Sooner or later there was going to be a showdown somewhere in Africa over the continental-wide Christian backed attacks on homosexuality.

It seems Malawi is it. The jailing with hard labour for fourteen years of Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza – after they declared their intention of sealing a civil union, has finally concentrated action on this Southern African nation.

Within minutes of the sentence, the hugely influential Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria issued a strong statement condemning it as undermining the investment in AIDS/HIV investment, ‘driving sexual behaviour underground’, and ‘creating an environment where HIV can more easily spread’.

Yesterday the Head of the Global Fund Michel Kazatchkine, and the Head of UN/AIDS Michel Sidibe arrived in Malawi to carry their protest to the seat of government and to warn the president and his ministers that they now face major assaults on the aid budgets upon which their country survives.

Pastor Mario Manyozo of the Word of Life Tabernacle Church of Malawi says ‘homosexuality is against God’s creation, an evil act, since gays are possessed with demons’.

It’s easy for those of us in the north to throw stones – who’s to say our own forebears didn’t use such language? But there are already those asking whether UK aid money and the money of UK voluntary agencies should be used to fund aid in Malawi.

My own sources inside DFID and in the Scottish Executive (Malawi has very close ties with Scotland – indeed Jack McConnell – former first Minister – tells me there are more Church of Scotland worshippers in Malawi than in Scotland itself).

Malawi’s President Bingu we Mutharika is quoted as saying this – ‘homosexuality is evil and bad before the eyes of God’.

What’s happening in Malawi is being replicated in Africa by some thirty other countries extending from Senegal to Uganda.

In Uganda I am told the unmistakable hand of US evangelical churches is in evidence – proving both funding and propaganda. Mr McConnell says that in Malawi the antigay movement has more indigenous roots.

More widely, my own experience of reporting the issue of homosexuality is that some of those who most loudly condemn it are themselves ambivalent about their own sexuality. When I was last in Uganda for example, it was widely circulated that one of the most vociferous clerical antigay campaigners was himself gay.

We have no great record in the developed world in this matter. Equal rights and the legalisation of homosexual acts between consenting males and females has only been made legal in the UK in my own life time.

Only time will reveal whether the visit of the two Michels to Malawi will have achieved much mind changing there. At the same time, incarcerated in Malawi’s primitive overcrowded prison system, no one I have spoken to is confident that the two convicted men will survive their fourteen year ordeal.

Both are, quite literally, according to local sources, expected to die in custody.

My seasoned and accomplished contact who operates in the highest echelons of the multinational world reports attending a number of gatherings of economists over the past few weeks.

He says they are all, without exception, pessimistic. He’s not entirely convinced they are right. And nor am I.

Last night I attended a session with a number of business leaders who operate on the African continent, where even the pessimistic economists predict 3 per cent growth.

The intriguing thing about Africa is that economically it faces an aid reduction catastrophe and an investment opportunity. Some talk of a reduction of $500bn in the coming year.

I spoke with a venture capitalist who says many people are re-reading Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, a theory that links people, land and community, developing the local economy.

Interestingly, this chimes with DFID’s (Britain’s aid department) pre-crunch shift from major aid bundles to targeted small business investment.

By chance yesterday morning I attended a breakfast to listen Dambisa Moyo talk about her book Dead Aid. Moyo argues aid is throttling Africa. It has had 60 years to develop the continent and has so far failed. She too thinks the future lies in micro-finance and micro-investment.

Strangely, I detect a whiff of confidence in the air, at least when it comes to Africa. As to the rest, all we can be certain of is that there is not an economist alive who knows.

I’m very struck by the response to the condom debate sparked by our interview following the Pope’s comments last week. More than 50 comments, and an interesting spread.

I have I suppose what the Catholic church would call a “confession” to make. I did not handle it well. One must be honest about these things.

In truth, it’s rare that anyone offers quite what was in the air that night, and the debate perhaps generated more heat than light. Just goes to show, every day in life is a learning experience.

The content in the online debate here is very rewarding, however, and I’m grateful to everyone who has participated. I have definitely learned from the experience.

Now back to the matter of condoms. As I was saying…

Several readers of this blog have commented on my interview in last night’s programme on the back of Lindsey Hilsum’s report on the Pope’s trip to Africa.

En route to Cameroon, Pope Benedict remarked that condoms were not a solution to the spread of Aids but part of the problem.

After the piece, I spoke to Joanna Bogle, Catholic blogger, and Dr Rachel Baggaley, head of Christian Aid‘s HIV programme. Here’s the interview.