South Korea wants mothers to work, to bolster the labour force
SHIN JOO-HEE learned to cook at the age of 39, while his wife was pregnant with their son. He says it started as a modest challenge to himself: “I wanted to do something nice for her at least once a week.” To his surprise, he found that he enjoyed it. These days the couple share…
How not to reform Indonesia
Oct 15th 2020ONCE UPON a time, a slight, upstanding, mild-mannered person came to inhabit the presidential palace in Jakarta, carried there on the shoulders of millions of Indonesians who recognised in the former furniture-maker a man of the people. Today’s incumbent, by contrast, remains remote and aloof, surrounded by courtiers from the capital’s intertwined business…
In Congo the little guys are jailed for stealing minerals
WHEN COBALT prices soared from 2016, young men from all over Congo flocked to the south of the country to dig the stuff up. Demand for the metal, used in smartphones and electric cars, was driven by carmakers needing around 10kg of it per vehicle. (Phone batteries, by contrast, require just a few grams each.)…
Mali’s “civilian” government has rather a lot of soldiers
Oct 15th 2020IN THE LATE evening of October 8th a man in a white turban stepped off a military plane into a crowd of well-wishers at Bamako airport in Mali. Soumaila Cissé, an opposition leader kidnapped by jihadists in March, was free at last. Also arriving to cries of “maman” from her waiting son was…