Showing posts with label africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label africa. Show all posts

Thursday, June 22, 2023

22: Africa



How Can ChatGPT Help Create And Implement Customer Referral Programs?
How Can ChatGPT Analyze Customer Feedback Data And Suggest Ways To Improve Customer Satisfaction?
How Can ChatGPT Provide Recommendations For Improving Customer Loyalty Programs?
How Can ChatGPT Suggest Ways To Use Gamification To Engage Customers?
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Friday, July 24, 2020

Coronavirus News (191)



Curtis Waters, TikTok king: 'There are no gatekeepers to the industry anymore'  TikTok is fast becoming the new grassroots centre of the music industry, the YouTube generation a relic of the past.  

Uganda - where security forces may be more deadly than coronavirus In Uganda, at least 12 people have allegedly been killed by security officers enforcing measures to restrict the spread of coronavirus, while the country has only just confirmed its first death from Covid-19. .............    The 30-year-old headteacher was one of those allegedly killed by security forces enforcing a coronavirus lockdown. ........  Critics say the force puts guns in the hands of young, poorly trained people who are unable to reduce the tension in a confrontation. .......... "We've found that security forces have been using Covid-19 and the measures put in place to prevent its spread as an excuse to violate human rights"   

Joyce Namugalu Mutasiga making pancakes



Coronavirus in South Africa: Inside Port Elizabeth's 'hospitals of horrors'  exhausted doctors and nurses are overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients and a health service near collapse. ..........  With key staff on strike or sick with coronavirus in the Eastern Cape province, nurses are forced to act as cleaners, surgeons are washing their own hospital laundry and there are alarming reports of unborn babies dying in overcrowded and understaffed maternity wards. .............. South Africa - which held the coronavirus back for months with an early, tough, and economically devastating lockdown - now sees infection rates soar nationwide, prompting President Cyril Ramaphosa to warn that "the storm is upon us". ...........  raises fundamental questions about how those extra months were used, or wasted, by officials. .............   Covid has opened up all the chronic cracks in the system. It's creating a lot of conflict ...............  has seen departments turning on each other, and using Covid-19 as an "opportunity to air every grievance that ever happened" ................. "We have seen unions shut down hospital after hospital. Each time one staff member or patient tests positive, all staff down tools. While all these union demands are being met, nothing happens… for up to two weeks," one doctor complained. ................. Health services were circling the drain for 10 years. Now they've collapsed ..............  staff were "anxious, fearful… and overwhelmed." ............ the provincial health department was generally seen as so inept and dysfunctional that private donors, businesses and charitable funds anxious to help in the fight against Covid-19 were refusing to deal directly with it. ...........  One doctor cited a "culture of not wanting to discomfort your superiors which means people don't often tell it like it really is. ........  a desire by government "to be seen to be doing the right thing", rather than making tough decisions, citing the recent decision to resume community testing for Covid-19, despite the fact that it immediately pushed the entire testing system - including, crucially at hospitals - into a week-long backlog that rendered it almost useless. ...............  But the clearest lesson from Port Elizabeth may well prove to be about human nature, and how we respond under extreme pressure. ................  And then there is a third group. "The plain obstructive - a huge element, passive or overtly aggressive," said another source. For them, any sense "of altruism, or duty, has gone. It went a long time ago".

Rats in Livingstone Hospital

Why US-China relations are at their lowest point in decades  The message is that China is responsible for the Covid mess in the country, not him. ............  China has added to the recent run-up in tensions with its harsh national security law in Hong Kong and its repression of Muslim minority Uighurs, which triggered several rounds of US sanctions. ............  a speech about China delivered by Mr Pompeo this week. In rhetoric reminiscent of the Cold War, he accused Chinese leaders of being tyrants on a quest for global domination, and framed America's competition with Beijing as an existential struggle between freedom and oppression. ..............  The Chinese do not appear to be looking for escalation, and analysts agree that President Trump does not want a serious confrontation, certainly not a military one ............... unintended conflict. "The buffer that has historically insulated the US-China relationship, the presumption that the goal is to de-escalate and solve problems… has been stripped away" ..................   William Cohen, a Republican politician who served as defence secretary under the Democratic President Bill Clinton, thinks it's dangerous that China is being seen as an adversary across the political spectrum.

Coronavirus: South Africans divided over second alcohol ban  When it comes to coronavirus, South Africa is the hardest-hit country in Africa with more than 275,000 cases. ........... President Ramaphosa also announced a night-time curfew and said the wearing of masks outdoors was now compulsory. 

Covid-19 in Africa: Fighting fake news about coronavirus  what the WHO has called an "infodemic" around Covid-19  



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Monday, January 13, 2020

Africa's Moment To Shine



A united Africa may give China its moment to shine "The launch of the AfCFTA breaks new grounds for China-Africa cooperation,'' said Geng Shuang, a spokesperson for the Chinese minister of foreign affairs. Beijing, he said, will continue investing in "infrastructure connectivity, trade facilities and industrial promotion" under the country's Belt and Road Initiative. ........ In 2018, US-Africa trade shrank to $61bn, barely 45 percent of its 2008 value. During the same period, the value of trade between China and Africa exceeded $200bn, and projections suggest it is still growing. ........ On July 1, 2020, most AfCFTA-ratifying countries will start removing customs tariffs on 90 percent of imported goods that were made in Africa, with the aim of removing them completely before 2035. ..... Kituyi worries that

a recent move by the administration of US President Donald Trump to restart "bilateral agreements with African countries" works against African's effort to build a common market

. If the US would "change their position and embrace negotiating with the continent as a whole, we'll have grounds to celebrate", the UN official said. ........ Rwanda's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Richard Sezibera, said he would also welcome "negotiated agreements with the US, such as those we're conducting with Europe". ....... ....2016, when Rwandan President Paul Kagame raised taxes on Western-imported second-hand clothes, prompting the US to raise its tariffs on Rwandan imports. .......

