1 Africa creates biggest trade zone (Lerato Mbele on
BBC) African leaders have agreed to create the continent's largest free-trade
zone, covering 26 countries in an area from Cape Town to Cairo. The deal,
signed in Egypt, is intended to ease the movement of goods across member
countries which represent more than half the continent's GDP.
Since the end of colonial rule, governments have
been discussing ways to boost intra-African trade. The poor state of roads,
railways and airlines have made it difficult. Three existing trade blocs - the
Southern African Development Community (Sadc); the East African Community (EAC)
and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) - are to be
united into a single new zone.
With this agreement comes into fruition a
century-old dream to link the continent from the Cape to Cairo. Explorers and
freedom fighters alike all shared the vision to integrate African economies. However,
it needs parliamentary endorsements from all member-nations and once
governments start reading the fine print, the mood may change.
The pact - known as The Tripartite Free Trade Area
(TFTA) - will then be officially unveiled at the upcoming summit of the African
Union this weekend in South Africa. The idea behind it is to remove trade
barriers on most goods, making them cheaper, and stimulating $1tn worth of
economic activity across the region of more than 600 million people. The wheels
of action are hoped to be set in motion by 2017.
2 Al-Qaida ripped apart by Isis (Spence Ackerman,
Shiv Malik, Ali Younes & Mustafa Khalili in The Guardian) Two of al-Qaida’s
most important spiritual leaders have said that the terror group is no longer a
functioning organisation after being ripped apart by Isis. Abu Qatada, a Jordanian preacher who was based
in London before being deported in 2013, and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi,
regarded
as the most influential jihadi scholar alive, say the al-Qaida leader, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, is cut off from his commanders and keeping the group afloat
through little more than appeals to loyalty.
Senior insiders in Jordan add that al-Qaida around
the Middle East has been drained of recruits and money after losing territory
and prestige to its former subordinate division. The ongoing war between
al-Qaida and Isis has left the US struggling to catch up with the tectonic shifts
within the global jihadi movement, intelligence insiders said.
Qatada said Isis members were extremists and a
“cancer” growing within the jihadi movement following their assault on al-Qaida
over the last two years. “[Isis] don’t respect anyone,” he said. Isis was
al-Qaida’s branch in the heart of the Middle East until the group was
excommunicated from the network in 2014 after disobeying commands from Zawahiri
and starting an internecine war with fellow jihadists in Syria which left
thousands dead on both sides.
Today that fight continues and has expanded across
Eurasia and the Mediterranean. Since declaring the establishment of its
so-called Islamic State a year ago, Isis has gone on to build a global network
of affiliates and branches that now stretches from Afghanistan to west Africa
and competes with al-Qaida in its scale.
Isis leaders, who described al-Qaida as a “drowned
entity” in issue six of their official English-language publication, Dabiq, have
declared that they will not tolerate any other jihadi group in territory where
they are operating. But the US has been slow to grasp the implications of
al-Qaida’s decline and possible collapse despite extensive study of Isis,
according to intelligence community insiders.
Meanwhile, the US continues to target al-Qaida. So
far this year the Americans have launched 11 drone strikes in Yemen and 11 more
in Pakistan, killing between 82 and 122 people. US officials have warned that
al-Qaida’s presence in Yemen, which al-Qaida’s scholars consider to be its most
loyal branch, has benefited from the January coup that displaced the US client
government and the Saudi-led war to roll it back.
3 An online ‘mausoleum’ for dead start-ups (Greta
Kaul in San Francisco Chronicle) Startups generate a lot of buzz when they
grow, but when they die, it often happens quietly. A new website, Autopsy, aims
to make sure that dead startups, though gone, are not forgotten. It also
includes a quick tally of “lessons from failed startups.”
The site looks like a Google spreadsheet and reads
like a mausoleum wall, with the autopsy date, a blurb about the startup and why
it died. Many of the entries link to explainers — blogs posts or founders’ Medium.com
confessionals — about the startups’ failures.
For instance, poor old Dinnr, a same-day dinner
delivery service, died last year because it “simply didn’t have legs,”
according to Autopsy. Keep Fit Stay Sane, “an emotional gym” “couldn’t find a
market.” And BitShuva Radio — a Pandora for those with niche tastes — fell
victim to a “failed business model.”
Autopsy’s “undertakers” are Maryam Mazraei and
Matthew Davies, of Milc and Niral Patel of Sameroom.io, according to BloombergView.
It currently has about 100 entries but allows viewers to suggest dead startups
to be featured. The funny thing is, many of the epitaphs describe startups that
sound a whole lot like others in operation today. Will founders of living
companies take heed?
No comments:
Post a Comment