http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031114.html
That stuff’s old hat. Nowadays, we’ve got Obasanjo villages.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/12/04/nigeria.commonwealth.ap/
…Of course, the two phenomena aren’t exactly the same, because in the first place Catherine’s false villages apparently didn’t really exist, and in the second, according to the myth she was kept in the dark about the Potemkin villages, whereas Queen Elizabeth knows that this is a mock village. But still. Rather… Odd.