"LE GABON ENERVANT" OR "ANNOYING GABON"

Philibert Nang doctoral thesis La these de doctorat de Philibert Nang English Version As you can see above, a Gabonese individual by the name of Philibert Nang has won the prestigious Ramanujan Prize. This prize is named after Srinivasa Ramanujan, an indian mathematician (1887-1920) who is considered to be one of the greater mathematicians the world has ever known. The Prize is awarded annually to a researcher who should be less than 45 years of age on 31 December of the year of the award, and who has conducted outstanding research. The Prize carries a $15,000 cash award. This is a very competitive award as the selection committee consists of five eminent mathematicians from all over the world, appointed in consultation between ICTP, the Niels Henrik Abel Memorial Fund and the International Mathematical Union (IMU). Judging by the list of past winners below, this Gabonese mathematician is certainly one of the very best in his field in the world. 2011 Phil...

English version Coming back from a mini-summit in Cotonou, Benin and after a brief stop in Angola to meet with Eduardo Dos Santos, the Angolan president, South African president Jacob Zuma declared that his country was still determined for its former Foreign Minister and current Home Affairs Minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to take the African Union’s top. Jacob Zuma said the following: "We are indeed determined to change the leadership of the African Union Commission, South Africa has never before made an attempt of holding this position, but this time there are serious issues that this commission needs to address and it needs strong leadership" The current rules of the election of the president of that commission do not allow for either Dlamini-Zuma or Ping to run again. However these rules will be reviewed and changed and it is possible that the new format would allow previous contestant to run again. If that is the case, South Africa is signaling...

English version Political scientists and other experts tend to cite a number of leadership qualities they consider to be indispensable for success as a president. While these evaluations are more accurate in democracies, it would not be superfluous for the Gabonese people to evaluate Leon Mba, Omar Bongo and Ali Bongo according to these accepted parameters. This blog would like to list these characteristics and let the readers reach their own conclusion as to whether any of the presidents that Gabon has known met these criteria or not. 1. Public communication : effectiveness as a Public Communicator is very important for a president. A president incapable to explain coherently to the public what he is trying to do and achieve, is simply not a good president. Eloquence is not the ability to endlessly repeat a slogan, but should be the product of a capacity to think about projects, explain them accurately in press conferences that are not scripted. In a democracy,...

English Version Some readers sent us messages saying that they could not find some doctoral thesis from other Gabonese on the SUDOC.ABES web site. The example they give is the thesis of professor Pierre Andre Kombila, a Gabonese cardiologist. The reason is very simple. The site SUDOC.ABES contains all CONTEMPORARY theses. For older theses and specialized theses like for medicine and engineering it is better to go to the “ Bibliothèque Nationale de France ” (click on this link) where all doctoral theses, old and new are compiled. This link will tell you how to find any thesis ever published in France since 1959. Moreover, Ali Bongo says that he completed his thesis in the 80s; therefore this thesis should be in all these databases. As you can see below, we could find the thesis of Andre Mba Obame and that of Pierre Claver Maganga Moussavou, both published in the 80s. Could anybody tell us where Ali Bongo thesis is? Version française   Ce...

Bolloré 1 by sur_vivant Bolloré 2 by sur_vivant Bolloré 3 by sur_vivant Bolloré 4 by sur_vivant Bolloré 5 by sur_vivant English Version On Saturday in Johannesburg, South Africa, began the meeting of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). During his speech, former South African President, Thabo Mbeki, declared that an estimated 50 billion dollars was exported from Africa illegally every year. That money was lost instead of being invested in the continent, which is a serious problem. Mbeki suggested that this loss should be addressed because it can seriously undermine Africa’s development if the trend continues. Given that most serious economists working on African economies have published that about US25 billion comes into Africa every year, one can easily see that as the net effect of money going out of the continent, Africa loses twice as much as it receives from the outside. In economic terms, this means that Africa loses twice t...

English version In a country with a self respected population, the head of state, be it a prime minister or a president, needs to be someone who carries great moral authority. Therefore, the holder of the position needs to have the respect and support of the population on the basis of mutual trust and confidence. When the head of state is a serial liar, forger and an outright fraud, when their biography is totally made up and fake, it is an embarrassment that tarnishes the reputation of the country and shows that such head of state cannot be trusted as being reliable and having good judgment. Yesterday we posted an observation that we could not find Ali Bongo's doctoral thesis anywhere we looked. Here we show that the same system can find other theses. Therefore there is no reason for Ali Bongo thesis to be missing. As you can see below, this blog had no difficulty finding the thesis of Jean Ping and those of 3 prime ministers of former president Omar...

English version A friend of this blog made a very pertinent suggestion to us by asking us to look into whatever happened to Ali Bongo's doctoral thesis. As you may know, every doctoral thesis published in France is likely to be found digitalized on the website: www.sudec.abes.fr and anybody with internet access can type the name of a former student and find out whether or not they ever published a doctoral thesis. This blog tested the system by typing "Alpha Conde", the president of Guinea (Conakry) and as you can see above, the results were evident and proved that Alpha Conde did in fact published his doctoral thesis. However, when this blog attempted to find out if Ali Bongo had a doctoral thesis, the result was a giant nothing, not a single publication. Since Ali Bongo says in his biography that he has a doctorate in the study of the law, a thesis should be available. Why isn't this thesis in this database if indeed this thesis does exist? Anothe...