Against this turbulent background, President Obasanjo is determined to increase Nigeria's oil production from 2m to 4m barrels a day by 2010, and proven reserves from about 25 billion to 40 billion barrels.

ECONOMIST: You also have to know how to manage it

For all its cosmopolitan ambitions, the governing elite of German business is still made up almost entirely of men in their 50s or 60s, mainly with an engineering background, whose formative experience was growing up in the post-1945 Wirtschaftswunder, where production was king and shareholders were all but invisible.

ECONOMIST: Deutschland ��ber alles?