Word: kenya
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...That's changing. Kenya issued six exploration licenses between 2000 and 2002 and two more to CNOOC in the next four years. In 2008 and 2009, it issued 18 new licenses. "Despite a long history of unsuccessful exploration, the oil companies are investing in Kenya," says Mwendia Nyaga, managing director of the National Oil Corporation of Kenya. "The question is not if any hydrocarbon deposits exist, but where they are." (See "Borders of Sudan's Oil-Rich Region Shrink...
...voyages as a triumphant Chinese adventure, the journeys had a distinctly Muslim character. Zheng practiced Islam, as did Ma Huan, the main chronicler aboard the ships. It's likely they were guided to their many ports of call, such as Malacca, India's Malabar coast and Malindi in Kenya, by Muslim pilots of Arab, Indian or African extraction. "They were essentially following maritime routes that had been in use by people in the Indian Ocean for ages," says Wade. Many academics argue that the popular Arab-Persian tale of the Seven Voyages of Sinbad, littered also with snippets of Indian...
...Although the aura of Zheng's expeditions may somehow bolster China's budding soft power, it's unclear what lasting impact the visiting fleets had on medieval Africa. No durable trade ties were left in place. And while stories linger in Kenya's Lamu archipelago of a light-skinned community descended from shipwrecked Chinese sailors, the population there retains no trace of Chinese customs or language. "Not much endured beyond the legend," says Sautman. Indeed, scholars like Wade suggest the voyages themselves were something of an "aberration" in the wider context of Chinese foreign policy in that era, which...
...China's Ministry of Commerce announced it was funding a three-year project with the assistance of the Kenyan government to search for Ming-era vessels that had supposedly foundered off the East African coast. "Historical records indicate Chinese merchant ships sank in the seas around Kenya," Zhang Wei, a curator for a state museum, told China's official Xinhua news agency. "We hope to find wrecks of the fleet of the legendary Zheng He." (See pictures of China's investments in Africa...
...archipelago, where bits of Ming ceramic ware have surfaced in the past, and that it will be their legacy that gets burnished when they find it. A team of Chinese archaeologists is expected to commence work in July. It won't be alone - last year, following a visit to Kenya by Chinese President Hu Jintao, a Chinese state petroleum company won concessions to explore more than 100,000 sq km of Kenyan waters for oil. That will be theirs too. Africa, after all, holds more for China these days than just exotic animals...