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African countries are investing heavily in trying to attract tourists from the world’s biggest outbound travel market, China, as they battle to recover from losses suffered during the travel bans of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“COVID wiped out large parts of tourism industries, especially in poorer parts of the world like Africa,” said Mike Fabricius, a specialist in tourism management, consulting and marketing for his Johannesburg-based company, The Journey. “Some African countries rely heavily on the foreign exchange that tourists bring in and the money they spend in domestic markets. To lose that for a few years was a heavy, heavy blow.”

In 2019, before the pandemic, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) estimated that tourism in Africa had a yearly growth rate of 5% and contributed an average of 8.5% to GDP.

The WTTC said direct investments into the tourism sector were about $29 billion, and that tourism created jobs for 24.3 million direct employees, accounting for 6.4% of Africa’s total working population.

It estimated that COVID-19 travel bans cost Africa at least a third to half of these numbers.

“We saw similar losses across all major African tourism markets,” said Peter Masila, a tourism lecturer at Moi University in Kenya.

Nomasonto Ndlovu, chief operations officer of South African Tourism, said 500,000 jobs were lost in the local tourism sector because of the pandemic.

“We’re confident of a good recovery by end 2024, especially because we’re targeting tourists from a huge market like China,” she said.

In 2019, 155 million Chinese tourists visited foreign destinations.

“It’s true that relatively few chose to come to Africa,” said Ndlovu. “Only 95,000 visited South Africa in 2019. So, we can’t blame COVID entirely for low numbers of Chinese visitors. As far as South Africa’s concerned, we’re now spending a lot of money on new plans and strategies to win more Chinese over, and I know other African countries are doing the same.”

Discounts on airfare

South Africa, Egypt, Kenya and Tanzania are some of the countries now offering more direct flights to China.

Kenya is partnering with Chinese social media platforms and marketing attractions such as the Maasai Mara game reserve on WeChat and TikTok.

Tanzania’s national airline is offering discounts of up to 50% on flights to and from China. Still, the country’s tourism board projects that only 45,000 Chinese will have visited Tanzania by the end of the year.

But Fabricius said African authorities were placing too much emphasis on numbers.

He has worked on tourism projects in China and elsewhere for the United Nations and the World Bank and formulated strategies for global tourism authorities.

“I don’t think Africa’s a place for the mass tourism Chinese market,” said Fabricius.

“The Chinese market has evolved a lot. It used to be thrown in one pot, like the Chinese only travel in big groups and take lots of pictures; they only go to the big places,” he said. “But with a new generation of travelers, there’s no longer such a thing as ‘the Chinese tourist’; it’s become a lot more diversified and segmented.”

Fabricius said the Chinese mass market remained focused on “iconic” international travel destinations, such as New York, Paris and London.

“Africa’s not going to attract that bulk market; it remains a niche destination for the Chinese,” he said. “So, what you want to do is attract Chinese tourists with focused interests in things like culture, wildlife and exploring.”

Rosemary Anderson, chairperson of the FEDHASA organization, which represents hospitality industries across Southern Africa, said continental authorities should indeed be promoting “unique experiences.”

“We have rich cultural assets and diverse experiences” she said. “South Africa, for example, offers every experience imaginable — wildlife safaris, stunning landscapes, vibrant culture and adventure activities. We need to emphasize experiences that are distinctive.”

‘Visa access is essential’

According to Anderson and Fabricius, government inefficiency and complicated visa requirements remain challenges to African efforts to lure Chinese tourists.

“Visa access is essential,” Fabricius said. “It’s no good having all this slick marketing and then your government lets you down by making it hard for the Chinese to get visas.”

Anderson agreed. “Although we (South Africa) have an e-Visa system that accepts applications by Chinese nationals, the process remains cumbersome and is not fully optimized.”

She suggested that marketing initiatives should span both the public and private sectors, ensuring that messaging is targeted to attract diverse budgets, ages, travel interests, preferences and travel motivations.

“We also need to do more to ensure that destination and product information is available on Chinese search engines and marketing on Chinese social media channels, like Weibo and WeChat,” she said.

Fabricius said efforts to attract Chinese visitors should “actually begin at home,” not in Beijing.

“China is Africa’s biggest trade partner, and many thousands of Chinese business travelers are visiting the continent every day,” he said.

“That creates another opportunity: These people who come on a business trip and then after that they tell others about their experiences and that creates a second wave of the leisure travel market,” he said.

This story originated in VOA’s English to Africa Service.
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WASHINGTON – Vietnam is well-positioned to draw U.S. investors seeking to de-risk supply chains now in China, but closer economic integration between Hanoi and Washington appears unlikely to lead to political realignment, according to experts.

Addressing local media in Hanoi during a recent visit, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen hailed Vietnam as “a key partner” in the effort to reduce dependence on China by expanding manufacturing in the U.S. and with trusted partners.

“Vietnam welcomes the U.S. ‘friendshoring,’ which is beneficial to both countries and contributes to Vietnam’s growth,” Le Dang Doanh, an economist in Hanoi who served as an adviser to the late Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, told VOA Vietnamese in a phone interview.

Friendshoring is the practice of focusing supply chain networks in countries regarded as political and economic allies.

Carl Thayer, emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia, said closer economic integration between Vietnam and the U.S. will not lead to Hanoi realigning with Washington against Beijing, he wrote to VOA in an email.

“Vietnam and the United States already have a substantial economic relationship. The further development of this relationship will be based on mutual benefit,” he said. “China is more concerned about Vietnam’s potential security and defense relations with the United States than it is with their bilateral economic relations.”

Beijing, however, is “extremely sensitive to any U.S.-Vietnam economic relationship that undermines China’s interests,” he said, stressing “neither Beijing or Hanoi view economic relations as a zero-sum game.”

Doanh said he has seen a shift of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows from China to Vietnam, especially since trade tensions began increasing between the U.S. and China during the Trump administration. A bilateral trade agreement that came into effect in 2001 facilitated Vietnamese exporting to the U.S., he said.

Vietnam “has no ambition” of attracting U.S. businesses to completely relocate from China given that “they are already well-entrenched there after many years of investment with billions of dollars,” Doanh said.

“Vietnam just expects them to shift parts of their production, which makes it more convenient to export to the U.S.,” he said. “Vietnam continues to attract FDI to match its advantages like cheap, young and productive labor.”

Hanoi, fearing possible retaliation from China, may want to keep Washington at a remove.

“Given the intensifying China-U.S. competition and proximity between China and Vietnam, Hanoi may feel reluctant to formally upgrade its comprehensive partnership with Washington,” said Bich Tran, adjunct fellow at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Reuters in March.

VOA Vietnamese contacted the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment to seek comments on what Vietnam will do to attract more investment from the U.S. but has yet to receive a response.

Bui Kien Thanh, an economist in Ho Chi Minh City, said Vietnam’s geographic location would give it a competitive edge in any regional competition for U.S. friendshoring.

