John Ashbourne
@JohnAshbourne
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Emerging Markets Analyst, Africa watcher. 🇨🇦🇬🇧(All tweets in personal capacity)
Joined October 2009
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So what Nigeria’s president seems to have taken from the escalating
#EndSARS
movement is that it’s a mistake for the govt to give any ground whatsoever.
Very worrying, suggests he sees a violent crackdown as the way forward. Note also, no real remorse for recent violence.
Sadly, the promptness with which we have acted seemed to have been misconstrued as a sign of weakness and twisted by some for their selfish unpatriotic interests.
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These are electrical train carriages.
But they’re being pulled by a diesel locomotive. So why bother buying electric trains?
I assume that this is a stop-gap solution to meet a deadline? It can’t be the LT plan, surely. What an expensive waste.
Bienvenue: The Blue Line started passenger operations today. History. Vision. Resilience. Confidence. That’s the spirit of Lagos. Welcome onboard.
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First interaction with Nigerian Border staff on landing in Abuja.
Border Guard: “And perhaps you have a little something for us?”
Me: “Sorry, I don’t have any money with me”
BG: “Brother, we take card”
You can’t fault his initiative.
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I criticise the weakness of Nigerian non-oil exports a lot, but my local Vietnamese grocery in London now carries Indomie manufactured in Ogun, Rivers, and Kaduna.
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I’m a sucker for interesting maps, but I thought this one was pretty good.
The red and blue areas have approximately the same population.
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They flew it in for a photo op, then sent it back to the Addis-Mogadishu route.
Legitimately very funny
Nigeria Air aircraft back to regular service for Ethiopian Airlines, live tracker shows
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Uniformed airforce officers giving orders to the police and announcing that they will “serve as a buffer” between police & protestors is a sign that things have gone very wrong.
And - as an honest question - Will protestors respect and trust the forces more than the police?
Another video of Nigerian Airforce personnel telling Police officers to stop shooting.
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The repeated claim that Nigerian agriculture needs more people (rather than more capital or better infrastructure) is - I don’t want to sugar coat this - completely insane
This thing na craze. If 60% of the population are already ‘employed’ in agriculture, please what percentage will be enough? 80%? 100%?
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Does anyone think that a lack of *labour* is what’s holding back Nigerian agriculture?
Does he really think that putting a few million more people into the fields is going to make Nga into Thailand?
We have a lot of able-bodied young people willing to work, and agriculture is the answer.
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Asked about Covid, Nigeria’s High Commissioner to the UK is extolling the benefits of garlic, turmeric, and prophylactic Nigerian herbs
Ghana’s HC, who spent weeks on a ventilator, responds by saying he’s glad 🇬🇭, 🇸🇳, and 🇷🇼 worked to found a vaccines factory
#HLAfricaForum
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Unless I’m mistaken, Deby might be the first head of state to die in battle since Paraguay’s Francisco Solano López in 1870.
Both warrior presidents of landlocked military states. They died doing what they loved.
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The costs of a failed electricity system.
“People think the lack of power hurts manufacturers. But it’s everyone. After staff, our branch network’s biggest expense is diesel for the generators that keep the lights on”
- Senior manager at (Nigerian bank you’ve heard of)
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Why Africa can't get rich only exporting commodities, example no. 10,532
Cost breakdown of a £2.50 cup of coffee in London:
Shop costs/rent: £0.87
Staff costs: £0.63
Tax: £0.37
Profit: £0.17
Cups, napkins, etc: £0.10
Milk: £0.10
Actual Coffee: £0.25
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Can a French-founded, Dubai-based, German-incorporated, NY-listed firm really call itself "African", even if it serves Nigerian customers? 🤷♂️
I'm more interested in the fact that it *wants* to
Firms used to hide their Africaness; now its a selling point
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To everyone asking, I think this is GREAT!
This project has had a difficult history. And (as I said, a weird start)
But it now seems to be up and running. I hope it provides a great service to millions of people. I look forward to giving it a try next time I’m there.
