Startup Fever Is Gripping the World’s Last Big Untapped Nation: Pakistan
December 6th, 2021
Via Bloomberg, a look at how global investors are pouring money into Pakistan’s budding tech sector: The startup scene in the world’s fifth-largest nation is having a breakout year. More money has flowed into Pakistan’s nascent technology sector during 2021 than in the previous six years combined, with investors from the U.S., Singapore and the United […]
Read more »African Nations Make Do as China Tightens Belt and Road
December 6th, 2021
Via Reuters, an article on China’s decreased appetite for BRI financing in Africa: Deep in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, members of the National Youth Service tirelessly swing machetes to clear dense shrubs obscuring railway tracks more than a century old. It’s a distinctly low-tech phase for China’s Belt and Road drive in Africa to create […]
Read more »The Road to Damascus Will Be Paved by China’s Belt and Road
December 6th, 2021
Via National Interest, commentary on China’s long game in improving relations with Syria and the Middle East as a whole: As Damascus’ forces gradually recover more territory, with Idlib province being the last rebel stronghold, Syria is now entering a “postwar” phase. Yet while Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s forces have prevailed on the battlefield, his victory has […]
Read more »Syria: A New Narcostate
December 5th, 2021
Courtesy of The New York Times, a report on how associates of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, are making and selling captagon, an illegal amphetamine, creating a new narcostate on the Mediterranean: Built on the ashes of 10 years of war in Syria, an illegal drug industry run by powerful associates and relatives of President Bashar al-Assad […]
Read more »Turkey’s Economic Turmoil Sends Desperation and Inflation Soaring
December 3rd, 2021
Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, a report on Turkey’s economic crisis: The two-decade economic boom that lifted millions of Turks into the middle class is beginning to unravel, threatened by a currency crisis that has people lining up for subsidized bread, cutting back on meat and fleeing for a better life in Europe. The Turkish lira […]
Read more »The Real Reason China Is Pushing “Digital Sovereignty” In Africa
December 3rd, 2021
Via Rest of World, commentary on the real reason China is pushing “digital sovereignty” in Africa: This June, Senegal’s president, Macky Sall, proudly commissioned the construction of the Diamniadio National Datacenter, about 30 kilometers outside the capital city, Dakar. Sall said the West African country would move all government data and digital platforms from foreign servers abroad […]
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.