“As a neighbor of China, Vietnam is a convenient destination for companies seeking to relocate from China,” Thanh told VOA Vietnamese over the phone.

“What’s more, Vietnam is located at the heart of the most populous and the most economically dynamic region of the world, between Northeast and South Asia,” he said.

Estimates of how much of the world’s trade passes through the South China Sea near Vietnam range from about 20% to 30%.

The U.S. currently ranks second to China in terms of value of bilateral trade with Vietnam, which topped almost $139 billion in 2022. And the U.S. is the largest export market for Vietnamese-made textiles, footwear and electronics.

Thanh said Hanoi “is well-disposed to Washington” and “very welcoming to U.S. businesses.” The two countries marked 10 years since the establishment of a Comprehensive Partnership this year.

In her Hanoi speech on July 21, Yellen cited green energy and semiconductor manufacturing as potential sectors for Vietnam to join the global supply chain. In 2021, Amkor, the Arizona-based provider of semiconductor packaging and test services, announced plans to build a smart factory in the northern Bac Ninh Province. Intel has its largest assembly and testing facility in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s largest city.

Thanh said that Vietnam “cannot develop its own semiconductor industry without U.S. help,” adding, “If Intel can open its largest facility in Vietnam, other American chip makers can make it too.”
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IRBIL, IRAQ — Dozens of people protested in front of the Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad and bank owners called for official action to stem a sharp increase in the dollar exchange rate Wednesday, after the United States blacklisted 14 Iraqi banks. 

Over the past two days, the market rate of the dollar jumped from 1,470 dinar per dollar to 1,570 dinar per dollar. The jump came after the U.S. listed 14 private Iraqi banks among banks that are banned from dealing with U.S. dollars due to suspicions of money laundering and funneling funds to Iran. 

The ban was imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on July 19.

“The listing of almost one-third of the private banks as banned from dealing with the U.S. dollar will have negative consequences from many perspectives,” Haidar al Shamaa, owner of a private bank in Baghdad said at a news conference Wednesday.

He called on “the brothers at the Iraqi government to work … to undo the damage which occurred to us specifically, and to the Iraqi banking section in general.”

The 14 banks facing the ban issued a joint statement urging the Iraqi government to address the issue and warning that banning a third of Iraq’s private banks from dollar trading would not only impact the dollar price but hinder foreign investment.

Protesters organized by a group calling itself Thuwar Tishreen (October Revolutionaries), which is connected to a movement that started mass protests in Iraq in 2021, also demanded that the government take action to halt inflation.

Also Wednesday, central bank chief Ali al-Allaq told the state-run Iraqi News Agency that his institution continues to provide dollars at the official rate of 1,320 dinar to the dollar for “all legitimate transactions” including “remittances and credits for various imports.”

He blamed the current rise in the street price of the dollar on the “reluctance of certain merchants” who “do not practice legitimate activities and operations” to use the official electronic platform used for currency requests.

On Sunday, the Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al Sudani met with al-Allaq and discussed measures to stabilize the dinar price against the dollar.

A similar dive in the value of the dinar took place earlier this year after measures taken by the United States late last year to stamp out money laundering and the channeling of dollars to Iran and Syria from Iraq severely restricted Iraq’s access to hard currency.
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The U.S. Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, citing still-elevated inflation as a rationale for what is now the highest U.S. central bank policy rate since 2007.

The hike, the Fed’s 11th in its last 12 meetings, set the federal funds rate – the benchmark rate on overnight loans that banks charge each other – in the 5.25%-5.50% range. That level was last seen just prior to the 2007 housing market crash, and it has not been consistently exceeded on an effective basis for about 22 years.

“The [Federal Open Market] Committee will continue to assess additional information and its implications for monetary policy,” the Fed said in language that was little changed from its June statement and left the central bank’s policy options open as it searches for a stopping point to the current tightening cycle.

As it stated in June, the Fed said it would watch incoming data and study the impact of its rate hikes on the economy “in determining the extent of additional policy firming that may be appropriate” to reach its 2% inflation target.

Though inflation data since the Fed’s June 13-14 meeting has been weaker than expected, policymakers have been reluctant to alter their hawkish stance until there is more progress in reducing price pressures.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said any future policy decisions would be made on a meeting-by-meeting basis, and that in the current environment officials could provide only limited guidance about what’s next for monetary policy.

But he didn’t rule out action if it was deemed necessary.

“It is certainly possible that we would raise the funds rate again at the September meeting if the data warranted, and I would also say it’s possible that we would choose to hold steady at that meeting” if that was the right policy call, Powell said in a press conference after the release of the policy statement.

But Powell cautioned against expecting any near-term easing in rates. “We’ll be comfortable cutting rates when we’re comfortable cutting rates, and that won’t be this year,” Powell said.

Yields on both the two- and 10-year Treasury notes moved down modestly from levels right before the release of the Fed’s policy statement, while U.S. stocks ended mixed. Futures markets showed bets on the path of Fed rate increases over the remainder of the year were little changed, seeing small odds of a rise in September.

“The forward guidance remains unchanged as the committee leaves the door open to further rate hikes if inflation does not continue to trend lower,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide. “Our view is the Fed is likely done with rate hikes for this cycle since continued easing of inflation will passively lead to tighter policy as the Fed holds the nominal fed funds rate steady into 2024.”

‘Moderate’ growth

Key measures of inflation remain more than double the Fed’s target, and the economy by many measures, including a low 3.6% unemployment rate, continues to outperform expectations given the rapid increase in interest rates.

Job gains remain “robust,” the Fed said, while it described the economy as growing at a “moderate” pace, a slight upgrade from the “modest” pace seen as of the June meeting. The U.S. government on Thursday is expected to report the economy grew at a 1.8% annual pace in the second quarter, according to economists polled by Reuters.

Powell said he’s still holding out hope the economy can achieve a “soft landing,” a scenario in which inflation falls, unemployment remains relatively low and a recession is avoided.

“My base case is we’ll be able to achieve inflation moving back down to our target without the kind of really significant downturn that results in high levels of job losses,” he said, while noting that outlook is “a long way from assured.” He also noted that Fed staff economists are no longer predicting a recession as they have at recent meetings.

With about eight weeks until the next Fed meeting, a longer than usual interlude, continued moderation in the pace of price increases could make this the last rate hike in a process that began with a cautious quarter-percentage-point increase in March 2022 before accelerating into the most rapid monetary tightening since the 1980s.

In the most recent economic projections from Fed policymakers, 12 of 18 officials expected at least one more quarter-percentage-point increase would be needed by the end of this year.
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This week as Beijing suddenly announced that China’s foreign minister Qin Gang had been removed after just seven months in the job, his predecessor and now replacement, seasoned diplomat Wang Yi, was on a tour of some of Africa’s key economies.

