French President Emmanuel Macron is in Africa. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has just been to Central Asia before visiting India, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has just completed a tour of Africa, India and the Caucasus.
Of the 6.3bn people who reside outside of liberal democracies, 70% have a positive view of China and 66% of Russia.
The free flow of ideas, people, goods, services, and capital across national borders leads to greater economic integration. But globalization, the trend toward these things moving ever more freely between nations, has slowed in recent years.
There is an old joke that the role of economic forecasters is to make astrologers look good. Forecasting GDP or inflation for the upcoming year with any degree of accuracy is virtually impossible, but there are some scary signs appearing.
In December the investment community took notice of Jack Dorsey’s most recent moves in Africa when his tech conglomerate Block, Inc. co-led a $2mn investment round into Gridless, a bitcoin mining company in Africa.