“China is a true friend,” Tanzanian president John Magufuli effused not so long ago. Surprising then, that, early last month, he should be assailing his Chinese partners, accusing them of treatment that could “only be accepted by mad people”. This...
The G20 summit concluded this weekend in Osaka, Japan. US President Donald Trump was the center of several controversies and discussions, not limited to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, climate change, and US support for Saudi Arabia in...
To the victor belong the spoils – so goes the old adage. Iraq’s Kurdish community would surely disagree. Instrumental in the military victory over the Islamic State (IS), Kurdistan has fared poorly since the caliphate’s destruction. An abortive independence referendum,...
The discovery of a giant gas field, Tamar, off the coast of Israel in 2009 opened up a new era for the Eastern Mediterranean as an energy hot spot, but regional politics stood in the way for some years. This...
Is Facebook’s new digital currency, Libra – hubris, or part of Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to take over the world? It appears to be a little bit of both. As of August of 2018, the number of existing cryptocurrencies was over...
In France, 65% of those who employ maids today pay them on the books – a sharp change from 10 years ago when nearly all maids were a part of the informal economy. Today, “le travail au noir” (working in...
The launch of Facebook’s cryptocurrency, “Libra”, on June 18, 2019, is an ambitious attempt by Facebook to diversify its business and move into financial services. One has to admire the scale of the move, but one also has to wonder...
(Cairo) Egypt is implementing an animal production project that aspires to bridge the massive gap between meat production and consumption within the country, also bringing high meat prices in the market down. The project, one of many aiming at sealing...
(Nairobi) Sub-Saharan Africa still holds untapped opportunities across various sectors of the economy, particularly in agribusiness, manufacturing, infrastructure, power, construction, tourism and health care, among others. Because of this, Africa’s trade volume is expected to multiply by the year 2030....
It was only supposed to be a threat, a warning to scare the United States. Instead, China is serious. Beijing has cut exports of rare-earth elements in response to the treatment that the Trump administration has meted out to Huawei. ...