Infrastructure Archive

Forty years after its independence from Portugal and 13 years since the end of the civil war that immediately followed, Angola has made great progress in consolidating peace and stability, but continues to face many challenges. Foremost among them is managing an economic crisis, exacerbated by staggering inequality, while avoiding the potential social and political fallout it could generate. The country’s political landscape could also prove perilous: The ruling party, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), faces both a determined opposition and a potential internal battle over who will succeed longtime President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. The […]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement of $20 million in financing for private investment in Caribbean clean energy projects at a meeting yesterday with the region’s leaders in Kingston, Jamaica, comes at a good time: After a lost decade, during which easy access to cheap Venezuelan oil undermined incentives to seek alternative sources, the Caribbean now faces long-deferred decisions on how it sources and uses energy. The slump in global oil prices has hit Venezuela’s economy hard, threatening its Petrocaribe trade program, established by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2005 to sell subsidized oil and diesel to the group’s […]