Tripoli, Mar 16(ANI): Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi tapped his country's vast oil reserves to sprinkle billions of dollars around sub-Saharan Africa to buy allies for his regime.
According to the New York Times, from Liberia to South Africa to the island of Madagascar, Libya's holdings are like a giant venture capital fund, geared to make friends and win influence in the poorest regions of the world.
Gaddafi has invested in almost anything - governments, rebel groups, luxury hotels, Islamic organizations, rubber factories, rice paddies, diamond mines, supermarkets and the countless OiLibya gas stations.
Mali, a desperately poor country near Libya, is a case in point of the allegiance Gaddafi has bought in many parts of the continent.
The dictator has built a mosque in Bamako, Mali's capital, the Malian national television network in the 1980s and a gleaming new 100 million dollar government complex, the paper reports.
Meanwhile, Seydou Sissouma, spokesman for Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure, has played down the idea that Libya was buying friends.
"That's not the case. Libya has accepted to share its resources with others. Other African oil producers, like Nigeria, don't do this," the paper quoted Sissouma, as saying.
"Some people see the colonel as the devil, but he's not. He's a great African," he added. (ANI)
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