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It only takes a small swarm of locusts a single day to eat enough food for 35,000 people.
Several hundred million are currently raging across Kenya
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His presidential ambitions crushed by a cruel world, one courageous central bank governor has discovered his heretofore secret passion for fighting inflation.
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*All* of our strategies for dealing with Covid 19 are designed for rich, urban societies in Europe and East Asia.
Trying to impose them in Africa (or India) will be a huge challenge.
Try spending three weeks at home if you are living like this.
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Perhaps my fears about weak Nigerian consumer spending were misplaced?
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@RencapMan
The man didn’t seem bothered when I said that wasn’t going to happen. We also had a brief chat about econometrics, which he studied at uni. Nice guy
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@OnyeAjuju
In the back, yes. Said manufactured in Nigeria. Had addresses listed in Ogun, Kaduna, and Rivers
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I often tell myself that I’ve finally internalised how big Africa is, it turns out that I’m nowhere close.
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"Yeah, I've lost about $500,000. But that's just in dollar terms. And I don't think in dollar terms, because that is going away"
And this is....not a parody?
This book might have your kid mining Bitcoin by their next birthday.
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The IMF now expects that SSA oil exporters (Nigeria, Angola, etc) will spend 76.3% of their tax revenue on debt service payments.
Brace, brace.
COVID-19 has exacerbated debt vulnerabilities in sub-Saharan Africa. While debt relief provided by the IMF and G20 will ease some of the burden, more financing is needed. More here:
#IMFAfrica
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Today’s crazy fact.
Brazil’s GDP fell by about 5% last year, but the govt’s crisis grant scheme worked so well that the number of people in poverty actually *fell* by ~1.1mn
Imagine the impact if they treated poverty as a crisis in a ‘normal’ year.
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Hard to overstate what a terrible result this is.
a) GDP per capita has been falling for 3 years.
b) Despite Buhari's talk of re balancing the economy, growth is more oil-dependent than ever. Manufacturing output is actually *lower* than in 2015.
Bleak bleak bleak
Q2 2019 GDP published @ . Q2 2019 GDP grows by 1.94% compared to 2.10%(revised from 2.01%) in Q1 2019 & 1.50% in Q2 2018. Oil GDP grows by 5.15%(-1.46% in Q1 2019; -3.95% in Q2 2018). Non oil GDP grows by 1.64% in Q2 2019(2.47% in Q1 2019; 2.05% in Q2 2018)
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Recognise I'm fixating on the dull, economic bit in an article about cutting-edge style, but fact that running diesel generators to avoid power cuts makes up 45% of this Nigerian fashion label's costs is a great example of why infrastructure matters.
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@DeborahToluwase
@Ellinadear
I’m sorry if that’s the only way forward. I know that Germany has some very generous programmes for foreign students (
@wheretheroad
?)
And if you speak French & English, that is worth a lot of points on the Canadian immigration selection system. We’d be lucky to have you.
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That Lagosian smooth transition from “dinner with a client” to “ordering gin by the bottle with a client”
This does not happen so often in London.
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I’ve been corrected!!
Ethiopia’s Emperor Yohannes IV was shot thorough the chest at the battle of Gallabat in 1889. Leading a landlocked country seems like a dangerous business.
Many apologies for this lapse, especially for letting down a fellow “John”.
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Hopes that this decade would make more sense than the last are immediately dashed...
"Mr Ghosn had fled his court-approved residence in Tokyo with the assistance of a paramilitary group who were disguised amongst a band of musicians."
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I will never cease to be in awe of the Federal Republic’s amazingly mature relationship with its history.
76 years ago the end of the Second World War and the end of Nazi tyranny brought liberation to Europe.
On this
#DayOfLiberation
we thank all those brave men and women who have freed Europe from the horrors of the Nazi terror.
