September 12th, 2018
Via Silk Road Briefing, an interesting look at the possibility of China joining the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Pipeline: China has expressed interest in joining the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, by building a link from Pakistan to China. This could act as alternative to Chinese plans to build a fourth China-to-Turkmenistan pipeline. The China-to-Turkmenistan line has to cross […]
Read more »Iran Foreign Investments Co.
September 10th, 2018
Via The Wall Street Journal, an interesting report on Iran’s foreign-investment fund which targets assets that give it access to cash, services, goods and technologies that it is at risk of losing: With much fanfare, a French-Iranian scientist recently announced a $3 million plan to invest in a bankrupt medical factory that had become a […]
Read more »August 28th, 2018
Via Ozy, an interesting look at at Bahrain: Indian tech entrepreneur Amjad Puliyali had worked for a decade in Dubai, but in 2016, he relocated to tiny Bahrain to launch an online grocery delivery startup called GetBaqala. With just 1.5 million people packed into a 295-square-mile country of 33 islands, Bahrain is the smallest market in […]
Read more »DRC: Blood, Sweat, and Batteries
August 26th, 2018
Courtesy of Fortune, a detailed look at the Democratic Republic of Congo’s involvement in the global cobalt supply chain: MOST OF HIS NEIGHBORS are still sound asleep at 5 a.m., when Lukasa rises to begin his 12-hour workday. The slender 15-year-old, with an oval face and piercing stare, slips out of his family’s mud-brick home before […]
Read more »August 22nd, 2018
Via Frontera, an interesting look at Libya’s oil region and reserves: The recent turmoil in Libya’s Oil Crescent – a region which stretches along the coast from Sirte to Ras Lanuf, and which extends down to the Jufra district – has underscored the competition for the control of state revenues, as Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s […]
Read more »Why Central Asia Is Betting on China’s Belt and Road
August 18th, 2018
Via The Diplomat, commentary on why Central Asian countries are betting on the BRI for long-term benefits, despite the apparent risks: The transfer of Hambantota deep-water port in Sri Lanka to China through 2116 set off alarm bells across Asia. Those already warning that China’s ambitious infrastructure development project, the Belt Road Initiative (BRI), was […]
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