As the second largest energy company in the world after Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell has been a major player in Nigerian oil and gas from the beginning, overseeing the first ...
Acting Chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Committee (EFCC), Ibrahim Lamorde, is in a tough spot.
It has now been almost four years since the controversial ouster of former EFCC ...
Foreign policy used to be a craft practised by diplomats and statesmen. No longer. In an increasingly globalized economy featuring the disruptive presence of state-owned companies, sovereign wealth, and trends ...
To describe the recent discovery of natural gas deposits off the Southern coast of Mozambique as "transformational" might be an understatement. Until recently, this East African country of about 23 ...
Which country offers the most attractive model for development for a rising country - the United States or China?
The answer used to be easy, but not any longer. Mired in ...
Zimbabwe Minister of Education David Coltart is unequivocally on a mission. And his mission is particularly unique here in Zim – it is supported on both (if not more) sides of the proverbial aisle.
It is common knowledge that education is a pillar of infrastructural stability, allowing a nation and its respective citizenry to develop and thrive. Education turns aspiration to talent, fosters it and allows it to give back through implementing an acquired skill at home, ultimately equating to a nation sustainably developing.
Yet after the turmoil of 2008, one would have all but written off the former breadbasket of Africa regarding its developmental potential. David Coltart is out to prove those naysayers wrong.
The following contains excerpts of a recent article published by Financial Times correspondent Joe Leahy, based in São Paulo:
The Brazilian ministry of development, trade and industry is investigating claims by Brazilian cellphone producers that their Chinese counterparts are dumping cheap handsets on the market. The intense rate of importation of what the Ministry believes are substandard telecommunications products is having adverse effect on the domestic opportunity for sustainable production.
“These are being sold here below the cost of production,” said Abinee, the Brazilian association of electrical and electronics industries. “We can’t compete.”
The move follows other measures by Brazil to curb cheap imports from China as one of the world’s newest and most important trading partnerships becomes more adversarial.
With mining company Anglo American’s successful sale of a contentious $5.4 billion stake in Las Bronces copper mine in Chile, they may have won the point but lost the game, as relations with the Chilean government and wider public have sharply soured during the dispute. During the transaction in question, the state-owned copper interest Codelco had decided to exercise its legally granted call option in order to purchase 49% of the Las Bronces share, but was blocked from doing so when Anglo moved forward to sell 24.5% of its Chilean company to Japan’s Mitsubishi. But this week, the Chilean government went ahead and announced on Monday that they would officially take over the full 49% of Anglo American Sur, including the half of the stake sold to the Japanese.
According to a number of financial and political risk analysts interview by The Financial Times, the aggressive and “arrogant” moves by Anglo have prompted a certain level of “unquantifiable risk” that the company may have unleashed in their handling of the dispute with an unusually business-friendly like Chile. The question remains: was it worth $5.4 billion in value in terms of the heightened risk their operations will now face?
As the second largest energy company in the world after Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell has been a major player in Nigerian oil and gas from the beginning, overseeing the first commercial export of oil from the country in 1958 from the Oloibiri Field. Their success over the years has been notable, with operations are spread over 30,000 square kilometres in the Niger Delta, including more than 6,000 kilometres of flowlines and pipelines, 86 oil fields, 1,000 producing wells, 68 flowstations, 10 gas plants and two major oil export terminals at Bonny and Forcados.
But after a number of accidents, attacks by militants, and political scandals, is Shell’s honeymoon with Nigeria coming to an end? Some recent events and transactions indicate a shift in the Dutch company’s strategy in the country, opening a window of opportunity for new operators.
It is said in Tbilisi that if many share the same dream, it has the potential to become a reality.
Today, Georgia stands at the doorway of that achievable ‘dream’ in that it seems clear tangible change is on the way. Such change is brought to us by Bidzina Ivanishvili and his newfound ‘Georgian Dream Movement’.
