Via Modern Diplomacy, commentary on possible outcomes if Indonesia were to join the BRICS: Before we delve further into the complexity of the possibilities that could occur if Indonesia joins BRICS, it is important to know what BRICS is and the agenda it has. BRICS is an association of 5 countries consisting of Brazil, Russia, […]
Read more »Via The Economist, a report on Africa’s retail revolution as it plays out in the supermarket sector: To walk along the main road in Ruaka, a town on the outskirts of Nairobi, is to glimpse the extremes of African shopping. Market stalls selling vegetables and charcoal spill onto the street. In the distance is a […]
Read more »Courtesy of Bloomberg, a look at China’s strategy to use remote regions to host vast green projects; Out of the rolling yellow dunes of the Kubuqi desert arises what appears to be an oasis, shimmering blue beneath the northern China sky. Row after row of hundreds of solar panels cover this otherwise barren stretch of […]
Read more »Via the East Asia Forum, commentary on China’s BRI future: Not so long ago, countries were ecstatic about the potential of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a mega-infrastructure scheme launched in 2013 that would connect the world through ports, power grids, railways, roads and telecommunications networks. Western pundits worried that BRI projects were pulling […]
Read more »Courtesy of The Economist, a look at India’s massive aviation boom: The venomous snakes snakes that infest the new airport rising near Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, are only a minor inconvenience compared with what has already been overcome at the site. Some 8,000 workers, labouring around the clock, have blasted away 55m cubic metres of […]
Read more »Via the Review of African Political Economy, commentary on how the ongoing crisis in the Horn of Africa can be linked to a violent transnational extractive economy that links the Horn and the Gulf States. The authors note that Sudan and Somalia, two countries that have suffered sustained violence in recent years, were together supplying 90% […]
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