Is a traditional tribal leader a government official, and could giving money to him be considered bribery? These questions, which oil and gas company executives grappled with recently during a workshop in Equatorial Guinea, are more than an academic exercise. Oil seems to have enriched Equatorial Guinea's kleptocratic leaders alone, as citizens sank deeper into poverty, disease and hopelessness. The country's critics said the unprecedented workshop on ethics and international law was at best a small step on a long road to reform.

It has got a sad record of disease, brutality and corruption, and fewer inhabitants than Sheffield. But Equatorial Guinea is one of the key targets of the west's new "scramble for Africa". This mini country located under the armpit of the West African coast has immense quantities of oil; it is currently exporting $4.5bn worth (about £2.5bn) a year. Yet such an astonishing bonanza appears to have done most of the country's citizens no good. Who then, is getting the benefit?

Some 15 people have died in a cholera outbreak in Malabo, the island capital of Equatorial Guinea, and nearly 1,000 more have fallen ill, officials at the World Health Organisation (WHO) said last Friday. “We have a confirmed epidemic of cholera,” Dr Kalambay Kalula, the WHO representative in Equatorial Guinea, told IRIN by telephone.

Sir Mark Thatcher pleaded guilty Thursday to unwittingly helping to finance a foiled coup plot in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in exchange for a $506,000 fine and suspended jail sentence. Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, admitted in the Cape High Court that he paid to charter a helicopter, which mercenaries planned to use in their attempted takeover. But he maintains he believed it was to be used for humanitarian purposes, according to his lawyers and a person close to the family.

A few years ago it was an unknown blot on the map wedged between Cameroon and Gabon and home to roughly 525 000 people. But within a few years it has quietly rocketed up the rankings to become Africa's third largest oil producer. In 2004 it has firmly grabbed international attention with a coup plot that just keeps on unravelling.

The latest revelations on the Equatorial Guinea coup plot confirm earlier speculation that it was an 'open secret' within the global intelligence community. Last weekend the Observer UK reported that the British government knew about the coup several months before it was launched. The Observer said two reports on the coup were handed to British Intelligence and to a senior colleague of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfield. This news steps up the pressure on Tony Blair's government to explain why they failed to act according to international norms and warn the government of Equatorial Guinea.

Sharper questions for the UK government to reveal how much it knew come at an embarrassing time for Tony Blair. Blair has previously described Africa as a "scar on the conscience of the world". More recently he created the Commission for Africa to probe Africa's development challenges. Last week the Commission began a series of meetings throughout the continent aimed at gathering input on Africa's challenges. Blair will be keen to avoid any implication that his government tacitly supported the plot.

The only classroom for the mentally disabled in Equatorial Guinea is run by two non-governmental organisations, InteRed and the Teresian Institute. According to an activist in Spain, the country's government have not provided any other public institutions because in their eyes, the mentally handicapped do not exist. The classroom has 40 students and has been providing basic education, adult literacy classes and vocational training since 1983. In order to receive more support and legitimacy, the Institution is placing pressure on the state to officially recognise the issued training certificates in order to help the graduates of their programmes enter the job market.

Britain was given a full outline of an illegal coup plot in a vital oil-rich African state, including the dates, details of arms shipments and key players, several months before the putsch was launched, according to confidential documents obtained by The UK Observer. But, despite Britain's clear obligations under international law, Jack Straw, who was personally told of the plans at the end of January, failed to warn the government of Equatorial Guinea.

The dictator of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, is stepping up suppression of opposition, while social conditions in the tiny West African nation are worsening, an opposition leader told IPS on his visit to Spain. Because of the high levels of corruption, there is no spending on social programmes, including health. ”Even in Malabo, not to mention the hinterland, if someone has to be taken to a hospital for an emergency, the medicines must be purchased in a pharmacy,” said the opposition leader.

The British government learned about an alleged plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea in January this year, several weeks before suspects who included British citizens were arrested in the case. Britain denies being involved in any plot to topple Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo despite accusations from Zimbabwe that U.S., British and Spanish spy agencies did play a part.

