The End of Long Wave Radio

The global energy system is under pressure, from climate change to rising costs and energy security New research from Economist Impact shows consumers want more affordable energy and are open to sustainable technologies but sixty five percent worry renewables may drive prices even higher The Empowering Energy Consumers Barometer supported by Kraken, explores how to enable consumers to participate in the shift to cleaner, more resilient energy without losing out Search Epowering Energy Consumers Barometer to find out more With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs evenven on weekends pretty much all he talks about in a good way What's in your wallet Terms apply, see capital onene d. com slash bank, Capital One NA member FDIC The Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. and I'm Rosie Blw Today on the show, the rocketing cost of a staple dish in Nigeria, BBC waves goodbye to Long Wave Radio First, For America's neighbourors, Trump's second term has been unsettling. Kerrie Richmond Jones is our international economics correspondent as well as disrupting trade and sending energy prices soaring Trump has seemed determined to impose his will on the Western hemisphere. For example, by kidnapping the leader of Venezuela. U. S. President Donald Trump says the American military has captured President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. sending gunboats to the Caribbean The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier has reached Caribbean waters off South America's northern coast and threatening to invade Cuba. Trump has said that the U.S. Navy will take over Cuba almost immediately on the way back from Iran But in America strangely is also benefiting from Trumping chaos. No other regional economy in the developing world has done so well in the past year So you say Latin America is benefiting from Trumpian chaos, Karriion. Just how well is it actually doing It's doing remarkably well. In twenty twenty five, foreign direct investment to the developing world at large shrank. so that means that the developing world got less foreign cash in twenty twenty five than it did in twenty twenty four. But in Latin America, the amount of foreign investment actually rose to two hundred five billion dollars. That was a sizable increase on the previous year So how much of that was actually down to Trump? Quite a lot, at least half of that increase came from America It helps that Latin America is no longer this place of endless economic crises that it was thirty years ago, more or less, all thirty three countries south of the Rio Grande apart from Argentina and Bolivia now have floating currencies or peg them to the dollar, that means that investors know that they're not going to lose large amounts of cash when the central bank starts printing lots of it There's also more inflation targeting going on. So basically it's a much more stable region, politically and crucially financially than it was thirty years ago. and that's helped lure investors back gradually The fact is that we've seen a huge increase in twenty twenty five. And why is it exactly that Trump has decided Latin America is where he's going to invest kindind of counterintuitive really because On the one hand, Trump is not very nice about Latin America on a regular basis. He gathers leaders together to berate them for failing to get hard on drugs hard on gangs. But the flip side of that is that he's also really interested in the place and partart of his belief that America should have more power over its southern neighbours, that, in theory, should create these investment opportunities S. In October Trump extended twenty billion dollars in swap lines to Argentina to help have himA, the president and a Trump ally In twenty twenty four, the Development Finance Corporation, which is the foreign lending agency of Trump's government, set up its first office in the continent. It was in Sao Paulo. a bit more generally actually, if you go to Sao Paulo at the moment, in these swanky hotels, I was there a few weeks ago, there are just lots and lots of American investors looking for opportunities So where exactly is the money going to in terms of countries or even industries By far the single biggest beneficiary has been the mining industry. We've seen several deals from Trump himself with different Latin American governments, ranging from Chile, which has got almost half the world's copper that you'd maybe expect, but also down to places that even I didn't know had that many minerals like Paraguay to try and develop more of these deposits. As well as that, you've seen the American government quite literally just stump up half a billion dollars in one case for a rare earth mine in Brazil And then on the heels of the government, there's this separate wave of private investors. S of them are small time chances, trying to open gold deposits, small mines, new refineries, that kind of stuff. But then also the mining majors are really standing up, taking notice of Trump and desire for critical minerals and massively increasing investment A few years ago, it was China we were talking about in terms of investing in Latin America. So what's happened to other countries' interest in the region Latin America is kind of becoming this geopolitical battleground. You're totally right, China's spending increased all the way up to twenty eighteen when it has flattened. And that's one of the reasons that Trump has gone in so hard because he thinks it's sort of embarrassing and quite counterproductive to have China have such a big presence so close to America And what we've seen since Trump has come in with that extra wave of investment is that China has really doubled down. There've been extra announcements at the BYD factory in Brazil, new mining experiments, and also things that are Quite politically edgy. The Chilean government recently announced that it was exploring the idea of an undersea cable straight to Hong Kong across the Pacific. That has so angered America that the minister who's organizing that cable has actually been banned from going into the states. And it's not just America and China, either. we've recently seen a huge trade deal that's created the single biggest free market between Mercosur, which is a group of for Latin American economies, including Argentina and Brazil and Europe that now more than a billion people will trade with Basically no friction. and that's the first really big move on the continent that Europe has made in a long time. Karen, we know that Trump isn't always known for his steadfast certain loyal policies. Will this boom last, do you think That is such a good question. There is so much going on here. It feels like the Wild West at the moment in Sao Paolo And you're totally right, Trump has maximum two years left in office, we think. Most of these investments, particularly in mining, they need capital they've been pumped in for years, if not decades. Leave aside his shortter attention span, he doesn't have much time anyway But then also more broadly A lot of the mining money is going into things like rare earths Rare asss are quite different to something like copper. so copper you need hu huge quantities of copper to fit out data centers stretching decades into the future. America has very few rare earth metals which are mostly controlled