Archive for 2024

Liberia Signs Deal With Elon Musk’s Starlink

Courtesy of The Africa Report, an article on Liberia’s agreement with Starlink: Liberia has signed a one-year licensing agreement with tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service, in a bid to boost coverage across the poorly connected West African state. Internet coverage in Liberia currently stands at around 60 percent, acting chairman of the Liberia Telecommunications […]

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China’s Zijin and Australia’s AVZ Grapple Over DRC’s Lithium

Via The Africa Report, a report on the tussle between China’s Zijin and Australia’s AVZ over the DRC’s lithium: Home to one of the largest untapped lithium deposits in the world, the Manono site in the Democratic Republic of Congo has become the scene of a fierce commercial battle. To the naked eye, these thousands […]

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Speeding Up the Economy: The Role of Methamphetamines in the Southeast Asian Boom

Via The Diplomat, an article on how – faced with ruthless economic demands – increasing numbers of Southeast Asian workers are turning to a cheap, addictive drug that enables them to “work without stopping:” Like many teenagers around the world, Ngo started using drugs after being encouraged by his friends. But what separates his experiences […]

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Two Paths: Why States Join or Avoid China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Courtesy of Oxford Academic, an interesting new paper examining why countries join or avoid China’s BRI: Abstract Although China’s motives for developing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have been well studied, scholars have yet to comprehensively examine why states seek to join the initiative. We fill this gap by examining how and why states […]

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Can China’s Global South Strategy Achieve Its Objectives in Central Asia?

Courtesy of The Diplomat, a report on China’s foreign policy toward Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan which has had contrasting results over the years: The notion of the Global South has been characterized as “an intellectually elusive but emotionally rich term.” The multifaceted term Global South can refer to over 120 countries. It is used to describe regions and nations suffering […]

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Copper: Now and in the Future

Via Geopolitical Futures, an interesting look at the geopolitical challenges in copper mining are significant, particularly in Latin America and Africa: Copper is crucial to the global economy, and its importance is only going up. Historically, copper has been vital in construction, electrical networks and transportation. But now it is also in high demand as […]

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WILDCATS AND BLACK SHEEP
Wildcats & Black Sheep is a personal interest blog dedicated to the identification and evaluation of maverick investment opportunities arising in frontier - and, what some may consider to be, “rogue” or “black sheep” - markets around the world.

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.