Facebook’s Push Into Africa
November 9th, 2018
Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, an article on Facebook’s efforts to grow its business in Africa: A prominent red sign welcoming visitors to this remote and dusty agricultural city makes the announcement in capital letters: “This is now a 4G zone.” That is thanks in part to Facebook Inc., which, along with Indian telecom giantBharti Airtel Ltd.’s Ugandan unit […]
Read more »Africa Enjoys Oil Boom as Drilling Spreads Across Continent
November 8th, 2018
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 »Mozambique: Waiting For Gas
November 4th, 2018
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 »Suriname: The Land Alcoa Damned
November 4th, 2018
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 »Afghanistan’s “Sneakernet”
November 4th, 2018
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 […]
Read more »China Powering Economic Growth in Mozambique
October 25th, 2018
Via Future Directions International, a report on China’s economic engagement with Mozambique: China’s trade with the Portuguese-speaking countries (Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe and Timor-Leste) grew by US$82 billion in the first half of 2018, an increase of 21.5 per cent on the previous year. While the overall leaders were Brazil […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.