… could have been the title of a detailed piece by The Economist on the actions of the Chinese Queensway Syndicate in Africa: The syndicate is built on links forged during the cold war. It is largely the creation of a man known as Sam Pa. Though he uses several names, he was born Xu Jinghua.… Read More »
You probably already know about the Freshlyground music video. Well, in what is probably the least surprising news of the day, the Zimbabwean government has pulled their work visas. Upcoming concerts in Zimbabwe are cancelled. Listen to band members Zo and Simon talk on the PRI’s Global Hits programme here [mp3].
You probably know her. She is the award-winning author of An Elergy for Easterly, a beautiful collection of short stories. I didn’t drop the book until I finished it. Get it if you can. She writes in Guardian of April 14: Thirty years ago on Sunday the renegade British colony that had been Rhodesia was born… Read More »
1. How Mathematics might have caused the financial crisis 2. To which Gillian Tett says, Bad practice, not the discipline itself, is to blame for the financial crisis 3. Sex and the single black (American) woman 4. On Goodluck Jonathan’s Amanpour interview 5. Joe Stiglitz: An Agenda for Reforming Economic Theory 6. Zimbabwe hangman position… Read More »
1. An impending UK bonds market crisis might be worse than the Greek debt crisis – Telegraph H/T Keith Hart 2. Haiti, two months after the earthquake – Global Voices blog review 3. Why are religious films making a come-back? – Guardian 4. Morgan Tsvangirai defends Zimbabwe’s indigenisation laws – AllAfrica 5. Should Germany change… Read More »
Mugabe “thanked the Chinese embassy for its painstaking preparations for the birthday celebration and … hoped to further expand friendly cooperative relations in every field between the two nations”, the foreign ministry said. The ministry’s website (www.mfa.gov.cn) showed pictures of Mugabe cutting a birthday cake in front of a large sign wishing him “Happy 86th… Read More »
The International Telecommunication Union recently published their Information Society Statistical Profiles 2009 – Africa. The 76 page document details their statistical analysis of the progress of telephony and internet in Africa in the ten years up to the end of 2008. And guess what? Nigeria ranks highly in the fastest growing categories for mobile subscription,… Read More »
Zimbabwe: How the Berlin Wall collapse affected us: Zimbabweans have no compelling reason to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 – or the fall of Communism, which followed it, domino-like. True or false? Most zealots of the original plot to turn the country into a one-party state pretend it never happened. Or… Read More »