Khadija Sharife

In a globalised world, there is nothing so invaluable as the knowledge economy, comprising intangible assets.

China has long been renowned in Africa as the architect behind the continent’s ‘weapons of mass construction’. To date, this trademark is best symbolised by the 1,860 km Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TanZam), constructed from 1970-1975, at a cost of $500 million.

Gabon’s Ba’aka pygmy population may soon be saying au revoir to smoked fish and nihao to tofu, if the $3.5 billion Belinga iron-ore mining deal, awarded to a Chinese consortium in 2006, goes off without a hitch.

She watched the world through windows, counting number plates. Everybody seemed to be going someplace. Her place (just for now, she told herself) would be here, where she was needed.

I bumped into him when another young fellow kindly offered to liberate me of my shoes. Anxious to buy some time, I informed the fellow – let’s call him the Artful Dodger – that he would have to purchase my shoes for ZAR50, money for the taxi home, as I could not walk barefoot in the heat.

Players in South African Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) often use a complex and opaque web of directorships and shareholdings to access lucrative provincial and national tenders.

By 2009, more than 17 years after the non-binding UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit, developed countries had channeled just $3bn in climate funding to developing countries.

Collective-security organisations such as the United Nations depend on sanctions as political tools designed to bring deviant regimes to heel, providing incentive through non-military means a return to international frameworks.

When the Mauritius-based Essar Africa Holdings Ltd, an arm of India's Essar Group, was selected as the preferred private corporation to take on 54 per cent of Zimbabwe's ailing state-owned steel maker, the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company (ZISCO), many breathed a sigh of relief.

SABMiller is one of the world’s leading beverage companies and a new report by ActionAid makes its history in apartheid South Africa of particular interest.