PHOTO: Outgoing COMESA chairman Yoweri Museveni hands over the organization's flag to incoming chair Joseph Kabila
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That Africa is segueing backwards into the 21th century was evident this mid-morning in Kinshasa when Uganda's homophobic president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, right at midpoint in his opening keynote address as outgoing chair of the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), chose to tell an insipidly unfunny gay joke.
After, among other things, bemoaning the fact that despite COMESA, trade between members was still negligible; priding his chairmanship for insisting on regional programs to boost infrastructure; and boasting about the anti-imperial stance of Uganda in forcing oil companies to build refineries in his country; Museveni, in a goofing mood, then expressed the wish that in the upcoming encounters between COMESA and American, western and other Africa's global partners--though the continent wouldn't necessarily see eye-to-eye on many issues with those stakeholders--there will still be areas of common interest, as in the development of infrastructure and energy.
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