How One Controversial African Pipeline Reveals the State of the Global Fight Over Oil
March 11th, 2025
Via The Washington Post, an article on who gets to decide whether African countries can exploit their natural resources? For its first 88 completed miles, the world’s most controversial oil pipeline system runs in a bulldozed path through the Ugandan countryside. The pipeline runs past elementary schools lacking electricity. It cuts through the banana groves […]
Read more »Syria Needs Debt Restructuring, But That Will Be Difficult
March 8th, 2025
Via the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a report on Syria’s debt: Syria is in dire economic straits. The brutal civil war that lasted from 2011 to 2024 ended with the fall of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The country was effectively divided into several parts, each run by different rebel groups. The civil […]
Read more »China, America, and the Great Railway Race in Africa
March 7th, 2025
Via The Diplomat, a look at how China and the United States are engaged in a battle for access, resources, and influence along railways in Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, and the DRC, echoing trends from the colonial era. The Mukuba Express had been motionless for eight hours, stopped in a small village about 50 miles west […]
Read more »Will Lithium Be Mali’s New Goose That Lays The Golden Egg?
March 6th, 2025
Via The Africa Report, a look at Mali’s lithium sector: Mali has just launched West Africa’s first two lithium mines, a sector the government is betting on despite falling prices. On 15 December, Mali’s junta leader Assimi Goïta attended the opening of the Goulamina mine, where Chinese firm Ganfeng Lithium aims to produce 500,000 tonnes […]
Read more »The Age of Metals Diplomacy: Critical Minerals Take Center Stage In Global Politics
March 5th, 2025
Via Reuters, commentary on how critical minerals are taking centre stage in world politics: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump today to sign a critical minerals deal as a way of securing continued U.S. backing in the war against Russia. It initially started as a rare earths deal […]
Read more »Congo Courts Trump for Strategic Minerals Tie-Up as War Looms
March 5th, 2025
Via Bloomberg, a report that The Democratic Republic of Congo has offered the US exclusive access to critical minerals and infrastructure projects in exchange for security assistance as it battles a rebellion backed by neighboring Rwanda: The Democratic Republic of Congo has offered the US exclusive access to critical minerals and infrastructure projects in exchange […]
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.