Dreamestorical
Pro
Its up to the Congolese government to ask Nigeria, and kenya for assistance instead of going to the Israelis.
Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About
- Thread starter TommyHilltrigga
- Start date
Its up to the Congolese government to ask Nigeria, and kenya for assistance instead of going to the Israelis.
Kenya, for example, has its own oil pipelines to develop. DRC will have to be patient or grow some balls and say enough is enough.
TMNT4000
Superstar
Wait! Nigeria found a cure?
TMNT4000
Superstar
I see,
well let's hope Congo will wake up soon, because their are a potential economic giant waiting to happen.
Dreamestorical
Pro
Wait! Nigeria found a cure?
From what I have heard.the kola nut herbal cure has worked in selected cases. They still need more research to be done on it. The good thing is that due to this whole ebola mess and the United states denying nigeria's request for their own drug it has pushed the government to focus on traditional solutions.
TMNT4000
Superstar
Yo do thing the reason why U.S. came out with their cure because of Nigeria came with theirs?
Dreamestorical
Pro
Yo do thing the reason why U.S. came out with their cure because of Nigeria came with theirs?
I dont think so. The U.S has been doing research on ebola for quite some time as well.
China Outpaces U.S. in African Energy Investment
The U.S. lags behind much of the world in investing in Africa's energy development
Aug 7, 2014 |By Daniel Cusick and ClimateWire
Workers at Olkaria Geothermal Power Plant, Kenya.
Credit: Lydur Skulason via Wikimedia Commons
KAMPALA, Uganda—President Obama's appeal for greater U.S. investment on the African continent was not major news in this booming East African capital where economic progress can be measured by glassy new office towers built for Chinese energy firms and the recent opening of Kampala's upscale Acacia Mall, where the main imprint of U.S. culture and business is a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.
Uganda's national newspaper, New Vision, ran its coverage of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit deep inside yesterday's editions, alongside a photo of the American president whom many Africans view as their strongest ally—Bill Clinton. (The newspaper's website did publish the full text of Obama's remarks, along with photos of the current president.)
Indeed, despite the Obama administration's best effort to inject new muscle, and $14 billion of private investment, into U.S.-African business relationships, the reality is that the United States has fallen far behind Europe and Asia when it comes to meaningful foreign investment, even if Kentucky Fried Chicken has proved immensely popular with Kampala's mallgoers.
Nowhere is the evidence of that surge clearer than in the energy sector, where a handful of companies from the United Kingdom, France, China, Canada and the Middle East are licensed to tap much of East Africa's oil reserves and ship crude through a 800-mile pipeline to the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, Russian and Korean firms are vying to build East Africa's newest oil refinery, a 60,000-barrel-per-day plant in northwestern Uganda.
Uganda and Kenya are the closest to tapping new oil and gas reserves in East Africa, and both enjoy relative political stability and investment potential, according to experts here. Their prospects for generating new oil wealth are stoking interest in neighboring countries, too, including Ethiopia, South Sudan and even the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where rebels have been fomenting instability in the very regions where oil is most abundant.
"Kenya is in the first stage of oil exploration and needs more funding at this stage," John Muchiri, an energy consultant based in Nairobi, told the Ankara, Turkey-based Anadolu news agency this week as roughly 40 African leaders gathered in Washington, D.C. The country made its first commercial oil discovery in 2012 and is aiming to begin first production by 2016.
Oil and gas discoveries
Kenya's Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Edwin Limo told the Turkish news wire that President Uhuru Kenyatta and Energy Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala were planning to hold side meetings "with a number of American energy companies who have shown their interest in investing in Kenya after the discovery of oil in our country."
In Uganda, which claims East Africa's largest reserves, oil and gas developers are expected to have invested as much as $3 billion in the country's emerging oil fields in the Albertine Rift, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development. But none of that money is coming from U.S. firms.
Raising billions of dollars in foreign investment for African energy projects has also been hampered by long-standing concern about political corruption, insecurity and even violence. Companies operating in West and North African countries, whose oil and gas programs have been in place much longer than those of East Africa, have been subject to a variety of problems, including vandalism, kidnappings and even acts of terrorism.
