Day: September 29, 2020
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The G20 is Going to Try One More Time to Get Everyone Together to Come Up With a Debt Relief Plan for Poor Countries
Finance Ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 will convene an extraordinary meeting on November 13th in a bid to come up with a more robust debt relief plan for the world's poorest countries. A couple of weeks ...
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There’s Good News and Bad News About Kenya’s Ballooning National Debt
After Angola and Zambia, Kenya is high on the list of countries at risk of encountering severe debt distress due in part to extensive borrowing from China to fund major infrastructure projects like the Standard Gauge Railway and, more recently, its seemingly insatiable appetite for more debt. ...
China Launched a Virtual Trade Show With East Africa This Week That It Says Will Get 10,000 Attendees
With physical trade fairs all shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese trade promotion authorities are experimenting with new virtual models. On Monday, a China-Africa virtual expo kicked off, reportedly with more than a thousand exhibitors from both regions and organizers say they're confident ...
U.S. Throws WTO Director-General Selection Process Into Chaos, Possibly With an Eye on China
The United States threw a wrench into the selection process for the World Trade Organization's next Director-General when it moved on Wednesday to block the appointment of Nigerian-American Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to support its preferred candidate Yoo Myung-hee, South Korea's trade minister. Washington's stated ...
Algeria Opened the New Chinese-Built Mega Mosque
Algeria's new Grand Mosque, the largest mosque in Africa, hosted its first public prayers yesterday -- 18 months after the China State Construction Engineering Corporation completed construction. The new mosque, known locally as the Djamaa El-Djazair, occupies ...
The China Development Bank’s Debt Deferral in Zambia is a Good Start, But It’s Not Enough
The China Development Bank's (CDB) announcement yesterday that it will allow Zambia to push back an interest payment that was due last Sunday to next April was an unexpected development. After all, we haven't seen China's powerful policy banks publicly demonstrate ...
In the Aftermath of Zambia’s Default, Fitch Warns Four Other African Countries Could Soon Follow
One of the world's major credit ratings agencies, Fitch Ratings, issued an ominous warning that last week's downgrade of Zambia's will likely not be the last in Sub-Saharan Africa. In an article published on its website yesterday, the agency highlighted Angola, the Republic of ...
Sudan Under Pressure From Both China and the U.S.
The Sudanese government is being pulled in opposite directions by the United States and China over potentially volatile political issues related to Israel and Xinjiang. In its efforts to move more North African and Arab countries to recognize Israel, the United ...
Congolese Forward Cédric Bakambu Becomes Beijing Guoan’s All-Time Scoring Leader
After he scored his 50th goal on Monday, Congolese forward Cédric Bakambu became the all-time scoring leader for Beijing Guoan in the Chinese Super League. The Chinese embassy in Kinshasa noted the achievement on Twitter.
COVID-19’s Unanticipated Outcomes
The recent announcement that Zambia will default on several of its Eurobond notes, and the indication from ratings agencies that several other African countries are in similar danger are just the latest indicators of how the economic crisis kicked off by the pandemic is impacting African economies. ...
QZ Africa Editor Yinka Adegoke on the Current State of China-Africa Relations
There've been major developments over the past week in the African debt crisis. It appears that Angola and China reached a consensus on how to restructure the estimated $20 billion of loans that Luanda owes Beijing. This deal then paved ...
Letter to the Editor: Defending the Interests of Africa’s Private Creditors
Hi Mr. Olander, I work as a sovereign credit analyst at a private buy-side financial firm - I research the Sub-Saharan (and Middle East/North Africa) regions, and as such your content enriches my understanding of the countries in which we invest. ...
The Message From the Global Financial System to Africans Seeking Debt Relief Is Clear: You’re on Your Own
Ghana's increasingly outspoken finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta is giving voice to the growing frustration across Africa that calls for urgent debt relief have largely failed. In an interview this week with Bloomberg, Minister Ofori-Atta said the global financial system is failing Africa and places ...
Reminder: Africa Doesn’t Have a Chinese Debt Problem, About 10 African Countries Do
The South China Morning Post's Inkstone team published a brief analysis today showcasing data from the China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University. It provides a fresh reminder that the Chinese debt crisis in Africa is confined to a relatively small number of countries. ...
