Elliot Ross for the Guardian | On the distraction of African despots
“The rights abuses and political repression carried out by Mutharika and his government are the noisiest aspect of a bigger story, that of an African society struggling through a global economic crisis at a relatively early stage in its multi-party democracy. Mutharika’s bizarre decisions – among them his refusal to devalue the kwacha and the expulsions of the country’s biggest tobacco buyer and the British high commissioner – have exacerbated the economic hardship caused by the debacle in global finance. Faced with the terminal decline of the market for the country’s biggest export, tobacco, Malawi will soon have to reorient its economy, which, being predominantly agrarian, is also especially vulnerable to the volatile effects of climate change.”
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