 Quickly, you're hearing a lot about the war in Sudan yesterday, the United States did a special operation to get American personnel out of the embassy in Khartoum in the capital, Sudan. We talked about it a little bit on Friday. I think the biggest story here is Africa more generally. Right now in Africa, there is a real battle going on between the three superpowers or the three countries that would like to think of themselves as superpowers in the world today. And each one is using a different tactic in order to win. And it's going to be very interesting to see which one actually wins the game of influence in Africa. Unfortunately, Africa is ruled today by force. It is ruled most of Africa. Most of sub-Saharan Africa and most of Saharan Africa is ruled today by authoritarians, by gangs, riddled with civil wars, and is in real distress. Now, there are exceptions. There are countries that are exceptions. But a big chunk of Africa is basically ruled by force. And the United States, Russia, and China are all vying for influence in Africa, vying for influence for a couple of reasons. One is natural resources. There are significant and substantial amounts of natural resources anywhere from lithium to gold. There's gold in Sudan to other rare materials in the center of the Congo. And Africa is a natural resource of rich continent that hasn't been exploited anywhere near, let's say, some of the other parts of the world. Africa is also an upcoming continent. It's a continent that has not yet industrialized. It is a content that has not yet become wealthy. Influence is still yet to be determined where the Africa, a more wealthy Africa of the future, will be more aligned with the United States or more aligned with China, more aligned with Russia. And so there's something to gain. And there are some signs in some parts of Africa, Rwanda, Botswana, and others of some wealth creation, of some industrialization, of some growth. And it shows kind of the potential that could happen in all of Africa, which I think has enormous potential. If the world aid treated it right by opening up trade with them, and second by stopping to create monsters in Africa, which the rest of the world constantly does. So three different tactics in order to gain support in Africa. Russia uses the brute force method. It is basically putting troops on the ground all over Africa, not Russian troops officially. But what you have is the Wagner Group, the Wagner Group, which is a paramilitary, private contractor, think of American, bigger, much more independent, run out of Moscow. It is the main fighting force that has been fighting to the side of the Russian army in places like Bakhmut in Ukraine. Well, the second largest concentration of Russian fighters as part of this is in Africa. They have large numbers of troops all over Africa, including in Sudan, where they have contacts with both warring parties, but where they have a lot of interest in securing the gold mines in Sudan. In Central Africa, they are responsible to large extent for the Black Diamonds. But for other natural resources, they try to use force to occupy them. They ally themselves with local gangs, local insurgents, local terrorist groups, and they work with them to secure natural resources. They provide these local groups with weapons, training, money, and the local groups provide them with the natural resources that make some of the oligarchs in Moscow very, very rich. And of course, Russia has a lot of contacts in Africa from the days of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was dabbling in Africa, organizing coups, overthrowing regimes, and trying to establish socialist communist regimes all over Africa. Part of the reason Africa is still poor is because of everything that the Soviets did in Africa during those years. So that's Russia's approach, brute force, typical of the Russians, go in there with brute force. China's approach is different. China's approach is ingratiate these African countries to you, but also make them indebted to you. And here, China has built ports and established means of transportation and built infrastructure all over Africa. Much of that, funded with loans provided by the Chinese, loans that at least sometimes these governments default on. Now, I don't think China intends them to be defaulted on because China's lost a lot of money on these defaulted loans. But even when the loans default, it buys the Chinese influence. So China is very influenced through mercantilism, through empire building in the style of, I'd say, 18th century empires, economic influence, economic debt, building of infrastructure, ingratiating the population to the Chinese by those mechanisms. And that's been very successful. You see a lot of Chinese companies all over Africa. For Variety, for example, Huawei, Huawei, the telecom company and the other one, Zee something, they dominate all telecommunications in Africa. Of course, they also, that provides the Chinese with spying ability on all of Africa. They get all the communications from Africa that they want. Basically, every one of those Huawei, Huawei routers is sending information to Beijing, sending every night sends everything. ZTE, thank you, ZTE is the other Chinese company. China owns strategic ports in Africa, China owns natural resources in the more peaceful places. China is not putting troops in the ground, it's not funding insurgencies, it's not doing, it's not playing the Russian game, right? This is, it's doing it, it's doing it through dollars, through a mercantilist methodology. Finally, there's the United States. Not sure what the United States is doing. The United States is, is, has a big presence in Africa. It tries to compete on infrastructure with the Chinese. But most countries will tell you that Americans actually have more strings attached than the Chinese do. Human rights, minimum wages, all kinds of things like that. The Chinese just want money, just want a good deal. So there's a real, you know, there's a real, you know, challenge. You know, the Americans are just not providing that much. They're not playing the military game, although special forces are in many African countries, but they're usually very focused on one target, usually Islamists, usually trying to clean up Islamic cells in different places, Kenya, Uganda, even Tanzania. I remember the US Embassy was blown up in Tanzania, I think, and in other places. So US special forces on the ground there, which we can talk about doesn't make any sense, but they're there. But those are the three powers, I think, of the weakest of those is probably the United States in terms of its commitment. But certainly China and Russia are committed to trying to see and trying to access the natural resources in Africa by different means. Anyway, I thought you'd find that interesting. A lot of talk with Sudan about Africa, the Sudan conflict is going to affect a lot of Africa, and Russia is deeply embedded there. China is embedded as well. The United States less so really only focused on the battle against El Shabab in Somalia and the various Islamist groups out there. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to Iranbookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube, so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.