A Controversial China-Africa Documentary is Now Available to View Online… But You’ll Have to Hurry
The controversial documentary about Enock Alu, a teenager growing up in a Chinese Buddhist orphanage in Malawi, who is torn between his African identity and his Chinese upbringing is now available to view for free online for a limited period. The film, ...
Meaningful Debt Relief Probably Isn’t Going to Happen. We Should All be Worried.
The Financial Times newspaper deserves a lot of credit for calling out the world's wealthiest governments for their glaring hypocrisy on the issue of African debt relief. While treasuries in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and China come up with new creative solutions to insulate their ...
Huawei in Africa: Problems? What Problems?
While Huawei is facing intense scrutiny in certain European countries, the United States, and parts of Asia, the Chinese telecom giant is seemingly unimpeded in African markets. Just as in the brewing political standoff between the U.S. and China, where African leaders are doing their best to ...
Jack Ma Foundation Selects the Top 50 Finalists For This Year’s African Business Heroes Award
African tech Twitter exploded with excitement yesterday when the top 50 finalists for the immensely popular African Business Heroes (ABH) award was announced. 22,000 people from every country across the continent registered for this year's competition, according to event organizers.
China, African Union Move Forward to Build New Center for Disease Control HQ
The African Union's Commissioner for Social Affairs, Amira Elfadil, attended a signing ceremony on Monday in Addis Ababa with representatives from China's Ministry of Commerce to finalize the agreement for construction of the Africa Centers for Disease Control. Finalizing the deal to ...
China’s Escalating Conflict With the U.S. Prompts Re-Think on Foreign Aid Policy
Until now, international development assistance has not been a central theme of the increasingly bitter feud between the United States and China, but it could now be emerging as a new front in this conflict. "China and the U.S. are competing in many different areas, with foreign ...
Tweet of the Day: Kenyan Economist David Ndii Highlights One of the Most Important Challenges in the Current China-Africa Relationship
Popular Kenyan economist David Ndii gave voice today to a widely-held perception among large swathes of African civil society that Chinese interests are much more aligned with the continent's governing elites than with those of everyday people. This hasn't been helped, ...
COVID-19: How Can China Help African Countries Have a Stake in the Race for a Vaccine?
Six months after the emergence of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, the global effort to develop appropriate vaccines and treatments is continuing at a pace. The WHO report that there are now 125 candidate vaccines in development, including 10 in clinical evaluation. In recent weeks, there has ...
Debt Relief in Africa: A Conversation With Renaissance Capital’s Charlie Robertson
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Mohamed was among the first African leaders to issue an urgent appeal for debt relief back in March even before COVID-19 had become a serious public health issue on the continent.“COVID-19 poses an existential threat to the ...
Report: Workers at a Private Chinese Mining Company in Zimbabwe Blinded From “Dodgy” COVID-19 Tests, Embassy Responds Defensively
The Chinese embassy in Harare is confronting a new public relations crisis related to a reportedly private Chinese gold mining company in Zimbabwe that allegedly used sub-standard COVID-19 testing equipment that injured, even blinded, an unknown number of local workers, according to the news ...
Fact-Checking The Claim That Chinese Medical Aid Received in Ghana Has Been Contaminated With COVID-19
Fake news and other rumors started to circulate widely on Ghanaian social media this month claiming that imported personal protective equipment from China was infected with COVID-19: “As long as they allowed materials from china which contains COVID-19 the number of ...
China’s Role in Africa Emerging as Key Conservative Talking Point in U.S. Push For COVID-19 Blame
Conservative U.S. politicians and their respective media are focusing more attention lately on Chinese COVID-19 aid in Africa to highlight what they perceive as Beijing's plan to use this current crisis to expand its influence on the continent and around the world.
China Uses a Mix of Old and New Public Diplomacy Techniques to Try and Sway Opinion in Africa on Guangzhou Crisis
Prior to the recent crisis in Guangzhou, China's public diplomacy momentum in Africa looked unstoppable. Dramatic images of planes filled with donations from Alibaba founder Jack Ma were everywhere on state-run media channels, local news outlets, and diplomatic Twitter accounts, and receiving enthusiastic responses from African leaders. ...
The Guardian: Anti-African Discrimination Persists in Guangzhou
Despite repeated assurances by the Chinese government and media that discrimination does not exist in Guangzhou or elsewhere in China, The Guardian newspaper reports that African nationals in the southern Chinese city continue to encounter difficulties that they contend is attributable to ...
