Domingo Brief — G7 drama, Walmex goes digital, & Andean connectivity

Each Sunday, take two minutes to catch key stories and opportunities shaping Latin America.

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Welcome back to the Domingo Brief! We took last week off to commemorate 6 months of the Brief, but we’re back this week with a new edition full of some stories we’re tracking around the region.

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🇧🇴 Entel will invest roughly $12.5M to expand fiber optics and deploy new antennas in the Bolivian department of Chuquisaca. The state-owned telecommunications company, which reportedly has over 6M mobile users, is seeking to launch 5G and bring the entire country online.

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🇧🇷 Brazilian President Lula da Silva attended the Group of Seven (G7)’s 2023 summit in Hiroshima, Japan. While there, he met with leaders of some of the world’s largest economies and posed for big group photos with fellow invitees—though, notably, appears to have been snubbed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Latinometrics: The last time Brazil was invited to a G7 summit in 2009, Lula was also in office, nearing the end of his successful second term.

G7? Like a plane? The G7, or Group of 7, consists of the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Canada (plus the European Union). The forum’s members make up 40% of global GDP and represent some of the largest trade partners and investment sources for Brazil.