Trajectories — Portrait No. 4 Infrastructure is a rent asset. Airports, ports and power grids earn their returns from the absence of a substitute, not from competitive advantage — which is exactly why long-horizon capital wants them, and exactly why a weak regulator turns a partnership into a transfer of pricing power. Adebayo Ogunlesi built...

Trajectories — Portrait No. 3 Central African economies pay better for trading than for making. Importing a container requires working capital and a licence; building the factory requires energy, a supply chain, trained labour and capital you cannot get back if you are wrong. Célestin Tawamba trained as a financier, spent a decade pricing exactly...

Trajectories — Portrait No. 2 Ursula Burns took over a company whose product was being erased by the internet, and spent $6.4bn — the largest acquisition in Xerox’s history — buying a different business to become. Six years later the group was split back in two under pressure from an activist holding roughly 15% of...

Trajectories — Portrait No. 1 Strive Masiyiwa spent five years and most of his money in court, arguing that Zimbabwe’s telephone monopoly was an assault on free speech. He won, switched on his network, and then left the country for twenty-six years. The infrastructure group he built from exile is now being tested by the...

For the best part of a decade, Ousmane Dembélé was football’s most tantalising unfinished sentence — all gift, few moments. Then came a June night in Boston, three goals, and the unmistakable sense that a career had finally caught up with its talent. On 26 June 2026, against Norway, Ousmane Dembélé did something he had...

Standfirst: It took a World Cup night, an opponent that refused to bend, and a strike from another planet. East Rutherford, June 16, 2026: with a decisive brace against Senegal (3-1), Kylian Mbappé overtook Olivier Giroud to stand alone atop France’s all-time scoring charts. 58 goals in 99 caps — and a reign that’s only...

To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Europe’s largest technology show has secured the most coveted signature on the planet. On Wednesday, June 17, 2026, Jeff Bezos — founder of Amazon, of Blue Origin, and now head of a multibillion-dollar AI start-up — will take the main stage at VivaTech. Behind this media coup lies far more...

When Cannes Lions welcomes a speaker, it is never simply about celebrating a career. It is about creating a dialogue on influence, leadership, and the power to shape culture. In 2026, the presence of Oprah Winfrey at the world’s largest festival of creativity is set to be one of the most anticipated highlights of the...

One runs Africa’s biggest bank. One governs a country at war. One holds a presidency, one a 130,000-strong empire, one the rules of world trade. None of them was supposed to be here — and that is exactly why they are. The story of five women who didn’t break into power so much as out-calculate...