Wang participated in BRICS summit-related meetings in South Africa, infrastructure talks in Kenya, and pledges on debt relief in Ethiopia, meetings that analysts said illustrate China’s way of showing its commitment to the continent.

“Talk about hitting the ground running: news broke when Wang Yi was on tour as the director of the foreign affairs commission of the party’s central committee,” Lauren Johnston, senior China-Africa researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs said of the revelation that Qin — who hadn’t been seen for a month — had been removed.

“His tour, now as foreign minister, includes South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Turkey — all big players in the Global South,” she told VOA.

Paul Nantulya, research associate for the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, told VOA that Wang’s trip to the region comes as China seeks to re-engage more with Africa in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However he noted: “It is rather unusual to have two high-level multicountry visits within a space of six months, because remember Qin Gang was in Africa at the beginning of the year for the inaugural Chinese foreign affairs visit.”

Cliff Mboya, a research fellow at the Afro-Sino Center for International Relations, suggested it might not be coincidence that Wang was in the region when Qin’s exit was announced, noting Wang could be “coming to re-establish relations and continue from where Qin Gang left.”

Requests and Promises

The analysts noted Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, where Qin is also scheduled to travel, are the economic powerhouses of East, Southern and West Africa. Ethiopia, a surprise addition to Wang’s itinerary, is the seat of the African Union.

According to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, while in Addis Ababa Wang told Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed: “China encourages powerful and reputable enterprises to invest in Ethiopia and is willing to play a positive role in easing Ethiopia’s debt pressure.”

The country is billions of dollars in debt. Security there is also a concern as the strategic Horn of Africa nation emerges from a brutal civil war.

Next, in Kenya, Wang met with President William Ruto — who was elected last year and had talked tough on China during his campaign.

Nantulya noted that Kenya is China’s largest trading partner on the continent and a key security partner, and that Beijing has been “very anxious about the change of government” there and was obviously looking to cement ties.

According to a readout from the Chinese side, Ruto used the meeting with Wang to push for more infrastructure investment, despite analysts noting China has pulled back a bit recently from its major Belt and Road Initiative projects.

Kenya said it is willing to “deepen cooperation in the fields of railways, highways, water conservancy, aviation and renewable energy,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.

On his third stop, in South Africa, Wang attended security meetings related to the upcoming summit of the BRICS group of economies, which also includes Brazil, Russia and India. Wang spoke with his South African counterpart, Naledi Pandor, and President Cyril Ramaphosa.

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Wang noted that “the friendship between China and South Africa has a long history, and the two countries have forged a profound friendship of comrades and brothers.”

Steven Kuo, a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town and author of the book “Chinese Peace in Africa: From Peacekeeper to Peacemaker,” pointed out that Chinese rhetoric around “South-South cooperation” and anti-imperialism “does strike a chord with African countries. Increasingly African countries, including South Africa, see the West as hypocritical, so there are some ideological commonalities.”

Wang also promised South Africa that China would “expand cooperation in key minerals, digital economy, clean energy, environmental protection industries, marine resource development, poverty reduction and other fields.”

Looking Ahead

Wang’s trip comes as global powers vie for influence in Africa — which is youthful, growing and resource-rich.

This week has been a busy time for Africa diplomatically, with the U.S. Treasury undersecretary in Kenya and Somalia, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dymtro Kuleba trying to get support on a trip to Equatorial Guinea, and Russian President Vladimir Putin hosting leaders at a Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg from Thursday.

The next two stops on Wang’s schedule are a fourth African state, the continent’s largest economy, Nigeria, and Turkey.

Like Kenya, Nantulya noted, Nigeria has a new government, which might be one of the reasons it was chosen, as well as the fact that Beijing is increasing engagement in West Africa. Earlier this month China’s navy visited the country amid speculation it is seeking a military base somewhere on the Atlantic coast.

In August, President Xi Jinping is expected to attend the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, along with all the other leaders of the bloc, except for Russian President Putin, who is unable to attend due to an International Criminal Court warrant out for his arrest.
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JOHANNESBURG — African leaders, including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, are heading to St. Petersburg this week for the second Russia-Africa Summit, as an isolated Moscow looks to shore up its influence in a key region.

Analysts told VOA that high on the agenda will be President Vladimir Putin’s nixing of an arrangement that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach foreign markets.

Putin will be under pressure to reassure them after he terminated a deal allowing safe passage of Ukrainian grain exports earlier this month — a move criticized by the African Union Commission as something that could negatively affect food security, especially in Africa.

The move has riled African governments, with one senior Kenyan official saying the axing of the agreement is “a stab [in] the back.”

Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, said the decision not to renew the deal has already caused an increase in global food prices, which could hurt parts of Africa.

“Our very hope is that as the African leaders go to the Russia-Africa Summit, they can actually be able to have a much more sound conversation about the Black Sea grain deal — amongst other things that of course will be negotiated there — so that this can go back on the table and the exports can go,” Sihlobo said.

Earlier this week Putin himself sought to reassure African countries, relations with which have become increasingly important given Russia’s isolation by the West since its invasion of Ukraine last year. Many African countries have been hesitant to take sides in the conflict.

In a statement, Putin promised that Russia could replace the Ukrainian grain itself “both on a commercial and free-of-charge basis.”

Cameron Hudson, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Putin is likely to use the St. Petersburg meeting, which starts Thursday, to appeal to African leaders’ direct needs.

“Obviously he’s trying to win back some friends from his exit from the grain deal,” Hudson said, “and also show that he has the power to kind of cut bilateral deals with African countries that put them frankly more in his need, which is exactly the position that he wants to be in.”

Analysts have noted that Russia has an outsized influence in Africa comparative to its trade and investment clout. This is sometimes because of the former Soviet Union’s support for the region’s 20th century liberation movements, and because of shared anti-Western sentiment.

At the first Russia-Africa Summit in 2019, Putin vowed to double trade with Africa to $40 billion over five years. Instead, it has been sitting at about $18 billion a year, compared with China’s record $282 billion worth of trade with Africa.

Despite its relatively minor economic clout, Moscow is keen to use the summit to project political heft, said Denys Reva, a researcher for the Institute of Security Studies in South Africa.

“Despite the fact that the level of investment has been low, the level of trade has been low, Russia has very cleverly learned, or realized, some of the problems that exist between Western states, the European Union and the U.S., and Africa, and has positioned itself, in a way, to separate itself from these traditional partners,” Reva said.

While the summit aims to position Russia as a global player, Russian media reported that fewer than half of the African countries attending are sending their heads of state.

Analysts also said the issue of the Wagner Group — the mercenary group that recently attempted a mutiny in Russia and which has operations in several African nations — will likely be raised on the summit’s sidelines.
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Snaking lines for fuel, empty shelves in food stores, angry street protests — those were common scenes in Sri Lanka last year when the country became bankrupt.