But opportunity looms here, as experts say tens of billions of additional dollars may be needed if Africa is to fully tap its petroleum potential. The World Bank has estimated the continent's energy and transportation needs over the coming years will require an additional $50 billion of investment annually.
As it stands, "energy poverty" remains a massive problem for sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated 600 million people lacking electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. Insufficient refining capacity, particularly in East Africa, has also contributed to rising fuel prices at the pump and taken a toll on the region's road infrastructure, where fuel-laden tanker trucks cross thousands of miles to deliver gasoline to stations in the interior from import terminals in Kenya and Tanzania.
A December 2013 brief from the Brookings Institution estimated that sub-Saharan Africa boasts over 132 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves—more than 8 percent of the world's supply. "Yet, by exporting most of this oil to refine it elsewhere, including for eventual domestic consumption, the continent has long missed out on a huge opportunity for economic transformation," Brookings said.
Lavish financing from China
For now, most of East Africa's leaders appear to be focused on trying to tap a seemingly bottomless well of Chinese direct aid and loans for everything from energy projects to road building to technology improvements.
For example, last September, Chinese National Offshore Oil Corp. secured a $2 billion government contract to develop the Kingfisher oil field in northwest Uganda, estimated to hold 635 million barrels of oil, about 200 million of which is considered recoverable.
Where oil is not East Africa's top energy priority, hydropower has drawn considerable interest, especially in the Nile Basin. And renewables, including solar and biomass, have proved to be viable sources of power generation in rural areas where village entrepreneurs charge cellphones from roadside photovoltaic stands and firms like Kakira Sugar Ltd. of Uganda are burning sugar cane husks to produce electricity for both internal use and to sell to the national grid.
Uganda is also in the midst of a major hydropower expansion, with a series of dams being constructed on the White Nile, which originates from Lake Victoria in the country's south-central region. One recent major U.S. investment in a Ugandan energy project was the construction of the 250-megawatt Bujagali hydropower plant, completed in 2012 at a cost of $900 million. That project was a joint venture between the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development and Sithe Global Power LLC, the U.S.-based energy development arm of Blackstone Capital (ClimateWire, Oct. 19, 2012).
New York-based Blackstone, in conjunction with the Dangote Group of Nigeria, announced at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit that it would jointly invest up to $5 billion over the next five years in energy projects across sub-Saharan Africa with a particular emphasis on power generation, transmission and pipelines.
Meanwhile, Africa's largest hydropower project, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (formerly the Grand Millennium Dam) on the Ethiopia-Sudan border, is set to begin producing first power on the Blue Nile before the end of the decade. That project, with a nearly $5 billion price tag, is being financed entirely by the Ethiopian government with help from several Chinese state banks.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-outpaces-u-s-in-african-energy-investment/
The U.S. lags behind much of the world in investing in Africa's energy development
Aug 7, 2014 |By Daniel Cusick and ClimateWire
Workers at Olkaria Geothermal Power Plant, Kenya.
Credit: Lydur Skulason via Wikimedia Commons
KAMPALA, Uganda—President Obama's appeal for greater U.S. investment on the African continent was not major news in this booming East African capital where economic progress can be measured by glassy new office towers built for Chinese energy firms and the recent opening of Kampala's upscale Acacia Mall, where the main imprint of U.S. culture and business is a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.
Uganda's national newspaper, New Vision, ran its coverage of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit deep inside yesterday's editions, alongside a photo of the American president whom many Africans view as their strongest ally—Bill Clinton. (The newspaper's website did publish the full text of Obama's remarks, along with photos of the current president.)
Indeed, despite the Obama administration's best effort to inject new muscle, and $14 billion of private investment, into U.S.-African business relationships, the reality is that the United States has fallen far behind Europe and Asia when it comes to meaningful foreign investment, even if Kentucky Fried Chicken has proved immensely popular with Kampala's mallgoers.
