Podcasts about saharan africa

This episode follows a wide-ranging panel convened at Stanford's King Center on Global Development, featuring Gyude Moore, as well as Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman, former USAID Administrator and Ambassador Mark Green, and Chair and Founder of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility Vera Songwe - The future of global development: Approaches and partnerships for a new reality.Bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa will fall by between 16% and 28% this year, according to the IMF. In past downturns, multilateral and humanitarian funding tended to fill the gap when bilateral aid dropped. This time those channels are shrinking too.Gyude Moore, who ran the Liberian President's Delivery Unit under Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, thinks the contraction is structural rather than a passing effect of the Trump administration, and that recipient countries should stop expecting the old arrangement to return. He wants economic growth put at the centre of development rather than treated as one programme among several. Instead of letting donors decide which programmes are run, he says, countries should run a growth diagnostic: a way of identifying the two or three constraints doing most to hold an economy back. Governments can then reorganise their budgets around removing those constraints, and use the diagnostic to decide which offers of aid to take and which to turn down. Moore calls this “sovereignty through analytics”. Aid was meant to be temporary, he argues, and the job now is to quickly reach the point of not needing it.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and W. Gyude Moore. 2026. "The end of aid dependency.” VoxDev Talks (podcast). Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About the guestW. Gyude Moore is a distinguished fellow at the Energy for Growth Hub and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development. He was Liberia's minister of public works from December 2014 to January 2018, and before that deputy chief of staff to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and head of the President's Delivery Unit, which oversaw more than $1 billion of road, power and port projects in a country rebuilding after civil war. He also lectures at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. His work covers African infrastructure, energy, industrial policy and development finance.Cited in this episodeThe scale of the cuts. The IMF's October 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for sub-Saharan Africa, using OECD figures, projects bilateral aid to the region falling by 16% to 28% in 2025, with more cuts likely. Moore says the cuts to multilateral and humanitarian funding run higher again, and that the most aid-dependent countries have been hit hardest, through weaker health, education and nutrition systems.Growth diagnostics. A way of finding the constraints that matter most: the one or two that, once removed, allow others to ease. Moore likens it to a doctor running tests before prescribing. The method is associated with the Growth Lab at Harvard. He suggests governments hire an independent party to run the analysis, so the findings cannot be dismissed as political.The Millennium Challenge Corporation. A US agency that runs what it calls a constraints analysis, then funds the removal of the constraint it finds. Moore offers it as an existing model for diagnostic-led aid, while noting that it has critics.Sovereignty through analytics. Moore's phrase for using a credible diagnostic to set the terms with donors. A government can say what it is trying to do, ask for help where it needs it, and decline what does not fit. He points to Ghana, Zambia and Zimbabwe rejecting or walking away from US health agreements under the America First Global Health Strategy as evidence that recipient governments now have that leverage and are willing to use it.The Development Alliance. Liberia's attempt, around 2014 and 2015, to bring every donor and NGO into one room to map who was doing what, spot duplication and find the sectors nobody was covering. Moore's assessment: useful, but voluntary, not written into law, and not built around a single diagnostic. His conclusion is that such a framework should be put on a legal footing.Five-year plans. Moore, who teaches in China each autumn, points to the discipline that fixed planning periods impose, and argues that legislation can do a similar job of holding a development strategy steady across changes of government.Delivery units. Small teams set up to push complex projects through where the wider bureaucracy cannot. Moore ran one in the Liberian presidency and calls them islands of competence; he offers them as a way around weak implementation.The European politics of aid. Moore's reason for thinking the window may close. Nativist parties are gaining ground across Europe, from the AfD to Reform UK to the PVV in the Netherlands, and an ageing population will pull more public money homeward. Countries that do not adjust, he warns, may find the external funding gone.

In Italy, Georgia Meloni's coalition government gained power on an anti-immigration political platform. But faced with low birth-rates and a dwindling workforce, the prime minister has had to be pragmatic. Over the next two years, hundreds of thousands of temporary visas are being offered to migrant workers, mainly from Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, to help fill the gaps. In the far south of Italy, one of the country's poorest regions, Calabria, is famous for its citrus fruit, and thousands of farms need workers to pick their produce. Some of the migrant workers live in terrible conditions. Lizzy McNeill reports on what the reality is on the ground.

The End of the World Jonathan Parnell Download Psalm 97,The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice;let the many coastlands be glad!2 Clouds and thick darkness are all around him;righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.3 Fire goes before himand burns up his adversaries all around.4 His lightnings light up the world;the earth sees and trembles.5 The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,before the Lord of all the earth.6 The heavens proclaim his righteousness,and all the peoples see his glory.7 All worshipers of images are put to shame,who make their boast in worthless idols;worship him, all you gods!8 Zion hears and is glad,and the daughters of Judah rejoice,because of your judgments, O Lord.9 For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth;you are exalted far above all gods.10 O you who love the Lord, hate evil!He preserves the lives of his saints;he delivers them from the hand of the wicked.11 Light is sown for the righteous,and joy for the upright in heart.12 Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!This morning I want to talk to you about the end of the world. For as long as there has been a world, humanity has been fascinated with this topic. This has been true of cultures all over the world all throughout history — from Ancient Mesopotamia to Chinese dynasties, from Norse Vikings to sub-Saharan Africa, from medieval Europeans to modern Americans — it's a human thing to wonder about the world's end.And in the Bible itself, the end of the world was on the table right away!In the Book of Genesis, just five chapters in, the Flood could have been the final judgment to end the world — and it would have been if not for the mercy of God!But because of God's mercy, and because of his patience (the apostle Peter tells us), the final end of the world has been delayed. Still.But the end is coming, and that's what I want to talk about this morning. And the real reason I wanna talk about the end of the world is because it's the topic of Psalm 97.There are three parts to the psalm, and I'm gonna title each part with what its mainly about:Part 1, verses 1–6 is Christ will come again.Part 2, verses 7–9 is Every human will respond. Part 3, verses 10–12 is How God's people live in the meantime.We're gonna spend most of our time on Part 3, but first Part 1.1. Christ will come again (vv. 1–6)Psalm 97, verse 1 just picks up where Psalm 96 left off. Psalm 96 envisions all of creation rejoicing, and the last verse of Psalm 96 explains why. This rejoicing is, verse 13,“…before the Lord, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.”97:1, then, says: Yes, that's right, the Lord reigns and all the earth rejoices, even the coastlands. That's the deepest corners of the earth. The parts way out there.Then verses 2–5 describe the coming of God with this intense imagery. Listen to this: clouds and thick darkness. A throne of righteousness and justice. Fire going before him, consuming his adversaries. Lightning flashes. The earth itself trembles. Mountains melt like wax.To a casual reader, this sounds like a really bad thunderstorm. But when we have the whole Bible in mind, we can pick up the allusion to Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai was when God came down on the mountain to give the law: Exodus 19:18,“Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.”Deuteronomy 4:11,“the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom.”The Final TheophanyThis was an amazing moment in history. The word for it is a ‘theophany' — which means a God-appearing. That's what Sinai was.And now Psalm 97 is describing another theophany — it's a future, final God-appearing, that's envisioned to be like Sinai!That's because the Original Law-Giver and the Final Judge are the same. That's why the imagery is the same, except in this future, final appearing, God comes in the person of Jesus Christ. We know this from the New Testament: John 5:11,“The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.”Matthew 24:30,“Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man… and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”2 Thessalonians 1:7,“the Lord Jesus [will be] revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire…”The end of the world is now what we call the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The God who once descended on Sinai in clouds and fire will appear again finally in the person of Christ, and “every eye will see him” — Revelation 1:7. Everybody will see him, and everybody will respond, one way or another. That's Part 2.2. Every human will respond (vv. 7–9) Humanity is divided into two categories that will be clearest on the final day of judgment.Jesus has called these categories the wheat and the tares. The Psalms use the language of the righteous and the wicked. The New Testament draws the line as between believers and unbelievers — those who are in Christ and those who are not. And when Jesus comes back every eye will see him — those who have been united to him by faith and those who have rejected him. They all will see him, but they're gonna respond differently. Shame for IdolatersVerse 7 tells us the unbelievers (those who reject Christ) will be put to shame — but here they're described as the “worshipers of images” … as those who “boast in worthless idols.” Which is a good reminder! I want you to get this: there is really no such thing as an unbeliever. Everybody believes in something. The question is never if you believe, but who you believe in. So, unbelievers are always more accurately called “idolaters.” They've chosen to reject the one true God, and instead, they've replaced him with some other ‘little-g god' — and for the last hundred years in our society, the ‘little-g god' of choice is the Modern Self. That's the point of theologian Carl Trueman's book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (it's a helpful book written a few years ago).In one sense, modern idolatry is as old as it comes — our society has “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” — that's Romans 1:25.But what makes us different today is that, with our technologies, we have said, “I will make myself like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14) …So we want to create human life … We want to determine our own sexuality …We want to invent our own morality … We want to become super human in our daily lives and live longer than ever … We even want to have the final say on when and how we die … The whole thing is about putting Self in the place of God.That's what transhumanism is — it starts with the myth of exclusive humanism (that's the idea that there is no God, but only us). That paves the way for the idolatry of the Self — the idea that “We are all God.” And right now, it's just so clear that's what's going on. If you look around in our culture, the idolatry of Self is having its moment. But on the day Jesus returns, at the end of the world, every unbeliever/every idolater/everyone who rejects Jesus will be put to shame. That means eternal regret. They will hate the choices they have made. The lies they have embraced will be exposed. And the demonic forces behind the idolatry will also bow the knee in submission to Jesus! (That's the end of verse 7.) The Day is coming. Joy for BelieversBut now in verse 8 notice the contrast to believers, to those who trust in Christ — that's who Zion and Judah represent. It's the people of God. Zion is glad! The daughters of Judah rejoice! And the mention of “daughters” in verse 8 is an idiom for villages or small towns. (This is an insight from Christopher Ash.) He says the idea here is that it's not just the capital city, Zion, that rejoices, but it's all believers everywhere! Even what might seem like the smallest outpost of kingdom of Christ, even the parts way out there, like in the middle of North America — on that day we're all rejoicing together … believers from “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” … We will all say, “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory!” (Revelation 7:9; 19:7). On that day, verse 9 will be the clearest reality of all:“For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth;you are exalted far above all gods.”In other words, Jesus has ultimate supremacy … “every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:11).This is what Psalm 97 is getting at. In summary, Psalm 97:1–9 is the Christian hope in a nutshell: One day Jesus is coming back in judgment and salvation — judgment for those who reject him and salvation for those who trust him. And by his grace, church, we trust him. We will rejoice on that day. We will love his future, final appearing! Amen.The big question now is: How do we live in the meantime?3. How do God's people live in the meantime?Now this is the church's question. We ask it together, and the New Testament is all about it. But verses 10–12 in Psalm 97 give us a pretty good answer, and that's what I wanna show you. But I want to help you bring it down more personally. This is a topic that can be so out there and theoretical, but don't let it be. I want you to think, right now: Jesus is coming back one day. Now ask yourself this question: What does God want me to do in this life? How should I live in the meantime?According to verses 10, 11, 12, we see at least three answers. First is this:1. Lead a moral life.This is verse 10, and it's one you need to see. So everybody help me out. Find Psalm 97, verse 10:“O you who love the Lord, hate evil!”“Hate evil” — this is a command, and it's one that we are not set up well to understand. That's because “hate” is a biblically strong word that we use too commonly. And “evil” is a biblically common word that we use too strongly. That make sense? We've weakened the word hate and narrowed the word evil. So we have to slow down and think about this.To hate something is to have an intense hostility against it. It's not a mood, it's a conviction. We shouldn't casually throw the word around about food or weather or sports teams. And evil is anything that defies the moral will of God — anything that is a deprivation or distortion of God's goodness. It's not just the worst, most horrible things nobody likes to talk about. But truly, sin, of every kind, is evil. See, we often define evil horizontally: we think it has to do with how much hurt it causes other people. But the Bible, first, defines evil vertically: the issue is what it says about God.Evil is evil because it defies him, it rejects him, it dishonors him. This is why we must have a God-centered morality.Right and wrong, good and evil, is not whatever you want it to be in the moment. But good and evil — the moral framework of reality — is an objective standard determined by the righteousness of God, and he has revealed this to us as his moral will in Scripture. What a gift!God guides us how to live in harmony with his holiness. He shows us how to lead a moral life, which means we hate evil. I think this is one of the greatest needs in our day for the church's witness. We need moral clarity — the ability to recognize evil, the courage to call evil evil, and the God-centered conviction to hate evil.And that means the evil out there, but it starts first with the evil within our own hearts. It's been said that many Christians today are soft on evil. And wherever that's true, my theory is that we're soft on evil culturally because we're soft on evil personally, and we're soft on evil personally because our vision of God is small … Wherever our understanding of God's glory is frail, and our commitment to his word is weak, we will get this wrong.And if we're ever gonna experience true revival, in our church, in this country, it will include a recovery here. Spurgeon put it plainly. He said, “We cannot love God without hating what he hates.”Until Jesus returns, in the meantime, we're called … you're called … to lead a moral life.Second thing to do in the meantime …2. Lead a hopeful life. This is verse 11:“Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart.”A few years back, the Holy Spirit made this verse pop off the page to me. I wrote it out on a notecard and put it on my desk. I think it's a glorious sentence. Notice first that it's an agricultural metaphor, which we see a lot of in Scripture. Light and joy are sown. The focus is on planting, on sowing, but the words “light” and “joy” sound more like a harvest. How do you sow light? How do you plant joy? You don't. You sow something else that, in the moment of sowing, looks different from what you hope it will become.I just re-seeded my front yard. Tall fescue grass: Thick, forest-green blades, cool to the touch on the hottest summer day, firm but humble, durable but inviting, elegant but approachable — oh it will be wonderful! But what I held in my hand, before I dropped it in the ground, looked nothing like that — it looked nothing like what it will become. It was just a seed.That's so much of life, isn't it? Life in this meantime is sowing. It's planting. And a lot of times, we want to judge the future harvest by how the seed looks now. It's such an easy mistake to make. How do we not do that?How can we call it light now in the sowing? How can we call it joy now? The answer is hope. Our hope is in the harvest, and it's so sure — God's promise is so certain — we can say the light is in the ground. The joy is coming, and it's already here. That's what it means to lead a hopeful life.Third thing to do in the meantime …3. Lead a thankful life.This is verse 12:“Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!”Rejoicing and thanksgiving — it's the same idea. We rejoice in God and we give him thanks in response to who he is and what he's done. Now, I'm just going to use the word thankful because it's the last word in verse 12 and it encapsulates joy. Thankfulness includes joy. And this is such a fitting way to conclude Psalm 97, and really, to conclude everything. For everyone who trusts in Christ, thankfulness will be the posture of our hearts at the end of the world. We begin doing now what we will do forever. We're called to lead a thankful life today: Colossians 3:15,“And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts… And be thankful.”1 Thessalonians 5:18,“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”Now, how do we do that? What does it look like to lead a thankful life?I think it comes down to the discipline of daily thankfulness.Very practically, just imagine how you start and end your days. You wake up every morning. We all start there. Now what if, first thing in the morning, when you're awake for your brain to work, you thanked God? Thank him for something specific — a provision, a gift, an experience. Start by thanking him. And then that night, with your head on your pillow, when God has brought you through another day, you end your day by thanking him for it. Even when things are tough, when things go sideways, in the full assessment of everything, there's a reason to be thankful. Give God thanks as you fall asleep, give God thanks when you wake up — and if you do that everyday that becomes a thankful life. It will be a life that honors God until that final day when we step into the eternal morning. This is how we live as we wait for the end of the world, because, as Psalm 97 shows us: Because Christ will come again. And every human will respond to his final appearing, either in shame or joy. And until that day, in the meantime, lead a moral life, lead a hopeful life, lead a thankful life.Father in heaven, the life to which you have called us is a life that you create. Thank you for the Holy Spirit! Thank you for his presence and power day by day, moment by moment. We need him. Thank you that your Spirit brought us from death to life through the gospel. Thank you that he opened our eyes to see Jesus and to know your great love for us.Thank you for the hope that your Spirit guarantees in our hearts — the hope that Jesus will return and make all things new. We long for that day. And we pray, with the apostle John, Come, Lord Jesus!In his name, amen.