Now, the long waits outside fuel stations have gone, markets are again stacked with food and the streets of the capital Colombo are calm.

A year after Sri Lanka’s economic collapse brought a new government, the island nation is past the worst of the crisis. But the country’s economic woes are far from over.

For many the dilemma is that while food is now available, it is unaffordable.

Costs of all basics — food, fuel, electricity, and medicines have spiraled, taking a huge toll on millions in lower income groups.

“What we see now is the most vulnerable communities struggling and still facing hardships in getting three meals a day. The socio-economic indices indicate that still the crisis is far from over and it’s a long path to recovery,” according to Bhavani Fonseka at the Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo.

Among the scores of community kitchens that sprang up across the country last year to address the hunger crisis were those run by The Voice for Voiceless Foundation in Colombo. It continues to provide about 600 meals a day.

“There is still a huge need,” the foundation’s national director, Moses Akash, told VOA. “What we find is that with prices of electricity and other utilities having risen hugely, people have lesser money left to buy food.”

The organization has cut back its operations due to a shortage of funds and spiraling food prices, said Akash. “We now focus on giving meals to children because many were facing malnourishment as families were unable to afford items such as milk or eggs.”

The World Food Program says the crisis that the country faced last year has been alleviated but has not gone away. According to the WFP, about 17% now face food insecurity, compared with about one quarter of the population last year. That adds up to about four million people in the nation of 22 million.

“The most vulnerable cross section in terms of food insecurity are people relying on social protection assistance, unskilled workers relying on daily wages and households with lower levels of education,” Abdur Rahim Siddiqui, Country Director at the World Food Program in Sri Lanka told VOA.

However, there are signs of revival in some sectors. Tourists have begun returning to the country’s pristine beaches, bringing back jobs in a crucial industry that has long been the backbone of Sri Lanka’s economy.

On a recent visit to India, President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took charge after protestors stormed his predecessor’s home and office a year ago, expressed optimism about his country’s economic revival.

“I have set Sri Lanka firmly on a path of economic reform and Sri Lanka is already witnessing the stabilizing outcomes of these measures and the revival of confidence both within and outside the country,” Wickremesinghe said during a recent visit to New Delhi.

Sri Lanka turned the corner after it secured a bailout package of about $ 3 billion from the International Monetary Fund in March. But while the IMF loan extended a lifeline and removed Sri Lanka’s “bankrupt” tag, it came with tough conditions that require imposing higher taxes and steep cuts to government spending and welfare programs.

The next task for the country is to restructure both its domestic and foreign debt on which it defaulted last year. With more stringent reforms still to come, there is uncertainty over what lies ahead.

“How does it impact state-owned enterprises for example? Would people lose their jobs? There are a lot of conversations now as to what the restructuring will mean for people’s pensions and savings,” said Fonseka.

Analysts say while the reforms will lead to more pain and fuel popular resentment, Sri Lanka will have to stay the course.

“The worst is seemingly over but it can come back if the present trends don’t continue, if the government of the day does not plan and execute the policies it has outlined in a judicious manner,” according to Harsh Pant, Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

That means that for millions, the tentative signs of economic recovery will bring little cheer in the foreseeable future.

The economic crisis was blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic and economic mismanagement by former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government.

Many are also disappointed that demands for political change and accountability have failed to materialize in the country that last year witnessed its biggest street protests in decades, with anger directed at the former president and his family over allegations of corruption and mismanagement. The Rajapaksas had controlled the affairs of the country for the most part of the last two decades.

The protests ended after Rajapaksa resigned. The new president Wickremesinghe took a tough approach to the demonstrations and there is still simmering anger in the country. Many protestors were disappointed when he came to the helm.

Some question whether the practices that led to the crisis have changed.

“The demand was for a system change that would ensure greater transparency and political accountability. But has there really been change or is the new administration a new avatar of the old?” said Fonseka.

She adds that there are still many questions about accountability regarding economic crimes and corruption.
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WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday raised its 2023 global growth estimates slightly given resilient economic activity in the first quarter, but warned that persistent challenges were dampening the medium-term outlook.

The IMF in its latest World Economic Outlook said inflation was coming down and acute stress in the banking sector had receded, but the balance of risks facing the global economy remained tilted to the downside and credit was tight.

The global lender said it now projected global real GDP growth of 3.0% in 2023, up 0.2 percentage point from its April forecast, but it left its outlook for 2024 unchanged, also at 3.0%.

The 2023-2024 growth forecast remains weak by historical standards, well below the annual average of 3.8% seen in 2000-2019, largely due to weaker manufacturing in advanced economies, and it could stay at that level for years.

“We’re on track, but we’re not out of the woods,” IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told Reuters in an interview, noting that the upgrade was driven largely by first-quarter results. “What we are seeing when we look five years out is actually close to 3.0%, maybe a little bit above 3.0%. This is a significant slowdown compared to what we had pre-COVID.”

This was also related to the aging of the global population, especially in countries such as China, Germany and Japan, he said. New technologies could boost productivity in coming years, but that in turn could be disruptive to labor markets.

Debt distress could spread

The outlook is “broadly stable” in emerging market and developing economies for 2023-2024, with growth of 4.0% expected in 2023 and 4.1% in 2024, the IMF said. But it noted that credit availability is tight and that there was a risk that debt distress could spread to a wider group of economies.

The world is in a better place now, the IMF said, noting the World Health Organization’s decision to end the global health emergency surrounding COVID-19, and with shipping costs and delivery times now back to pre-pandemic levels.

“But forces that hindered growth in 2022 persist,” the IMF said, citing still-high inflation that was eroding household buying power, higher interest rates that have raised the cost of borrowing and tighter access to credit as a result of the banking strains that emerged in March.

“International trade and indicators of demand and production in manufacturing all point to further weakness,” the IMF said, noting that excess savings built up during the pandemic are declining in advanced economies, especially in the United States, implying “a slimmer buffer to protect against shocks.”

While immediate concerns about the health of the banking sector — which were more acute in April — had subsided, financial sector turbulence could resume as markets adjust to further tightening by central banks, it said.

The impact of higher interest rates was especially evident in poorer countries, driving debt costs higher and limiting room for priority investments. As a result, output losses compared with pre-pandemic forecasts remain large, especially for the world’s poorest nations, the IMF said.

The IMF forecast that global headline inflation would fall to 6.8% in 2023 from 8.7% in 2022, dropping to 5.2% in 2024, but core inflation would decline more gradually, reaching 6.0% in 2023 from 6.5% in 2022 and easing to 4.7% in 2024.

Gourinchas told Reuters it could take until the end of 2024 or early 2025 until inflation came down to central bankers’ targets and the current cycle of monetary tightening would end.

The IMF warned that inflation could rise if the war in Ukraine intensified, citing concern about Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grain initiative, or if more extreme temperature increases caused by the El Nino weather pattern pushed up commodity prices. That in turn could trigger further rate hikes.

