Word: droughts
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...immediate cause of the problem is beyond De Beers' control: political instability in some of the planet's richest diamond regions. Although the Angolan drought made alluvial-plain diamonds easier to find, Angola's rush was triggered mainly by the chaotic aftermath of civil war. Thousands of demobilized soldiers with no job prospects began scratching around for easy money. Legislation enacted in November permitting Angolans to trade in uncut diamonds was intended to soak up rough stones that people had illegally hoarded down through the years. Instead, because the move made it vastly easier to unload illegally dug diamonds...
...most of his power by a national assembly. Political leaders seem convinced that a move to democracy, perhaps next year, is the only hope for peace and a better future. Peace in both Mali and Niger is threatened by Tuareg rebels, pastoral nomads who have suffered from years of drought and feel that their plight has been ignored by their central governments...
...staggered under as many "structural" burdens, as opposed to the familiar "cyclical" problems that create temporary recessions once or twice a decade. The structural faults, many of them legacies of the 1980s, represent once-in-a-lifetime dislocations that will take years to work out. Among them: the job drought, the debt hangover, the defense-industry contraction, the savings and loan collapse, the real estate depression, the health-care cost explosion and the runaway federal deficit. "This is a sick economy that won't respond to traditional remedies," said Norman Robertson, chief economist at Pittsburgh's Mellon Bank. "There...
...World Bank report looked at the African regression: modest development after independence in the '60s, stagnation in the '70s, decline in the '80s. Factors such as drought and the oil crisis obviously played a role. But the principal cause of the continent's wasting disease was seen as a fundamentally wrong approach to economics. Instead of developing and diversifying agriculture, most African countries tried, often ineptly or corruptly, to industrialize at a time when much of the world was already on its way into the postindustrial age. African industrial products never had a chance to compete in a high-tech...
Amid the chaos of aids, overpopulation, tribal conflict, drought, starvation, bureaucratic mismanagement and political corruption, there are small signs of resiliency and hope...