Angola

country is he from?

My dad's Angola and my mom's Congolese.

Yeah, so he's Congolese.

Mm-hmm.

Governments are determined to move beyond pure raw material extraction.

The Western backed Lobito corridor railway is transforming regional logistics by linking the central African copper belt directly to Angola's Atlantic coast.

This route slashes transit times from more than a month down to a single week, offering a viable alternative to the Chinese-supported Eastern Rail Corridor to Tanzania.

The rail link is also unlocking broader regional commerce, carrying Angolan agricultural freight alongside copper and cobalt, while nations like the Democratic Republic of Congo work to bring 10 million artisanal miners into formalised regulated supply chains.

Turning to freight, commercial shipping routes are confronting an acute security crisis.

At the Strait of Hormuz, vessel transits dropped to a mere seven ships on Thursday, down from 11 the previous day and far below the pre-war daily benchmark of 125 vessels.

Simba of Tanzania won 1-0 away to Mighty Wanderers in Malawi.

Petro Athletico of Angola also winning 1-0 away to Udi Songo of Mozambique, and an away victory for Senegal's Tenggeth, a 1-0 away to FC Canchungo of Guinea-Bissau.

And Al-Hilal of Sudan won 2-0 away to Eglonois, Of Burundi looking in a strong position, while Zamalek of Egypt have an away advantage too.

They won 2-1 against AS Port in Djibouti.

Their revenue was $7.2 billion in 2025.

That figure is more than the GDP of Angola, the country.

Staggering.

Apparently there's now 378 million people using the platform.

Let's start off with Total Energy.

They plan a $10 billion U.S. dollar Angola investment with their partners over five years.

They are going to do it.

They're planning it with the action model, the American company.

So it's going to be a partnership.

But just remember that Total Energy is the largest operator in Angola.

I think it accounts for 45% of the production.

If you measure it in barrels per day produced, it accounts for about 45% of the total Angolan production.

In 2002, American Airlines retired a Boeing 727-223 with registration N844AA, and this plane was purchased by Mari Joseph, who owned an aerospace company in Florida.

Different sources give different stories, but the main gist of the situation is that a businessman came and leased the plane, located in Angola, from Mari, only to default on his payments or abandon the plans that he had for the plane.

Apparently this businessman wanted to use the plane to transport oil to diamond mines across Angola and this same businessman and Mari Joseph had come to a payment agreement that never came to fruition.

This meant that the plane went back into storage and racked up over $4 million in airport fees.

The plane with number N844AA was then back in the hands of Maury Joseph who brought Ben Padilla on board.

So Ben got to work fixing up the plane and all was going well.

That was until May 25th, 2003, when something truly bizarre happened.

On this day, the plane was due to fly from Angola to Germany, but as the crew arrived at the airport for their flight, they noticed that the plane had gone.

The move is part of Washington's wider effort to to reduce reliance on Chinese communications equipment, particularly technology supplied by Huawei.

AfriCell operates in Angola, The Gambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone.

According to research group CounterPoint, Huawei accounts for about 52% of Africa's 5G infrastructure.

South Africa is extraditing six Nigerian nationals to the United States over alleged involvement in an organized criminal network linked to online romance scams.

Okay, I'll look into that.

Our listeners, Canada, U.S., Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, United Kingdom, India, Ireland, Russia, Uruguay, Denmark, South Africa, France, Angola, Argentina, and Algeria.

Thank you for listening.

One last thought.

I was with Dag Haywood Mills.

I don't know anybody in Angola.

I do now, but I didn't then.

And so this guy gets healed, and I feel like embarrassed telling you, but I was too dumb to realize what was happening.