From The Huffington Post

The US-Africa Summit wrapped, but that wasn’t the end of the fanfare for one of its most controversial participants.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, the world’s longest serving non-royal head of state, was honored at an invitation-only dinner hosted by the Corporate Council on Africa.

The council, whose members pay between $5,000 and $25,000 for the benefits of “access, connections, and insight,” is co-sponsoring an “Equatorial Guinea Economic Forum.”

The forum agenda, designed to entice more American investment, skips over issues of government mismanagement and high-level abuse of power in Equatorial Guinea.

A morning session on the “health system in Equatorial Guinea” is likely to skip over the inconvenient fact that the Obiang government manifestly fails to fulfill its international social and economic rights obligations to meet the basic needs of its citizens.

Life expectancy in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, which has a per-capita income equivalent to Portugal’s, is 53, compared with 80 in Portugal and 63 in neighboring Gabon, according to World Bank statistics from 2012. Despite tremendous resources, Equatorial Guinea has very low vaccination rates, including the worst polio vaccination rate in the world, according to the World Health Organization.

Written by Lisa Misol/ Read more at The Huffington Post