Every civil service reform plan opens with the same list of complaints: poor performance, low motivation, weak accountability. Across six African countries and three decades, governments launched 131 separate reform efforts; not one fully achieved what it set out to do.Martin Williams spent more than a decade working alongside Ghana's civil service before writing a book called Reform as Process that analyses the lessons from his experience, and the rest of the 131 reforms. For example, 34 programmes across six countries tried to link civil service pay to performance; none delivered. One lesson is that formal rules and accountability systems cannot govern what matters in a civil service: innovation, adaptation, co-ordination, the willingness to act on the spirit of a rule rather than its letter. Meaningful reforms often require no money at all. They require changing expectations from inside, starting small and building credibility, decentralising the leadership of change, and treating new formal rules as a last resort rather than a first step.The book behind this episode:Williams, Martin J. 2026. Reform as Process: Implementing Change in Public Bureaucracies. New York: Columbia University Press. Open-access PDF available at uplopen.com.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Martin J. Williams. 2026. "Why civil service reform fails (and what actually works)." VoxDev Talks (podcast).Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About the guestMartin J. Williams is Associate Professor of Organizational Studies and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and Associate Faculty at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. His research spans the politics and management of policy implementation, public service delivery, and bureaucratic reform, with a sustained focus on sub-Saharan Africa. He previously worked as an economist in Ghana's Ministry of Trade and Industry as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow, and as a Senior Researcher at the Economic Policy Research Institute in Cape Town. Reform as Process has been shortlisted for the Douglass North Award for best book in institutional and organizational economics.Research cited in this episodeNon-verifiable tasks. In organizational economics, a verifiable action is one where a third party (an auditor, a judge, an administrative tribunal) can determine objectively whether it was performed correctly. Non-verifiable tasks are those where no such determination can be made; they include innovation, adaptation, co-ordination across teams, and acting on the spirit of a rule rather than its letter. Williams draws on this framework, which originates in contract theory, to explain why formal accountability systems consistently fall short: they can only govern verifiable outputs, leaving the full range of non-verifiable tasks unaddressed and, in many cases, actively crowded out.Performance-linked incentive systems. Williams's dataset covers 34 separate reform efforts across Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Zambia that attempted to tie civil service pay or progression to measured performance. Not one delivered sustained differentiated incentives on an ongoing basis; only two achieved even partial delivery of rewards, and none delivered sanctions based on measured performance. Williams argues this is not isolated implementation failure but reflects a structural incompatibility between formalised performance metrics and the non-verifiable nature of much civil service work. Managers respond rationally: they set soft targets, award uniform scores, and the process becomes a tick-box exercise.Projectization of reform. Williams uses this term to describe the dominant approach: treating change as a time-bound, discrete intervention with its own budget, acronym, and implementing team, conceived separately from the organisation's core work. This approach systematically distorts reform goals towards formally measurable outputs (new policies, new laws) rather than sustained behavioural change, undermines credibility by signalling a predetermined end date, and reinforces the perception among civil servants that reform is a temporary performance before things return to normal.Continuous improvement. Williams draws an analogy with physical fitness: achieving a target and then stopping does not sustain the gain. High-performing organisations, in the public and private sectors alike, treat improvement as an ongoing process embedded in daily work, not a periodic project handed to a specialist unit. Starting small is not an absence of ambition; it is how credibility is built and larger changes become possible. Williams argues civil service reform should be reconceived on these terms, with performance improvement treated as the job of everyone in the organisation.Decentralised reform leadership. The dominant model of reform leadership, Williams argues, is a visionary leader driving a top-down plan. This model is counterproductive. It personalises reform in ways that guarantee reversal when the leader moves on, and it cannot reach the day-to-day interactions among the thousands of individuals and hundreds of teams that determine how a civil service actually works. A more effective model is catalysing rather than forcing: creating conditions in which teams can identify and solve their own problems, escalate issues, co-ordinate with each other, and act on ideas for improvement without fear of being ignored or penalised.More VoxDev Talks episodesHow government analytics can improve public sector implementation, in which Daniel Rogger and Christian Schuster discuss their efforts to use the data that already exists in governments to better understand how they function. 

This week we talk about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, malaria, and healthcare infrastructure.We also discuss militants, Uganda, and the Bundibugyo virus.Recommended Book: We Should Get Together by Kat VellosTranscriptEbola, which is more formally called Ebola Virus Disease or Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever, is caused by an infection by a type of RNA virus called an orthoebolavirus.There are six known species of orthoebolavirus, and four of them have at some point infected and caused illness in humans. Those four are the ebola virus, sometimes called the Zaire ebolavirus, which historically has been the strain responsible for the biggest, most devastating outbreaks of this disease, the Sudan virus, the Taï Forest virus, and the Bundibugyo virus, the latter three each causing a variant of the disease that carries the same name.The other two orthoebolavirus species that we know of, the Reston virus and the Bombali virus, have been known to infect animals, but have not, at this point at least, been known to make the jump to human hosts.Ebola symptoms vary a bit between specific viruses and between hosts and infection conditions, but in general those who are afflicted by ebola begin to experience symptoms between a few days and a few weeks after infection, and they'll start by experiencing cold and flu-like symptoms, like fever, sore throat, headaches, and general muscle pain. Soon after that, though, they'll start experiencing diarrhea and rashes, they'll begin vomiting, and they'll begin to experience liver and kidney dysfunction, and around that same time, they'll start to bleed internally and externally.Once infected, a person has between a 25 and 90% chance of dying, depending on the strain of ebola, and if they die, usually due to what's called hypovolemic shock—a severe and sudden loss of bodily fluids, including blood—they usually die between 6 and 16 days after those first symptoms are reported.What I'd like to talk about today is a new outbreak of ebola centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and why this one stands out from other recent outbreaks in the region.—Ebola was first officially reported in medical literature in 1976, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, and there have been semi-regular outbreaks in that region, of various sizes ever since, and very likely before that, too.This disease is spread through direct contact with the body fluids of someone who's infected, and it's thought that this is probably how the disease made the leap from animals, like primates, to human beings: locals sometimes come into close contact with local primates, either while just coexisting, or while hunting bushmeat, hunting monkeys for food.It's thought that fruit bats serve as hosts for the virus, long-term, and it then spreads to other animals, and then sometimes to humans, in some cases causing illness along the way in those other species, but not always; bats are not negatively afflicted by it, for instance, but humans very much are.Despite not being an airborne pathogen, so it's not spread by coughing or talking too close to someone, like a cold or Covid-19, ebola can still be spread person-to-person through bodily fluid contact. That means fluids like saliva and blood and semen and breast milk, and research has shown that even after someone survives and recovers from ebola, the disease can linger in their fluids for months. So if someone catches it, survives, and then breast-feeds their child, or kisses or has sex with their partner, or gets a cut and then someone else comes into contact with their blood, like a health worker, that can lead to the transmission of the disease, despite their having been well and seemingly fully recovered for weeks or months.That lingering contagiousness is a confounding factor with this disease, as it requires that people be very careful, even to an antisocial degree, and even well after it seems like that's no longer necessary, because they feel good and healthy again.This also means that if someone dies of ebola, contact with their bodies can be incredibly dangerous. And past outbreaks have stemmed from or been further enflamed by locals wanting to perform community funerals and wakes, during which the body is often on display and touched by attendees, and that has led to further spread of the disease—which in many cases is difficult to tie back to that wake, because again, symptoms don't arrive right away, and ebola symptoms are similar to what locals experience all the time from other afflictions, like colds and malaria.This past week, in Bunia, which is located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, locals stormed a regional hospital in an attempt to recover the body of a beloved local figure who died of ebola. In the process, the hospital's isolation ward, which was being used to keep ebola victims separate from everyone else, to keep the disease from spreading further, that ward was burned to the ground.There are no vaccines or treatments for the Bundibugyo Ebola species that is at the core of the outbreak, and the spread of misinformation in the area had locals believing that these health workers were trying to kill their patients, not save or isolate them so no one else caught ebola.The man at the center of this, who died five days after being admitted to the hospital, was thought, by his family, to have malaria, which is common in the area and has very similar symptoms, at least in the early days of an ebola infection.They demanded the hospital release his body so they could bury him, and the staff refused, saying doing so right now could lead to more ebola spread. The family gathered more locals, who threw stones at hospital workers, they broke through the gates of the hospital, police fired into the air to try to disperse the angry crowd, and the ebola ward caught fire during the melee. During that fire, five patients who were in the ward, all suspected of having ebola, fled, and they haven't yet returned—so they are possibly out in the open, no longer isolated, suffering and maybe dying from their infection, and possibly spreading it to others, as well.There's a lot going on in this story, and misinformation spread by local traditional healers who don't like the hospitals and the medical workers who tell locals medical information rather than folk healing information are part of the problem, but the local medical establishment not doing a good job of educating locals about what they're doing and why are arguably the flip side of that same coin; more investment in that kind of information dissemination by the government would go a long way to preventing this sort of thing in the future, and health workers globally could use more resources and overall infrastructure to help protect them while they're carrying out their work.That said, this is just one small facet of what's become a much larger story. As of the day I'm recording this, this new outbreak, which was first reported in the Ituri Province of the DRC, has caused 186 confirmed deaths, with 82 more confirmed cases and 836 suspected cases.As I mentioned, it's caused by the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, which is less common, at least at this scale, and thus typical response efforts used against the more common Zaire ebolavirus, don't seem to map onto this strain as well as was hoped, and the World Health Organization declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on May 16, as while this is unlikely to become as significant an issue as Covid-19 or other aerosol-spread infections on a global level, regionally it's causing a lot of damage, and its nature, and the state of international aid for this sort of thing—which is currently substantially reduced, in part because of pullbacks on such programs by the current US administration—means it could continue to flare for several more months, before eventually starting to slow, killing many, many people, in any incredibly painful and contagious manner, in the process.This is the 17th ebola outbreak in the DRC since the disease was first recorded in the medical literature, and the third outbreak of this strain—the first of which was in the Bundibugyo District of Uganda in 2007 through 2008, that's where it got its name, and then another in 2012 in the DRC.This isn't the deadliest strain of ebola, only killing between 25 and 50% of those afflicted, but because of those aforementioned issues, plus it having flared in a region where governance is complicated by the presence of several militant groups, this wave of infections has created a broad and precarious situation; lots of people have been uprooted from their homes because of conflict between these militant groups and the government, and those refugees have been spreading ebola to other areas throughout the region, making contact tracing difficult or impossible, and leading to surges of new infections in neighboring, and a few further-flung, provinces.According to a predictive model of the outbreak published by the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, the current number of infected people could actually be well over 1000, in part because of how difficult it's been isolating the infected, and because the early symptoms are so similar to other common local afflictions; so people are less likely to visit hospitals and get an accurate diagnosis, because they assume it's just a bout of something else, something less deadly and contagious.Getting resources into the area is becoming more difficult, too, as those militant groups are fairly active, one such group recently taking over a primary regional airport, which has disallowed the import of necessary medical equipment for regional hospitals.This hasn't had much of an impact globally, yet, though cases have been documented in neighboring Uganda—a total of five confirmed infections, as of the day I'm recording this—and the World Cup team from the DRC was ordered to isolate before entering the US to compete, forced to remain in Belgium for 21 days to confirm they aren't carrying the disease before being allowed into the States for the competition.Far more likely than mass global spread, though, is more regional spread, which could lead to temporary border lockdowns and similar efforts to keep those who are in currently impacted regions from scattering, understandably fleeing either the outbreak or the militants in these areas, and thus carrying the disease into different provinces or countries.Local and international aide organizations are scrambling to prevent this, and to identify and isolate infected people where possible, but it'll likely be a while before they have the necessary on-the-ground resources to do this correctly, and a lot more spread could occur before they're able to do so at an effective level.Show Noteshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebolahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_African_Ebola_epidemichttps://www.cdc.gov/ebola/about/index.htmlhttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5175058/https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/congo-ebola-outbreak-cases-are-top-iceberg-coalition-says-2026-05-21/https://apnews.com/article/congo-ebola-outbreak-who-4e08d8df6d9c34039a9e0b8bad7a8954https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/ebola-outbreak-explained-4ab4414fhttps://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/5/23/uganda-confirms-three-new-ebola-cases-bringing-total-to-fivehttps://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/23/dcr-world-cup-squad-isolate-ebola-outbreak-congo-united-stateshttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/world/africa/ebola-congo-clinic-burned-protests.htmlhttps://www.npr.org/2026/05/23/nx-s1-5831963/u-s-passengers-flying-from-ebola-affected-countries-reroutedhttps://www.cdc.gov/han/php/notices/han00530.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Ituri_Province_Ebola_epidemichttps://edition.cnn.com/health/maps-ebola-charts-vishttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/21/ebola-outbreak-public-healthhttps://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/suspected-ebola-cases-reported-rebel-held-congo-area-2026-05-21/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/world/africa/ebola-outbreak-deaths-congo-who.html This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of THE MENTORS RADIO, Host Dan Hesse talks with Ambassador Randy Tobias, former Vice Chair of AT&T, and Chair and CEO of AT&T's primary operating unit, AT&T Communications. Randy left AT&T in 1993 to become Chair, President and CEO of Eli Lilly and Company. In 2003 President George W. Bush nominated him to be the founding United States Global AIDS Coordinator with the rank of Ambassador and with the charge to develop, launch and lead what became PEPFAR, a multibillion-dollar U.S. government initiative to blunt the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, first in sub-Saharan Africa and then globally. Now in its twenty-second year, PEPFAR is credited with having saved more than 26 million lives. Subsequently President Bush named Randy Administrator of USAID and concurrently the first Director of all United States Foreign Assistance with the rank of Deputy Secretary of State. Ambassador Tobias has been recognized with a long and diverse list of honors including five honorary degrees. He has served on a number of corporate and non-profit boards, and in leadership roles with numerous organizations including as chair of the boards of trustees of both Duke University and Indiana University. He is the author of two books, Put The Moose On The Table: Lessons In Leadership From A CEO's Journey Through Business And Life, and Never Daunted: A Life and Legacy of Embracing Change, a memoir published in 2025. LISTEN TO the radio broadcast live on iHeart Radio, or to “THE MENTORS RADIO” podcast any time, anywhere, on any podcast platform – subscribe here and don't miss an episode! SHOW NOTES: AMBASSADOR RANDY TOBIAS: BIO: BIO: Ambassador Randy Tobias BOOKS: Never Daunted: A Life and Legacy of Embracing Change, by Randall L. Tobias Put the Moose on the Table: Lessons in Leadership from a CEO’s Journey Though Business and Life, by Randall L. Tobias and Todd Tobias WEBSITE: Tobias Leadership Center, University of Indiana