The IMF said world trade growth is declining and will reach just 2.0% in 2023 before rising to 3.7% in 2024, but both growth rates are well below the 5.2% clocked in 2022.

The IMF raised its outlook for the United States, the world’s largest economy, forecasting growth of 1.8% in 2023 versus 1.6% in April as labor markets remained strong.

It left its forecast for growth in China, the world’s second-largest economy, unchanged at 5.2% in 2023 and 4.5% in 2024. But it warned that China’s recovery was underperforming, and a deeper contraction in the real estate sector remained a risk.

The fund cut its outlook for Germany, now forecast to contract 0.3% in 2023 versus a 0.1% contraction in April, but sharply upgraded its forecast for the U.K., now expected to grow 0.4% versus a 0.3% contraction forecast in April.

Euro zone countries are expected to grow 0.9% in 2023 and 1.5% in 2024, both up 0.1 percentage point from April.

Japan’s growth was also revised upward by 0.1 percentage point to 1.4% in 2023, but the IMF left its outlook for 2024 unchanged at 1.0%.

Inflation remains a focus

The rise in central bank policy rates to fight inflation continues to weigh on economic activity, the IMF said, adding that the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England were expected to raise rates by more than assumed in April, before cutting rates next year.

It said central banks should remain focused on fighting inflation, strengthening financial supervision and risk monitoring. If further strains appeared, countries should provide liquidity quickly, it said.

The fund also advised countries to build fiscal buffers to gird for further shocks and ensure support for the most vulnerable. 

“We have to be very vigilant on the health of the financial sector … because we could have something that basically seizes up very quickly,” Gourinchas said. “There is always a risk that if financial conditions tighten, that can have a disproportionate effect on emerging market and developing economies.”

The IMF said unfavorable inflation data could trigger a sudden rise in market expectations regarding interest rates, which could further tighten financial conditions, putting stress on banks and nonbank institutions — especially those exposed to commercial real estate.

“Contagion effects are possible, and a flight to safety, with an attendant appreciation of reserve currencies, would trigger negative ripple effects for global trade and growth,” the IMF said.

Fragmentation of the global economy given the war in Ukraine and other geopolitical tensions remained another key risk, especially for developing economies, Gourinchas said. This could lead to more restrictions on trade, especially in strategic goods such as critical minerals, cross-border movements of capital, technology and workers, and international payments. 
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Elon Musk has unveiled a new black and white “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.

Musk replaced his own Twitter icon with a white X on a black background and posted a picture on Monday of the design projected on Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

The X started appearing on the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the phone app.

Musk had asked fans for logo ideas and chose one, which he described as minimalist Art Deco, saying it “certainly will be refined.”

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk tweeted Sunday.

The X.com web domain now redirects users to Twitter.com, Musk said.

In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would be called Xs.

Musk, CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter. The billionaire is also CEO of rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, he founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal,

He calls his son with the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, “X.”

Musk’s Twitter purchase and rebranding are part of his strategy to create what he’s dubbed an ” everything app ” similar to China’s WeChat, which combines video chats, messaging, streaming and payments.

Linda Yaccarino, the longtime NBC Universal executive Musk tapped to be Twitter CEO in May, posted the new logo and weighed in on the change, writing on Twitter that X would be “the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”

Experts, however, predicted the new name will confuse much of Twitter’s audience, which has already been souring on the social media platform following a raft of Musk’s other changes. The site also faces new competition from Threads, the new app by Facebook and Instagram parent Meta that directly targets Twitter users.
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A ban imposed by India on exports of several categories of rice due to rising domestic prices and fears of a shortfall in the next crop yield could drive up global prices of the grain at a time when food insecurity is already a concern, according to experts. 

India, the world’s largest rice exporter, accounts for 40% of the global rice trade, with its shipments going to about 140 countries.  

Announcing the ban Thursday, the government said that prices in the country had risen by 11.5% over the past year and 3% over the past month.   

In a statement, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs said that it has amended the export policy “in order to ensure adequate availability of non-basmati white rice in the Indian market and to allay the rise in prices in the domestic market.” It said the ban would take effect immediately. 

India’s move came days after Russia backed out of a deal to allow Ukrainian wheat safe passage through the Black Sea, prompting warnings that the action could lead to surging prices.    

“The impact of India’s rice ban is bound to be felt on global prices. This is happening soon after the Black Sea initiative was not renewed. When wheat is undergoing a shock, India banning rice exports creates a further shock in global food grain markets,” Harish Damodaran, agriculture editor at The Indian Express newspaper, told VOA. 

“India used to export about 22.5 million tons. Now about 10 million tons will go out of the international market, so about 40% of our exports will be knocked out. This includes a category whose exports were banned last year,” according to Damodaran.  

India is unlikely to ease the restrictions soon as it grapples with food inflation, according to analysts.  

The increase in food prices is a sensitive issue for the government as the country prepares to hold a series of key state elections later this year and national elections next April. Prices of rice and wheat are of particular concern in a country where cereals are a predominant part of the diet of low-income people. 

India has been tightening farm exports since last year — a ban imposed on wheat exports more than a year ago has not been lifted.  

Analysts say that while India, the world’s second largest rice producer, has sufficient stockpiles of rice for its 1.4 billion people, there are fears that an erratic monsoon season could damage the next paddy crop, which was planted in June and harvested in September.  

Heavy rains in the north of the country in recent weeks triggered floods in key rice growing regions while deficient rains in the south prevented many farmers from planting the crop.   

“We have had severe rains and floods in Punjab and Haryana, and these are the two states that predominantly supply surplus rice to the country,” Devinder Sharma, a farm analyst, told VOA. “The tragedy of southern states is that they don’t have irrigation and therefore they get adversely impacted by a shortfall in rains. So everything could go topsy turvy with the next rice harvest.” 

He also pointed out that there are worries over the “El Nino” effect, which usually causes hot, dry weather and lower rainfall in Asia, where the bulk of the world’s rice crop which needs ample water is grown. That has led to further uncertainty about potential shortages of the crop that is a staple for more than 3 billion people in the world. 

“So the government is right in being very cautious. They don’t want to take any risk,” said Sharma. 

The curbs on rice exports exclude one variety that is mostly exported to Bangladesh and several countries in Africa, which analysts say is a diplomatic move to ensure that the neighboring country with which New Delhi has good ties and African nations — where it is trying to build influence — do not face a significant problem.   

“The rice curbs have been crafted keeping in mind domestic political compulsions and diplomacy,” says Damodaran. 
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A little-publicized clause in the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act has companies scrambling to recycle electric vehicle batteries in North America, putting the region at the forefront of a global race to undermine China’s dominance of the field.

The IRA includes a clause that automatically qualifies EV battery materials recycled in the U.S. as American-made for subsidies, regardless of their origin. That is important because it qualifies automakers using U.S.-recycled battery materials for EV production incentives.

