The Railway That China Hopes Will Take On The US In Africa
March 22nd, 2025
Courtesy of The Financial Times, an article on the railway that China hopes will take on the US in Africa: Mukololo Chanda still recalls the glory days of Africa’s “freedom railway”. Almost four decades ago, fresh from high school in Zambia, she began working as a switchboard operator on the railway built by Mao Zedong’s […]
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 »Trump Aid Freeze Risks $1 Billion African Minerals Project
February 18th, 2025
Via Bloomberg, an article on how an expansion of the US’s biggest strategic critical-minerals project in Africa is at risk: A billion-dollar expansion of the biggest US strategic critical-minerals project in Africa faces delays because of the Trump administration’s sweeping foreign-aid freeze, providing a potential opening for rivals like China. The Lobito corridor railway project […]
Read more »PGI’s Lobito Corridor Rail Network to Unlock African Copper Belt
January 17th, 2025
Via Fast Markets, an article on how Africa’s first transcontinental rail network, known as the Lobito Corridor, which aims to eventually connect almost the entire regional copper-cobalt belt with additional links across sub-Saharan Africa, is on track to break ground early in 2026: The project will link Angola and Zambia by rail for the first […]
Read more »The Billion-Dollar Railways Driving Biden’s Last Overseas Trip
December 3rd, 2024
Via Bloomberg, a report on US support for African infrastructure aimed at countering Chinese influence in the region: Twice a week, a cargo train groaning under hundreds of tons of copper concentrate pulls into the Angolan port of Lobito from mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The locomotive is made by Pittsburgh-based Wabtec Corp. but many of […]
Read more »The New Investment Superpower Outflanking China and the U.S. in Africa
November 9th, 2024
Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, a report on the UAE’s billions of dollars of investment into Africa’s mines, ports and other projects: Across the world, the U.S., China and Russia are rubbing up against each other as Beijing and Moscow try to establish a new international order. The tiny United Arab Emirates is looking closer […]
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.