Courtesy of Rest of World, an article on how Wave’s rise has burst open the mobile money landscape in Senegal by fueling competition with existing players: From the confines of a light-blue shipping container next to a busy roundabout, Ousmane Fall runs a modest business transferring money across Senegal, with little more than his smartphone. A […]
Read more »Via Geopolitical Monitor, a report on China’s growing engagement in the “Lithium Triangle”: China aims to expand its influence in the “Lithium Triangle” as a component of a broader campaign to construct a near-monopoly in the global lithium market. The Lithium Triangle, comprising Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, accounts for approximately 56% percent of global lithium supply. Beijing’s […]
Read more »Via The Diplomat, a look at how the BRI is becoming less and less prominent in Chinese leaders’ speeches as the Global Development Initiative takes over: Nearly a decade after its launch, the Belt and Road Initiative – what was once nicknamed the “project of the century” – is slowly vanishing from Chinese leaders’ speeches. […]
Read more »Via Ariana News, a report that Afghanistan hopes to join the CPEC: Afghan Minister of Commerce and Industry has said that Afghanistan should be included in the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) infrastructure project. “In talks we had with China, it was mentioned that we should partner with China in the Belt and Road Initiative and […]
Read more »Via Diplomatic Courier, a review of a book that explores how China found itself with a remarkably expansive, though unintended, empire in Central Asia: Over the course of the summer, China found itself headed for a foreign debt crisis. Many of its loans, made under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—Beijing’s globe-spanning infrastructure and influence […]
Read more »Courtesy of The Washington Post, a report on the impact that a massive hike in cell service fees has had upon Lebanon’s poor: Shopping for grapes at Beirut’s wholesale market to resell from her produce cart, an exhausted Rawaa Ghosn described how another layer of her increasingly tenuous life was peeled away after she had […]
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