The poorest countries may owe less to China than first thought
THE FOUR-LANE, 62km toll road being built between Masiaka, a business hub in Sierra Leone, and Freetown, the country’s capital, promises shorter journey times, fewer accidents and smoother drives. It is nonetheless controversial. Awarded to China Railway Seventh Group, the project added over $160m to the country’s foreign debt, according to the China-Africa Research Initiative…
Will labour reforms in India work?
Jun 27th 2020HAS ANY country ever lost as many jobs as India shed in April? After the government imposed a strict lockdown on March 24th, employment fell by 114m in the following month, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a research firm. The number, it said, was “mind-boggling”. It has also been mind-concentrating.…
A supposed detente between Japan and China is already fading
Jun 27th 2020BACK IN FEBRUARY, when covid-19 was raging in China, a young girl in Japan took Chinese social media by storm. Dressed in a traditional Chinese cheongsam, she stood on the streets of her hometown bowing to passers-by to solicit donations for the afflicted. Calligraphers, too, knelt in Tokyo, inkbrush in hand, writing prayers…
The bitter dispute over Africa’s largest dam
Jul 4th 2020BEIRUT AND ADDIS ABABAFOR BIRUK NEGAFH, as for millions of Ethiopians, the summer rains may bring the climax of a decade’s work. As a high-school student in 2011 he bought 100-birr bonds (then worth $6 each) to help finance the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a giant edifice that would span the Blue Nile,…
An aide to Congo’s president gets 20 years for graft
Jun 27th 2020POLITICIANS ARE so rarely punished for stealing public money in the Democratic Republic of Congo that some find the idea absurd. Perhaps that is why Vital Kamerhe, the president’s former chief of staff, laughed aloud as a judge condemned him to 20 years in prison on June 20th.Footage of his trial was live-streamed.…
Majority of Americans did not celebrate Independence Day, Here’s Why
The Independence Day celebrations in the United States is not as festive as it once was. Next to Christmas and New Year’s, the July 4th celebration is one of the biggest national holidays in America. It is celebrated by all, regardless of any difference, everywhere in the United States. However, the United States is currently…
A Look at How New Drugs Are Discovered
Every day in labs around the world, researchers are endeavoring to find potential drug therapies for some of the most harmful diseases known to man. Before a drug makes it to market it must undergo multiple stages of research and development to prove its safety and efficacy. This process begins with drug discovery. Drug discovery…
Trade finance stumbles into the digital era
Jul 4th 2020“IN WARM WEATHER, fewer people wear socks,” says Paul Rotstein of Gold Medal International, a wholesaler in New York. People may not sport socks in the summer but his firm starts shipping them to retailers in July, ahead of the start of the school year. There is, however, a big lag before he…
How resilient are the banks?
Jul 4th 2020WHEN FINANCIERS and governments redesigned the financial system in order to make it safer after the debacle of 2007-09, most of them imagined that a shock as bad as the subprime fiasco would be a generation away. In fact it arrived only a decade or so later. Lockdowns have led to a savage…
India’s ban on TikTok deprives the country of a favourite pastime
IN INDIA, AS elsewhere, TikTok looks like a cornucopia of bright and busy nonsense: an endless, blooming, buzzing confusion of shaky videos and cheap special effects, dispensed free of charge in 15-second doses. But time spent on the app—or on its Chinese-owned peers, all of them abruptly blocked by the government on June 29th—had a…