Empty Chinese-Built Housing Development of Kilamba, Angola


The modern ghost town of Kilamba isn’t something you’d expect to find in Angola - indeed, it’s highly reminiscent of China’s ghost town of Ordos City. That’s because it was built by the China International Trust and Investment Corporation, financed by a Chinese credit line and repaid by the Angolan government with oil. The series of 750 eight-story apartment blocks, along with over 100 commercial complexes and a dozen
schools, was designed to accommodate half a million people, but only a few hundred apartments were sold in the initial opening period, leaving the vast development empty for many months. Angola doesn’t have a large enough middle class to afford homes like this.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chelyabinsk Meteor And 2012 DA14

Image
On February 15, 2013, an asteroid entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the southern Ural region of Russia and exploded. The event was witnessed by thousands of people and became the largest known airburst since the 1908 Tunguska event. The blast produced a light brighter than the Sun, and the shock wave was felt by people all over the area. The energy of the explosion was equivalent to 20-30 of the atomic bombs used at Hiroshima. The asteroid was not detected by the authorities before the airburst, and the event surprised many people. It wounded 1,500 and damaged over 7,000 buildings. The meteor was caught on tape by multiple sources, which shows a giant fireball in the sky - followed by an enormous explosion of light. It was reported that the meteor made the ground hot, and the city smelled like gunpowder after the explosion. The event was an extremely rare occurrence and the only time in history that a meteor has been known to cause human injury.
Read more

Charity Destroys Lives

Image
By its very definition, charity is selfless. Whether it’s dropping a few pennies in a collection box or shipping our old T-shirts off to Africa, a spot of charity is a quick and easy way to net some karma. At least it would be if it didn’t usually harm the very people we’re trying to help. Take our practice of sending old clothes to Africa. Objectively, it makes sense: People living on under a dollar a day probably don’t have much of a clothing budget, so why not redistribute the stuff we’re not using? In fact, it makes so much sense that millions of us pack and ship off our novelty Christmas jumpers every year - resulting in the complete collapse of the African textile industry. Think about it: If you flood a market with free goods, you’ll bankrupt the traders and manufacturers trying to sell them. And that’s exactly what’s happened here. Across the continent, whole communities have lost their livelihoods in exchange for your old Slayer T-shirts.
Read more

The Amazing Cooltone Mini Fridge And Sounds Cool

Image
The Cooltone Mini Fridge provides an interesting combination of popular dorm room items into one “cool” package. This refrigerator has a 22 liter capacity which is enough to hold 20 standard beverage cans and keep them cold, but there’s much, much more. The Cooltone gets its name from the multiple music-playing features included in this unlikely combination. On the top of the fridge is a standard top loading CD player and and AM/FM radio which both play music out of the integrated speakers built into the sides of the Cooltone. Users can also connect stereo headphones or connect external speakers to further enhance their extra-cool music. The fridge/stereo also has a standard 3.5mm input jack where you can connect an auxiliary MP3 player to sound through the speakers for the rest of us who no longer have any CD’s.
Read more