From a repeat of the Roaring 20s to the Boring 20s to “That ‘70s Show”, describing the decade ahead by diving deep into the past for comparisons has become a bit of a fad.
It’s certainly a fun thought experiment for those who care about these things.
But there is a serious unspoken truth to it all.
This article was published in the Sunday Cyprus Mail on 20th June 2021
In an affluent suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa, where ex-colonial houses sit comfortably next to shiny new shopping centres, is the unassuming building that has housed the Cyprus Brotherhood of South Africa since 1952.
Continue reading “A sense of continuity for the South African Cypriot diaspora”
While many commentators are raising their proverbial arms in the air and decrying the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the current violence may have exposed a path to an end game – for better or for worse – between the two sides.
As familiar as the eternal and depressing rocket exchange between Hamas and the IDF is, causing predictable and well-trodden consequences and damage, it seems that this this time the confrontation feels different in scope.
Continue reading “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Why the eternal struggle may not be so eternal for much longer.”
A shorter version of this article appeared in the Sunday Cyprus Mail on 4th April 2021 and was re-published in Economia – the Greek business and finance media group on 27th April 2021
https://cyprus-mail.com/2021/04/04/where-have-all-the-greeks-gone-the-story-of-greeks-in-africa/
Today there remain only a few Greeks in Africa, mainly in the metropoles of South Africa. These last remnants only hint at a rich past that tied generations of Greeks to the vast African continent. There are some who still remember this prosperous past. Minis Papapetrou, a retired engineer who grew up in Sudan and now resides in Athens describes how he and around 200 members of the ‘Greek Community of Sudan’ still meet periodically in the Greek capital. Before covid disrupted life, they regularly gathered for Christmas and Easter, even though most, including Mr Papapetrou himself, left Africa almost 50 years ago. So powerful is the memory of the place that bonds them. “When we get together, or go to the club, our conversations are all about when we were back in Sudan,” he sighs. “Do you remember that? Do you remember when we went there? It’s a nice feeling to remember the country you were born.” Mr Papapetrou represents the last in a line of three generations of Greeks whose fortunes ebbed and flowed with those of the continent.
Continue reading “Where have all the Greeks gone? The story of Greeks in Africa”
Up until about 2004 when I emigrated to Africa – first to Kenya and then South Africa, I had lived in London all my life.
From Greek heritage I always considered myself English growing up. A born and bred Londoner.
Even when people would retort, “yes, but where are you actually from?” puzzling over my generic dark, Mediterranean physical features, I would brush the slight aside and proudly declare allegiance to Blighty – water off a duck’s back as the old British saying goes.
Moving abroad, that sense of nationhood only deepened. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that – A proverb probably borne out of the intense passion of a thousand long-distance relationships fueled by well-engineered love letters in well-crafted English as described in the best traditions of 19th century British romance novels of the Jane Austen persuasion.
But all that changed with the Brexit vote on 23rd June 2016.
Continue reading “The broken social contract and the paradox at the heart of Brexit”
A superpower begins to fade under the weight of its bloated size and over-confidence. Through arrogance and careless mis-steps it bungles and self-sabotages to the point it starts creating problems it could have easily avoided, undermining its strength and capacity to shape global events to its will along the way.
Nowhere are these early seeds of destruction for U.S. better-exposed than in its dealings with Sudan.
Read more
I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, a time that saw the end of the Cold War and a new wave of prosperity. An age when the modern industrialised capitalist economy reigned supreme and globalisation, then still in its infancy, seemed to be the answer to global poverty. We clung to the hope that it would raise billions out of subsistence.
Continue reading “The End of the Age of Labour. We are entering the Era of Automation & Neo-Socialism: A Look at Daniel Susskind’s ‘A World Without Work’”
A shorter version of this article appeared in Business Day, South Africa on 23rd March 2020
Last month President Ramaphosa in his SONA heralded the forthcoming construction of a new 5G-ready smart city around Lanseria Airport in the next decade. With it, South Africa was belatedly thrust to the front of a Continent-wide rush to establish so-called smart and eco-friendly cities, seen as a means of jump-starting the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution powered by digital technology.
Continue reading “Smart Cities in Africa. The Smart Move or another White Elephant that brings crushing debt”
I’ve had a few heated debates in the past few days about how I appear to care more about the economic fallout of Covid-19 than the mounting death toll from the virus itself.
Of course I care, and especially about the looming global health system crises too. But looking to the bigger picture, I also know that in the long-run, for better or for worse, this virus will be under control in a about a year’s time. Whereas the economic fallout, and by extension the social and political fallout could last decades.
Continue reading “The Covid-19 Medical Emergency is an Unprecedented Crisis, but it is the economic fallout that should truly petrify us all”
I recently finished reading Fukuyama’s two seminal books. They are essential reading for anyone wishing to get a deeper understanding of the advent and spread of democracy and the modern industrial economy globally. Not to mention the subsequent rise of identity politics and the likes of Trump and Brexit.
George Philipas 
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