Nowhere is the evidence of that surge clearer than in the energy sector, where a handful of companies from the United Kingdom, France, China, Canada and the Middle East are licensed to tap much of East Africa's oil reserves and ship crude through a 800-mile pipeline to the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, Russian and Korean firms are vying to build East Africa's newest oil refinery, a 60,000-barrel-per-day plant in northwestern Uganda.
Uganda and Kenya are the closest to tapping new oil and gas reserves in East Africa, and both enjoy relative political stability and investment potential, according to experts here. Their prospects for generating new oil wealth are stoking interest in neighboring countries, too, including Ethiopia, South Sudan and even the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where rebels have been fomenting instability in the very regions where oil is most abundant.
"Kenya is in the first stage of oil exploration and needs more funding at this stage," John Muchiri, an energy consultant based in Nairobi, told the Ankara, Turkey-based Anadolu news agency this week as roughly 40 African leaders gathered in Washington, D.C. The country made its first commercial oil discovery in 2012 and is aiming to begin first production by 2016.
Oil and gas discoveries
Kenya's Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Edwin Limo told the Turkish news wire that President Uhuru Kenyatta and Energy Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala were planning to hold side meetings "with a number of American energy companies who have shown their interest in investing in Kenya after the discovery of oil in our country."
In Uganda, which claims East Africa's largest reserves, oil and gas developers are expected to have invested as much as $3 billion in the country's emerging oil fields in the Albertine Rift, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development. But none of that money is coming from U.S. firms.
Raising billions of dollars in foreign investment for African energy projects has also been hampered by long-standing concern about political corruption, insecurity and even violence. Companies operating in West and North African countries, whose oil and gas programs have been in place much longer than those of East Africa, have been subject to a variety of problems, including vandalism, kidnappings and even acts of terrorism.
But opportunity looms here, as experts say tens of billions of additional dollars may be needed if Africa is to fully tap its petroleum potential. The World Bank has estimated the continent's energy and transportation needs over the coming years will require an additional $50 billion of investment annually.
As it stands, "energy poverty" remains a massive problem for sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated 600 million people lacking electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. Insufficient refining capacity, particularly in East Africa, has also contributed to rising fuel prices at the pump and taken a toll on the region's road infrastructure, where fuel-laden tanker trucks cross thousands of miles to deliver gasoline to stations in the interior from import terminals in Kenya and Tanzania.
A December 2013 brief from the Brookings Institution estimated that sub-Saharan Africa boasts over 132 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves—more than 8 percent of the world's supply. "Yet, by exporting most of this oil to refine it elsewhere, including for eventual domestic consumption, the continent has long missed out on a huge opportunity for economic transformation," Brookings said.
Lavish financing from China
For now, most of East Africa's leaders appear to be focused on trying to tap a seemingly bottomless well of Chinese direct aid and loans for everything from energy projects to road building to technology improvements.
For example, last September, Chinese National Offshore Oil Corp. secured a $2 billion government contract to develop the Kingfisher oil field in northwest Uganda, estimated to hold 635 million barrels of oil, about 200 million of which is considered recoverable.
Where oil is not East Africa's top energy priority, hydropower has drawn considerable interest, especially in the Nile Basin. And renewables, including solar and biomass, have proved to be viable sources of power generation in rural areas where village entrepreneurs charge cellphones from roadside photovoltaic stands and firms like Kakira Sugar Ltd. of Uganda are burning sugar cane husks to produce electricity for both internal use and to sell to the national grid.
Uganda is also in the midst of a major hydropower expansion, with a series of dams being constructed on the White Nile, which originates from Lake Victoria in the country's south-central region. One recent major U.S. investment in a Ugandan energy project was the construction of the 250-megawatt Bujagali hydropower plant, completed in 2012 at a cost of $900 million. That project was a joint venture between the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development and Sithe Global Power LLC, the U.S.-based energy development arm of Blackstone Capital (ClimateWire, Oct. 19, 2012).