New evidence has emerged linking Jeffrey Archer to the alleged conspirators behind the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. A lawyer for the Equatorial Guinea government said in London Tuesday that telephone records showed four calls between the homes of one of the alleged financiers behind the plot, London-based Lebanese businessman Ely Calil, and Lord Archer in the run-up to the coup attempt in March. Another alleged plotter, businessman Greg Wales, also made five calls to Sir Mark Thatcher in the days after the failed coup.

In a recent article by the Financial Times, it was suggested that the regime of Mr Obiang is an embarrassment to the US, which is showing interest in west African oil and claims a "positive, constructive relationship" with the country. This is despite a recent human rights report by the State Department which said "there was little evidence that the government used the country's oil wealth for the public good. Most oil wealth appears to be concentrated in the hands of top government officials while the majority of the population remained poor."

Fourteen foreigners went on trial in the tiny oil-rich state of Equatorial Guinea on Monday, charged with plotting a mercenary invasion to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, a government official in the capital Malabo said. The eight South Africans and six Armenians were arrested in Malabo on 6 March. They were charged with conniving with 70 South African mercenaries who were arrested 24 hours later in Zimbabwe as they were allegedly on their way to Equatorial Guinea to mount an invasion.

The Spanish NGO, Equatorial Guinea Solidarity Forum (FSGE) announced this week that it is to lodge a lawsuit in the Spanish courts calling for the investigation of bank accounts in the name of Equatorial Guinea's President. The move follows the US Senate's report last week which found around $700m in the Washington-based Riggs bank in accounts under the names of Obiang, his family and associates.

A US Senate investigation into lax controls on money laundering at a Washington bank has revealed the misappropriation of at least US$35 million of oil revenues by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea and his family and other senior government officials since the country started exporting oil in the mid 1990s.

The government of Equatorial Guinea, the rags-to-riches West African petro-state where major U.S. oil companies have invested billions of dollars in recent years, has violently put down the latest coup plot against it, summarily executing at least a dozen alleged rebels and rounding up and torturing relatives and associates of an opposition party accused of sponsoring the coup attempt, according to Amnesty International. The alleged coup attempt, which the government itself announced May 30, was the latest in a series of such efforts over the years directed against President Teodoro Obiang since he overthrew Macias Nguema.

Equatorial Guinea has suddenly been brought into the world's spotlight as a result of a supposed coup attempt there by a group of former members of the South African special forces. The picture that is emerging is not a pretty sight. This country is a caricature of Africa, a microcosm of all that is bad about the continent. Because of the discoveries of bigger and bigger oil reserves every year in its waters, Equatorial Guinea has one of the highest economic growth rates in the world - nearly 17% in 2002 and over 14% in 2003. Yet 65% of the people still live in extreme poverty and the oil wealth is concentrated in the hands of no more than 5% of the population.

On the steamy shores of West Africa, oil seldom brings good tidings. Equatorial Guinea, the nugget-sized nation at the heart of last week's bungled apparent coup attempt, is no exception. A despotic leader, his playboy-rapper son, scheming relatives and thousands of American oil men are the characters of a twisted plot that reads like Dallas set in equatorial Africa. And although attention has focused on 67 alleged mercenaries arrested in Zimbabwe, a far greater intrigue swirls around the dictatorial regime of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Equatorial Guinea have launched a scheme to train enough teachers so that every child in the African country can finish primary school by 2010. Over the next four years the UNDP and Equatorial Guinea have promised to spend $5.2 million training 2,000 teachers, 45 school inspectors and 36 education advisers as part of a scheme dubbed “Education for All,” the agency said this week.

UNDP and the Government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea will invest US$5.2 million over the next four years to train 2,000 teachers, 36 education advisors, and 45 school inspectors to implement an "Education for All" project. The aim is to have all children in the central African country attend and complete primary school before 2010, five years ahead of the deadline for achieving the second Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education. This will help the population of one million people reach the over-arching goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015, since illiteracy is a major cause of poverty.

Independent journalist Rodrigo Angue Nguema was released this week after spending eight days in police custody in Equatorial Guinea's capital, Malabo. Angue Nguema works as a correspondent for the wire service Agence France-Presse (AFP), as well as several other foreign news organisations, and is one of the only independent journalists in the country.