Editor Peter Wilton is joined by LPG World editor Matt Scotland and reporter Yasmin Zaman to unpack the latest findings from the Global LPG Storage Survey. They explore how clean cooking policies are driving modest capacity growth, a surge in project pipelines particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and what rising geopolitical tensions and shifting trade flows mean for future infrastructure investment.    The Global LPG Storage Survey is now quarterly, providing an expanded view into each region. It is published as part of Argus LPG World, a renowned source of valuable insights to keep you up-to-date on the LPG markets.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of Born Scrappy I sit down with Brett Ekart, Serial Entrepreneur, Owner of United Metals Recycling and the host of A Scrap Life podcast, for a masterclass in what it really means to grow. Not just bigger, but smarter, broader, and with the right people alongside you.Brett has built one of the most diversified operations in the scrap industry. From eight scrapyards in Idaho and Oregon to pipe supply, trucking, tire recycling, property development, and media.But this episode isn't just about the businesses he's built. It's about how he thinks, how he spots opportunities others miss, how he finds the right people to back, and why giving away equity is one of the best decisions he's ever made.Raw, honest, and full of hard-won lessons. This is Brett Ekart unfiltered.In this episode, we talk about:

There are signs that a huge part of East Africa is starting to break away from the African continent.有迹象表明，东非的一大片地区正开始从非洲大陆分离出去。Geologists (people who study the Earth and its land and rocks) studied a deep crack that runs along a large part of Zambia.地质学家（研究地球、陆地和岩石的人）研究了一条贯穿赞比亚大部分地区的深裂缝。The crack is called a rift.这条裂缝被称为“裂谷”。It is a major fault in the rock that covers Earth's surface.它是覆盖地球表面的岩层中的一条主要断层。Geologist Mike Daly of the University of Oxford is studying Zambia's Kafue Rift.来自University of Oxford的地质学家Mike Daly正在研究赞比亚的卡富埃裂谷。He believes there is activity in the rift that suggests a giant piece of land is breaking away.他认为，裂谷中的活动表明一大片陆地正在分离。He wrote: "There is evidence that the fault boundary of the Kafue Rift is active and therefore the Southwest African Rift Zone is too."他写道：“有证据表明，卡富埃裂谷的断层边界是活跃的，因此西南非裂谷带也是活跃的。”He warned that this "may be an early indication of the break-up of sub-Saharan Africa".他警告说，这“可能是撒哈拉以南非洲分裂的早期迹象”。The land on Earth is constantly moving.地球上的陆地一直在不断移动。Three hundred million years ago, there was just one huge supercontinent.三亿年前，地球上只有一个巨大的超级大陆。It was called Pangea.它被称为“盘古大陆”。Over millions of years, Pangea broke up.经过数百万年，盘古大陆逐渐分裂。Giant areas of land slowly moved across the oceans to form the continents we know today.巨大的陆地区域缓慢穿越海洋，形成了我们今天所知道的各大洲。This movement is called continental drift.这种运动被称为“大陆漂移”。Rifts are one reason why land masses split apart.裂谷是大陆板块分裂的原因之一。The Kafue Rift in Zambia is part of a 2,500-kilometre-long rift zone stretching from Tanzania to Namibia.赞比亚的卡富埃裂谷是一个长达2500公里裂谷带的一部分，该裂谷带从坦桑尼亚延伸至纳米比亚。The rift is moving at a rate of about 4.7 mm per year.该裂谷正以每年约4.7毫米的速度移动。At this rate, it will take millions of years for Africa to split in two.按照这个速度，非洲大陆需要数百万年才会分裂成两部分。Scientists believe that in 200 million years from now, there could be just one supercontinent again.科学家认为，在两亿年之后，地球可能又会重新形成一个超级大陆。

Opeyemi Awoyemi built WhoGoHost in his first year atuniversity before Nigerian tech had a template. He co-founded Jobberman from a dormitory, grew it into the largest online recruitment platform in sub-Saharan Africa, and watched it get acquired by Ringier One Africa Media. He didn't stop there; he went on to build a venture studio and now a startup - ola.cv In this conversation, Ope breaks down what he actuallylearned by going back inside a global company after his own exit, why he calls himself a "pseudo VC," and what he means when he says he only backs "fundamentals-fluent" founders - not "venture-fluent" ones. This is a conversation about building before the playbookexists.

In this episode, Ray Cochrane breaks down a reversible conductive glue from Newcastle University that could replace solder and finally make electronics recycling work. Additional stories cover China widening its clean energy lead, DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve scoring wins from genomics to Google’s database, Anthropic’s $200 million partnership with the Gates Foundation, Intel teaming up with McLaren Racing, and end-to-end encrypted RCS rolling out in beta. – Want to start a podcast? Its easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens the show with a deep dive into Newcastle University’s reversible conductive glue, a water-based adhesive that could finally make electronics recycling economically viable. He frames the e-waste problem first: 62 billion kilos a year, with less than a quarter ever recycled. Then he walks through the silver nanoparticle chemistry, the lead-free angle on traditional solder, and the geopolitical stakes of critical mineral recovery. From there the episode pivots through energy, AI, hardware, open source, data research, space, science, and consumer privacy. A Reversible Conductive Glue That Could Replace Solder A team at Newcastle University has developed a water-based glue that conducts electricity well enough to replace solder. Unlike solder, however, the glue releases cleanly with a quick rinse of acetone or an alkaline bath. The breakthrough relies on silver nanoparticles suspended in a water-based binder. Consequently, components can be recovered intact, opening a viable path to electronics recycling at scale. Co-investigator Volker Pickert framed the second prize directly: solder has the best conductivity, but the best formulations contain lead. China Widens Its Clean Energy Lead A new Atlas Public Policy report shows Chinese firms accounted for 55 percent of $1.1 trillion in global clean energy manufacturing investment between 2019 and 2025. Battery manufacturing alone pulled in nearly half of that money. Meanwhile, U.S. companies have actively retreated from those same industries. With the Strait of Hormuz currently closed, supply chain ownership in solar, wind, and batteries matters more than ever. A separate Ember analysis showed Chinese solar panel exports doubled in March alone. DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve Scores Real Wins DeepMind published an update on AlphaEvolve, its Gemini-powered AI coding agent. The system cut genomic variant detection errors by 30 percent. Additionally, it lifted AC Optimal Power Flow feasibility from 14 to over 88 percent on the electrical grid. AlphaEvolve also found a better cache replacement policy in two days that would have taken human engineers months. Furthermore, it reduced write amplification in Google’s Spanner database by 20 percent. The pattern shows applied AI sticking, not as a chatbot but as a quiet optimizer. Anthropic and Gates Foundation Commit $200 Million Anthropic announced a four-year, $200 million partnership with the Gates Foundation across three pillars. The biggest pillar targets global health and life sciences in low and middle-income countries. Notably, the research scope includes polio, HPV, and preeclampsia. A second pillar covers AI in education across the U.S., sub-Saharan Africa, and India, in partnership with the Global AI for Learning Alliance. Finally, an economic mobility pillar focuses on agricultural productivity and crop benchmarks. Google’s AI Educator Series Launches Free Google rolled out the first 20-plus sessions of its AI Educator Series this week. The free AI literacy training targets the roughly 6 million K-12 and higher education teachers across the U.S. Modules are designed as short, snackable trainings teachers can finish in a prep period or a lunch break. Additionally, stackable workshops let educators build credentials over time. Importantly, the program requires no institutional subscription. Amazon Bedrock Prompt Optimization Goes GA Amazon Bedrock dropped its Advanced Prompt Optimization tool, now generally available across most major regions. The feature rewrites prompts to perform better on specific models and automates prompt migration when switching between models. Furthermore, a built-in evaluation feedback loop lets users benchmark against up to five models side by side. The default judge model is Claude Sonnet 4.6. Consequently, teams can stop hand-tuning string templates and focus on product work. Sponsor: GoDaddy Economy hosting $6.99/month, WordPress hosting $12.99/month, domains $11.99. Website builder trial available. Use codes at geeknewscentral.com/godaddy to support the show. Arm AGI CPU and Red Hat Go Production-Ready on Agentic AI Arm and Red Hat expanded their collaboration around Arm’s AGI CPU, which is Arm’s branding for its agentic AI chip family. The deal brings Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift to the chip as a production-ready stack. Hardware specifications include 136 Neoverse V3 cores, 96 PCIe Gen6 lanes, and 12 channels of DDR5-8800 memory in a 300-watt thermal envelope. Availability lands in Q4 through Supermicro, Lenovo, and ASRock Rack. Intel Becomes McLaren Racing’s Official Compute Partner Intel announced a multi-year deal as the official compute partner for McLaren Racing. The agreement covers the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 team, Arrow McLaren IndyCar, and McLaren F1 Sim Racing. Trackside edge compute will power real-time race decisions, while Xeon and Core Ultra silicon drive Computational Fluid Dynamics and digital twin work. Consequently, design iterations that once took weeks now collapse to days. The deal puts Intel silicon in front of every CTO watching a Grand Prix. Rust Lands 13 Google Summer of Code Projects The Rust Project landed 13 accepted projects in Google Summer of Code 2026. Out of 96 proposals, a 50 percent jump from last year, the project selected 13. Notably, three returning contributors from prior years are back. Mentors flagged a noticeable share of AI-generated submissions as a growing challenge. Furthermore, the real bottleneck remains mentor capacity rather than funding. GitHub Innovation Graph Maps Digital Complexity Researchers used GitHub Innovation Graph data to predict GDP, inequality, and emissions through the Economic Complexity Index, or ECI. Countries are compared to kitchens; the more variety and sophistication in software output, the higher the score. Germany ranks first, followed by Australia and Canada. The U.S. lands at sixth. However, the dataset only captures public GitHub activity, leaving most proprietary software invisible. NASA and Eta Space Prepare Cryogenic Fuel Demo NASA is teaming with Eta Space on an in-orbit demonstration called LOXSAT, short for Liquid Oxygen Flight Demonstration. The nine-month mission tests cryogenic fluid management techniques required for in-space propellant depots. Launch is no earlier than July 17 aboard a Rocket Lab Electron from the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. Successful refueling in orbit could reshape what is possible for deep-space missions to the Moon and Mars. Stealth Magma Surge Under São Jorge Surprises Researchers Researchers in the UK and Spain published in Nature Communications on a 2022 magma surge under São Jorge Island in the Azores. The surge climbed from more than 20 kilometers underground to 1.6 kilometers below the surface. Surprisingly, most of the thousands of earthquakes happened after the magma stalled, not during the climb. Consequently, scientists are calling it a stealth surge and a failed eruption. A primed magma chamber now sits closer to the surface than before. End-to-End Encrypted RCS Begins Rolling Out Apple and Google led a cross-industry effort to roll out end-to-end encryption for RCS messaging. As of May 11, the feature is rolling out in beta on both platforms. Importantly, encryption is on by default and auto-applies to new and existing conversations. A lock icon in the chat indicates active end-to-end encryption. This quietly raises baseline privacy for billions of cross-platform messages. Cochrane signs off with the usual ecosystem mentions: GNC Insider at geeknewscentral.com/insider, the show newsletter, and modern podcast app recommendations at podcastapps.com. The post A Reversible Glue that could Replace Solder #1865 appeared first on Geek News Central.

This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney and Kurtis Lockhart's conversations on cities.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjXmiaMPabQ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-perfect-city/id1866874059?i=1000767322240 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3MfSc3AWT6lT5jG9kvXW4B?si=371569bc3d374d72 Audioboom: https://audioboom.com/posts/8902311-the-perfect-city Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/p/the-perfect-city  What does a perfect city look like in a low- or middle-income country – and how do you get there?In the closing episode of the Ideas in Development cities series, Ed Glaeser joins Kurtis Lockhart and Oliver Hanney for a wide-ranging conversation on what makes cities work. He sets out the three foundations every city needs (safety, mobility, education), why infrastructure without the right incentives and institutions fails, what 19th-century New York's cholera outbreaks teach Lusaka about water, why “bus good, train bad” still holds, and what the medieval European city has to offer sub-Saharan Africa's fastest-growing urban regions.We also discuss the political art of being a great mayor, why "capacity eats policy as a light afternoon snack", and his three priorities for African cities over the next decade.

Namibia sits on the south-west coast of Africa. Below Angola, above South Africa, with Botswana to the east.Portuguese explorers first reached the coast here in the 1480s. No natural harbour, brutal surf, cold Atlantic fog, the Namib Desert running straight into the sea, little access to fresh water. They planted crosses to mark their claims, turned around and went home again, never to return.Today that coast is known as the Skeleton Coast because of shipwrecks and whale bones.Three hundred years later, having decided there was too much tropical disease in Gambia, the British looked at Namibia as a possible penal colony. They decided it was too inhumane.It was Germans and Finns who eventually settled on the coast another hundred years on.Namibia is about three and a half times the size of the UK, and yet its population is only 3 million. It is big and empty. Most of it is desert.I've got more endless expanse shots than I know what to do with. Here is just one of them. Plus a short vid shot from a hot air balloon which gives you an idea of the sheer endlessness of the place.Even in the capital city, Windhoek, there is just so much space.The only two places in the world that are less densely populated are Greenland and Mongolia. Namibia beats even Australia and Mauritania, which is mostly Sahara desert.Demographically, the country is roughly 87% black, 6% white and 5% mixed race, with the Ovambo people to the north making up about half the population. I saw a few Asians while I was there too.A country of extremesThere are still bushmen and other ancient hunter-gatherer people living as they have lived for centuries, yet other parts of the country are extremely modern. There are shopping centres to rival our own, good roads (the best in Africa, I was told), great restaurants, commercial farms and more. About half the population is urban. The national language is English, adopted after the country gained independence from South Africa in 1990, but I found that people, black and white, would as often speak amongst themselves in Afrikaans and, up north, Ovambo. On the coast German is widely spoken. (The country was a German colony from the 1880s until World War I, when South Africa, then British, invaded. Hence it has great beer.)The controlling political force is the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO), which has governed since independence in 1990. SWAPO is nominally social democratic, but there are still strong liberation-era left-wing instincts, as evidenced by streets in the capital renamed after independence: Fidel Castro Street, Robert Mugabe Avenue and so on.All being said, Namibia functions well.It is a stable democracy with rule of law, an independent judiciary (the government sometimes loses cases), relatively free markets and low crime by African (and European) standards. Immigration law is tight too. Having seen the problems stemming from mass immigration into South Africa, Namibia has taken a more controlled approach.Indeed I heard repeated frustrations from mining companies trying to obtain visas for geologists and mining engineers where the local expertise either does not exist or is employed elsewhere.Official unemployment is 37%, but I heard from several different sources that the real number is above 50%. 50%! Very sad.Nominal GDP per capita sits around US$5,000, roughly double that adjusted for purchasing power, which puts it above most of sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank classifies Namibia as a lower-middle-income country, alongside countries such as Albania, Argentina and Belize. But these numbers are misleading.The country has vast wealth through its natural resources and related industries: uranium, copper, diamonds, fishing and tourism. Spread that revenue across just 3 million people and the averages look impressive.There is also serious rural poverty.Namibia combines first-world infrastructure with third-world unemployment.The currency is pegged to the South African rand, not one I would have chosen. Official inflation sits in the 2-3% range.About 88% of the country's sovereign debt is held domestically, and there appears to be healthy demand for its bonds. The country has also recently begun a sovereign wealth fund, which is reportedly growing at an impressive 16% since 2022. The central bank has recently also implemented a gold acquisition programme. Kudos.The country has high institutional savings and one the larger stock exchanges in sub-Saharan Africa.Food is cheap, protein in particular. The country has an enormous cattle herd, almost as large as its population. Recent outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in neighbouring countries are therefore a cause for concern, as you can imagine. (Not my bag, but I reckon there is an opportunity exporting Namibian biltong to the UK, where it is expensive. I brought back loads). Other goods, however, can be expensive because the country relies heavily on imports.If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.The main industries - tourism and natural resourcesPorts are expanding. The railways are not great, though I hear they will be improved. The roads, however, are excellent, as I said. Namibia is also the world's third-largest uranium producer after Kazakhstan and Canada. Chinese interests hold majority stakes in the country's three largest uranium mines, not to mention other metals.Oil and gas have recently been discovered offshore. Shell plc is one of the pioneers.As for gold, Namibia only really became a meaningful gold player after independence, since when roughly 15 million ounces have been discovered, much of it alongside copper. Among the larger players is B2 Gold (BTO.TO), which is well known in the country. Large parts of the country remain un- or under-explored. And I think that is where a lot of the big opportuities lie.There also appear to be rare earth deposits in some abundance. Kendrik Resources (KEN.L) recently made some progress here. Solar, wind and hydrogen projects are also attracting investment tooChinese money helped build the SWAPO headquarters, and they are investing significantly in mines in the country. Of note is that the USA recently spent heavily developing their embassy. It is big. Former Trump attorney John Giordano is now ambassador, a surprisingly high -profile appointment for such a low-profile country.One theory I heard repeatedly was that, given deteriorating US relations with South Africa, Washington increasingly sees Namibia as strategically important in terms of Atlantic access, energy routes and influence in the south Atlantic. Not quite the Panama Canal or Strait of Hormuz, but it could be something of a chokepoint. Namibia feels like a country at the cusp of something.It has space, resources, energy, political stability and strategic importance.Next week I want to look in more detail at Namibia as an investment destination, particularly its mining sector, where some very interesting things may be developing.My thanks go to to Rowland Brown and Chanel Marais of Cirrus Capital for bringing me to Namibia and for organizing what was a brilliant and instructuve conference.Thank you for reading the Flying Frisby.Until next time,Dominic This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of Born Scrappy I sit down with Michael Lion, Former Owner of Philipp & Lion and Former Consultant & Chairman at Sims Metal Management, for a masterclass in what really happens when it all goes wrong and what you can learn from it.Michael's career is one of the industry's most extraordinary stories. He entered the business at 17, built Philipp & Lion into one of the world's largest non-ferrous scrap traders, pioneered copper trade routes into China in the late 1970s, and operated at a scale most traders only read about.Then in April 1991, it all came crashing down. What followed was years of rebuilding and the lessons he brought into an 18-year career at Sims Metal Management, where the controls he put in place got every penny back through the global financial crisis.This isn't theory. These are lessons bought at enormous personal cost, shared with the kind of honesty that only comes from someone with nothing left to prove.In this episode, we talk about:

Namibia sits on the south-west coast of Africa. Below Angola, above South Africa, with Botswana to the east.Portuguese explorers first reached the coast here in the 1480s. No natural harbour, brutal surf, cold Atlantic fog, the Namib Desert running straight into the sea, little access to fresh water. They planted crosses to mark their claims, turned around and went home again, never to return.Today that coast is known as the Skeleton Coast because of shipwrecks and whale bones.Three hundred years later, having decided there was too much tropical disease in Gambia, the British looked at Namibia as a possible penal colony. They decided it was too inhumane.It was Germans and Finns who eventually settled on the coast another hundred years on.Namibia is about three and a half times the size of the UK, and yet its population is only 3 million. It is big and empty. Most of it is desert.I've got more endless expanse shots than I know what to do with. Here is just one of them. Plus a short vid shot from a hot air balloon which gives you an idea of the sheer endlessness of the place.Even in the capital city, Windhoek, there is just so much space.The only two places in the world that are less densely populated are Greenland and Mongolia. Namibia beats even Australia and Mauritania, which is mostly Sahara desert.Demographically, the country is roughly 87% black, 6% white and 5% mixed race, with the Ovambo people to the north making up about half the population. I saw a few Asians while I was there too.A country of extremesThere are still bushmen and other ancient hunter-gatherer people living as they have lived for centuries, yet other parts of the country are extremely modern. There are shopping centres to rival our own, good roads (the best in Africa, I was told), great restaurants, commercial farms and more. About half the population is urban. The national language is English, adopted after the country gained independence from South Africa in 1990, but I found that people, black and white, would as often speak amongst themselves in Afrikaans and, up north, Ovambo. On the coast German is widely spoken. (The country was a German colony from the 1880s until World War I, when South Africa, then British, invaded. Hence it has great beer.)The controlling political force is the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO), which has governed since independence in 1990. SWAPO is nominally social democratic, but there are still strong liberation-era left-wing instincts, as evidenced by streets in the capital renamed after independence: Fidel Castro Street, Robert Mugabe Avenue and so on.All being said, Namibia functions well.It is a stable democracy with rule of law, an independent judiciary (the government sometimes loses cases), relatively free markets and low crime by African (and European) standards. Immigration law is tight too. Having seen the problems stemming from mass immigration into South Africa, Namibia has taken a more controlled approach.Indeed I heard repeated frustrations from mining companies trying to obtain visas for geologists and mining engineers where the local expertise either does not exist or is employed elsewhere.Official unemployment is 37%, but I heard from several different sources that the real number is above 50%. 50%! Very sad.Nominal GDP per capita sits around US$5,000, roughly double that adjusted for purchasing power, which puts it above most of sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank classifies Namibia as a lower-middle-income country, alongside countries such as Albania, Argentina and Belize. But these numbers are misleading.The country has vast wealth through its natural resources and related industries: uranium, copper, diamonds, fishing and tourism. Spread that revenue across just 3 million people and the averages look impressive.There is also serious rural poverty.Namibia combines first-world infrastructure with third-world unemployment.The currency is pegged to the South African rand, not one I would have chosen. Official inflation sits in the 2-3% range.About 88% of the country's sovereign debt is held domestically, and there appears to be healthy demand for its bonds. The country has also recently begun a sovereign wealth fund, which is reportedly growing at an impressive 16% since 2022. The central bank has recently also implemented a gold acquisition programme. Kudos.The country has high institutional savings and one the larger stock exchanges in sub-Saharan Africa.Food is cheap, protein in particular. The country has an enormous cattle herd, almost as large as its population. Recent outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in neighbouring countries are therefore a cause for concern, as you can imagine. (Not my bag, but I reckon there is an opportunity exporting Namibian biltong to the UK, where it is expensive. I brought back loads). Other goods, however, can be expensive because the country relies heavily on imports.If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.The main industries - tourism and natural resourcesPorts are expanding. The railways are not great, though I hear they will be improved. The roads, however, are excellent, as I said. Namibia is also the world's third-largest uranium producer after Kazakhstan and Canada. Chinese interests hold majority stakes in the country's three largest uranium mines, not to mention other metals.Oil and gas have recently been discovered offshore. Shell plc is one of the pioneers.As for gold, Namibia only really became a meaningful gold player after independence, since when roughly 15 million ounces have been discovered, much of it alongside copper. Among the larger players is B2 Gold (BTO.TO), which is well known in the country. Large parts of the country remain un- or under-explored. And I think that is where a lot of the big opportuities lie.There also appear to be rare earth deposits in some abundance. Kendrik Resources (KEN.L) recently made some progress here. Solar, wind and hydrogen projects are also attracting investment tooChinese money helped build the SWAPO headquarters, and they are investing significantly in mines in the country. Of note is that the USA recently spent heavily developing their embassy. It is big. Former Trump attorney John Giordano is now ambassador, a surprisingly high -profile appointment for such a low-profile country.One theory I heard repeatedly was that, given deteriorating US relations with South Africa, Washington increasingly sees Namibia as strategically important in terms of Atlantic access, energy routes and influence in the south Atlantic. Not quite the Panama Canal or Strait of Hormuz, but it could be something of a chokepoint. Namibia feels like a country at the cusp of something.It has space, resources, energy, political stability and strategic importance.Next week I want to look in more detail at Namibia as an investment destination, particularly its mining sector, where some very interesting things may be developing.My thanks go to to Rowland Brown and Chanel Marais of Cirrus Capital for bringing me to Namibia and for organizing what was a brilliant and instructuve conference.Thank you for reading the Flying Frisby.Until next time,Dominic This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Currency risk (often referred to as FX risk) is one of the most under appreciated barriers to sub-Saharan Africa's energy transition. In many contexts it is not just a financing headache. It shapes which projects get built, which companies survive, and which communities remain without power.The Energy Talk partnered with Dr. Churchill Agutu from the Collegium Helveticum to explore this issue through the voices of the practitioners navigating it every day — developers, advisers, investors, and institutions working at the heart of the challenge. We are doing a 2 episode mini-series on the topic. In Episode 1, we zoom into the off-grid electricity sector.We speak with Daniel Komolafe, CEO and Founder of First Electric, Nigeria, and Bodunde Akinola at CrossBoundary.Daniel takes us back to First Electric's early days deploying mesh grids in rural Nigeria. He describes how the Naira moved from 300 to the dollar to 1,500 to the dollar, a fivefold depreciation, pushing his company to the verge of insolvency on a $50,000 blended debt facility. As he puts it: if they had taken a more significant loan, the company would have been totally bankrupt. It is a story many energy entrepreneurs across the continent will recognise.Bodunde brings a different lens. Drawing on his experience advising companies across frontier markets, he walks through the core solutions:  hedging, tariff indexing, blended financing, and local currency financing, and is candid about where the real difficulty lies: scaling local currency financing remains the hard problem that the sector has not yet solved.Learn more about:⁠Publication on financing costs for off-grid electrification in sub-Saharan Africa⁠Collegium HelveticumFirst Electric CrossBoundary Advisory Connect on LinkedIn with:Churchill Agutu Bounde AkinolaDaniel Komolafe

In this episode, Justine Walker sits down with Brad Brooks-Rubin, a leading expert in sanctions, illicit finance, and corruption to examine why gold — one of the world's oldest stores of value — has become a blind spot in modern sanctions and financial crime frameworks. Their conversation explores gold's central role in illicit finance, corruption, and the shortcomings of existing due-diligence and certification programs. Against a backdrop of intensifying geopolitical competition and evolving payment systems, they unpack what effective accountability, intelligence sharing, and sanctions strategy could look like when confronting high‑risk commodities like gold. Brad Brooks-Rubin focuses on the intersection of different types of risks – sanctions, corruption, money laundering, political, and human rights. Most recently, Brad was a Senior Advisor in the Office of Sanctions Coordination at the U.S. Department of State, where he was responsible for sanctions policy coordination related to sub-Saharan Africa, Burma, the West Bank, and natural resources, principally diamonds, gold, and timber.

This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. In our final look at the game mechanics for Civilization V we look at all of the players and their unique attributes. This helps you to see that certain Empires can be better suited for particular victory strategies. Playing Civilization V, Part 11 The Players By the time you got to the last expansion and all of the DLC, there are 43 possible Empires you can play as. But they are not all alike. Each Empire has a particular Leader, a Unique Ability, and a Unique Unit. In addition most of them have some kind of Starting Bias, and many have a Unique Building or a Unique Improvement. Understanding how to make use of these is important to your strategy. If you let random chance assign you to an Empire, you need to know what kind of strategy will work with that Empire. And if you want to pursue a particular strategy you will want to know how to pick an appropriate Empire to fit strategy. There is a chart that lists all 43 Empires with all of their parameters at the Civilization Fandom Wiki and you might want to bookmark that page for future reference. Also, you want to know what to expect concerning your opponents in a game. Leader You don't have a choice of leaders. When you choose a particular Empire you get the Leader that comes with it. But these leaders are distinct in various ways. To see what I mean, go to the Leader page for one by clicking on the link under the Leader picture. You will see a long list of AI Traits. These describe in numerical terms how competitive the Leader is various ways, how prone to war, which kinds of units it will build, and so on. It is a long list, so your eyes may glaze over, but the significance is that it may give you some insight if this Leader is one of your opponents in a game. This list is how the AI is programmed. There is also more approachable summary under Personality and Behavior, and here is what it says about Pedro II of Brazil: “Pedro will most commonly try for a cultural victory. If he pursues a different victory condition, he is likely to choose a diplomatic one over a scientific or domination victory. Pedro is exceptionally friendly and loyal, and will readily befriend anyone but the most warlike leaders. He is more willing to denounce than to wage war himself, but will maintain a defensive militia comprised of a variety of units. He also has a habit of building a fairly large navy. Fittingly, Pedro's highest priority is the Happiness of his people, followed by the development of his lands and Culture. He will not claim a large territory, but his cities will be highly populated and the land and water around them will be full of improvements. He will sometimes try to build wonders that enhance his Culture and Tourism output. Pedro is friendly toward city-states in his sphere of influence and will often pledge to protect them. He will hardly ever attack or bully them.” Now, the point is that this describes your AI opponent. If you choose to play as Pedro II of Brazil, you can make entirely different decisions from what the AI would do Starting Bias Each Empire will spawn on the map in ways that reflect their Starting Bias, if any. Some Empires (e.g. China, France, etc.) have no Starting Bias at all, which means they can spawn anywhere on the map, though there is programming to ensure that the location is not a disaster, like all Tundra and Ice, or the middle of the ocean. So it will certainly be playable. Still some players like to try 2,3, or 4 times to spawn to see if they can get a good place to start.. For the Empires with a Starting Bias, it can be either positive or negative. For example, the Mongolian Empire has a bias towards starting on plains, which makes sense historically since they came from the plains of Central Asia. The Russian Empire has a bias to start in Tundra, which again seems to fit. The Songhai Empire has a negative Starting Bias, which is to avoid Tundra. The Songhai Empire historically was an empire in sub-Saharan Africa, so this makes sense. And the Siamese Empire avoids Forests. The Roman and Shoshone Empires have no Starting Bias at all, so they could spawn anywhere. This Starting Bias will apply to whichever Empire you choose to play, so if you would prefer to not play with a lot of Tundra, you would de well to not choose Russia. But Russia can do more with Tundra than some other Empire might, so it all balances out. Unique Ability Generally speaking each Empire will have a Unique Ability. For example, the Austrian Empire has the Unique Ability called Diplomatic Marriage, which allows them to spend Gold to annex or puppet any City-State that they have been allied to for at least 5 turns. If the City-State is annexed, it becomes part of the Austrian Empire, but if it is puppeted the City-State technically remains separate but is under the control in some ways of the Austrian Empire. India has a Unique Ability called Population Growth. This doubles the unhappiness caused by more cities, but reduces by 50% the unhappiness caused by increased population. So if you were playing India it is even more important to build Tall rather than Wide. Unique Units Every Empire has at least one, and sometimes two Unique Units. These units replace a normal unit, but are a little better in some respect. They are worth having, but some are more useful than others. And a key factor is when they are available to you. For example, the Celtic Empire gets the Pictish Warrior, which replaces the Spearman. Since the Spearman is generally the first unit you learn to build, it comes very early in the game. So if you were interested in a strategy of early warfare, this might matter to you. The Pictish Warrior is actually weaker than the Spearman in one respect, though, in that it gets no bonus against mounted units. So if you are the Celts, and you are facing the Mongols, you will have a problem. But the Pictish Warrior can pillage without any movement cost. Normally when you use a unit to pillage it ends your turn, but the Pictish Warrior could pillage and then move if it still had movement left. And the Pictish Warrior also has the Foreign Lands Bonus, which gives it a 20% bonus when fighting outside of Celtic territory. And finally the Pictish Warrior gets a Faith bonus when it kills an enemy unit, equal to 50% of the killed unit's strength. The American Empire is one that has 2 Unique Units. One is the B-17 bomber, which replaces the regular Bomber. It comes with 2 promotions (Siege I, and Evasion), and is slightly stronger (70 vs. 65). The problem with this is that it comes so late in the game that it is hard to see what good it will do you. If you are pursuing a Domination strategy you should have already gone most of the way to conquering the world before you actually get the B17. The other Unique Unit the Americans get is the Minuteman, which replaces the Musketman. It comes with a Drill I Promotion, ignores Terrain restrictions, and earns points towards a Golden Age. This is more useful than the B17, but not useful enough to push you towards a Domination victory. But since you need good units for any strategy, if only for defense, it is worth having. Personally, if I was playing as the Americans I would rather go for a Science victory. Unique Buildings/Improvements The last parameter for these Empires is the possible Unique Building or Unique Improvement. Some Empires, such as the Byzantines or the Japanese, do not have one, but they can be useful. For example, the Portuguese Empire has a unique building called the Feitoria which has the interesting property of being built outside of Portugal's territory. The Feitoria, which becomes available once you discover Navigation, can be built in the territory of a Coastal City-State on a Coastal Land tile that has no resources on it. It has three properties: Portugal gets one copy of each Luxury Resource the City-State has. This is great for either increasing Happiness or as something that can be traded with other Empires. +50% defensive strength for any combat units on the tile. Pillaging the Freitoria constitutes an Act of War against Portugal, which means Portugal gets no penalties for going to war. Another example is the Dutch Polder, which can be built on any Marsh or Flood Plain tile. It gives +3 Food, and once you discover Economics it will also yield +1 Production and +1 Gold. Summary Studying the chart of the Empires can help you in picking strategies for the Empire you are playing, or help you to pick an Empire that is well suited to the strategy you want to try. And knowing how the AI is programmed for other Empires helps you to know what to expect in your game. But here are some suggestions. Note that you can win with any Civ, but these are ones that lend themselves to a particular strategy. That said, I usually let the game give me a random choice and then formulate my strategy when I see what I get. Domination Germany Japan Rome Songhai Mongols Science Babylon Korea Poland America Culture Brazil Polynesia Poland France Diplomatic Greece Arabia Portugal Links: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Civilizations_(Civ5) https://www.palain.com/gaming/civilization-v/playing-civilization-v-part-11/ Provide feedback on this episode.

