Month: September 2020
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Nigeria’s President Buhari Responds to Debt Critics: “We Just Have to Take Loans to do Rail, Roads and Power”
President Muhammadu Buhari finally weighed on the debate currently raging in Nigeria over the government's decision to borrow billions of dollars, including from China, to build badly-needed infrastructure. “We have so many challenges with infrastructure. We just have to take loans ...
CCP “Training Class” With Congo’s Ruling Party Highlights Deepening Chinese Party-to-Party Engagement in Africa
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is steadily making inroads with Africa's ruling parties by convening seminars like the one held earlier this month with the Republic of Congo's incumbent Party of Labor. In this virtual session, or a "training class" according to the CCP, some ...
U.S. & Chinese State-Run Media Channels Go At Each Other in a Seemingly Fruitless Effort to Sway African Public Opinion
With relations between the United States and China rapidly deteriorating, each country's state-run propaganda outlets are ramping up cynical coverage of the other in an apparent attempt to sway international public opinion against their respective rivals. Two reports published this week, ...
StarTimes’ African Voice Actors Are the Newest Faces of Chinese Soft Power
The hugely popular Chinese-owned African pay-TV service StarTimes has always tried to put some distance between itself and the Chinese government, reminding anyone who asks that it is a private enterprise. Regardless of its status, the company is nonetheless a powerful ...
Subsidies and the False Promise of Fair Trade
Towards the end of our discussion last week with Walter Ruigu, managing director of the Beijing-based trading and logistics company CAMAL Group, on the China in Africa Podcast, he shared a fascinating insight that reveals why African commodity producers are condemned to remain at ...
The Long Journey to EurAfrica
Recently I've been trying to give my brain a break from marinading in China-Africa issues by reading the biologist Merlin Sheldrake's mind-bending new book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures. He points out that scientists in ...
Chinese Agricultural Engagement in Africa in the Post C19-Era
China's importing a lot more African agricultural products these days. Zambian blueberries were recently approved to enter the China market, Namibian beef shipments started this year, Ghanaian cocoa is now traded through a new exchange in Hunan province and, after more ...
Amazingly, China’s Trade With Egypt Actually Increased This Year
While China's trade with Africa fell by almost 20% in the first half of the year, two-way trade with Egypt actually increased compared to the same time last year, according to new data from the Chinese embassy in Cairo.
Gyude Moore: Amid Heightened U.S.-China Tensions, Europe Can be a Stabilizing Force for Africa
With both Europe and Africa uncomfortably stuck in the middle of the increasingly acrimonious U.S.-China conflict, Gyude Moore, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Development in Washington, proposes in a new article that stronger EU-Africa ties could serve as an important ballast ...
Debt Trap? Nah, We’re Too Disorganized For Anything Like That Says China’s Chargé d’Affaires in Nigeria
China's Chargé d'Affaires in the embassy in Nigeria, Zhao Yong, provided an uncharacteristically frank rebuttal last week to the persistent accusations that Beijing is engaged in predatory lending in Nigeria and Africa writ large. In typical fashion, Zhao blamed the U.S. ...
How the World’s Great Powers Are Exacerbating the Security Crisis in the Sahel
Russia-MENA analyst and Oxford University PhD candidate Samuel Ramani argues in a compelling new article in Foreign Policy that a combination of narrow political agendas, unilateral actions and a bias towards supporting authoritarian governments by France, the U.S., Russia and China are all contributing to ...
Chinese Donation of Motorbikes Highlights Police-to-Police Ties With Lesotho
China's ambassador to the tiny landlocked southern African country of Lesotho led a handover ceremony last week of dozens of police motorbikes donated by China's Ministry of Public Security (China's domestic law enforcement agency). The donation highlights how so much of ...