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Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

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  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen...

Zambia’s Chinese debt nearly twice official estimate, study finds

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  Copper-rich Zambia became Africa’s first coronavirus-era sovereign default last November. By  Helen Reid, Reuters   28 Sep 2021   11:33  Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg Zambia’s debt to Chinese public and private lenders is $6.6 billion, almost double the amount disclosed by the previous Zambian government, an analysis of loan data by the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) has estimated. Copper-rich Zambia became Africa’s first coronavirus-era sovereign default last November and its ongoing debt restructuring has become a test case of Western multilateral efforts for countries to fully disclose their borrowings. Zambia’s previous government led by Edgar Lungu said its Chinese debt stood at $3.4 billion. But the estimate published by CARI on Tuesday chimes with recent comments from newly-elected President Hakainde Hichilema, who took office last month, that the debt load is likely higher. The country’s international creditors, which the government is in talk...

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