Day: August 27, 2020
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It’s Not All Gloomy
The last few weeks have been marked by a pervasive gloominess about Africa's future. As Zambia was defaulting on its Eurobond debt, the G20 was praising itself effusively for coming up with a debt response unlikely ...
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China’s Role in Africa’s Economic Transformation
Over the past 20 years China has played a pivotal, arguably indispensable role in Africa's economic development. China is by far Africa's largest bilateral trading partner, a major source of foreign investment and a vital player in helping Africa to close ...
18 Days and Counting Until Zambia’s D-Day (aka Debt Day)
In less than three weeks, a group of Zambian bondholders, mostly in New York and London, will reconvene to vote on whether or not to approve Lusaka's request for a six-month repayment holiday on about $3 billion of Eurobond notes that are coming due. ...
Zambia Stands to Benefit From Rising Copper Prices Due to Heightened Chinese Demand
While Zambia tries to figure out how if/how it plans to restructure its $12 billion debt portfolio, government coffers stand to benefit from resurgent copper prices, a major source of export earnings. The price of copper recently ...
Analyst: Zambia Owes More Than Double the $12 Billion to China and Other External Creditors
Zambia owes $27 billion to external creditors rather than the $12 billion figure that is widely circulated in the media, according to Brad Setser's reading of World Bank data on external debt. Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, explained in ...
File image of a worker cleaning solar panels installed on the roof of the traditional Gedhe market in Klaten, Central Java. China’s $180 billion clean tech push is reshaping the Global South, with Indonesia a key test of who controls new green industries. (Photo: DEVI RAHMAN / AFP)
By Cobus van Staden, CGSP Head of Research Remember “no blood for oil”? Decades ago, the slogan emblematized opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Its logic subsequently shifted as the United States experienced a gas and oil revolution thanks to fracking.
Tecno’s Response to This Week’s Malware PR Crisis: “Keep Calm and Carry On”
The news that Chinese-owned African mobile phone giant Tecno sold tens of thousands of phones infected with malicious viruses between 2018 and 2019 is now a major international story. CNN, the BBC and dozens of African news outlets have been ...
Leading Environmental Protection NGO Responds to Ghana’s Controversial Decision to Re-License a Chinese Trawler
The London-based Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) responded this week to the Ghanaian government's controversial decision to renew the fishing license for the Chinese trawler Lu Rong Yuan Yu 956. The EJF's main point of contention is that Lu Rong Yuan Yu ...
Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta Wants to Know What Happened to the Missing Jack Ma PPE Donations
Under mounting public pressure, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered an investigation into Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) and its handling of the March 2020 PPE donations from the Jack Ma Foundation, amid allegations that they were illicitly sold, lost or wasted. The ...
China’s New Top Diplomat For Sub-Saharan Africa Lays Out His Agenda
China's former ambassador to Kenya and the new head of the African Affairs Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wu Peng, laid out his agenda in a recent column published in the state-run China Daily newspaper. There ...
China’s Soft Power Play in Africa: Rapid Industrial Development
The Chinese embassy in Cameroon posted a short, seemingly innocuous video today that commemorated 40 years of development in Shenzhen, a once-sleepy fishing town near Hong Kong that is now one of the world's leading tech hubs with a population of 13+ million people. ...
The Political Ramifications of China’s Reduced Appetite for African Oil
News that two of China's largest oil companies, Sinopec and CNPC, are going to scale down their presence in South Sudan provides the latest evidence of China's waning appetite for African oil. This isn't a new phenomenon. In fact, ...
China’s Ejiao Producers Are on a Quest for Africa’s Donkeys
In Africa it’s said that “if you don't have a donkey you become a donkey yourself”. A proverb that is becoming more relevant as China’s ejiao (donkey-hide gelatin) producers look to the Continent for resources. Ejiao is a glue derived from ...