In the days following Jacob Zuma’s rise to political power, one might forget an upcoming event that will change the way the world views South Africa henceforth - Fifa World Cup 2010. The event is one of the largest sporting spectaculars in the world, and the sport has perhaps the most incensed fan-base out of [...]

The beauty and indeed power of Bollywood has never been more prevalent than in recent months, with the smash-hit success of the film “Slumdog Millionaire“. Through the music of A.R. Rahman and the dazzling cinematography, one can only imagine the next big hit to come from an emerging economic and indeed cultural market.
However, there is [...]

Venezuela is often referred to as the capital of South America, and in some respects, its easy to see why. In terms of notable leaders on the continent, one doesn’t immediately think of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, President of a Brazil that comprises nearly half of the land mass, but indeed, of Venezuelan President Hugo [...]

Greater “transparency”, be it actual openness or not, has been one of the pillars of the Dmitry Medvedev presidency in Russia. With that in mind, Al-Jazeera has reported that today, Medvedev has begun a blog on a popular internet site.
Investors need not heed this information as any more than a gaffe, a public relations initiative with [...]

Robert Mugabe, pictured at left and quoted here in December of 2008, claiming that the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has been ‘arrested’.
In my mind, Mugabe must be more a fan of Kim Jong-Il than of Hu Jintao. Why? Because although both Jong-Il and Jintao host nations with tragically stringent levels of media censorship, denying in many cases [...]

With the the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre fast approaching, the onus is on Beijing to show the world that it has changed for the better. Even before June 4, 1989, the day democracy advocates were gunned down, human rights in China remained an issue adamantly in question.
China’s State Council recently released the [...]

Hopes were high. Promises were made. There were even small clamors of joy found in the most dilapidated of homes. From the moment Morgan Tsvangirai was inaugurated as Zimbabwean prime minister, February 11, 2009, Zimbabwe has witnessed nothing but controversy and corruption, power struggle instead of power shared. President Robert Mugabe maintained the post he had [...]

Emerging stocks rose on Thursday towards new year highs set earlier in the week fuelled mainly by Asian optimism, but Central and Eastern European currencies once again underperformed. Political unrest in Moldova had little effect on markets, but investors watched for wider impact. Moldova’s Communist president, Vladimir Voronin, today accused neighboring Romania yesterday of trying to overthrow [...]

In order to cope with the challenges of a growing international economic crisis, Chinese Minister of Commerce Chen Deming stated Monday that China is willing to increase cooperation with their largest African trading partner, Angola.
Of course this is not a bad trend. Since November of 2006, China has not only forgiven Angola’s matured debts equivalent [...]

Today I read with great interest this piece in the New York Times Magazine, which explores some of the central corporate foreign policy issues we see crop up for a variety of technology companies, such as Skype and Yahoo!’s recent experiences with the Chinese government seeking the identity of dissidents.  To what extent are these [...]