World Perspectives

Sights on Africa; Worse than the Virus; Watershed Protection; Can’t Beat 'em, Join 'em

Sights on Africa Minxin Pei, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund says China gets blamed for practicing economic colonialism in Africa, but there have been large pitfalls for the Middle Kingdom. For one, the value of the assets in Africa that collateralized China’s loans have plunged during the current crisis, making repayment less likely. He thinks the larger Belt and Road Initiative may now be in trouble. Both the U.S. and EU have their sights on Africa for improved relations. The United Nations says COVID-19 deaths in Africa could hit 300,000 people. Some in Europe are pressing to reshape the Continent’s relationship with Africa via an effective post-COVID assistance program. U.S. officials are touting the fact that...

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From WPI Consulting

Communicating importance of value-added products

Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.

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