New York-based Blackstone, in conjunction with the Dangote Group of Nigeria, announced at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit that it would jointly invest up to $5 billion over the next five years in energy projects across sub-Saharan Africa with a particular emphasis on power generation, transmission and pipelines.
Meanwhile, Africa's largest hydropower project, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (formerly the Grand Millennium Dam) on the Ethiopia-Sudan border, is set to begin producing first power on the Blue Nile before the end of the decade. That project, with a nearly $5 billion price tag, is being financed entirely by the Ethiopian government with help from several Chinese state banks.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-outpaces-u-s-in-african-energy-investment/
How the US Military Took Over the African Continent | Interview with Kambale Musavuli
Dreamestorical
Pro
Stallion Group Delivers Made-in-Nigeria Hyundai
http://leadership.ng/news/380622/stallion-group-delivers-made-nigeria-hyundai
TMNT4000
Superstar
@Dreamestorical what's the update on the ebola cure?
Dreamestorical
Pro
@Dreamestorical what's the update on the ebola cure?
The government is still working on it with Dr Iwu. Time will tell.
TMNT4000
Superstar
How is Nigeria handling the Ebola outbreak?
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Oh a growing african vacation spot, if you'd like to invest early
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Going here next year for the sole purpose of land speculation. My homeboy bought some land in Namibia. Dirt cheap i hear.
JAN
15
African Science Fiction is Still Alien
African Science Fiction is Still Alien
By Nnedi Okorafor
Contrary to what was pounded into my head for years by brilliant well-meaning creative writing professors, science fiction is one of the most relevant and potent forms of storytelling.
Science fiction carries the potential to change the world. Literally. It has changed the world. The concept of the very computer that I am using to type these words was first dreamed up in a science fiction novel. The same is true for the Internet, cell phones, submarines, e-readers, satellites, and robots. In fact, most modern technology was born within the pages of science fiction novels.
The power of imagination and narrative should never be underestimated. Aside from generating innovative ideas, science fiction also triggers both a distancing and associating effect. This makes it an excellent vehicle for approaching taboo and socially-relevant yet overdone topics in new ways. Oh, and these narratives are a lot of fun, too.
Considering all of this, the impact of African-based science fiction on Africa and the rest of the world could be great. Sadly, there are few such narratives emerging from within or outside the continent. Note, “African science fiction” is not the same as “science fiction set in Africa” (though there isn’t much of the latter, either).
In 2009, a year before my own African-rooted science fiction/fantasy novel Who Fears Death was released, I wrote an essay titled “Is Africa Ready for Science Fiction?” The essay was the result of a conversation I’d had with close friend and celebrated Nigerian film director Tchidi Chikere about African’s non-relationship with science fiction.
“I don’t think we’re ready [for science fiction] in the primary sense of the word,” Chikere had said. “We can hide it in other categories like magical realism, allegory, etc., but we’re not ready for pure science fiction. Science fiction films from the West are failures here. Even Star Wars! The themes aren’t taken seriously. Science fiction will come here when it is relevant to the people of Africa. Right now, Africans are bothered about issues of bad leadership, the food crisis in East Africa, refugees in the Congo, militants here in Nigeria. Africans are bothered about roads, electricity, water wars, famine, etc, not spacecrafts and spaceships. Only stories that explore these everyday realities are considered relevant to us for now.”
He had a point. Plus, it's a fact that the genre of science fiction was birthed in the West. Few science fiction classics and contemporary works feature main characters of African descent, African mythologies, African locales, or address issues endemic to Africa. And until recently, next to none were written by African writers.
As a Nigerian-American, born and raised in the United States, what distanced me from science fiction novels early on was feeling that I was not a part of the stories; I didn’t exist in them. I suspect the same can be said for many African writers who might consider writing science fiction.
There may also be another reason for the non-relationship. Things Fall Apart was one of the first African novels to garner critical acclaim overseas (due to colonialism, success overseas is the hallmark of an African writer’s success). This great work was one of the first African novels to enter standard university curricula globally. Nevertheless, this also set a precedent for African writers striving to be viewed as “serious” writers. Even today, many African writers still dismiss genre fiction like science fiction and fantasy as “childish” or “amateur”.