Drive through cities in Africa and you're likely to see a waste problem. In the streets, the sewage, in the waterways…540 million tons of waste goes uncollected every year across sub-Saharan Africa. It's a $16 billion opportunity. But much of the infrastructure is still missing. What would it actually take to build it at scale?In Nigeria, a company called Scrapays is paying people to collect it. In Kenya, Plas-tech is turning the same plastic into cooking gas. 00:00 - Where does your waste go? 01:25 - In Lagos, Scrapay's Boluwatife Arewa is empowering informal waste pickers05:44 - In Mombosa, Plas-tech's Robin Kariuki is turning waste into cooking gas09:13 - The multi-billion dollar opportunity in wasteThis episode was produced as part of our series on climate action in Africa, The Greenprint, in partnership with Catalyst Fund and FSD Africa, with the help of UK aid.Watch more episodes of The Greenprint here.Our Links -

Decades of agricultural development policy have chased yield. Bigger harvests, better seeds, more fertiliser. But how can we make farming more profitable? Craig McIntosh of UC San Diego is academic lead on a J-PAL Policy Insight covering twenty-three randomised evaluations of credit and grants for farmers in low- and middle-income countries. He tell Tim Phillips that although yields and revenues often rise, profit rarely responds in the same way. When farmers are already running their farms close to the margin, costs rise at the same rate as income, and the household bank balance does not move much. What can we bundle with credit to change that situation?The research behind this episode:Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). 2026. "Can relaxing credit constraints boost farmers' profits?” J-PAL Policy Insights. Last modified February 2026. Academic leads: Craig McIntosh and Tavneet Suri; insight authors: Leonie Rauls and Rebecca Toole.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Craig McIntosh. 2026. “Boosting farmers' profits?" VoxDev Talks (podcast). Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About the guestCraig McIntosh is Professor of Economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego. His research spans development finance, agricultural credit, cash transfer design and the evaluation of large-scale anti-poverty interventions. Research cited in this episodeMicrocredit take-up among farmers. Across four randomised evaluations of traditional microcredit aimed at farmers, in Morocco, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Malawi, take-up sat between 13 and 33 percent. Standard microcredit repayment begins a week or two after disbursement, which is incompatible with a crop cycle that pays out cash once or twice a year. Group liability also breaks down in agriculture, where shocks like drought or floods hit borrowers together rather than one at a time.Tailoring credit to the agricultural cycle. Restructured loans push take-up much higher. Nakano and Magezi in Tanzania allowed rice farmers to defer 80 percent of repayment until harvest; 39 percent borrowed and over 92 percent repaid. William Jack and co-authors in Kenya offered dairy farmers asset-collateralised loans for a water tank; take-up reached 44 percent against 2.4 percent for a typical joint-liability product. Lambon-Quayefio, Manjeer and Udry in Ghana offered digital credit with a three-month grace period; 59 percent of farmers took it up.Sell low, buy high. Burke and co-authors in Kenya showed that smallholders routinely sell at the post-harvest price trough and buy back grain at hungry-season prices 20 to 40 percent higher. Harvest-time loans that allowed farmers to delay sales had take-up of 64 percent and produced returns around 29 percent for borrowers. Treated villages also saw flatter price trajectories, generating spillover benefits for non-borrowers.Lean-season credit. Fink, Jack and Masiye in Zambia found that lean-season loans let farmers stop hiring out their labour and instead work their own land. Output rose by 9 percent. Loan repayments were comparable to the gain, leaving farmers roughly even on profits.Selection into credit markets. Beaman, Karlan, Thuysbaert and Udry in Mali first offered loans, then offered grants to those who had refused. Returns to capital among would-be borrowers were on the order of 130 percent. Returns among those who had refused the loan were close to zero. Credit appears to self-target toward farmers who can use it productively, which is regressive in welfare terms and also exactly what a capital-scarce economy needs credit markets to do.Input subsidy programmes (ISPs). Jayne and co-authors reviewed eighty studies of fertiliser subsidies across sub-Saharan Africa. Yields rise while subsidies are in place; profitability is mixed; targeting is frequently politically distorted, often skewed toward better-connected or wealthier farmers. The standout randomised exception is Carter, Laajaj and Yang in Mozambique, where two-thirds of recipients had never used fertiliser before; the programme produced sustained gains and a high benefit-cost ratio. By contrast, Gignoux and co-authors in Haiti found a fertiliser-voucher subsidy crowded out farmers' own input spending and lowered yields once the subsidy ended.Cash transfers and diversification. In six studies measuring both farm and non-farm outcomes, three found households doubled down on agriculture and three saw movement into non-farm enterprises. The Zambian Child Grant evaluation by Handa and co-authors saw women invest in seeds, fertiliser and livestock and start non-farm businesses, with household income roughly doubling.Bundled input programmes. Four randomised evaluations bundled credit or a grant with information, training or market access. All four lifted revenues; three of the four lifted incomes or profits. Harou and co-authors in Tanzania showed that fertiliser vouchers alone and soil testing alone did nothing; only the combination raised yields and revenues. Ashraf, Gine and Karlan's Kenya study on French-bean and baby-corn export found credit increased programme participation from 27 to 41 percent, even where it did not further raise income among participants.

Collaboration, whether it's between young people in a classroom or between institutions across an educational ecosystem, is often seen as an unquestioned virtue. An assumed aspect of people simply working together on a shared purpose, but without much thought given to how it happens in meaningful and deep ways to generate genuinely expanded possibilities for everyone. Rose A. Dodd and her team at The Education Collaborative have been showing how this is done at a massive scale across Africa, for the last decade. Rose joined me this week to share what she and her network have been learning about how deep radical collaboration can really shift and transform systems across a whole continent. Rose is a strategic leader mobilizing Africa's higher education sector at a critical moment, when the continent's youth population is rapidly growing, yet tertiary enrolment remains the lowest in the world. As Executive Director of The Education Collaborative, a pan-African initiative launched by Ashesi University in 2017, Rose leads a peer-driven network that has engaged over 400 institutions across the continent. Under her leadership, the Collaborative is driving transformation in teaching, institutional practices, and graduate outcomes—impacting hundreds of thousands of students, with a goal to reach one million by 2030.With deep expertise in strategy and stakeholder alignment, she develops scalable models for institutional collaboration and system-wide improvement. Rose is driven by a commitment to social innovation and is shaping the future of African higher education by building the systems, networks, and models that enable institutions to lead transformative change at scale.About The Education Collaborative: The Education Collaborative spearheads a collective engagement model that promises to transform higher education outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. This initiative uses a network approach to build trust and foster collective commitments among higher education leaders and stakeholders to generate sustainable results within the systems they govern and influence. Central to this pioneering movement is a membership model that promotes open engagement, sharing, and community accountability among participating institutions.Website: https://educationcollab.ashesi.edu.ghGiving Voice to Values Africa: https://educationcollab.ashesi.edu.gh/ehub/ecourse/giving-voice-to-values-africaRead our latest Impact Stories Publication: https://educationcollab.ashesi.edu.gh/impact-stories-publication-issue-2LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-education-collaborative-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theeducationcollaborativeReach us via email: education.collaborative@ashesi.edu.gh

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of Born Scrappy I sit down with Jonathan Ross from John Ross & Sons Ltd., and his son Alex Ross, VP of Ops and Sales. Recorded live at ReMA 2026, this is a candid, unfiltered conversation about what it actually takes to bring the next generation through a fifth-generation family business the right way.Jonathan has spent decades building one of Canada's largest and most respected metal recycling operations. A company now in its fifth generation, which puts it in rare company. Alex came up through the yards at 12 years old, studied accounting and finance at McGill University, and is now stepping into leadership having earned it from the ground up. Together they represent one of the most compelling succession stories in the industry.This episode goes beyond the feel-good family narrative. It's an honest look at the dynamics of working alongside your father, the philosophy behind earning respect before authority, and what the next generation is already bringing to the table that the previous generation didn't see coming.In this episode, we talk about:

361 days. That's how long my streak on Duolingo is. This week, all going well, I will pass the 12-month mark on the world's biggest language learning app. A year of consistent daily Español. Although of course, if you've ever used Duolingo, you might know that a 365-day-streak does not necessarily mean a full year without missing a lesson. The thing about Duolingo streaks is that if you happen to miss the occasional day for whatever reason, and you've racked up a bit of a streak already, it forgives you your absence. It freezes your progress for a day. I thought it was a cop-out feature until I flew across a time zone and faced the prospect of having my record thrown on the scrap heap. One of my great educational regrets is that I cannot fluently speak multiple languages. I've always loved the sound of languages. I've loved what they reveal about culture. I get such a thrill from being in a place and speaking something other than English, connecting with another person. I swear that when I dragged my family to Latin America last year, you could hear my wife rolling her eyes as I cleared my throat and began attempting to converse with the guy in the customs booth. But while I've ebbed and flowed with my Māori and Spanish over the years, I've never got to fluency. It's one of those slightly embarrassing things about New Zealand. Roughly 20% of us can speak two languages – a figure that has been increasing as our population becomes more diverse. But when you travel, you quickly come to appreciate that not only can most Europeans breezily switch between at least two languages, many people in developing countries with limited formal education opportunities also have impressive language skills. Two thirds of Europeans are multilingual. Indonesia has roughly 200 million people who can switch between languages, let alone people in the sub-continent or sub-Saharan Africa. For many, multilingualism is a utility and English skills are vital for economic reasons. For those of us who've grown up in Anglophone countries, the case for learning can perhaps seem less urgent. I can see competing forces in language trends. While te reo Māori has recorded an incredible surge in interest over the last decade, new language tools make it easier for those of us who are also interest in foreign languages to opt out of doing the hard stuff. Real-time live translation tools are amazing (when they work) and they're only going to get better. It's not inconceivable to think that in a few years, live translation will become the default way of travelling. For many, it already is. No more blind pointing at a menu and hoping for the best. No more language barrier charades. I can see how those tools and that technology might make someone like me give up and throw in the towel. What's the point in a Duolingo streak if you can open a different app on your phone and that'll perfectly communicate on your behalf? But I hope not. I think the connections you form with another person when you communicate in their language are ultimately un-replicable by technology. And what's more, there is something nourishing about forming a learning habit. It's like you can feel the neural pathways trying to fire. There's something humbling, too. It's 25 years since I started learning Spanish, and here I am again confusing a verb conjugation. I think from time to time, being humbled isn't such a bad thing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Send us Fan MailIn this week's episode, I chat to Lenny Formato, Co-founder of Empire Metal Trading. A third-generation recycler out of New York, Lenny has lived and breathed this industry from a young age. From riding trucks as a kid to building a business that's still evolving today.We cover everything from persistence and patience in deal-making to the power of going “all in” when it really counts. Lenny shares stories that only come from decades in the game, including the deals that took years to land, lessons from starting again in his mid-40s, and why backing yourself matters more than ever.We also get into the importance of collaboration across the industry, staying involved in trade associations, and how relationships, not just transactions, are what keep this business moving forward.This one's full of real, hard-earned insights for operators who are in it for the long game.In this episode, we talk about:

******Support the channel******Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenterPayPal: paypal.me/thedissenterPayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuyPayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9lPayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpzPayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9mPayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ******Follow me on******Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoBFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Roy Richard Grinker is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at the George Washington University. Dr. Grinker is a cultural anthropologist specializing in ethnicity, nationalism, and psychological anthropology, with topical expertise in autism, Korea, and sub-Saharan Africa. He is also the director of GW's Institute for Ethnographic Research. He is the author of Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness. In this episode, we focus on Nobody's Normal. We talk about mental illness from the perspective of cultural anthropology. We discuss the origins of the stigma surrounding mental illness, how capitalism changed our understanding of mental illness, and recent progress in how we deal with it. We also talk about how war shaped our understanding of mental illness, idioms of distress across different cultures, and the DSM and the classification of mental illness. Finally, we discuss what “normal” means.--A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, HEDIN BRØNNER, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, VALENTIN STEINMANN, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, MAURO JÚNIOR, TONY BARRETT, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, STEVEN GANGESTAD, TED FARRIS, HUGO B., JORDAN MANSFIELD, CHARLOTTE ALLEN, PETER STOYKO, DAVID TONNER, LEE BECK, PATRICK DALTON-HOLMES, NICK KRASNEY, RACHEL ZAK, DENNIS XAVIER, CHINMAYA BHAT, RHYS, AND ALEX MACLEOD!A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, NICK GOLDEN, CHRISTINE GLASS, IGOR NIKIFOROVSKI, AND PER KRAULIS!AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER,SERGIU CODREANU, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

Send us Fan MailIn this week's episode, I chat to Andy Golding, Chief Strategy Officer & Partner at Kripke Enterprises and incoming ReMA Chair.This one's a proper masterclass on attracting young talent, and more importantly, what to do once you've got them.Andy shares how the industry needs to rethink some of its oldest habits if we want to stay relevant. From moving away from the “everyone must start in the yard” mindset, to hiring for specialization and actually trusting people to do what they're good at.We also get into how Kripke has built a brand that people genuinely want to be part of — not just customers, but employees too. Because if you want better people in your business, you need to give them something worth joining.There's a lot in here for anyone trying to build a stronger team, keep good people, and future-proof their operation.In this episode, we talk about:

Small Cap Breaking News You Can't Miss! Here's today's roundup, April 8, 2026.New Age Metals Inc. (TSX.V: NAM) (OTCQB: NMTLF) (FSE: P7J) — Ring of Fire Expansion: NAM staked the northern extension of its Northern Shield project, expanding to ~34,000 hectares in Ontario's Ring of Fire. The 100% owned expansion secures a layered mafic intrusive complex prospective for PGMs, nickel, and copper. Ontario targets 2026 for road construction, full access by 2031.NuRAN Wireless Inc. (CSE: NUR) (OTC PINK: NRRWF) (FSE: 1RN) — $15M Private Placement + African Expansion: NuRAN is raising up to $15M through a non-brokered placement at $3.66/unit (warrants at $4.30). The company erected its first towers in Ivory Coast and deployed 3G in Cameroon, expanding rural telecom across sub-Saharan Africa.Military Metals Corp. (CSE: MILI) (OTCQB: MILIF) (FSE: QN90) — Europe's Largest Modern Antimony Resource: MILI released a maiden inferred resource of 6.5 Mt at 1.02% Sb and 1.06 g/t Au for 67,000t of antimony and 222,000 oz of gold at its Trojarova Project in Western Slovakia — the largest antimony resource in the EU by modern standards.Lion Rock Resources Inc. (TSXV: ROAR) (FSE: KGB) (OTCQB: LRRIF) — New Gold Discovery in South Dakota: Phase 1 drilling at the Volney Project confirmed gold mineralization across a 500m strike, 400m width, and 200m depth. All 9 drill holes returned gold, with highlights including 36.5m @ 0.5 g/t Au and 23.2m @ 1.1 g/t Au. The system remains open in all directions with near-surface bulk-tonnage potential.E3 Lithium Ltd. (TSXV: ETL) (FSE: OW3) (OTCQX: EEMMF) — Defense-Grade Lithium Partnership: E3 Lithium signed a Teaming Agreement with Germany's TKMS to support Canada's Patrol Submarine Project, establishing a framework for research, technology transfer, and investment aligned with Canada's Industrial and Technological Benefits policy. E3's Clearwater Project in Alberta holds 21.2 Mt LCE in resources with a pre-tax NPV of USD 5.2 Billion.Bottom Line: Today's releases highlight Canada's growing critical minerals momentum — from Ring of Fire expansion and defense-grade lithium supply chains to a maiden antimony resource in Europe and a new gold discovery in South Dakota. Stay ahead of the market — follow AGORACOM for more breaking small-cap news and insights.