It’s been brought about to bring the one thing that has hindered the political landscape from being competitive. Resources have allowed a President, who many view as having visions of Putinism dancing in his head, to assume that the upcoming elections were his to landslide. And therefore it is resource that the Georgian Dream provides to facilitate free and fair elections, to assist two leading opposition parties in order to effectively compete – giving them the ball and asking them to run.
Acting Chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Committee (EFCC), Ibrahim Lamorde, is in a tough spot.
It has now been almost four years since the controversial ouster of former EFCC Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, back when the anti-corruption unit held some level of international legitimacy, as well as a local reputation as a hammer used against Olusegun Obasanjo’s opponents. Ever since then, with Farida Waziri serving as EFCC Chairperson, the agency has become at best a joke, and, at worst, a tool used to persecute some of Nigeria’s fledgling reformers.
But President Goodluck Jonathan’s abrupt firing of Waziri and appointment of Lamorde has given hope to some observers that the lost prestige could be regained. Writing in Next Newspaper, columnist Stephen Davis argues that “Replacing Waziri is a bold step by President Jonathan. It clearly shows this is not a puppet President but a man who may yet be the leader Nigeria desperately needs to carry the nation through a dark and difficult time.”
The following, penned in Arab Newsby Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov, is an intriguing recommendation that Muslims should address misperceptions in the world about the nature of their religion, in light of the nation taking on the role of chairing the 57-country Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
“…We did so because we saw an important opportunity to give a fresh impetus to the OIC’s long-standing objectives of promoting modernization in the Muslim world in line with the values of Islam based on peace, tolerance and human dignity. As a country both in Europe and Asia, we do not believe in the Samuel Huntington theory of the “Clash of Civilizations.” Over the past 20 years the advance of globalization, the expansion of free markets and the rise of “emerging” economies from Asia to Latin America have created new linkages rather than the re-emergence of old divisions predicted by Prof. Huntington. Kazakhstan’s own experience as a predominantly Muslim nation with more than 100 ethnic groups and 40 religions and with no history of either inter-religious or inter-ethnic enmity or bloodshed is also a case in point.
Which country offers the most attractive model for development for a rising country – the United States or China?
The answer used to be easy, but not any longer. Mired in a lost decade kicked off by the attacks of 9/11, two long and devastatingly costly wars, and capped off by a sub-prime mortgage crisis of baffling greed and investment banking shell games, the United States has lost more than just its luster – it’s also lost it’s place as the undisputed champion of soft power. When at one moment the iconic Abu Ghraib photos circulated, just a few years later the Chinese celebrated an impressive Olympics with panache and confidence, heralding an arrival of some sort to the next level of global presence. Tens of millions of Chinese citizens have been lifted out of poverty, while the economic growth of the country in the past few decades may be unprecedented in world history.
Although China has proliferated its relationships with a vast number of new countries from Africa to Latin America, their soft power remains constrained by an inflexible political system that resists competition and disagreement. Looking into the benefits and limits of Chinese soft power, David Piling of the Financial Times takes note of a new Central Committee directive that has dedicated a new $174 billion fund not to industry, not to defense, and not to infrastructure – but rather to culture, so that famous chefs, filmmakers, artists, and musicians can take the world by storm and spread the core values and ideas of the Chinese nation. But will this really work if those values and ideas are not allowed to be debated and negotiated in the public space? From the FT:
Blackrock, the world’s largest money manager, today warned that “resource nationalism” was a growing trend, on the rise globally. Their investment chief for natural resources, Evy Hambro, particularly singled out the regimes of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela as extreme examples of government intervention, ultimately hinderances to foreign investment.
“We’re seeing a trend around the world of resource nationalism with governments that are short of tax revenue… whether it’s by personal taxation levels or extending into corporate or other ways,” Hambro said at a media briefing, while discussing the company’s investments in mining accounts (totaling $35.75 billion).
“Obviously, you want to stray away from indigenization, which is being proposed by Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Chavez in Venezuela on one end of the extreme,” Hambro said.