Digging deeper, this leads to two troublesome facts: 1. Africans are absent from the creative process of global imagining that advances technology through stories. 2. Africans are not yet capitalizing on this literary tool which is practically made to redress political and social issues.
Notwithstanding the challenges, Africa is ripe with invention and ingenuity. Need examples? A line from the Ethiopian-American hip-hop group CopperWire’s science fiction-themed song, “Phone Home” comes to mind: “What’chu think we do all day, swat flies? We got two-ways and flip phones shipped here from Dubai.” The manner in which raw technology has proliferated the African continent is as unique and fascinating as its individual nations.
Consider young women in rural Nigeria walking down the dirt road carrying containers of water on their heads because they lack plumbing in their homes. While they walk, they hold their mobile phones in front of them as they text, to avoid splashing them with water. Or the innovative yet desperate lawless Nigerian scammers manipulating gullible people through the Internet. Or the unreliable infrastructures of so many African countries that have led to people preferring chargeable devices.
Consider the remnants of colonialism mixing with the information infusion of the Internet in Namibia. The impact of portable tech, like mobile phones and blackberries in Ethiopia. School kids in Djibouti with no electricity at home managing charged up e-readers given to them at school. Youths living around digital dump sites in Ghana. We’ve already seen aliens in Johannesburg in the South African science fiction film District 9. This film was a start (one that I took serious issue with regarding the offensive portrayal of Nigerians), but we can do better. Africa is bursting with resources, including the raw material of fresh science fiction narratives. As Nigerian writer Ben Okri wrote in Birds of Heaven, “Africa breathes stories.”
http://davebrendon.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/afrosfa.jpg
Zimbabwean writer Ivor Hartmann emphasized the uniqueness of his own culture, too. “Most speculative fiction, be it fantasy, scifi, or horror, is firmly rooted in cultural mythologies,” Hartmann said. “It’s not something we can ever get away from because they form the archetypal base for all speculative stories. This is why I think African writers are already changing the face of literature and beyond, because our intricately diverse and complex mythologies are for the most part unwritten and therefore bring forth a relatively new and fresh perspective.”
I understand this perspective intuitively. I was born to two Nigerian Igbo parents who immigrated to the United States for medical and graduate school in 1969. When my siblings and I were old enough, we regularly traveled as a family to Nigeria. Thus, the unconditional connection, love, and pride that I have for Nigeria is limitless.The Nigerian culture I was infused with in the United States and the frequent trips to Nigeria were the foundation of my need to see Africa in the future. I started writing science fiction set in Africa, based in specific African cultures, from an African perspective because I wanted to READ these stories. Hey, my mother always said that the best way to get something done is to do it yourself. In my forthcoming science fiction novel,Lagoon (April 2013), aliens arrive in Lagos, Nigeria, all hell breaks loose and even the spirits and ancestors come out to see what’s going on.
A handful of others are doing it themselves, too. In 2010, Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu’s Kenyan science fiction short film Pumziwas screened at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to win several awards and accolades. Last year, the Ethiopian-American hip-hop group CopperWire released its first album Earthbound. It’s described as a “hip-hop space-opera” and it is fantastic.
In 2011, South African science fiction writer Lauren Buekes won the Arthur C. Clark Award for her second science fiction novel Zoo City, a cyberpunk novel set in a future Johannesburg, South Africa. The first science fiction anthology by African writers,AfroSF (edited by Ivor Hartmann), was released last year. And South African writer Sarah Lotz’s The Three will be released in May of this year.
As African consumers sample the few works out available, their palettes will grow accustomed to and hopefully even crave homegrown African-rooted science fiction. It’s only a matter of time. I can imagine what will come next.
Note: I wrote this for the New York Times but the New York Times editor I was working with ended up setting it aside (unfortunately, some other story pushed mine out of the way).
http://nnedi.blogspot.ch/2014/01/african-science-fiction-is-still-alien.html