by China at the moment, but the market isn't actually very large. so Some of these elements that Trump is trying to produce in Latin America at the moment The global market is worth about two hundred million dollars, a billion dollars, perhaps. And so you don't need many of those minds for Trump or whoever comes after him in the White House to be happy. There are going to be a lot of very disappointed people and investors in Latin America in decades to come. Karn, thank you very much Thank you so much for having me The global energy system is under pressure, from climate change to rising costs and energy security New research from Economist Impact shows consumers want more affordable energy and are open to sustainable technologies, but sixty five percent worry renewables may drive prices even higher The Empowering Energy Consumers Barometer supported by Kraken, explores how to enable consumers to participate in the shift to cleaner, more resilient energy without losing out Search Empowering Energy Consumers Barometer to find out more This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive pre approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they sack. That's technology at Capital One Last week, I went to Rusei Market in Abujab, Nigeria, searching for the ingredients for the perfect jolof. It's a beloved rice dish that's long been a staple in Nigerian cooking Ori Oam B is the economist's Africa correspondent Now, I wasn't shopping for my dinner I was investigating how food prices for Nigeria's basic meals become unaffordable The Jof index, issued quarterly by a LagO based consultancy called SBM Intelligent, tracks the prices of a dozen ingredients used to make Jelof, from the tin tomato puree that gives the dish its renowned red orange hue. to the oil that's used to saute the onions and spices first Now, this market in We earn the top spot on the list for having the priciest ingredients of anywhere else in the country Before we get to the economics, let's just talk gastronomics for a minute. Tell me a bit more about Jolof Jalooth is a spicy tomato and pepper based rice dish It's actually something that we inherited from the Senegalese, but it has become so popular in Nigeria and Ghana. I personally love it. In the southwest of Nigeria, we love it super spicy. When I was in Uni, not in Nigeria, I actually used to make jelof all the time and kind of get Nigerians and Ghanaian students together and we'd gosip over a bit of jelof. It became my thing. I love it and it's kind of iconic now to this part of West Africa Just how expensive is it now? Well, for many families, it's become too expensive and that's kind of the point. It's transformed how and what they're able to eat because of how expensive these ingredients have become. So I spoke with one of the shoppers at the market who told me about the cost of rice alone We bought like four thousand nira in April. then a week in May, it's already six thousand. Most of the prices here are outrageous. Now to put that in context with the other ingredients, so the tomatoes, the peppers, the onions and everything else, a pot of jalof for a family of five can now go for around thirty thousand five hundred nira That's about twenty two US dollars. And for context, that's forty percent of the monthly minimum wage on just one dish That's astronomical for just one dish. How is that possible? Well, the vendors at the market say that they have to charge that much to cover their costs, which have skyrocketed since the war in Iran began I spoke to Precious, a vegetable vendor at the market I don't think that the price is so expensive, you understand. because if you watch The current situation of this country you know that things are very expensive right now. So we sell according to how we buy. You know, we buy from LegOos. So that's now makes They seemnd to be expensive She said that she buys rice from a supplier in Lagos and in order to get that transported to Abuja, she has to pay the truck driver per carton of rice. So that adds up In fact, the twenty percent jump in the cost of Jalof since the start of the war in Iran comes mostly from diesel costs of the lorries that are moving the tomatoes, the peppers and the rice and everything else. from the farmers and the suppliers to the markets. Now because most of the jillof ingredients in Nigeria are farmed locally bad roads and the bad weather also adds to those spikes. So the war in Iran makes the diesel costs higher for the trucks, and then there are seasonal issues that make those costs even higher. So if this is partly about the war in Iran, presumably it's affecting the price of this dish across the region then? Not everyone has been hit as hard as Nigeria has So in Ghana, for example, their government is actually steering a pretty impressive economic recovery. They' return to single digit inflation in spite of all that's going on with pricing. For years, they had had really high inflation as high as fifty four percent in December of twenty twenty two But now, an average pot of jel off in Ghana actually works out cheaper in dollar terms than it was in Ghana three years ago. This is likely because the Jolof basasket in Ghana is much more import dependent and because they now have a stronger currency, that's cushionhing them from the worst of the shocks that we're seeing elsewhere So while Ghana's year over year inflation has reached single digits, Nigeria is still much higher over the same time period, which helps explain that divergence Joolf can't be the only dish then that's seen this food price inflation. Is life getting more and more expensive for Nigerians overall? Well, exactly. And I think jelof is interesting because it encompasses so many ingredients. So for some families, it's what people are having the jelofe with that they're having to cut back on. So things like meat. Pe are swapping chicken and turkey for instead little bits of tinned or smoked fish instead But what this kind of tells us is that even those small brief price rises, so the kind of inflation we've seen over a couple of months, can be the difference between whether or not people can afford to make a pot of Jalof or can't afford any at all To be honest, for the one hundred forty million Nigerians who are still living below the poverty line. Jelof has been a luxury for a very long time All right, thank you very much for talking to me. Thanks for having me, Rosie nineteen thirty four The BBC switched on what was then one of the world's most powerful radio transmitters near Droitwich Bu Franklin is a senior digital editor, the economist. Suddenly, the Midlands town of barely five thousand people stood out on the dials of British wireless sets Until recently, two seven hundred foot high steel masts sent long wave broadcasts across Britain and deep into Europe. But on june twenty seventh, they stopped. This is London callalling In the Second World War, the mass transmitted nonsense messages that were decoded by the resistance Recently, they've carried similarly baffling phrases that can only be understood by cricket fans Probably going to go slightly finer now to Sophia Dunkley. It's also got a Deep square like. Almost nobody will notice that they have been switched off. And the BBC says that it doesn't make sense to maintain out of date technology. Even so, devotees insist that it's not obsolete