What makes the Covid-19 pandemic unique is that it is primarily a health crisis that has also fundamentally affected both the supply and demand side of the global economy.

For great numbers of people, especially those living in overpopulated urban areas where only the odd parks serve as small patches of greenery, nature is something out there somewhere.

South Africa is the strongest research player in Africa, with deep roots in astronomy, agriculture, health and social research. But the country’s persistent budget and social problems have hit the research sector as well – even as the government looks to science and technology to help solve those very problems.

We are witnessing a global economic collapse without precedent in modern times. As investors we must think about what the world will look like when the pandemic has passed. This is difficult to do because the information we have is so uncertain and fragmentary. Sandy McGregor offers his thoughts on some of the features of the post-pandemic world.

A growing number of countries in Africa are looking to cannabis as the ticket out of poverty, and foreign investment for this sector has flooded in. Activists who pushed for legal commercial cultivation now face the challenge of crafting a cannabis economy that empowers small farmers and rural communities, rather than replicating the elitist forms of past agro-export industries.

The world is currently facing a crisis of unpredictable magnitude, and South Africa is no exception.