What does it really take to lift millions out of poverty and prevent needless deaths?In this special compilation episode, 17 past guests — including economists, nonprofit founders, and policy advisors — share their most powerful and actionable insights from the front lines of global health and development. You'll hear about the critical need to boost agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa, the staggering impact of lead poisoning on children in low-income countries, and the social forces that contribute to high neonatal mortality rates in India.What's so striking is how some of the most effective interventions sound almost too simple to work: banning certain pesticides, replacing thatch roofs, or identifying village “influencers” to spread health information.Full transcript and links to learn more: https://80k.info/ghdChapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Luisa's intro (00:00:58)Development consultant Karen Levy on why pushing for “sustainable” programmes isn't as good as it sounds (00:02:15)Economist Dean Spears on the social forces and gender inequality that contribute to neonatal mortality in Uttar Pradesh (00:06:55)Charity founder Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on what we can learn from the massive failure of PlayPumps (00:14:33)Economist Rachel Glennerster on how randomised controlled trials are just one way to better understand tricky development problems (00:19:05)Data scientist Hannah Ritchie on why improving agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa is critical to solving global poverty (00:24:36)Charity founder Lucia Coulter on the huge, neglected upsides of reducing lead exposure (00:47:48)Malaria expert James Tibenderana on using gene drives to wipe out the species of mosquitoes that cause malaria (00:53:11)Charity founder Varsha Venugopal on using village gossip to get kids their critical immunisations (01:04:14)Rachel Glennerster on solving tough global problems by creating the right incentives for innovation (01:11:31)Karen Levy on when governments should pay for programmes instead of NGOs (01:26:51)Open Philanthropy lead Alexander Berger on declining returns in global health, and finding and funding the most cost-effective interventions (01:29:40)GiveWell researcher James Snowden on making funding decisions with tricky moral weights (01:34:44)Lucia Coulter on “hits-based giving” approaches to funding global health and development projects (01:43:01)Rachel Glennerster on whether it's better to fix problems in education with small-scale interventions versus systemic reforms (01:48:12)GiveDirectly cofounder Paul Niehaus on why it's so important to give aid recipients a choice in how they spend their money (01:51:09)Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on whether more charities should scale back or shut down, and aligning incentives with beneficiaries (01:56:12)James Tibenderana on why we need loads better data to harness the power of AI to eradicate malaria (02:11:22)Lucia Coulter on rapidly scaling a light-touch intervention to more countries (02:20:14)Karen Levy on why pre-policy plans are so great at aligning perspectives (02:32:47)Rachel Glennerster on the value we get from doing the right RCTs well (02:40:04)Economist Mushtaq Khan on really drilling down into why “context matters” for development work (02:50:13)GiveWell cofounder Elie Hassenfeld on contrasting GiveWell's approach with the subjective wellbeing approach of Happier Lives Institute (02:57:24)James Tibenderana on whether people actually use antimalarial bed nets for fishing — and why that's the wrong thing to focus on (03:05:30)Karen Levy on working with governments to get big results (03:10:53)Leah Utyasheva on how a simple intervention reduced suicide in Sri Lanka by 70% (03:17:38)Karen Levy on working with academics to get the best results on the ground (03:29:03)James Tibenderana on the value of working with local researchers (03:32:15)Lucia Coulter on getting buy-in from both industry and government (03:35:05)Alexander Berger on reasons neartermist work makes sense even by longtermist standards (03:39:26)Economist Shruti Rajagopalan on the key skills to succeed in public policy careers, and seeing economics in everything (03:47:42)J-PAL lead Claire Walsh on her career advice for young people who want to get involved in global health and development (03:55:20)Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongContent editing: Katy Moore and Milo McGuireMusic: CORBITCoordination, transcriptions, and web: Katy Moore

Eighty years after Indian independence, the economic fingerprint of British colonial rule is still visible at the district level. Two institutions in particular left scars: whether a district was governed directly by British administrators or by one of India's roughly 680 Indian princes, and what kind of land tax arrangement the British put in place. For example, by 1991, directly ruled districts had nine percentage points fewer middle schools and a 20-percentage-point lower probability of having a road than areas under indirect rule. The question was whether those gaps would eventually close.Lakshmi Iyer of the University of Notre Dame tells Tim Phillips that by 2011 infrastructure gaps had closed completely. Targeted post-independence programmes, including the Minimum Needs Program of the 1970s and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan of 2001, pushed schools, health centres, and roads towards underserved districts. The picture for land tenure is mixed. Areas that historically had landlord-based systems are still 17% behind non-landlord areas in wheat yields, and the gap in fertiliser use has widened rather than narrowed. One reason, the policy response was a universal subsidy rather than being specifically aimed at places that had fallen behind.So colonial legacies can be erased, but only by policies designed to reach the places that were left behind. When policies have equalisation built in, historical gaps disappear. When they do not, the gaps persist.The research behind this episode:Iyer, Lakshmi and Coleson Weir. 2025. "The colonial legacy in India: How persistent are the effects of historical institutions?" Journal of Development Economics 177.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim and Lakshmi Iyer. 2026. "The colonial legacy in India: How persistent are the effects of historical institutions?" VoxDev Talk (podcast).Assign this as extra listening: the citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About Lakshmi IyerLakshmi Iyer is Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame and a Research Fellow at CEPR. Her research focuses on political economy, governance, and the long-run effects of historical institutions in developing countries. The paper discussed in this episode extends two of her earlier papers, one co-authored with Abhijit Banerjee and one sole-authored, both of which are listed in the research cited section below. Research cited in this episodeIyer, Lakshmi. 2010. "Direct versus Indirect Colonial Rule in India: Long-Term Consequences." Review of Economics and Statistics 92 (4). The original paper documenting that areas brought under direct British rule had significantly lower access to schools, health centres, and roads in the post-colonial period, using Lord Dalhousie's Doctrine of Lapse as an instrument for the selectivity of British annexation.Banerjee, Abhijit V. and Lakshmi Iyer. 2005. "History, Institutions, and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India." American Economic Review 95 (4). Finds that districts where the British assigned proprietary rights in land to landlords have significantly lower agricultural investment and productivity in the post-independence period than areas where rights went to individual cultivators.Nunn, Nathan. 2007. "Historical Legacies: A Model Linking Africa's Past to its Current Underdevelopment." Journal of Development Economics 83 (1). Develops the theoretical case for why economies displaced into a low-production equilibrium by extraction or oppression can remain there long after the original impetus disappears.More VoxDev Talks on this topicIndia's economic development since independence: Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian discuss how India's transformation across eight decades of independence has defied conventional models of development, and what it reveals about the relationship between political economy and growth.Related reading on VoxDevDrawing the line: The short- and long-term consequences of partitioning India: examines the economic and political legacy of the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent, and how a boundary drawn in the final weeks of empire continues to shape outcomes on both sides.Historical legacies and African development: surveys the evidence on how pre-colonial political organisation, colonial-era institutions, and the slave trade have shaped the long-run economic geography of sub-Saharan Africa.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, I host a live panel discussion diving deep into one of the biggest forces shaping the scrap industry right now: Tariffs, trade policy, and global market dynamics.Joined by industry experts, the panel unpacks what's actually happening beneath the headlines, covering recent tariff changes, shifting trade flows, and the real-world impact on recyclers, traders, and operators.From 10% global tariffs to 50% steel and aluminum duties, and everything in between, this conversation cuts through the noise to focus on what really matters for scrappies on the ground.In this episode, we talk about:

Malcolm Nance is a former career US Naval Intelligence officer specializing in counter-terrorism, intelligence and violent extremism. He has been an advisor to the US government's law enforcement, Homeland Security and Intelligence agencies. As an Arabic-speaking special intelligence collections operator, field interrogator he provided top secret anti and counter-terrorism support to national intelligence agencies while on numerous reconnaissance and combat operations in the Balkans, Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. On April 18, 2022, Nance revealed that he had joined the Ukrainian Foreign Legion in March 2022. In an interview with Michael Harriot of The Guardian, Nance alluded to African-American military aviator Eugene Bullard's service in the French Foreign Legion to his service in Ukraine, hoping to inspire "African Americans and young Americans who have been in the military" and describing the International Legion as "the pantheon of the defense of democracy in the defense of Ukraine".----------BOOKS: The Plot to Betray America: How Team Trump Embraced Our EnemiesImage of Hacking ISIS: How to Destroy the Cyber JihadThe Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to StealDefeating ISIS: Who They Are, How They Fight, What They Believe----------LINKS:https://x.com/MalcolmNancehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Nancehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmnance/https://www.spymuseum.org/host-an-event/spy-speaker-series/malcolm-nance/https://us.macmillan.com/author/malcolmnance----------ACTIVE CAMPAIGN:We are raising funds for 5 of 15 Vampire DronesSilicon Curtain for Kupiansk Vampires. Dzyga's Paw, together with Jonathan Fink, is joining forces to raise $40,000 to provide the Khartiia Brigade with Vampire Drones.https://dzygaspaw.com/silicon-curtain-for-kupiansk-vampiresThese heavy bombers are designed to destroy manpower and equipment, as well as for remote mining. The Vampire UAV, manufactured by Skyfall, has proven itself to be one of the most effective weapons in the Kupiansk direction. Skyfall is one of Ukraine's largest defense tech companies, producing Vampire bomber drones, various modifications of Shrike FPV drones, P1-SUN, Shahed drone interceptors, communication systems, and components.----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------PLATFORMS:Substack: https://substack.com/@siliconcurtainTwitter: https://twitter.com/CurtainSiliconLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finkjonathan/Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4thRZj6NO7y93zG11JMtqm----------DESCRIPTION:Malcolm Nance on Trump's Iran War, Market Manipulation Claims, and the New Asymmetric BattlefieldMalcolm Nance, a former US Navy cryptography and intelligence officer and national security commentator, joins Silicon Curtain to argue that Trump's Iran war reflects personal pathology more than coherent domestic or foreign policy, describing an “imperial presidency” mindset and warning of dangerous, grift-driven decision-making. Nance alleges war-related announcements are timed to minimize market impact and enable profiteering, citing claims of stock moves tied to Trump's circle, and says US leadership is unprepared for modern asymmetric warfare where cheap drones can overwhelm expensive defenses and cause massive economic damage. The discussion covers alleged US alignment with Moscow's interests, hostility to Ukraine, and shifting Middle East security dynamics as Gulf states seek Ukrainian drone-defense expertise. Nance points to troop and logistics movements—special operations airlift, airborne deployments, parachute loads, and runway repair units—as indicators of potential escalatory operations involving Gulf islands or Iranian facilities, warning of catastrophic consequences.----------

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, I sit down with Amy Hinton, North American Scrap Editor at Fastmarkets. We break down one of the most misunderstood parts of our industry. How prices actually work.If you've ever questioned where scrap prices come from, how they're formed, or whether the market is being “played”… this is the episode for you.Amy pulls back the curtain on how price reporting agencies operate. From sourcing real transaction data to filtering out noise, bias, and market positioning. We dig into the mechanics behind pricing, but more importantly, what you as a scrappy should actually be paying attention to.We also get into what really moves the market. From geopolitics and currency to supply and demand fundamentals and the often-overlooked role of psychology and sentiment.In this episode, we talk about:

Religious belief is supposed to fade as societies get richer and more educated. So why do newer surveys show the opposite pattern in the United States, with college grads and post grads often *more* likely to attend church than people with only a high school education? We unpack what the data can and cannot prove, why earlier secularization theories missed key realities, and how a smaller but more committed religious share can still look like a “revival” in daily life.We also get into the deeper driver behind the numbers: meaning. For many young adults, especially Gen Z, the loss of stable community and shared moral language can feel like a vacuum. We talk through why “science versus faith” is often framed as a conflict, how that framing breaks down in real life, and why congregations can function as durable social institutions that provide belonging, support, and a place to raise kids with values that feel coherent.Zooming out globally, the story changes fast. Western Europe continues to secularize, but the global south tells a different tale. We explore why sub Saharan Africa may become the centerpiece of global Christianity, from fertility rates and a very young age structure to the practical role churches play where public institutions are weak. We also debate the risks of religion blending with partisan politics and the growing connection between schooling choices, religious communities, and family life.If you found this conversation useful, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review with your biggest question about where faith, community, and demographics are headed next.Support Our WorkThe Center for Demographics and Policy focuses on research and analysis of global, national, and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time. It involves Chapman students in demographic research under the supervision of the Center's senior staff.Students work with the Center's director and engage in research that will serve them well as they look to develop their careers in business, the social sciences, and the arts. Students also have access to our advisory board, which includes distinguished Chapman faculty and major demographic scholars from across the country and the world.For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, Associate Director for the Center for Demographics and Policy, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu.Follow us on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-feudal-future-podcast/Tweet thoughts: @joelkotkin, @mtoplansky, #FeudalFuture #BeyondFeudalismLearn more about Joel's book 'The Coming of Neo-Feudalism': https://amzn.to/3a1VV87Sign Up For News & Alerts: http://joelkotkin.com/#subscribeThis show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

In this Special Africa Edition of the Edge of Show, In this episode, host Josh Krieger and co-host Nefertiti Strong are joined by Mercy Fordwoo and Megan Hess from WADA Global, who are at the forefront of blockchain adaptation and community-driven economic growth across sub-Saharan Africa.Join us as we explore:The unique opportunities and challenges of Web3 adoption in Africa.Inspiring use cases, including innovative solutions for medical records and financial transactions.The impact of the recent Cardano African Tech Summit and how it has empowered local developers and communities.Insights into the future of decentralized intelligence and the role of local voices in shaping the tech landscape.Discover how WADA Global is creating access points for local communities and pushing for inclusion in the tech space. This episode is packed with valuable insights for dreamers, disruptors, and doers passionate about innovation and culture.Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell to stay updated on our latest episodes!Support us through our Sponsors! ☕ Want to make content like ours? Sign up with Castmagic to make your creative process easy: https://bit.ly/CastmagicReferral Work smarter, grow faster. Automate your SEO, get AI insights, and manage all your clients in one place with Helm. Start today at helmseo.comAre you a content creator, podcaster or interested in your business getting its voice out there? Then reserve a .podcast domain by paying just one-time as little as $10 for a lifetime of benefits! Check out the details and snag your .podcast domain today! https://get.unstoppabledomains.com/podcast/