#NeverAgain
#NeverForget
#8May1945
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Discussions about boosting African economic growth often focus in on various forms of Blockchain nonsense.
They tend to ignore Agriculture, the sector in which most Africans actually work.
Just raising Mozambique's cassava yields to match India's would boost headline GDP by 14%
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(I guess the more cyclical possibility being that they’re *all* made in Indonesia and someone just accidentally sent crate of the Naija-labelled ones to Europe instead of Africa. But I hope not)
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Let’s all just agree that none of us will ever be as cool as these Burkinabé hipsters.
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Sweet merciful gods.
“In Lagos, operators say it costs more than $4,000 to truck a container 20km to Nigeria’s mainland from the ports of Apapa and Tin Can Island, almost as much as shipping it from China.”
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Im launching a petition to play this on loop in every train station in the world.
We have added subtitles for our friends who are not fluent in isiZulu!
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Bosnia; it’s always even more fascinating than you’d think.
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It's just *tragic* how well-meaning consultancy firms keep being taken in by corrupt African politicians.
If only there was some kind of hint that a president's daughter and her art dealer husband buying a super-yacht might not be totally kosher. Sad.
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Today's South Africa budget fact: SA spends a greater share of its national income paying the salaries of government employees than Sweden or Norway.
So far, the only country I've found where the wage bill exceeds SA's is Jordan.
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"A new class of super-wealthy Romans created financial instruments to package debt, resell it, and invest the profits in infrastructure projects."
The IMF on what the Roman Republic tells us about economic development.
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My apologies for everyone who followed me after that previous tweet hoping for a steam of well-informed takes on Nigerian agricultural development.
A full refund is available if you regret your decision.
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An avalanche of justified anger has led the wacko American bros who wanted to build their own city “in Africa” to lock their tweets
Fortunately, it’s all archived here
And it’s *utterly* beyond parody. More madness per tweet than you can imagine. Enjoy
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Some people really like the countryside, but I think the best views are of big cities at night.
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~Jega, world champion in dramatic pauses, shuffles his papers as 180mn people (+ half of twitter) hold breath
#Nigeriadecides
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Meffy’s term in office is going to be really visible on all future NGN/USD charts
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@DoubleEph
My attempts at sarcasm have, again, failed.
I’ll add it to my list of faults for my self criticism when the revolution comes.
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Kampala would like the world to know that it explicitly condemns the protesters in Hong Kong. Totally unrelated, I am sure, to the large debt that its owes Beijing....
#ChinaAfrica
PRESS RELEASE: Uganda’s Position on the Situation in Hong Kong
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@RencapMan
@ianbrownape
A polite request, backed up by the implied power of the state. Which individuals really shouldn’t be able to leverage for their own personal “gift” extortion
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"Nigeria's budget continues to be a work of fiction, only believed by its authors." -
@sbmintelligence
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Providing his customary ray of sunshine and optimism,
@DoubleEph
shares his "Iron law of Nigeria"
"No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse"
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When The Economist was launched in 1843, the word didn’t yet mean “someone who studies the economy” but “someone who economises”, because it condensed lots of info and saved you time.
Mind. Blown.
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@WTBClowes
A “Business trip” during a campaign would certainly raise a few eyebrows in most countries.
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Rejuvenating the national theatre may well be a great idea, but is the CBN the right institution to do this?
I can’t think of another country where the definition of monetary policy extends to “owning and improving a theatre”.
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Tunisia imports 79kg of Ukrainian wheat per person per year?
That’s a lot of new supply to find all at once
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Today’s weirdest BBC Breakfast News story, a posh British man who is dedicated to saving the rhinos. “They’re the soul of Africa”
Not my call, but I would have assumed that people are the soul of Africa. But, sure, I’m not anti-rhino.
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Great dinner at SLoW, which might be the world’s first Nigerian-Latin American-Korean fusion restaurant.
(This is, in case it isn’t clear, a very good combination)
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The rise of African students studying in China - more than in the US or UK - is a huge opportunity for closer ties. But racism is a big challenge.