Rwanda, Sezibera stressed, "is the second-best place to do business in Africa and the 29th in the world according to the World Bank".

...... But the free trade zone, she said, "motivates us to strengthen the peace process, so that we might regain control over all our territory and trigger our full economic potential, especially in agriculture, which employs 75 percent of our labour force and needs to become more productive".

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Tuesday, November 05, 2019

Thoughts On The Middle East

I have had a chance to think a lot about the Middle East in recent weeks.

The first thing I see is, the region has a 10-year window in which to diversify their economies or face decline. The city of Dubai has already done what the region at large needs to do. I believe that realization is there. And countries across the region are scrambling to move. Major moves are being plotted and made.

Two, where does Dubai go from here? Dubai has to move up the economic food chain. And that is mostly to do with technology. If diversification is achieved, money becomes the new oil, the gift that keeps giving.

Three, politics. First of all, I have to admit I don't know much. I have not had the chance to study in-depth. At some point, I'd like to. A few weeks ago I came across this nugget of information, that the United Arab Emirates has a federal parliament that has a roadmap to universal franchise. Not knowing that was not stupid. It was not even ignorant. Hey, you don't know what you don't know. But it sure was uninformed. Second, I have to be open-minded about possibilities. Let's just take that UAE example. Finally, when there is a universal franchise, that still would not make the monarch of the UAE someone like Queen Elizabeth. Let's face it, Queen Elizabeth rubber stamps whatever the British parliament comes up with. And recently it has come up with much nonsense. The monarch of the UAE does not even hold that title. He calls himself president. I see that as an evolving situation. Three, Iran. I think we from afar underestimate how much distrust Iran arouses among the Gulf countries. Whereas Iran thinks of itself as a country on a mission.

I would like to read up and learn and become rehearsed on the nuances of the domestic politics of many of these countries in the Gulf. For one, it is of interest to me.

Four, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. I see Africa and South Asia as the next two Chinas. When the politics part is tidied up a little, Africa and South Asia could grow faster than China did. And I see the possibility of Dubai playing the role Hong Kong played in the economic rise of China. China needed FDI. And the world only trusted Hong Kong with it. 

Five, culture and religion. I find the music and the language fascinating. I was looking at some rudimentary videos on YouTube with thoughts of teaching myself some Arabic recently. When I visit Dubai, there is a list of mosques I'd like to visit. I definitely would want to visit that mosque in Abu Dhabi. And I read about a mosque in Dubai where the sermon on Friday is delivered in English. I would like to attend that service. And yes, you can't visit Dubai and not watch a Bollywood movie.

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Sunday, July 21, 2019

Shithole Country, Donald?

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Tuesday, May 28, 2019

African Economic Union



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Tuesday, February 20, 2018

The US-India-Japan-Australia Alternative To OBOR Should Focus on Broadband And Hyperloop And Drones



Talk of four-nation-led ‘alternative’ to Belt and Road picks up steam
Planning is under way to establish a joint regional infrastructure scheme led by the US, India, Japan and Australia, as the four countries continue efforts to balance China’s growing regional influence. ....... The official played down the idea that the plan would be a “rival” to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, saying he preferred the word “alternative.” ....... “No one is saying China should not build infrastructure” ........ “China might build a port which on its own is not economically viable. We could make it economically viable by building a road or rail line linking that port.” ......... The planning comes as the Trump administration embraces Japan’s articulation of a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” ....... the China hawk nominated to be the US ambassador to Australia, Harry Harris, was expressing concerns about China’s “predatory economic behavior in the Indo-Pacific.”
There is no need for a Cold War mentality. This is not war. This is trade. But competition is good. Let US-India-Japan-Australia compete with China. The peoples of Asia and Africa will benefit.

The primary focus ought be to take broadband to every community across the region. Then there has to be a major push for clean energy. Energy is the number one bottleneck to prosperity. And the bullet train perhaps should be bypassed for hyperloop technology. The biggest cities should connect to satellite cities and to each other. But if broadband gets there first, education will improve fast, and many people will get to telecommute, there will be ecommerce proliferation.

Ports, and rails, and roads have not gone out of fashion.

But infrastructure is not only physical. It can be argued, the number one item is identity infrastructure, the biometric kind that India has managed to build. The number two item is credit infrastructure so as to make loands available to everyone. What has been done in India should be replicated across the region, across Africa.

And just like Indians skipped landlines and went straight to mobile phones, the drone technology allows one to not wait until roads and bridges are built in remote, sparsely populated regions. Drones are the new "wireless."

Both camps - China and the alternate - ought to get the interest rate right. The work has to feel more like a Marshall Plan than usury.

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