Photojournalist Bryan Anselm on Climate Change Photography, Storytelling & Changing Minds The 10 Frames Per Second podcast (new episodes every Tuesday) brings together photojournalists who turn complex stories into powerful images. In this episode, host Molly Roberts (Joe Giordano was out for this one) sits down with Bryan Anselm, a New‑York‑based photographer whose work chronicles the long‑term impacts of climate change across the United States. If you're a: Photojournalist looking for inspiration on climate‑related assignments Emerging visual storyteller seeking practical career advice Editor or curator interested in the intersection of documentary and fine‑art photography

Interview with Heye Daun, President & CEO of Koryx Copper Inc.Our previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/koryx-copper-tsxvkry-seasoned-executives-aim-to-unlock-value-in-huge-namibian-copper-project-6281Recording date: 1st March 2026Koryx Copper Inc. is developing the Haib copper project in Namibia, one of sub-Saharan Africa's most stable and established mining jurisdictions. Under the leadership of CEO Heye Daun, a Namibian citizen, mining engineer, and serial dealmaker, the company has transformed a previously mismanaged junior mining asset into a credible large-scale copper development opportunity in under two years.The Haib project was drilled originally by Rio Tinto in the 1970s but was left undeveloped as copper prices at the time did not support a low-grade sulfide deposit. It eventually passed to Deep South Resources, which proposed bio-heap-leach processing, a method not proven at commercial scale for sulfide material, and subsequently lost its operating licenses. When Daun's team assumed control, they reinstated conventional milling and flotation, the standard and bankable processing route for sulfide copper, and rebuilt both the technical and financial credibility of the asset from the ground up.The resulting PEA published in 2025 modelled just under 100,000 tonnes of annual copper production at a capital cost of approximately $1.5 billion, using a copper price of $4.30 per pound which roughly 30% below spot at the time of the PDAC 2026 interview. The middle-of-the-cost-curve economics hold up at conservative assumptions, and management's stated approach to study assumptions has historically been validated: on both prior Namibian transactions, the step from PEA to PFS maintained or improved the project scope rather than contracting it.The next milestone is the PFS, expected by end of 2026. This study will sharpen engineering and cost estimates, providing a more bankable document for potential financing discussions and strategic partner conversations. Alongside the PFS, Koryx is expanding its mineral resource and adding exploration ground around the Haib project, with a new, larger resource estimate expected in the near term.Financially, the company has moved from a $10 million market capitalisation to raising over $100 million, including a $51 million institutional placement that attracted Middle Eastern and Chinese financial groups as strategic participants. The company states it is sufficiently capitalised to reach an investment decision without further dilutive financing in the near term.The long-term construction path is expected to involve a major mining company or capital partner given the scale of investment required. Daun has been explicit about this: a $1.5 to $2 billion project is beyond the appropriate scope for a junior developer to build independently. Whether that takes the form of a joint venture, acquisition, or offtake-led financing arrangement will be determined in part by prevailing market conditions and the company's share price at the time of the investment decision.For investors, the near-term investment case rests on two catalysts: the mineral resource expansion and the PFS delivery. Both are well-defined, time-bounded events that, if executed credibly, represent meaningful de-risking steps for an asset that already has institutional and strategic interest at the door.View Koryx Copper's company profile: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/koryx-copperSign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com

In cities across low- and middle-income countries, traffic crawls 24 hours a day. In Dhaka during rush hour, speeds average around 15km/h. At three in the morning, when the roads are empty, they average about 20km/h. Urban transport in the developing world is not only slow because of congestion. And so congestion policy, Adam Storeygard of Tufts University argues, gets you a small fraction of the way to solving the problems of urban transport in LMICs.That counterintuitive finding is one many themes in Storeygard's wide-ranging review of what research actually tells us about how people in LMICs get from A to B. From informal minibuses to bus rapid transit, from a field experiment in Bangalore that tested congestion pricing to the long shadow of colonial railroads still shaping African trade today, the picture that emerges is more nuanced and more interesting than many policy blueprints suggest. He tells Tim Phillips what the evidence supports, where it runs out, and why fixing the roads won't fix everything.The research behind this episode:Storeygard, Adam. 2025. "Transport in Low- and Middle-Income Countries." NBER Working Paper 34354. Forthcoming in a special issue of Regional Science and Urban Economics.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim. 2026. "Transport in Low- and Middle-Income Countries." VoxDev Talk (podcast). Assign this as extra listening: the citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About Adam StoreygardAdam Storeygard is Professor of Economics at Tufts University, where his research focuses on urbanisation, transportation, and the economic geography of the developing world, in particular sub-Saharan Africa. Much of his work uses geographic and satellite data to study how infrastructure shapes where people live, how they move, and how economies develop.Research cited in this episodeAkbar, Prottoy Aman, Victor Couture, Gilles Duranton, and Adam Storeygard. 2023. "The Fast, the Slow, and the Congested: Urban Transportation in Rich and Poor Countries." NBER Working Paper 31642. The paper behind the Dhaka finding: assembling travel speed data across 1,200 cities in 152 countries, the authors show that cities in poor countries are roughly half as fast as those in rich countries, and that most of the gap is not congestion but structural low speeds in the absence of traffic.Björkegren, Daniel, Alice Duhaut, Geetika Nagpal, and Nick Tsivanidis. 2025. "Public and Private Transit: Evidence from Lagos." Working paper. When Lagos introduced a major new public bus system, informal drivers on affected routes left,  so bus frequency on those routes fell on net. The big benefit accrued to other routes that informal drivers switched to, where prices and waiting times fell. Winners and losers, not a clean gain.Franklin, Simon. 2018. "Location, Search Costs and Youth Unemployment: Experimental Evidence from Transport Subsidies." Economic Journal 128 (614). A randomised trial in Addis Ababa: providing transport subsidies to unemployed young people helped them search for and find formal jobs. Effects did not persist once subsidies ended, raising questions about how much the transport constraint itself was the binding one.Borker, Girija. 2021. "Safety First: Perceived Risk of Street Harassment and Educational Choices of Women." World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9731. Women in Delhi attend less selective colleges than male peers with identical academic credentials, not because they are not admitted, but because of perceived harassment risk during the commute. Delhi university students overwhelmingly live with their parents, and the daily journey matters as much as the institution.Kreindler, Gabriel. 2024. "Peak-Hour Road Congestion Pricing: Experimental Evidence and Equilibrium Implications." Econometrica 92 (4). A field experiment in Bangalore, paying drivers to avoid congested areas and times. The finding: congestion pricing would produce only modest benefits in Bangalore because traffic density has a relatively moderate impact on speed there, meaning you would have to charge astronomically high prices to shift behaviour significantly.Jedwab, Remi, and Adam Storeygard. 2022. "The Average and Heterogeneous Effects of Transportation Investments: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa 1960–2010." Journal of the European Economic Association 20 (1). Shows how transportation infrastructure investments, including the legacy of colonial railroads built primarily to connect mines to ports, continue to shape where Africans live and how countries trade, with consequences that push African economies toward overseas rather than intra-regional commerce.More VoxDev Talks on this topicMichelson, Hope, 2026, “African agriculture's underappreciated supply side.” VoxDev Talk. How transport links are one of the many impediments that stop rural farmers from making the most of the opportunities of better agricultural inputs.Related reading on VoxDev"Urban transport infrastructure in developing countries”, the VoxDevLit review of research on urban transport in LMICs, covering buses, BRT, subways, and informal transit networks."Who wins when public transit challenges private transit?”, the Lagos bus reform discussed in this episode, with further detail on how informal drivers responded to new public routes."Perceived risk of street harassment and college choice of women in Delhi”, Girija Borker's research on how commute safety shapes women's educational choices, as discussed by Storeygard in this episode."The equitable benefits of Colombia's bus rapid transit system”, complements the discussion of BRT in Bogota, one of Storeygard's three best-evidenced cases for BRT benefits.

Ilana Landsberg-Lewis went to law school to understand how power works—so she could help transform it in the service of justice, especially for women. Alongside her father, she co-founded and led a nonprofit funding community-based organization in sub-Saharan Africa working to turn the tide of AIDS and support African grandmothers raising a generation of grandchildren orphaned by the pandemic. When others dismissed older women as “not a sustainable investment,” Ilana helped launch an international movement of grandmothers across Canada, the UK, and the United States—raising more than $50 million and supporting millions of grandchildren. At the center of this work is her unwavering belief that older women are not only caregivers, but leaders, change-makers, and moral anchors for their communities.Through her podcast and fund, Ilana lifts up older women's stories and their power-- a practice of love and a commitment to liberation—from the chains of inequality and from the limits placed on whose lives are valued. Her work invites us to see the human family more fully, and to recognize older women as essential architects of justice across the globe.Connect with IlanaEmail:grandmothersonthemove@gmail.comWebsite: wisdomatworkpodcast.comThank you to our SPONSOR—AARP Illinois, dedicated to empowering adults 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. AARP Illinois advocates for the health, financial security, and overall well-being of Illinois residents through community programs, expert resources, and member benefits. aarpil@aarp.orgRecognizing the Age-Wise Collective. Women Over 70-Aging Reimagined has joined other women podcasters to amplify the voices of women over 50. We shine the light on gerontologist Sally Duplantier, founder and host of My Zing Life, dedicated to helping older adults live their best lives longer. Her current Healthspan work focuses on improving health behaviors and mental well-being for vulnerable populations through community-based health coaching. https://sally@myzinglife.com

Send a textWhat if American influence felt like clean water, reliable power, and healthier newborns instead of tariffs and weapons? We lay out a bold “belt and suspenders” strategy: a Green Belt and Road that targets water security, neonatal health, and clean infrastructure to cool conflicts before they ignite. China's Belt and Road proved that ports and rail can reshape alliances; we argue for a greener version that fixes leaky megacities, equips hospitals to save infants, and electrifies logistics so food and medicine keep moving when heat and drought hit.We start with the simplest lever: water. From Mexico City losing half its supply to Tokyo's 24‑hour leak response, the gains from modern pipes, smart metering, and pressure management are massive. Then we connect the dots between drought, rising beef prices, and migration surges that stress borders and budgets. Investing upstream is cheaper than reacting downstream. That's why we pair urban water projects with resilient agriculture—drip irrigation, soil repair, and drought-ready crops—so people can flourish at home rather than flee in crisis.Health changes demography too. When infant mortality falls, families choose fewer births. Funding maternal clinics, durable incubators, and stable power across sub‑Saharan Africa saves lives and steadily eases pressure on land and cities. We also dig into practical financing: blending public funds, development banks, and private capital with friendshoring rules that grow U.S. and allied manufacturing for panels, pumps, membranes, and meters. And yes, there's room to cooperate with China on standards and components when it serves local outcomes and global stability.This is foreign policy you can measure: fewer leaks, steadier grids, calmer borders, better trade. It's also a national story worth telling—one where American engineers, medics, and financiers build systems that last longer than speeches. If you're ready for a world where the U.S. leads with solutions people can drink from and plug into, hit play. Then share this with someone who thinks climate action stops at our shoreline, and leave a quick review to help more listeners find the show. Support the showHelp these new solutions spread by ... Subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts Leaving a 5-star review Sharing your favorite solution with your friends and network (this makes a BIG difference) Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.Email: solutionsfromthemultiverse@gmail.comAdam: @ajbraus - braus@hey.comScot: @scotmaupinadambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast) Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

This episode explores how sustained scientific ambition, backed by flexible philanthropy, has helped transform HIV from a fatal diagnosis into a manageable condition and why the search for a cure remains both urgent and achievable. At the centre of the conversation is the work of amfAR and its distinctive role in advancing research that changes lives far beyond a single disease area. Founded in the mid-1980s, at a time when HIV and AIDS were poorly understood and highly stigmatised, the organisation emerged from the determination of clinicians, researchers and advocates who refused to wait for slow-moving systems to respond. From the outset, the mission was clear: fund innovative research quickly, support bold ideas early, and accelerate scientific discovery where it was needed most. Since its first grants in 1985, the organisation has invested nearly one billion dollars in research and supported more than 3,900 researchers across the world. Rather than simply awarding grants, its approach has been to invest in people and ideas, often at the earliest and riskiest stages. Many of those early investments have gone on to underpin treatments now used globally, including antiretroviral therapies that allow people living with HIV to lead long, healthy lives. The episode places this progress in today's global context. More than 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV, with around 1.3 million new infections each year. While treatment has transformed outcomes in many countries, access remains deeply unequal. Women and girls account for over half of those living with HIV globally, and people in low-income and marginalised communities, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, continue to face life-threatening barriers to care. Against this backdrop, the case for a cure remains compelling. Lifelong treatment depends on stable health systems, consistent access and freedom from stigma, conditions that are far from guaranteed. A cure would remove these structural vulnerabilities. Importantly, the science now points to possibility. Around ten individuals have been effectively cured of HIV, providing researchers with vital clues and a credible roadmap. Current cure-focused research is tackling some of the most complex questions in virology. This includes understanding latent viral reservoirs, where HIV hides in the body, and finding ways to reactivate and eliminate the virus. Researchers are also studying elite controllers, people whose immune systems suppress HIV without medication, to uncover mechanisms that could inform new treatments. Alongside this, insights from cancer, ageing, autoimmune disease and other viral infections are increasingly shaping HIV research, highlighting the interconnected nature of scientific discovery. A key theme running through the conversation is what defines a viable cure. It must be scalable, affordable and easy to administer, not a solution that only works in specialist settings. This emphasis on real-world applicability shapes funding decisions and research priorities. The funding model itself is central to this work. Research is supported entirely through private philanthropy, from individual donors and family foundations to global fundraising events. Independence allows decisions to be driven by science rather than politics, while short funding timelines enable researchers to move quickly. Rigorous peer review ensures standards remain as high as those of major public institutions, without the inertia that can stifle innovation. Beyond HIV, the episode highlights how this model has influenced advances in other fields. Research originally funded to understand HIV has contributed to breakthroughs in cancer immunotherapy and vaccine development, including technologies later used in mRNA vaccines. Today, the organisation is expanding its focus to areas such as cancer, Alzheimer's disease, immunotherapy and artificial intelligence, particularly where these intersect with the needs of an ageing HIV-positive population. Woven throughout the discussion is the human impact of research. Funding science does more than produce data and treatments; it provides hope. Knowing that researchers are actively working towards a cure can fundamentally change how people live with a diagnosis. Investment in early-stage research becomes an investment in dignity, longevity and possibility. The episode closes with a clear message. Scientific discovery is not confined to governments or large institutions. Individuals and philanthropists can play a decisive role in advancing research that affects every household. Supporting bold ideas early is one of the most powerful ways to accelerate global health progress and, ultimately, to help make AIDS history. Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship. 

Slavery in the Islamic world has a diverse and controversial history. Speaking to Emily Briffett, historian and journalist Justin Marozzi explores some of the stories at the heart of his latest book Captives and Companions, tracing networks of enslavement that stretched from sub-Saharan Africa to Central Asia. He reveals how people who were enslaved became soldiers, labourers, concubines and courtiers, and considers what this complex history tells us about power, faith and human experience across the centuries. ----- GO BEYOND THE PODCAST To find out more about the history of slavery, catch up with this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast in which historian Claire Taylor explores the realities of slave trading along the medieval Silk Road: https://bit.ly/40itSfu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite headwinds from US tariffs and Chinese competition, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's latest report shows stronger-than-expected GDP growth, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa as decelerating inflation boosts consumer spending power. In Business, we spoke to the report's lead author, EBRD chief economist Beata Javorcik.

