Tag: Debate

Mobile phones propelling Africa’s renaissance

| April 4, 2015 | 0 Comments
Mobile phones propelling Africa’s renaissance

Africa’s latest renaissance is propelled in substantial part by the remarkable indigenous technological transformation of a hand-held computerized gadget — the mundane mobile telephone — into a powerful instrument for human advancement. Africa pioneered gathering and transmitting merchandizing and market information. More recently, it invented and popularized banking and financial transmission by mobile device. Now […]

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Drugs, crime and terror in Africa

| January 5, 2015 | 0 Comments
Drugs, crime and terror in Africa

The wars of Africa are fuelled by narcotics. That is an exaggerated over-simplification, but many of the internal conflicts of today’s Africa are driven, in part, sometimes a substantial part, by profits being made from the trafficking of hard drugs and precursor chemicals. The battles in Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of […]

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Africa’s growing dependence on China

| September 26, 2014 | 0 Comments
Africa’s growing dependence on China

Africa’s survival depends on China. At the very least, sub-Saharan Africa’s rapid GDP growth rates — an estimated 6.3 percent this year and 5.1 percent last — rely on continued strong demand from China (growing this year at about 7.6 percent) for the vast commodity resources of the continent. Africa has an abundance of the […]

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Slaughtering the innocent

| June 22, 2014 | 0 Comments
Slaughtering the innocent

Poachers have killed 300 gentle rhinoceroses since the beginning of 2014 in South Africa alone. So far this year, throughout the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, poachers have gunned down another 15,000 unsuspecting elephants. Lions are dying out, too. Fabled Africa, with its profusion of big game, is now imperiled by Asian greed, rampant corruption in […]

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Temporary visa versus refugee status reforms

| April 20, 2014 | 0 Comments
Temporary visa versus refugee status reforms

The beginning of the 20th Century ushered in the increased need for global travellers to obtain a visa before entering another country for a temporary period. The visa is a means of pre-screening to ensure people who may be inadmissible for health, security or criminal reasons are prevented from arriving at a port of entry. […]

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Overcoming Africa’s critical challenges

| January 5, 2014 | 0 Comments
Overcoming Africa’s critical challenges

Sustaining sub-Saharan Africa’s current welcome prosperity, especially an average annual GDP growth of five percent, will demand enhanced or better political leadership, improvements in prevailing methods of governance, a canny embrace of Chinese mercantilism and the ability to cope successfully with or effectively manage the many serious problems — demographics, energy shortfalls, paucities of educational […]

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Less Martin Luther, more Milton Friedman needed in the Arab world

| September 30, 2013 | 0 Comments
Less Martin Luther, more Milton Friedman needed in the Arab world

  Martin Luther and Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor who set himself ablaze, may not seem to have much in common, but they both dropped a spark into much accumulated dry kindling and timber. That set off blazes that led to sectarian violence, revolution, additional repression and war. Martin Luther’s nailing of his 95 […]

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Saving the Euro by opening the exit door

| July 5, 2013 | 0 Comments
Saving the Euro by opening the exit door

  In 1925, Britain’s economically inexperienced chancellor of the exchequer, agonizing over the economic controversy of the day, returned Britain to the gold standard. The decision was hailed as a triumph of sound economics, necessary to protect sterling and London’s status as the world’s financial centre. Disaster followed. The Great Depression arrived half a decade […]

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Kyoto: ‘The silliest of high-minded gestures’

| April 5, 2013 | 0 Comments
Kyoto: ‘The silliest of high-minded gestures’

December 15, 2012 marked the end of what has been a less-than-stellar chapter in Canadian diplomatic history. No, I am not referring to the fact that Canada has pulled out of one of the silliest of the many high-minded gestures that increasingly characterize United Nations diplomacy. Rather, I am taking some satisfaction in Canada’s decision […]

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Syria’s fallout on Jordan, Lebanon and the Kurds

| January 4, 2013 | 0 Comments
Syria’s fallout on Jordan, Lebanon and the Kurds

What happens to Syria’s Kurds may have broader implications for Kurdish populations in Turkey, Iran and Iraq — and regional instability. By Harry Sterling “Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.” When author George Bernard Shaw uttered that pessimistic, certainly cynical, view more than a century ago […]

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