“Outside the university, we had a kind of isolation. On the bus, if you are African they move away.”
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Have to say I’m a big fan of
@RencapMan
’s focus on literacy as a precondition for economic transformation. Lots of historical basis for it in Asia.
Highlights how so many economists don’t want to talk about “social issues”; as if those were distinct from the economy.
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Great, from
@simonallison
on Africa's ailing leaders
“It’s the real me, I assure you,” the president told a press conference. The denial did not allay everyone’s suspicions — after all, that’s exactly what Jubril would have said.
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I am not sure if this is really mixed messages, or some top-level trolling from the CBN.
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“I advise all parents* to strive to raise their daughters this way—by instilling confidence and ambition, you are giving them the support they need to become successful businesswomen.”
*Best results if parents are long-ruling leaders of oil-rich states
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Buhari hopes to recover Nigeria's stolen petrodollars. It'll be difficult: $1bn stolen by Abacha still in EU banks.
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"Only 20% of African migrants are fleeing insecurity...A large proportion are young, well-educated and female. If they were white, they would be called expatriates."
@davidpilling
on the elephant in the room when Europe talks about African migration
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Westminster might thinks its little promise to ‘dabble’ in breaking international treaties is for domestic consumption, but the implications are being debated far and wide.
Here, for instance, is a great video explainer from Nigeria’s
@sbmintelligence
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This is the kind of stuff that sounds really boring, but is actually very important. Will - if it works - make it easier for millions of people to prove their identity to get loans, government grants, etc.
Huge administrative challenge, though.
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Of course, some of the imported containers are used to build generic global hipster beach bars.
I fully support this as a growth industry.
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Africa’s agricultural sector desperately needs investment and restructuring.
Here’s a sense of the scale of the challenge:
PrOpCom estimates that there are about 20,000 tractors in use in Nigeria (many in poor repair)
50,000 new tractors are sold in Thailand EACH YEAR.
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Fun fact, it is currently hotter in London (34) than in Lagos (28) or Abuja (28).
I have never missed air conditioning more. Jesus.
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Yet another patriotic leader forced, reluctantly, to accede to his people’s demand he serve another term. The struggle continues.
Face à ce cas de force majeure et par devoir citoyen, j'ai décidé de répondre favorablement à l’appel de mes concitoyens me demandant d’être candidat à l’élection présidentielle du 31 octobre 2020.
Je suis donc candidat à l’élection présidentielle du 31 octobre 2020.
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Emefiele: 'smuggling remains the greatest challenge to the country's industrialisation...that nothing can be achieved unless it is tackled head on'
(Weeps)
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And while politicians in the West can (and do) afford to ignore the young, in Africa the 18-24 cohort will be a huge share of the electorate.
This is why Nigeria has two 70+ political veterans promising “change”
After 7 years of APC, 95% of Nigerians aged 18-24 think their country is headed in wrong
direction, worst result in ALL Africa. Most want to emigrate.
Nigeria needs a
@PeterObi
presidency to make its youth believe again. Seriously.
Full BBC article here:
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In other news, I have just been served all of the catfish and all of the rice in Abuja.
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Nigeria's newest port is being built by an unlikely partnership between an Indonesian textile firm-turned-instant noodle subcontractor and China Development Bank*.
*Ok, the second one isn't so surprising. But, on the whole, this is a weird project.
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“If you look at OPEC, they are only controlling about 30-40% of the global oil supply and they control prices. If they have OPEC, we can have Copec.”
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It's funny. When I wrote negative things during her father's time in office, Isabel claimed I was a hack who didn't know anything and implied I was being paid by the opposition. Now she cites my forecasts.
I guess this time really is different.
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There are more than 250 state-owned National Development Banks (NDBs) worldwide, holding a collective $4.9trn worth of assets. (Though half of these are owned by just one, China Development Bank)
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@DoubleEph
Those sort of things don’t tend to go well for foreign-born financial sector workers, so I’ll be doing my best to escape before we get to that point.
