Month: November 2020
Related Posts
China’s COVID Donations Go to 53, Not All 54 African Countries
Chinese diplomats and state-run media outlets used to highlight how COVID-19 donations were sent to all 54 African countries across the continent. Recently, though, both Xinhua and the likes of senior diplomat Wu Peng have ...
U.S. Election: Africans Hope Biden Will Warm Up Relations with Continent
Re-balancing ties between the United States and China emerged as one of the key themes in the stream of analysis that flowed all weekend from African journalists and analysts after Joe Biden formally won the U.S. presidential election. Many commentators from ...
Kenya’s Spiraling Debt Crisis Worsens as the Cost of Chinese Loans Mount, Currency Weakens and Exports Soften
Kenya is rapidly becoming the next flashpoint in the Africa debt crisis amid a dramatic increase in borrowing that threatens to submerge the economy. The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) warned on Friday that the country's ballooning debt is ...
What’s Next For Jack Ma’s Philanthropy in Africa Now That He’s in Real Trouble Back Home?
Jack Ma, the founder and former CEO of Alibaba, is in trouble with the government at home. Big trouble. Last week, Chinese regulators pulled the plug at the very last minute on Alibaba's blockbuster $34 billion IPO of its financial unit Ant Group after Ma ...
China, Africa and the New Biden Administration
There's palpable excitement in dozens of capitals around the world about the prospects of a new government in Washington, D.C. This is especially true in Africa, where U.S. relations with a number of countries on the continent felt like they were rapidly deteriorating and on their way ...
Q&A: Can African-Sino Agri-Health Cooperation Champion Green Recovery?
For a moment it would seem that climate change has taken a backseat in the midst of a global pandemic, yet we are increasingly seeing the need to make linkages between COVID-19 response and climate action policies. What has been termed as “green recovery” refers to ...
Weaponizing China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Since its inception in 2013, Chinese government officials have insisted that the Belt and Road is solely an economic initiative and does not have any military motivations. But the BRI's civil-military distinction is no longer as clear cut as it used ...
How’s the Belt & Road Doing During the Pandemic? Well, the Answer Depends on Who You Ask
There are conflicting assessments of the health of China's Belt and Road Initiative and how it's fared during the past 7-8 months amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A new report from the London-based analytics and consulting firm ...
Kenyan Newspaper Pleads With Government to Stop Borrowing Money
The influential financial newspaper Business Daily published a sharply-worded editorial on Wednesday that blasted the government for taking on more debt amid the country's worsening economic crisis. "The implications of the rapid accumulation of debt are stark. The rising repayments are ...
China’s Decision To Hold on To Its Oil Assets in Sudan May Now Start To Pay Off
Sudan's oil industry is starting to rumble back to life, following this year's landmark peace agreement with rival South Sudan and a dramatic improvement in ties with the United States, which recently took Khartoum off its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Port Competition Along Africa’s East Coast Intensifies With China as a Central Player
After the Dubai-based ports operator DP World was effectively pushed out of Djibouti by China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH), the Emiratis packed up and headed a few hundred kilometers down the coast to set up shop at the Port of Berbera in the self-declared ...
Construction Begins on a Massive New Chinese-Financed Cultural Center in Kinshasa
The Chinese embassy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced that construction had begun on an enormous new art and cultural center in the capital Kinshasa. Work on the enormous new facility had been delayed due to COVID-19.