Reuters interviewed more than a dozen industry officials and experts who say that is kicking off a U.S. factory building boom, encouraging automakers to research more recyclable batteries, and could eventually make it harder for buyers in developing countries to buy old used EVs.

China handles virtually all EV battery recycling in a global market projected to grow from $11 billion in 2022 to $18 billion by 2028, according to research firm EMR. As more EVs are introduced and age out of the vehicle fleet, that business will grow.

The minerals in those batteries – primarily lithium, cobalt and nickel – are worth on average between 1,000 euros ($1,123) to 2,000 euros per car, BMW sustainability chief Thomas Becker told Reuters.

Those materials could be in short supply within a few years as automakers boost EV production, but “can be recycled infinity times and not lose their power,” said Louie Diaz, vice president at Canadian battery recycling firm Li-Cycle, which received a $375 million U.S government loan for a New York plant slated to open later this year. That funding helped bring forward the investment decision for the plant, Diaz said.

JB Straubel, CEO of Redwood Materials, which was awarded a $2 billion U.S. government loan in February to build out a battery material recycling and remanufacturing complex in Nevada, said the IRA treats recycled battery materials as locally “urban mined,” or materials recovered from scrap rather than obtained from mining.

That has encouraged U.S. companies to move faster on recycling efforts than their counterparts in the European Union, which has focused instead on mandates, including minimum amounts of recycled materials in future EV batteries.

Recycling firms Ascend Elements, Li-Cycle and others are planning European plants in the next few years, but access to funding and the made-in-America incentive means several U.S. plants are already being built.

“What it (the IRA) does is change the demand equation for battery materials,” said Mike O’Kronley, CEO of Ascend Elements, which already has one recycling plant open in Georgia and has received nearly $500 million in Energy Department grants under the infrastructure law for a plant in Kentucky slated to open in late 2023. “We need to keep those valuable materials… so we can put them right back into EVs.”

The race is on to build “closed-loop supply chains” where recycled minerals are put into locally produced new batteries, said Christian Marston, chief technology officer at Altilium Metals, which is building a plant in Bulgaria and plans one in the UK by 2026.

“Everybody wants to control their own supply chain and nobody wants to be reliant on the Chinese,” he said.

However, China still leads the race, announcing tougher standards and increased research support for recyclers last month. After passage last year of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, Chinese officials described the legislation as “anti-globalization” and accused the U.S. of “unilateral bullying.”

Rapid growth

Globally, there are at least 80 companies involved in EV recycling, with more than 50 startups attracting at least $2.7 billion, virtally all in the last six years, from corporate investors including automakers, battery makers and mining giants like Glencore, according to PitchBook.com data.

The volume of EV batteries available for recycling should grow over tenfold by 2030, said consultant Circular Energy Storage. Around 11.3 Gigawatt hours (GWh) of batteries reached end of life in 2022, and that should rise to 138 GWh by 2030 – equivalent to roughly 1.5 million EVs – CES said.

Electric vehicle batteries can last for 10 years or more.

Some industry officials anticipate rapid growth means 40% of battery materials used in new EVs could come from recycled stocks by 2040.

There is little existing U.S. recycling capacity today, and virtually none in Europe.

At a facility in Poole in southern England, car breaker Charles Trent Ltd has built two lines where workers deconstruct wrecked or old vehicles to recycle everything. It has built special containers for EV batteries, which are sold for research or used by retrofitters electrifying fossil-fuel cars, partly because there is nowhere to recycle them.

In Europe, EV batteries are currently shredded into “black mass” that is shipped to China for recycling.

‘Lose nothing’

The race is on to squeeze the best price out of that black mass.

“The one who gets the highest yield at the lowest cost … will win this game,” said Bruno Thompson, CEO of Cambridge, England-based startup The Battery Recycling Company, which plans its first plant in 2024.

Dallas, Texas-based Ecobat, which shreds batteries in Europe and the U.S. for recycling elsewhere, has improved its recovery process so around 70% of battery-cell lithium is available for recycling, said chief commercial officer Thea Soule.

Eventually, Soule said, yields should reach levels close to 90% to 100%.

Getting better yields matters because the EU will mandate minimum amounts of recycled lithium, cobalt and nickel in EV batteries within eight years. The EU will also impose tough conditions on recycling outside Europe.

Those conditions will effectively keep recycling local, said Kurt Vandeputte, senior vice president at Belgian materials firm Umicore.

There are also industry concerns about finding old EVs for recycling. Today, anywhere up to 30% of Europe’s old fossil-fuel cars disappear overseas – to new owners in developing countries or for scrap. Some automakers are trying to figure out how to keep tabs on those EVs.

Nissan has turned to leasing EVs in Japan to maintain control of batteries, while Chinese EV maker Nio leases batteries to customers to retain ownership.

Keeping those minerals in Europe would cut off a cheaper source of transportation for developing countries.

BMW’s sustainability chief Becker said the value of battery materials will hopefully make recycling more attractive than selling vehicles abroad, but Europe must focus on ensuring those EV batteries do not slip away.

“We’ve got to make sure we lose nothing,” Becker said.
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India and Sri Lanka boosted their economic partnership by signing a series of agreements on energy, trade and connectivity projects following talks between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe in New Delhi on Friday.

Wickremesinghe was on his first visit to India since he took charge a year ago after an economic crisis engulfed the country and led to the resignation of his predecessor.

He came to New Delhi as both sides reset a relationship that has been set back by growing Chinese influence in the strategic island nation that lies on India’s southern tip. Before Sri Lanka’s economy collapsed, Beijing had poured in billions of dollars to build infrastructure projects that India feared could affect its security.

India provided aid last year

Ties between Colombo and New Delhi received fresh momentum last year, though, after India extended $4 billion in aid to help the beleaguered country.

Addressing reporters along with Wickremesinghe, Modi said that being a close friend, India had stood “shoulder-to-shoulder” with its neighbor during the crisis and that a prosperous Sri Lanka was key to regional stability.

“Sri Lanka has an important place in our ‘neighborhood first’ policy,” Modi said. “We believe that the security interests and development of India and Sri Lanka are intertwined.”

Wickremesinghe said that his visit had “reinforced trust and confidence for our future prosperity in the modern world.”

In a signal of deepening bilateral ties, the two countries unveiled an economic partnership vision that focused on enhancing connectivity and investments.

Modi said the two sides will conduct feasibility studies on laying a petroleum line between the two countries that would give Sri Lanka access to affordable energy. They also will explore the possibility of building a land bridge. The closest points between the two countries are just 50 kilometers apart.

The two countries also will work to connect their electricity grids and cooperate in the renewable energy sector. New Delhi will develop a port and an economic hub at Trincomalee, on Sri Lanka’s northeastern coast.