The energy grid fails in silence, long before the lights go out. The real problem is that most of the infrastructure keeping the grid alive is inspected too slowly, too infrequently, and with sensors that drift. We pour billions into building new power infrastructure, yet some of our biggest reliability gains might come from simply seeing existing assets more clearly. Quantum sensing promises exactly that, and it is closer to deployment than most people realise.In this conversation, Alex sits down with Emma Wong, Nuclear Principal Lead for Innovation, Quantum Technologies, and International Engagement at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), to explore how quantum sensing technology could transform grid reliability, reduce costly downtime at nuclear plants, and reshape how we think about energy security, from US utilities to communities in sub-Saharan Africa.Chapters00:00 Seeing Problems Early01:53 EPRI's Mission03:34 Into Nuclear Innovation06:27 Quantum Technologies Overview09:15 How Quantum Sensors Work12:33 No-Drift Sensing Advantage15:34 Real World Applications22:21 Cutting Nuclear Downtime25:20 Utility Pilot Programs26:15 Quantum Meets AI32:29 Key Stakeholders for Quantum35:37 Nuclear in a Renewable Grid41:43 Modern Reactor Safety46:43 G20 Nuclear Summit48:43 Energy Access in Africa53:22 Contrarian Energy Take#Nuclear #QuantumTechnology #EnergyTransition #CleanEnergy #FutureOfEnergy

The energy grid fails in silence, long before the lights go out. The real problem is that most of the infrastructure keeping the grid alive is inspected too slowly, too infrequently, and with sensors that drift. We pour billions into building new power infrastructure, yet some of our biggest reliability gains might come from simply seeing existing assets more clearly. Quantum sensing promises exactly that, and it is closer to deployment than most people realise.In this conversation, Alex sits down with Emma Wong, Nuclear Principal Lead for Innovation, Quantum Technologies, and International Engagement at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), to explore how quantum sensing technology could transform grid reliability, reduce costly downtime at nuclear plants, and reshape how we think about energy security, from US utilities to communities in sub-Saharan Africa.Chapters00:00 Seeing Problems Early01:53 EPRI's Mission03:34 Into Nuclear Innovation06:27 Quantum Technologies Overview09:15 How Quantum Sensors Work12:33 No-Drift Sensing Advantage15:34 Real World Applications22:21 Cutting Nuclear Downtime25:20 Utility Pilot Programs26:15 Quantum Meets AI32:29 Key Stakeholders for Quantum35:37 Nuclear in a Renewable Grid41:43 Modern Reactor Safety46:43 G20 Nuclear Summit48:43 Energy Access in Africa53:22 Contrarian Energy Take#Nuclear #QuantumTechnology #EnergyTransition #CleanEnergy #FutureOfEnergy

The essays in Islamic Ecumene: Comparing Muslim Societies (Cornell UP, 2023) address the ways in which Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia and from sub-Saharan Africa to the steppes of Uzbekistan are members of a broad cultural unit. Although the Muslim inhabitants of these lands speak dozens of languages, represent numerous ethnic groups, and practice diverse forms of Islam, they are united by shared practices and worldviews shaped by religious identity. To highlight these commonalities, the co-editors invited a team of scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine Muslim societies in comparative and interconnected ways.  The result is a book that showcases ethics, education, architecture, the arts, modernization, political resistance, marriage, divorce, and death rituals. Using the insights and methods of historians, anthropologists, literary critics, art historians, political scientists, and sociologists, Islamic Ecumene seeks to understand Islamic identity as a dynamic phenomenon that is reflected in the multivalent practices of the more than one billion people across the planet who identify as Muslims. Eric Taliacozzo: John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University.  David S. Powers: Professor of Islamic studies at Cornell University.  Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on X @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The essays in Islamic Ecumene: Comparing Muslim Societies (Cornell UP, 2023) address the ways in which Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia and from sub-Saharan Africa to the steppes of Uzbekistan are members of a broad cultural unit. Although the Muslim inhabitants of these lands speak dozens of languages, represent numerous ethnic groups, and practice diverse forms of Islam, they are united by shared practices and worldviews shaped by religious identity. To highlight these commonalities, the co-editors invited a team of scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine Muslim societies in comparative and interconnected ways.  The result is a book that showcases ethics, education, architecture, the arts, modernization, political resistance, marriage, divorce, and death rituals. Using the insights and methods of historians, anthropologists, literary critics, art historians, political scientists, and sociologists, Islamic Ecumene seeks to understand Islamic identity as a dynamic phenomenon that is reflected in the multivalent practices of the more than one billion people across the planet who identify as Muslims. Eric Taliacozzo: John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University.  David S. Powers: Professor of Islamic studies at Cornell University.  Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on X @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

This week we take a look at a new report from the Center for Global Development, which found that aid cuts have largely failed to spark reform in sub-Saharan Africa. The caveat, though, is that the authors analyzed national budget data from June 2025 — shortly after the U.S. announced its drastic cuts, meaning the analysis doesn't reflect efforts that have been taken since then. But still, it challenges the viability of current financing models and highlights growing risks to essential social spending in recipient countries. On the topic of sub-Saharan Africa, we examine the situation in Malawi, which is struggling to sustain critical health, education, and development programs after abrupt cuts to U.S. foreign aid exposed the country's heavy reliance on donor funding. Foreign aid cuts by the United States and the United Kingdom have also impacted the fight against female genital mutilation, hindering progress toward its elimination. To dig into these stories, and others, Senior Editor Rumbi Chakamba sits down with reporters Sara Jerving and Ayenat Mersie to discuss the top global development stories of the week. Sign up to the Devex Newswire and our other newsletters: https://www.devex.com/account/newsletters

It's Wednesday, February 11th, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Jonathan Clark Christians are leaving volatile Middle East The number of Christians in the Middle East is falling as religious freedom deteriorates in the region. Karmella Borashan of the Assyrian International Council addressed the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C. last week. She warned, “Christianity is fading from the Middle East and [Christians] are placed in the mercy of the perpetrators. Once we had 1.5 million Christians; now we have only less than 300,000 left.” Assyrian Christians, in particular, face persecution from Muslim Jihadists in Syria and Iraq. Hebrews 13:3 says, “Remember the prisoners as if chained with them—those who are mistreated—since you yourselves are in the body also.” U.S. and Hungary partner to advance religious freedom Speaking of the Middle East, the United States and Hungary  signed an agreement last week to advance religious freedom in the region. The U.S. Department of State noted, “Christians are the most persecuted religious group worldwide, yet atrocities and attacks against them too often go unaddressed. Such persecution presents a threat to American security and undermines the values upon which our nation was built.” Hungary has already been supporting suffering believers for years through its office of Aid for Persecuted Christians. The new agreement is focused on aiding the church in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. More Gen Zers attending church in New Zealand Baptist churches in New Zealand are seeing increased interest from young people.  Gen Z has reportedly been leading a rise in church attendance in the West, known as the “quiet revival.” The 2025 Annual Report for the Baptist Churches of New Zealand noted similar findings for its young people. Youth attendance in these churches increased 24% between 2022 and 2024. And people under the age of 25 accounted for nearly 60% of baptisms reported.  Trump tosses Obama's global warming policy In the United States, the Trump administration is expected to repeal an Obama-era climate change policy this week. The policy is known as the Endangerment Finding. It claimed that greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, are a danger to public health. The finding has been the legal basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions.  The Environmental Protection Agency plans to rescind the rule, making it “the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States.”  Is social media addictive to kids? Major social media companies are facing landmark trials this year for how their platforms affect children.  A case against Google-owned YouTube and Meta-owned Instagram begins this week. The companies face accusations that their platforms were designed to be addictive for kids.  The platforms TikTok and Snap were initially named in the lawsuit, but settled for undisclosed amounts.  Floridian Christian defended for objecting to pro-abort COVID shot Liberty Counsel recently filed an appeal on behalf of a Christian who lost his job for not getting the COVID-19 shot, reports LifeSiteNews.com. Christian Marin worked for Nemours Children's Hospital in Florida. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he refused to get the shot due to his pro-life beliefs. The hospital fired him in 2021. And the Florida Commission on Human Relations sided with the hospital in 2023. Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Nemours [Hospital] violated Marin's religious protections and should be held accountable.” RFK partners with Christian recovery programs for addicts & homeless The Trump administration is welcoming faith-based organizations to participate in a new recovery program for drug addiction and homelessness. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made the announcement last week at Prevention Day. It's the largest government-sponsored gathering dedicated to advancing the prevention of substance use. Listen to comments from Secretary Kennedy.  KENNEDY: “This is a chronic disease. It's a physical disease. It's a mental disease. It's an emotional disease. But, above all, it's a spiritual disease. And we need to recognize that faith-based organizations play a critical role, helping people re-establish their connections to community.” Grandfather recorded entire Bible on audio for grandkids And finally, a grandfather went viral since December for giving his grandchildren a recording of him reading the entire Bible for Christmas. It took the grandfather over a year to complete. A video of him sharing the gift got more than a million views across social media. The video was originally posted by Tiffany Shabazz. She said, “We shared one video of Grandpa giving us such a personal meaningful gift and now everyone wants a copy. I can't believe how many people this has reached. God is definitely in this story. … We are up to needing 118 copies for people all over the world.” Psalm 78:4 says, “We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done.” Close And that's The Worldview on this Wednesday, February 11th, in the year of our Lord 2026. Follow us on X or subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

It's Tuesday, February 10th, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Kevin Swanson, Timothy Reed, and Adam McManus Hong Kong man critical of Chinese Communists sentenced to 20 years In a Hong Kong court, religious freedom and free speech advocate Jimmy Lai has been sentenced to twenty years in prison for publishing articles against the communist Chinese government. Lai is a British Citizen and an adherent of the Catholic Church. World journalists are marking the case as a worldwide setback for freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The United Kingdom home office has responded to the news. The Hong Kong Free Press reports that “British national status holders will be able to immigrate into the U.K. with their children. The office estimates that 26,000 people will arrive in the U.K. over the next five years.” Thousands of Tanzanians murdered Political upheaval, tyranny, and blood in the streets is the order of the day in Tanzania over the last few months.  Some reports have revealed the government of President Samia Suluhu Hassan killed thousands of Tanzanians. Hassan is a Muslim who was re-elected in a landslide victory last October, marred by accusations of massive fraud.  That's when the African country was plunged into chaos and rioting.  The bloodshed and terror has gone on for months, reports The Washington Stand. In an effort to conceal the atrocities taking place there, the government has reportedly shut down the internet. Tanzania is at least nominally Christian with a 57 percent Christian population and a 37 percent Muslim population, as the Muslim creep hits south Saharan Africa. Christian martyrdom grows with Muslim population in Nigeria Islamic influence is growing in Nigeria as well — a nation where 56 percent of the population is Muslim and 43 percent is Christian. This has resulted in the martyrdom of 50,000 Christians and the displacement of millions of Christians from their homeland.   Pray for our Christian brothers and sisters and the people of Tanzania, Nigeria, and Uganda.  Civilian killings continue in Nigeria Last Tuesday, almost 200 Nigerians were killed by gunmen in the communities of Woro and Katsina, reports the International Center for Transitional Justice. Woro is located in the western Nigerian state of Kwara, while Katsina is in the northern region of the country. Psalm 35:1 says, “Plead my cause, O LORD, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me.” War Department will no longer work with Harvard War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the War Department will no longer send military officers to Harvard. He slammed the university for what he called its support of terrorism and the Chinese Communist Party.   Hegseth said, “Too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard — heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.” The War Department is set to re-evaluate all Ivy League school partnerships.  Virginia Democrats unveil gerrymandered congressional map Democrat lawmakers in Virginia put forward a new congressional map heading into the midterm elections this November. The Old Dominion state map heavily favors Democrats, giving them four extra seats, while the Republicans would lose four seats. This comes after the Supreme Court ruled that the new congressional map for California was valid, giving Democrats five additional seats. Virginia Democrats swept the last election, winning races for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General.  All told, gerrymandering in Virginia, California, and a few other states should yield the Democrats an additional 5 to 9 seats in Congress in 2026. And gerrymandering in Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri could yield the Republicans an additional 6 to 10 seats in the upcoming election. Connecticut works to expand abortion access Connecticut is launching a billboard campaign to promote abortion and death, reports LifeSiteNews. The campaign, sponsored by the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation, is advertising the state's commitment to make the killing of unborn children more accessible. Billboards will announce a state-provided pro-abortion hotline.  Connecticut Democrat Attorney General William Tong talked about his state's culture of death. He said, “Abortion is safe, legal and accessible here in Connecticut, and that's the way it's going to stay.”  But Proverbs 31:9 instructs us to “Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.” GOP Rep chastises NBC & NFL for Bad Bunny's foul lyrics And finally, Sunday's Super Bowl half-time show turned into one big leftist political statement with Benito Ocasio, known as Bad Bunny, and a few other characters, who openly opposed President Trump's “America First” policies.   To his shame, the Puerto Rican singer sang a bunch of foul-mouthed, sexually-explicit lyrics in Spanish. Republican Congressman Randy Fine of Florida did not pull any punches in his X post. He wrote, “You can't say the f-word on live TV. Bad Bunny's disgusting halftime show was illegal. Had he said these lyrics -- and all of the other disgusting and pornographic filth -- in English on live TV, the broadcast would have been pulled down and the fines would have been enormous. “We are sending FCC Chairman Brendan Carr a letter calling for dramatic action, including fines and broadcast license reviews, against the NFL, NBC, and Bad Bunny. Lock them up.” You can send a short 2-4 sentence letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, urging him to levy these fines.  The address is Federal Communications Commission, 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. Kid Rock, on Turning Point USA's half-time show, pointed to Christ Meanwhile, Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk, simulcast their alternative “All-American Halftime Show” featuring Robert Ritchie known as Kid Rock. Some 20 to 30 million Americans tuned in, reports Fox News. Kid Rock threw in another verse to the hit song “Til You Can't.” Check out the lyrics. KID ROCK: “There's a book a'sitting in your house somewhere that could use some dusting off . . . There's a man who died for all our sins a'hanging from the cross. You can give your life to Jesus and He'll give you a second chance, till you can't.”  Other performers included Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and Gabby Barrett.  War Secretary Pete Hegseth and House Speaker Mike Johnson both praised the Turning Point event, reports Politico. Close And that's The Worldview on this Tuesday, February 10th, in the year of our Lord 2026. Follow us on X or subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ. Extra stories Trump administration provides lower costs on prescription drugs President Donald Trump unveiled Trump Rx, a plan that brings down medicine costs for American citizens. Trump Rx negotiates lower rates with drug companies, passing the savings directly to the consumer. The plan specifically helps those who pay for medications out of pocket. The president is calling on lawmakers to pass healthcare reform through Congress to further codify his agenda.   Senator launches caucus against Sharia Law Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama launched the new Sharia-Free America Caucus in the U.S. Congress, and has introduced a bill to ban Sharia Law in the United States. Tuberville said, “The strength of our country comes from one law applied equally to all. We cannot allow competing systems of governance to weaken that foundation.”

One year ago, the United States was winning the global fight against HIV/AIDS. Thanks largely to American leadership, infections and deaths from HIV/AIDS have dropped precipitously over the past 20 years, ever since the U.S. government made combating the disease a global priority. Some once–hard-hit countries in sub-Saharan Africa were even on track to become AIDS-free by 2030. But then, suddenly and without warning, Donald Trump issued an executive order on January 24, 2025 that all but ended U.S. funding for global HIV/AIDS relief. One year on, people have lost access to treatment, and the specter of a resurgence of HIV/AIDS—after years of steady decline—now looms. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is cutting bilateral deals with countries like Zambia, releasing health and development assistance in exchange for access to natural resources and mining concessions. Joining me from rural Zambia is journalist Andrew Green, who is in the midst of a reporting project documenting the impact of these cuts on HIV/AIDS prevention efforts around the world. We kick off by discussing the historic role the United States played in the fight against HIV/AIDS before turning to what has been lost—and how countries across sub-Saharan Africa are responding.