SEVEN
From the
Online Edition:
UPLINK AND SEDCO CONNECT IN CENTRAL-SOUTHERN WEST AFRICA
SAN JOSE — Less than two weeks after UpLink International finalized its White Knight takeover and development of the African fiberoptic network left abandoned by the sudden pullout of financially strapped European rival Planetaire Systems Corp., UpLink has injected the troubled marine fiberoptics market with yet another surge of stockholder attention, winning an estimated $30 million contract with Texas-based Sedco Petroleum to wire its regional subsea facilities into the carrier system. The new network segment will deliver high-speed phone and Internet/Intranet connections between Sedco’s growing string of platforms in the Gulf of Guinea and their coastal offices and is expected to increase the quality and reliability of communications for the oil company’s marine-drilling operations.
Financial analysts are in general agreement that the deal will benefit both parties. Sedco stands to increase production from its facilities and heighten its prestige in a region where competition is intense for the leasing of offshore fields. UpLink likewise will receive a considerable economic and public relations boost from the move, quieting speculative jitters that its African project would sap corporate revenues at a time when most telcos are scaling back the pace of expansion, and investor optimism in broadband remains low due to lingering after-shocks from the dotcom implosion and consumer reticence toward new media technologies, such as video-on-demand and live-event multicasting.
In a symbolic display of commitment for the fast-track prioritization of their plans, Sedco Chairman of the Board Hugh Bennett, and UpLink Founder and CEO Roger Gordian — the latter almost absent from the public eye since his near-fatal illness several years ago — have informed the
This is not to suggest that Gabon is anything close to a Western investor’s paradise. UpLink’s large and formidable private security force has acquired a worldwide reputation. But despite Cangele’s reform measures, a complex political landscape and employee safeguard issues have led many other corporations to remain wary of their practical ability to conduct business in the tiny nation…
From
(limited content English version):
PRESIDENT CANGELE AND PARLIAMENT SHARE IN JOYOUS RECEPTION FOR UPLINK INTERNATIONAL
LIBREVILLE — In a gathering scheduled for later today, His Excellency El Hadj President Adrian Cangele and senior Parliamentary lawmakers will stand together beneath the graceful marble portico of the Presidential Palace to ratify a fifteen-year grant of the UpLink telecommunications licenses that had been early approved by the National Assembly. This frees the way for UpLink’s installation of a state-of-the-art fiberoptic network throughout the continent, and reaffirms the Republic of Gabon’s position as undisputed leader in Africa’s technological and economic rise to maturity on the global stage.
By confirming Uplink’s long-term franchise, President Cangele has given the company renewed confidence to proceed with its establishment of a headquarters complex in the Sette Cama region without concern that current network building operations could be interrupted by political sea changes. A further provision of the charter enables the Ministry of Transportation to deepen funding for construction of a modern paved highway from Port-Gentil to the Sette Cama, a difficult linkage that currently requires passage by air, river boat, or truck over dirt roads that are prone to flooding in the rainy season and plagued by scattered outbreaks of banditry, acts primarily committed by cross-border infiltrators (see feature article Cameroonian and Congolese Lawlessness). While UpLink will be a major beneficiary of upgraded travel to the region, it will also prove a splendid boon to agriculturists and lumbermen in far outlying areas, allowing easier distribution of their products to domestic and international markets. Increased tourism to the Sette Cama’s Iguela and Loango National Wilderness Reserves, long attractive to photographic safari planners and sport fishermen, is viewed as an additional economic dividend for Gabon.
In a demonstration of its openhanded cooperative relationship with the Cangele administration, UpLink International has offered to defray a large portion of the highway’s construction cost with corporate funding. While no specific financial amount has been disclosed, its promised subsidy is rumored to be in excess of $10 million U.S., ensuring that no unfair tax burden will be imposed on residents of Port-Gentil and its surrounding districts.
Shortly before this story went to press, President Cangele was asked about media stories of political opposition to his aggressive backing of the UpLink licenses. “The stories were classic sensationalistic exaggerations,” he told our reporter, adding, “It is praiseworthy that none such accounts appeared in
The president went on to explain that there has been no significant governmental dispute over the idea that UpLink International represents the nation’s telecommunications future.
“Any divisions that may have emerged concerned minor timing and procedural issues and were settled by brotherly, well-ordered debate,” he said. “My appearance with the foremost members of all our coalition parties will show that, regardless of political or tribal affiliations, the Gabonese people are joined by common principle, and a wish to champion West Africa’s shift from continuous cycles of violence and revolution to progressive, harmonious evolution at the dawn of the twenty-first century.”
From
(limited content English version):
CAMEROONIAN AND CONGOLESE LAWLESSNESS: WHO IS IN CHARGE NEXT DOOR?
FRANCEVILLE — Before sunrise on September 25, Abasi Aseme, 64, left his home in the village of Garabinzam accompanied by his three adult sons and several carts packed with furs, ivory, and a modest quantity of panned gold bought from Minkebe camp diggers, their little mule train bound for a trader’s market thirty miles to the south at the northern edge of Djoua Valley. They had made the trip through the lower Minkebe Forest every week for decades and were welcome callers at supply outposts along their sparsely traveled path. One of these posts was owned by Abasi’s older brother, Youssou.
When the Aseme family did not make their regular stop around noon, Youssou became concerned: in the remote bushland, a dangerous stalking ground for animal and human predators, locals know to travel by daylight or not at all. By early evening Youssou’s concern had turned to unease, and then to worry. The Asemes still had not appeared. Nor would they after darkness fell. Abasi did not have a telephone, and there was no way of contacting his brother’s wife to see whether anything might have occurred to delay his usual market visit.
Early the next morning Youssou and a small party of friends went out in search of his relatives, striking out north toward Garabinzam. Two hours later, the missing traders were found murdered, their wagons and merchandise gone. The killings had been savage. All four victims had their throats cut, their bodies lined in a row on the trail, their legs hacked off below the knees and tossed into the nearby brush, where it must have been evident the body parts would be discovered immediately.
Among Cameroonian bandits, mutilation of the lower extremities is considered a message to those who
