14.01.2016 - Anxious times for Africa's oil giants as commodities boom starts to bust
By relying on ready cash from oil and metals extraction, sub-Saharan African countries risk squandering their chance to invest in the continent’s future. As leaders of some African countries brace themselves for a rocky financial year, they might reflect ruefully on the words of Polish author Ryszard Kapu?ci?ski: “Oil is a resource that anaesthetises thought, blurs vision, corrupts.” As the wheels come off a decade-long commodities supercycle, Africa’s oil-producing and metal-rich giants find themselves facing a dangerous mix of lower export revenues, depreciating currencies, declining financial flows from China, falling domestic demand and higher debt costs following last month’s US interest rate rise...............................................Full Article: Source
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