But if I fail to get out, I will at least hope you take some flattering pictures.
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“Dear CBN, please reduce the supply of a good for which demand is in-elastic. But make sure prices don’t rise.”
Yours ever, Aso Rock
The idea that Nigeria has to close its borders to be competitive in agriculture is ... concerning. PMB Gives CBN Marching Order On Food Importation
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Fun fact: The plan is for non-CFA states to adopt the Eco first, before the Eco and franc are later merged.
But the only non-CFA country that met the inflation & deficit convergence targets last year was Cape Verde.
So it would just be the new Escudo
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Nigerian expats are building a fifth republic in Guangzhou...
"They have a constitution, an elected President General, an informal justice system with elected and respected judges, a task force ... procedures for complaints and dispute resolution"
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President Magufuli now seems to be so ‘not ill’ that he’s been evacuated to an expensive hospital in Nairobi.
The millions of Tanzanians being let down by his government’s appalling handling of the crisis will, of course, not have that option.
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Sorry, what?
Nigeria is more gender inclusive than Europe
I love to see it
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If I were Paul Biya I would be very nervous…
Soldiers seized power in OPEC member Gabon, in the latest African coup
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@hallaboutafrica
Not my area, but that is absurdly cheap, isn't it? How can it cost less than the Kenya SGR or the new Ethiopia line?
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I know I am becoming a broken record on this, but most of the world's population can't afford to social distance for a month.
In Liberia, a lot of people still went to work during the *ebola* outbreak.
"Developing countries wanting to flatten the curve will lack the capacity to do so. If people must choose between a 10% chance of dying if they go to work & assured starvation if they stay home, they're bound to choose work."
@ricardo_hausman
#coronavirus
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Also worth noting that the book is being priced in CAD, USD, and GBP rather than in bitcoins.
I guess even crypo-propagandists still have to pay their bills in slave money.
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*At full capacity*, Nigeria produces a bit less oil than Norway.
So there’s enough oil wealth to enrich one Norway-sized country (5m people)
Since Nigeria is a Brazil-sized country (200m-ish), this is not a viable plan.
Nigeria is not an oil-rich country, unless rich now has a different meaning.
I have never heard anyone describe the US as oil-rich though they produce 6 times as much crude as Nigeria.
The illusion of oil wealth is misleading and has lead to a lifestyle we cannot sustain.
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.
@XHNews
has outright falsified a quote and attributed it to me to imply that my research makes pro-Beijing political points.
I've attached their article, and the SCMP interview they claim it's based on. Really shamefully dishonest, would like an apology
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Huge embarrassment to the pastor/prophet industrial complex. I expect about 0% of their followers to question this.
Isn't it funny how no Nigerian pastor/prophet saw or said anything about this Coronavirus pandemic in their new year (2020) prophesies. Not one of them.
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Also telling that Guinness only needs to own one brewery in Europe (🇮🇪) and one in Asia (🇲🇾) but needs *three* for West Africa (🇳🇬, 🇬🇭, 🇨🇲) because shipping goods within the West African Economic “Community” is so difficult.
(Better infrastructure = cheaper beer, pass it on)
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Staggering figures. Californians use more power for computer games than Ghana, Ethiopia, or Kenya generate to meet all their needs.
If we really care about climate, we should be regulating video games & hot tubs, not power for poor people in Senegal or Kenya
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The
@WorldBankAfrica
's latest 'Africa's Pulse' makes for pretty grim reading.
Tepid economic expansion and high birth rates mean that per capita GDP will probably be lower in 2021 than it was in 2015.
If this is rising, gods help us from sinking.
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Huge shock that the one time Australia’s shoot-first, gulag archipelago-based immigration system is found to be too strict is the one time it inconveniences a rich white man with name recognition. Who could have seen that coming?
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