Economics Versus Narrative in the China-Africa Relationship
As the COVID-19 crisis drags on, we're seeing the emergence of two contradictory trends. On the one hand, the crisis has revealed the relative fragility of public diplomacy ties between China and Africa. While high-level government-to-government diplomacy continues, the Guangzhou crisis ...
Without South African Chrome, There Can Be No Chinese Stainless Steel
Coming off the N4 motorway near the small town of Marikana in South Africa’s platinum landscape, one almost immediately encounters the huge Tharisa Minerals mining operation. This gigantic open cast mine was started in 2009 for the production of chromium concentrate and platinum group metals (PGM) and ...
Why the Fight to Stop the Coronavirus From Spreading in Africa Begins in China
The following column was originally written as a nine-part Twitter thread on January 28, 2020. This is a full transcript with only minor edits for clarity. As a global development consultancy based in China that offers internships and jobs ...
Al Jazeera’s 101 East Investigates How China’s New “Silk Road” is Changing Lives From Asia to Africa
Al Jazeera English's Asia documentary series 101 East dedicated an entire episode to showcasing China's Belt and Road Initiative. It's a fascinating program that explores how the tens of billions of dollars already spent to build out the BRI is impact millions throughout the developing world, for ...
Tweet of the Day: African Twitter in Awe Over China’s Ability to Build Hospitals in Just a Few Days and Blasts Own Governments for Failing to Do the Same
News that China will need just days to build new hospitals in Wuhan to accommodate thousands of new patients infected with the coronavirus sparked both admiration about the seemingly unique Chinese ability to mobilize massive resources to get things done quickly and, at the same time, bitter ...
Conservation Groups Welcome China’s Decision to Ban on Wildlife Markets
Conservationists are hoping that China's decision this week to temporarily ban the sale of wildlife in open markets will eventually become permanent. The Chinese government announced the move on Sunday as part of a broad effort to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus. ...
Hundreds of Africans Feel Trapped and Abandonned Quarantined in Wuhan
While thousands of expatriates from wealthy countries will be airlifted out of Wuhan, the epicenter of the burgeoning coronavirus outbreak, African expats meantime confront a very different reality. In addition to the 4,600 African students currently in Wuhan, according to Quartz, there are hundreds ...
A Taliban security personnel operating an anti-aircraft gun keeps watch for Pakistani airstrikes near the Torkham border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Nangarhar province on February 27, 2026 following overnight cross-border fighting between the two countries. Photo by AIMAL ZAHIR / AFP
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif declared "open war" against Afghanistan on Friday amid a surge of fighting between the two South Asian neighbors. Pakistan said it's retaliating against Afghanistan for a series of attacks, including a suicide bombing in early February that killed at least 36 people ...
In the Aftermath of Zambia’s Default, Fitch Warns Four Other African Countries Could Soon Follow
One of the world's major credit ratings agencies, Fitch Ratings, issued an ominous warning that last week's downgrade of Zambia's will likely not be the last in Sub-Saharan Africa. In an article published on its website yesterday, the agency highlighted Angola, the Republic of ...
Sudan Under Pressure From Both China and the U.S.
The Sudanese government is being pulled in opposite directions by the United States and China over potentially volatile political issues related to Israel and Xinjiang. In its efforts to move more North African and Arab countries to recognize Israel, the United ...
Congolese Forward Cédric Bakambu Becomes Beijing Guoan’s All-Time Scoring Leader
After he scored his 50th goal on Monday, Congolese forward Cédric Bakambu became the all-time scoring leader for Beijing Guoan in the Chinese Super League. The Chinese embassy in Kinshasa noted the achievement on Twitter.
COVID-19’s Unanticipated Outcomes
The recent announcement that Zambia will default on several of its Eurobond notes, and the indication from ratings agencies that several other African countries are in similar danger are just the latest indicators of how the economic crisis kicked off by the pandemic is impacting African economies. ...
QZ Africa Editor Yinka Adegoke on the Current State of China-Africa Relations
There've been major developments over the past week in the African debt crisis. It appears that Angola and China reached a consensus on how to restructure the estimated $20 billion of loans that Luanda owes Beijing. This deal then paved ...
Letter to the Editor: Defending the Interests of Africa’s Private Creditors
Hi Mr. Olander, I work as a sovereign credit analyst at a private buy-side financial firm - I research the Sub-Saharan (and Middle East/North Africa) regions, and as such your content enriches my understanding of the countries in which we invest. ...