The two leaders also expressed support to implement a plan for the Sri Lankan government to share power with the country’s ethnic minority Tamil population that lives in the island’s north and east provinces. The Tamils of Sri Lanka have long had close ties with Tamils living in southern India.

“We hope that the government of Sri Lanka will fulfill the aspirations of the Tamils,” Modi said.

Optimistic about recovery

Wickremesinghe expressed optimism about economic recovery in his country, which secured a $3 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund in March.

“I have set Sri Lanka firmly on a path of economic reform,” he said.

For Sri Lanka, a top priority is to get countries like India and China to agree to a debt restructuring plan. Last year, the country defaulted on its $46 billion foreign debt.

But balancing ties with India and China still poses a challenge. Last year, Sri Lanka allowed a Chinese research vessel, Yuan Wang 5, to dock in a port built by Beijing — despite objections by New Delhi, which feared it was a spy ship.

Wickremesinghe’s visit to India, however — his first overseas trip since becoming president — underscores that ties between the two neighbors are again set on a growth trajectory.
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Hybrid work is here to stay, and if cities are to thrive, they must adapt to the new reality that workers will be downtown less often. That’s according to a new report that analyzes the COVID-19 pandemic’s lasting impact on office and retail space.

“What has fundamentally changed is just the broad uptake and the persistence of hybridity,” says Ryan Luby, an associate partner at McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm that released the report. “And that has knock-on implications for demand for office, for residential, for retail, what kind of space is demanded, where it is demanded, and that has real implications for urban vitality, vibrancy and the kinds of buildings that we demand.”

Now that they aren’t making their daily commutes to downtown offices, people are doing their eating out and shopping elsewhere. The report finds that foot traffic near stores in urban areas is still 10% to 20% lower than pre-pandemic levels, and office attendance is still down by about 30% on average in major cities across the world.

The New York City metropolitan area lost 5% of its population from mid-2020 to mid-2022, while the San Francisco area lost 6%. The numbers suggest that many of the people who left big cities during the pandemic are not moving back, the report said, which presents another challenge for cities trying to bounce back from pandemic-driven losses.

In Washington, the daytime population plunged 82% from February 2020 to February 2021. And a 2023 poll finds that two-thirds of Washington-area workers whose jobs can be done remotely prefer to work from home a majority of the time. Thirty-eight percent of people surveyed said they’d like to work from home all of the time.

City leaders and planners are preparing for a future that adjusts to this new reality.

“About 50 percent of our population can still remote work,” says Salah Czapary, director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Nightlife and Culture. “Some neighborhoods have not returned to pre-COVID levels of economic activity. … Our short-term strategy is activating the space, attracting festivals and making it easier for people to close streets — whether it’s for a farmers market or a music festival downtown — doing that to support what has traditionally been our economic engine of the city, which has been downtown.”

Luby, one of the report’s authors, says the most resilient cities have a mixture of office, residential and retail real estate.

“People are coming into those areas for reasons other than work,” he says. “I think the imperative, as we think about it from the public policy perspective, is really to encourage or incentivize what we think about as mixed-use development, in which folks will be present in these areas for reasons other than just work.”

Washington’s city leaders, for example, are looking for ways to meet the moment.

“Our long-term strategy is really attracting new residents to downtown by changing the buildings from commercial to residential,” Czapary says. “That will eventually attract grocery stores and other types of nightlife and restaurants and things that make neighborhoods attractive to live in.”

By 2030, demand for office space will be an average of 13% lower in major cities around the world than it was in 2019, according to the report. San Francisco is the most affected city in the United States in terms of demand for office space, with sale prices per square foot down 24% compared with 2019, while the asking price for rents is 28% lower than in 2019. The report also predicts that demand for retail space in San Francisco will be 17% lower in 2030 than in 2019.

Adjusting to this new reality could take time, Luby says, because people who own office space in major cities are still expecting prices to rebound as they did in pre-pandemic times.

“Because a commercial real estate office, in particular, tends to be on a five- to-10-year lease, you’ve got a slow-motion dynamic playing out,” Luby says. “And until you get buyers and sellers in the market to agree that we’re in a new normal and adjusting prices downwards, it’s really going to be difficult to get at-scale adjust
…

The labor movement in the United States is having an unusually active moment, with as many as four high-profile strikes possible and a level of coordination among separate unions that experts say has been lacking in recent years. 

In May, the Writers Guild of America, which represents film and television screenwriters, went on strike, followed last week by the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). The combination of the two has brought production of film and television programs in the U.S. to a near-complete halt. 

While labor action in Hollywood has garnered plenty of headlines, its day-to-day impact on average Americans has been limited. That will not be the case if two other major unions, both in contract negotiations right now, wind up on the picket lines. 

The United Auto Workers union (UAW) is negotiating with automakers General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — the so-called Big Three — to try to avert a strike that could result in hundreds of thousands of autoworkers walking off the job. At the same time, the Teamsters union is in discussions with shipping giant United Parcel Service over its contract with delivery drivers. A strike by either or both would be deeply felt across the U.S. 

Changing atmosphere 

The labor movement in the United States has been in a period of protracted decline for several decades. In the mid-20th century, fully one-third of U.S. workers belonged to unions, and it was not uncommon in any given year to see thousands of strikes, with workers in the millions across multiple industries walking off the job for some period of time. 

In 1974, at the peak of labor job actions, the federal government counted 6,074 individual strikes across the country, according to data gathered by Judith Stepan-Norris and Jasmine Kerrissey for their recent book, Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight Over the U.S. Labor Movement. 

That began to decline in the 1980s, as legal protections for employers became stronger and the courts became less friendly to labor. Strikes increasingly ended with little or no benefits for the workers involved, while many lost a major source of income for the duration of their work stoppages. Union membership fell, and by 2014, the U.S. saw only 68 strikes in total. Today, union members make up only about 6% of working Americans.

Possible turnaround 

Stepan-Norris, an emerita professor of sociology at the University of California-Irvine, told VOA there are multiple factors that appear to be animating the movement in 2023. She said the coronavirus pandemic and a trend of people leaving the workforce, called by many the “Great Resignation,” changed the dynamic significantly.  

“That gave workers more power. You had more of a strong labor market with low unemployment,” Stepan-Norris said.  

In addition, she said, they have had the example of some recent successful strikes. Last year, for example, academic workers led a massive strike against the University of California system, which resulted in major concessions in workers’ favor.  

“Other workers are looking around and seeing that these strikes are starting to show some progress for people, and so other workers are getting a taste that they can do it, too,” she said. “Not to say that any of these new strikes are directly related to that — it’s just sort of the atmosphere [of success] that surrounds them.” 

Horizontal solidarity 

Susan Schurman, who teaches labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, told VOA that in recent labor actions, she has seen a dynamic at play that has not been present recently: cross-union cooperation. 

