Quartz: Africa’s quiet LGBT revolution

It is routine. And sometimes borders on the absurd. As Kingsford Sumana Bagbin, the deputy speaker of the Ghanaian parliament did when he recently claimed homosexuality is worse than an atomic bomb. [...]

In South Africa, they may have laws protecting all—and legalizing same-sex marriage—citizens but still some want to silence anything perceived as gay. Earlier this year when the acclaimed South African film Inxeba (The Wound) was released, local censors fought to keep it out of movie theaters. The film tackles Xhosa manhood rites and is a tender love story that depicts wonderfully complex African men on screen.

It was controversial because it displays homosexual love in a heterosexual, hyper-masculine rural mountainside setting. I beamed with pride when this film—shortlisted for an Academy Award, and the first South African film to stream on Netflix—was allowed back in regular theaters, after the courts sided with the filmmakers’ legal challenge. [...]

In Tanzania, the brutal onslaught by the government continues as they bully prominent activist—even as it impacts their own society’s health needs, particularly around HIV/AIDS.

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Vox: A radical proposal to fight poverty in the developing world: tax the rich more than the poor

But new data on taxation and spending in the world’s poorest countries suggests that progressive tax-and-transfer systems are far less common than you would think. In general, taxes are less progressive in those countries, financial transfers are much smaller, and the bulk of social spending is soaked up by broken health and education systems. The net effect is often that tax-and-transfer policies leave poor people worse off, not better. [...]

That happens in two ways: The income of the well-off is reduced by higher taxes (this accounts for about a quarter of the reduction in inequality) while the poor get payments like Social Security as well as family, housing, disability and unemployment benefits. The latter accounts for three-quarters of the reduction in inequality. The US is an outlier in seeing less redistribution than most rich countries, but even there, the net impact of taxes and transfers is to reduce inequality. [...]

The Gini coefficient measures the level of inequality in a group: A measure of 0 implies complete equality (everyone gets the same income) and 100 is perfect inequality (one person gets all of the income). Before government taxes and transfers, the Gini for the 29 developing countries in Lustig’s study is 47. (It stands at 45 in the United States). Fiscal redistribution reduces the Gini coefficient by more than 7 points in the US and European Union. [...]

In the rich world, the poorest citizens tend to be net financial recipients from the government — they get more in transfers than they pay in taxes. But that’s not true in some developing countries. First, tax regimes in those countries aren’t very progressive, partly because the revenue authorities tend to rely on indirect taxes like the value-added tax (VAT) — which fall on all consumers — rather than direct taxes on high personal or corporate incomes. (A VAT is similar to an American sales tax but applies to all firms, not just retail businesses.)  

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Quartz: Another former colony wants Germany to pay for its atrocities in Africa

Mwinyi said he was encouraged by the Mau Mau in Kenya and the Nama and Herero in Namibia, who achieved post-colonial justice. In 2013, a lawsuit brought by five elderly victims of colonial-era torture and forced labor saw the British government award £19.9 million ($24.8 million) to over 5,000 Kenyans. That led to as many as 40,000 Kenyans launching a similar lawsuit in 2016.

Last year, Germany finally acknowledged that its first genocide was in fact in Namibia at the turn of the century, and committed to compensation in the form of aid. Then in January this year, the descendants of the murdered Herero and Nama people filed a class action lawsuit against the German government.

While Germany’s colonial record was already cruel, it was in Tanzania where their extreme tactics led to the highest fatalities. An estimated 75,000 people died, but some believe it could be as many as 300,000. The African population in the region decreased by as much as three quarters (pdf).

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The Washington Post: Israel’s Netanyahu seeks to make new friends in historic first visit to Africa

In Uganda, Netanyahu held a summit with leaders of seven African nations in the region aimed at strengthening ties, with Israel providing them with its expertise in security and technology, while receiving in exchange support from new friends that will refrain from criticizing Israeli policies and also provide diplomatic backing in international forums.

The effort comes as Israel’s ties with some of its longtime allies such as the United States and European Union have come under strain recently. Netanyahu’s right-leaning government has drawn sharp criticisms in the United States and Europe over its failure to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians and its continued building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, land that the Palestinians seek for a future state. [...]

“Netanyahu wants to improve Israel’s standing with these countries in Africa so that at international conferences they will not join the Arab countries in their resolutions against Israel,” said Aryeh Oded, a former Israeli ambassador to Kenya and Swaziland and non-resident ambassador in Zambia, Mauritius, Seychelles, Tanzania and Uganda.

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