Via Bloomberg, a look at renewed hydrocarbon activity in Africa: Africa is finally seeing the benefits from the recovery in crude prices as companies ramp up drilling from Algeria to Namibia. The rigs are returning and wildcatters are getting excited again after a years-long hiatus during the oil-price slump. From majors like Total SA to independents like Tullow […]
Read more »Courtesy of The Economist, a report on Mozambique’s economic malaise: Look at the state of this school,” says Manuel Jaime. It is not a pretty sight: cracked window panes, pockmarked floors and walls etched with graffiti. For this resident of Beira, in central Mozambique, the condition of Amilcar Cabral School, which doubled as a polling station […]
Read more »Via the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, a detailed look at Suriname, where a struggling country’s past and future has been shaped by Alcoa and its aluminum: It electrified this South American country even as it drowned a jungle, so the 1.2-mile-long dam Alcoa built here to harness the Suriname River is more than stone and turbines. It’s a symbol, […]
Read more »Via New York Magazine, an interesting look at Afghanistan’s offline marketplace of digital content — the “Sneakernet”: At a dusty street market in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Aziz is shopping for digital files: games, music, videos, ghazals (recitations of love poetry), and naat (anthems praising the Prophet Muhammad), to add to his already extensive mobile entertainment collection. When he makes […]
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