his neighbors.
Asia continues to invest in Africa. China and Japan are building a power plant in Kenya. Both China and Japan have been consistently investing in African nations, but we’re not hearing much about it in the U.S. press. Here in the U.S., Africa is a problem to be fixed (peep the third video in the Letterman-Obama interview below), but it seems like much of the continent is simply a sound investment to other world powers. Hmm. Is this good for Africa, Asia, or both?
Note: a good source for African news is allAfrica.com. The site creates its own content, and also aggregates news stories and op-eds from papers all over the continent, and lets readers search by country, region, or topic.
