I came across a brief article at Ozy by Pooja Bhatia noting that prosperity in former colonies is leading to the reversal of traditional patterns of post-colonial dominance. The effect is perhaps biggest in the case of Portugal, which is the smallest and poorest of the former imperial powers and has (in Brazil and Angola) larger and richer colonies ( Read more... )

The Guardian Weekly's Claire Gatinois reports on the controversies surrounding Angolan investment in former colonizer Portugal. Portugal, in a pronounced economic slump even before the global economic slowdown in 2008, is increasingly dependent on oil-rich Angola, whether as a destination for Portuguese migrants or as a source of investment. Many ( Read more... )

Writing for This is Africa, Lula Ahrens describes how in Luanda, capital of an Angola experiencing huge economic growth and rampant inflation, the poor get by. (The answer? Badly.)

Since the end of Angola’s civil war [1975-2002], Chinese oil-backed credit lines - Angola is China’s No. 1 oil supplier - have fueled an impressive building and ( Read more... )

• Bag News Notes comments on some recently-published photos of the family of Bashar Assad--father, mother, children--and how they seem particularly staged.
• The Burgh Diaspora links to an article describing how migration to the United States from one Mexican village helped, via remittances, to lift it to middle4 classes.
• The Discoblog summarizes a ( Read more... )

Huh. Inter Press Service's Mario do Queiroz came up with another interesting story.

With the announcement that his country is ready to buy Portuguese debt, the president of East Timor, José Ramos-Horta, set a precedent in international economic relations that was universally praised in political and financial circles in this southern European ( Read more... )

Sometimes when links accumulate too much they just need to be posted all at once. This may become a regular Monday feature, who knows?

• Gilbert Casasus at Marianne2 notes (in French) that Germany is now seeing net emigration, with Switzerland being a major destination and with East Germans being especially likely to leave.
• Silicon India observes ( Read more... )

The news from the West African country of Guinea-Bissau hasn't been very encouraging at all.

Guinea-Bissau's National Assembly speaker Raimundo Pereira will take the oath as interim head of state on Tuesday after the assassination of President Joao Bernardo Vieira, a parliamentary communique said.

Vieira was killed in his home on Monday in an ( Read more... )

Brazil's emergence as one of the famed BRIC powers, coinciding as it does with the massive oil-driven economic boom in a similarly Lusophone Angola that lies on just the other side of the South Atlantic Ocean, has seen Brazil emerge as one of Angola's major trading partners as described in Mario do Queiroz's article "Portuguese - the Common ( Read more... )

Although the recent coup attempt in East Timor, the East Timorese government was not decapitated and Ramos-Horta survived his shooting, the whole episode underlines the fragility of the East Timorese state. Some of the press coverage has explored how East Timor is caught between Indonesia and Australia, as the two countries' security, economic, and ( Read more... )

Portuguese rule in Angola ended very badly. Portugal is to Angola what France is to Algeria, or Britain to Ireland, that is to say, the colonizer left to deal with the colonized. The main difference is that Portugal-Angola have shared a rather more traumatic mutual history. Imagine, for comparison's sake, that the French war in Algeria was waged ( Read more... )