Operation Oil Theft: Month 4, Week 4, Day 1.

It has been another quiet week in Libya. The rebels have managed to hold on to the narrow 12 mile (20km) corridor they opened up on the Misrata front line last week. However the rebels were unable to hold on to the town of Gharain on the Nafusa mountains front line and were pushed back the full 6 miles (10km) they'd gained by a Libyan government counter offensive on Wednesday (13/7/11). On the Ajdabiya/Brega front line the rebels have been talking about mounting a big offensive to take Brega for a couple of days now but the line remains static while we wait to see if that attack will materialise.

On the diplomatic front on Wednesday the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg all recognised the rebel's Transitional National Council (TNC) as the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people. By contrast over the course of this week the Libyan government applied for permission to send a delegation to Israel and were given it. Although this meeting has yet to take place and when it does it will be more about opening a link rather then reaching a conclusion it highlights that rather then being behind the Libyan rebellion Israel is actually one of the few nations prepared to continue relatively normal diplomatic relations with Qaddafi. This is what prompted the French President, Nicholas Sarkozy to call for the NATO operation against Libya to end on Tuesday (12/7/11) because he thinks that France will require Israeli approval to replace Britain as Americas link to Europe.

With the actual fighting in something of a quiet period I should take the opportunity to talk more about the issue of Libya's frozen assets which sort of got overlooked in the early part of the conflict. Apart from authorising the NATO operation when the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed resolution 1973(2011) it also ordered that all Libyan assets be seized by the government in the country in which they're held and Britain, France and Italy have all suggested that these seized assets are given to the rebels to help fund their military campaign.

Apart from raising the worrying prospect of a foreign government taking money from one private company and giving it to another private company this creates a big problem because despite what the western propaganda would have you believe Qaddafi hasn't really plundered Libya's wealth to fund lavish lifestyles for himself and his family. Instead he placed most of it into something called a Sovereign Wealth Fund. One thing that Libya's Sovereign Wealth Fund does is fund the Libyan Investment Portfolio (LAP) which since 2006 has invested heavily in mobile telecommunications infrastructure across Africa. Starting with an initial investment of US$5billion LAP's GreeN mobile phone network now either operates outright or is in partnership with local operators in; Zambia (Zamtel), Uganda (UTL), Rwanda (Rwandtel), Niger (Sahelcom), Cote D'Ivorie (Oricel), Sierra Leone (Ambitel), Togo (GreeN) and South Sudan (Gemtel). Before the war it was planning to expand into Burundi, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo but already has over 4 million customers across the continent.

This is important because the spread of mobile phone use across Africa has driven the continents biggest development revolution over the past decade with some economists estimating that for every 1 in 10 Africans using a mobile phone GDP goes up by as much as 1.2%. This is because for as long as anyone can remember the big development challenge in Africa is the lack of infrastructure meaning that there aren't really any roads, no electricity grid, no postal, service, no TV, no newspapers and no banks. As a result rather then having sort of national populations many African countries have small, isolated communities who aren't really that aware of each other existence. That meant that farmers and fishermen weren't able to find out where to go to sell their produce for the best price, corrupt governments and foreign corporations were able to do whatever they liked with impunity and good governments weren't able to keep their people informed about things like floods, droughts and health threats like HIV/AIDS.

The spread of mobile phones and especially the mobile Internet has changed all that with all these people suddenly able to talk to each other and the world. As a result Africans have been better able to hold their governments to account and African businesses have been able to start operating on the global stage selling their goods on the global market and researching foreign companies that have been trying to rip them off. It has also created a boom industry in software development with African entrepreneurs now leading the world in things like eWallet technology and technology that allows payments to be made by text message to name but a few.

Unfortunately the decision to freeze Libyan assets has also frozen the assets of many of the mobile phone networks that are making all this possible. So apart from the damage that it's doing to Libya itself the longer the war against Libya goes on for the more damage it will do to the continent as a whole while people in the developed world are once again being asked to donate money to save people in east Africa from starvation.