Over the last two weeks I have bought fuel (in different parts of Lagos) for N105/litre. Two features distinguish the outlets which sold to me from the others: the relative absence of queues at the pumps; and the furtive manner of the attendants. Invariably, the latter would let me know, sotto voce, that their pump-station price was at an N8 [...]

the guardian asked zadie smith, one of a handful of contemporary writers, to comment on her rules for writing. since i found zadie’s list to be depressing, pessimistic, and utterly without joy, i wrote my own.  keep in mind that i am not an award-winning published author, although that doesn’t mean i’m not also a writer. 1. write first thing in the [...]

This article was originally written for www.tradeinvestnigeria.com. In May, an Indian trade mission, led by Mr. Ravi Bangar, the deputy permanent representative of India to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), paid a visit to Mr. Jubril Martins-Kuye, Nigeria’s Minister for Commerce and Industry. One of the major issues they discussed was the possibility of India helping Nigeria to revitalise its [...]

In the BusinessDay of January 5, 2010 Anthropologist Karen Ho carried out a seventeen-month-long fieldwork on Wall Street, interviewing and observing investment bankers. She first started out working as a rookie management consulting analyst in a hybrid investment and commercial bank. She planned to first work in finance herself for a while before going back to graduate school to study [...]

In the BusinessDay of October 27, 2009 The most popular way of looking at China in Africa is through the dual lenses of international relations and international trade. One main argument that comes out of this is that, the way China does business in Africa has made the countries that are pushing some African countries to do better on human [...]