spotlight madagascar

There are all sorts of happenings in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. Tensions have been steadily increasing between the Mayor, Andry Rajaolina and President Ravalomanana, who have opposing viewpoints about what democracy is and how one should run a country. This just happened:

From the Gulf Times: Mayor calls for Monday Strike

My glee at the cancellation of the Daewoo land deal was apparently premature, as Ravalomanana seems to want to go ahead with it, despite protests from the people and those political leaders who seem to want to actually serve them well. The AFP posted this article the other day:

AFP: Maverick mayor says Madagascar is ‘dictatorship’

Addressing more than 20,000 supporters at the historic Place du 13 Mai square on Saturday, Andry Rajoelina said “leaders who do not care about the people should not be there. We are here because we refuse to be gagged.”

Rajoelina is young, handsome and charismatic. He reminds me of a non-gun-toting Thomas Sankara, President of Burkina Faso for a tiny snippet of time, who led a revolution from 1983-1987, at which time he was brutally murdered. Look him up, he’s a really interesting character who believed in women’s rights, equality, and he even made his government officials drive themselves around in cheap cars. He died as poor as he lived, while most leaders in Africa were getting rich off the spoils of disgusting loans from institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, which should be completely shut down as far as I’m concerned.

In other news:

Speaking of the World Bank, I read this the other day:

Even the World Bank is continuing its role as a neo-colonial consensus agent by actively pursuing and financing access to ‘under-utilised land’ around the world through its International Finance Corporation.

Check out this article to learn more about land grabbing and its implications for those who have their land grabbed and those of us who may benefit from it without knowing:

MADAGASCAR: THE NEW LAND GRAB

i couldn’t be happier about this. people have been paying attention it seems.

Now the Daewoo plan, the largest in Africa covering an area of roughly half of Madagascar’s current arable land, has been put on hold after the Malagasy people protested that it would make them a “South Korean colony”.

Land rental deal collapses after backlash against ‘colonialism’ – Telegraph.

it’ll be interesting to see what happens next. though we’ve all been upset by this daewoo deal, it was refreshing to see that the decision not to go forward was driven by malagasy people, not foreigners.

this photo is from the town where i spent one year teaching english, ambatofinandrahana. hell used to be shell. a homeless woman now lives in the former gas station. thanks oil.

Climate Progress (a blog)

i’ve set my google alerts to ‘daewoo madagascar’ to give me updates on their latest land deal, which will probably demolish the malagasy economy. so we can have more corn.

Daewoo plans to produce 4 million tons of corn and 500,000 tons of palm oil a year, most of which will be shipped out of impoverished Madagascar—where the World Food Program (WFP) still provides food relief.

“We will build everything from ports and railways to markets on a barren and untouched area,” said Shin Dong-Hyun of Daewoo.

read some of the articles below, i get about 10 per day.

Global trends may be spurring ‘land grab’ in poorer countries – The China Post

Another article

NY Times: Paradox of Plenty (a short interactive history of the pillaging of Africa)