“The last time the Writers Guild went on strike, SAG-AFTRA didn’t even show up,” Schurman said. “This time, I went to a couple of rallies in New York and the stage actors — Actors Equity —  were there. The stagehands [the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees] were there. The Teamsters were there. The Communication Workers [of America] were there. The building trades were there.  

“We call this ‘horizontal labor solidarity’ across unions,” Schurman said. “This is when labor really makes gains. It’s important that you have what we call ‘vertical solidarity,’ within your own union. You have to have that in order to engage in a strike. But it’s not enough. You have to have the support of other unions.” 

Horizontal solidarity was commonplace in the mid-20th century, she said, but has not been a notable factor in labor job actions in several decades.  

“We have not seen that, like we’re seeing this summer, in a very long time,” she said.

Autoworkers dispute 

The UAW has a long history of striking in order to achieve better contracts for its members, and the current contracts with GM, Ford and Stellantis are all scheduled to expire in September. 

Shawn Fain, the leader of the UAW, announced last week that his 160,000 members are prepared to put down their tools and that blame for any work stoppage will lie with the companies’ management. 

“If the Big Three don’t give us our fair share, then they’re choosing to strike themselves, and we’re not afraid to take action,” he told reporters last week. 

In a sign of how acrimonious the discussions have become, Fain broke with tradition and refused to meet company executives for a public handshake as negotiations got under way, as other UAW leaders have done in the past.  

The automakers themselves have said they want to reach a deal but point out that they are trying to remake their companies for a world in which electric vehicles are expected to replace many of the gasoline-powered cars and trucks they currently produce. They warn that the transition will lead to inevitable disruption for their workforce. 

Teamsters and UPS 

The Teamsters union represents 340,000 UPS workers poised to strike on August 1. The contract negotiations, which broke down in early July and restarted just this week, are focused on compensation for workers. 

One key point is that as the job market has tightened over the past year, the company has been forced to raise the starting salaries it offers in order to attract more workers. However, it did not also raise the wages of many of its more experienced workers. This means that some UPS employees with years of seniority are earning wages equivalent to those of new hires. 

A strike by UPS workers could be damaging economically, with the think tank Anderson Economic Group estimating that a 10-day stoppage would cost upward of $7 billion when workers’ lost pay, the company’s lost profits and damage to UPS customers are combined. 

In a statement that accompanied the announcement that it would return to the bargaining table, the delivery company emphasized the need for a prompt resolution to the problem. 

“We are prepared to increase our industry-leading pay and benefits, but need to work quickly to finalize a fair deal that provides certainty for our customers, our employees and businesses across the country,” it said.
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After Russia withdrew from a deal allowing Ukraine to export grain through ports on the Black Sea, the Kremlin launched attacks on Ukrainian ports and grain hubs. Anna Kosstutschenko spoke with Ukrainian farmers about how this will impact them. VOA footage by Pavel Suhodolskiy
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Nigeria’s weak electric grid had led many of its citizens to rely on gasoline-fueled generators for power. But the president’s controversial removal of a costly fuel subsidy in May saw gasoline prices triple, spurring Nigerians to switch to generators fueled by cheaper and cleaner propane.

Rasheed Ayodeji, a lawyer in Abuja, is one of more than 10,000 Nigerians who have switched to generators powered by liquefied petroleum gas.

The switch to LPG, also known as propane, is in response to the cost of gasoline, which has tripled since authorities ended a fuel subsidy in May.

Ayodeji said that powering his generator with cooking gas is less expensive.

“I was skeptical at first, so I said let me just give it a try because I am someone that, I’m not resistant to change. … With my experience so far with this one week, my fuel expenses have been cut by 50% for now, and with the gas I still have left, I’m very sure it will still cut up to 60%.”

In 2013, Philip Obin started importing hybrid carburetors that converted gasoline generators to run on LPG. For years, demand was slow.

A decade later, however, his sales reached a new peak. He said that following the fuel subsidy removal, he sold more than 10,000 units in less than three weeks.  

“The product is selling like wildfire, and that’s because of the cost of petrol, which has moved from 190 or 180 to 550 or 540 per liter across Nigeria…We call them hybrid in the sense that it allows you to run either on petrol or cooking gas LPG,” he said.  

Obin said the switch is easy and simple to make.

“Essentially, you have to pull out the existing carburetor from your generator and install the hybrid carburetor, then you plug in the gas cylinder with your regulator, of course, and then you power up your generator, it’s as simple as that,” he said.

Some people are concerned about the safety of using cooking gas in generators that were originally designed to work with gasoline.

Obin said there has never been a single incident with the carburetor over the past decade.

“We’ve not had a single case of explosion arising from someone using our hybrid carburetor to run generators,” he said.

However, Chuks Edison, an Abuja-based electrical expert and generator repairman, recommends that people exercise caution during installation.

“If you must go into it, you must be very careful. Put so much measure in place, and make sure that your generator is in good condition, that it doesn’t have some kind of leakage, or the plug head must be there because the plug head is the most important one…you must keep your cylinder very far from the generator,” he said.

Authorities from Lagos State are also assessing the safety of the product. 
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Canada’s recently launched immigration work permit program is no longer accepting new applications since receiving an overwhelming response and reaching its cap of 10,000 applicants in two days.

Aiming to attract highly skilled technology professionals from the United States with H-1B work visas, Canada unveiled the initiative in late June.

Within 48 hours of its July 16 launch, the system reached capacity.

“Status: Closed. You can no longer apply,” said a message on the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) website. “We reached the cap of 10,000 applications for this initiative on July 17, 2023.”

H-1B visas are for nonimmigrant foreign workers with specialized skills, and the move is part of the country’s new Tech Talent Strategy.

“The Government of Canada is embracing Canada’s emerging role as a leader in global tech talent recruitment and attraction to ensure Canada is not only filling in-demand jobs today, but also attracting the skills and business talent to create the jobs of tomorrow,” said an IRCC statement issued last month.

The statement followed a November announcement in which the government set a goal to tackle an impending labor shortage.

By 2025, the country wants to welcome 1.45 million immigrants, focusing on people trained in health care and other in-demand job skills, and securing a skilled workforce for key sectors of its economy.

Canada’s population of 38.25 million represents about 11.5% of the 331.9 million in the United States, where the H-1B visa category currently allows more than 85,000 highly skilled foreigners to work in the country for at least three years.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reported that for fiscal year 2024, the agency received 780,884 applications from employers and approved 110,791 applications. In fiscal 2023, applications totaled 483,927, and 127,600 people were selected.

Canada’s new work program does not lead to permanent residence, but spouses and dependents of the 10,000 H-1B visa holders will be eligible to apply for study or work permits or temporary resident visas.

In the U.S., holders of H-1B visas can apply for legal permanent residence, but only the spouses of those with a pending residence application are eligible for employment authorization.

It remains to be seen how successful Canada will be in poaching workers from the U.S.
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