Afghanistan’s Horse Power: What History Can Teach Today’s Petrostates
December 16th, 2024
Via Fortune, an article on how the fall of Afghanistan’s horse power is a lesson to today’s petrostates: power based on a strategic commodity is fleeting. Afghanistan’s Taliban government accepted a $10 billion investment in the country’s mines last year. The funds came from a Chinese company, part of a years-long effort by the world’s second-largest economy […]
Read more »Mapping Afghanistan’s Untapped Natural Resources
December 5th, 2024
Via Al Jazeera, a report on Afghanistan’s untapped natural resources: Deep beneath the ground in one of the world’s poorest countries sits at least $1 trillion of untapped mineral resources, according to a report published by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum [PDF]. The South Asian country of 38 million people is estimated to hold […]
Read more »China Deepens Its Engagement With Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan
December 3rd, 2024
Courtesy of The Diplomat, a look at China’s vastly increased economic engagement with Afghanistan as it eyes a new node in the Belt and Road Initiative: On August 15, 2021, the Taliban took over Kabul and forced the U.S.-installed government of President Ashraf Ghani to escape overseas. From then on, the Taliban have ruled Afghanistan. […]
Read more »Dig, Baby, Dig: China Tightens Its Grip On The World’s Minerals
November 1st, 2024
Courtesy of The Economist, a look at how China is tightening its grip on the world’s minerals: To decarbonise the global economy and build the data centres needed for ever smarter artificial-intelligence models, the world will need lots of minerals. China wants first dibs. Last year its companies ploughed roughly $16bn into mines overseas, not including minority […]
Read more »The State-Owned Company at the Center of Taliban Plans for Self-Sufficiency
October 26th, 2024
Via The Diplomat, a report on Afghanistan’s National Development Corporation (NDC) which, even though established under the previous government, has become a key instrument for the Taliban’s economic planning: Initially an inherited afterthought from the days of the Islamic Republic, the National Development Corporation (NDC) has risen to new prominence under the Taliban government in […]
Read more »China Offers Taliban Tariff-Free Trade, Inches Closer To Regime
October 25th, 2024
Via Nikkei Asia, an article on the Taliban efforts to find foreign investors willing to help it diversify its economy and profit from its mineral wealth, but Afghanistan exported no commodities to China last year: China will offer the Taliban tariff-free access to its vast construction, energy and consumer sectors, Beijing’s envoy to Afghanistan said […]
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.