Day: January 7, 2021
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China Remains Africa’s Largest Source of FDI and Job Creation, Says EY’s Annual Investment Report
China was the leading source of foreign direct investment in Africa from 2016 to 2020 in terms of both jobs and capital invested, but third behind the United States and France in terms of the number of projects, according to Ernst & Young (EY)'s ...
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A Week After FOCAC, Experts Weigh in with More Nuance
While much of the news coverage in the immediate aftermath of this year's FOCAC focused on the premature calculation that China had reduced its financial pledge by a third, now, a week later, more nuanced analysis from some of the world's leading specialists in the field is ...
The Uganda Airport Story and FOCAC Spark More “Bad Takes” in Both Chinese and African Media
The editors at Nigeria's Punch newspaper are apparently still unaware that the story about Uganda's Entebbe International Airport being seized by China as part of a debt default is not true. If they knew that the rumor had been conclusively debunked, ...
New Report Isn’t Optimistic About Chinese Development of Wind and Solar Power Projects in Africa… At Least For Now
Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke at length last week during his keynote address at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation conference in Dakar about the need to promote green energy development in Africa. The continent lags far behind the rest of the world in the use ...
With FOCAC Now Over, Chinese FM Wang Yi Turns His Attention to China’s Forum With LatAm and the Caribbean
Within days of the conclusion of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Dakar, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pivoted to focus on a similar ministerial forum with his counterparts from Latin America and the Caribbean. Wang last Friday chaired the third Ministers' Meeting of the Forum of ...
Pentagon Spokesman Struggles to Explain Claim That China is Planning to Build a Military Base in Equatorial Guinea
Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby (photo) struggled to answer reporters' questions on Monday about the allegations published in a Wall Street Journal article that China is planning to build a military base on Africa's Atlantic coast, most likely in Equatorial Guinea. Reporters at ...
China’s New Ambassador to Tanzania Signs on to Twitter
China's new ambassador to Tanzania, Cheng Mingjian, is the latest Chinese envoy to open a Twitter account. There are now 51 Chinese diplomats in Africa that use the platform. Click here for a complete list ...
African Coal Exporters Benefitting From China’s Ongoing Electricity Crisis
China is scouring the globe for new sources of coal in an effort to stem the blackouts that have afflicted millions of residents and businesses in at least nine provinces over the past several weeks. While the ongoing crisis is now threatening China's post-pandemic ...
Even After China Bailed on Its Sengwa Coal Plant in Zimbabwe, RioZim Seems Unusually Confident It’ll Find Other Backers
Many presumed that the $3 billion Sengwa coal-fired power plant project in Zimbabwe was doomed after the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China withdrew its support earlier this year as the project's largest financier. Not so, according to plant's owner RioZim that said in its half-year trading ...
Chinese Community in the DR Congo’s Mining Belt Report More Robberies and Break-In Attempts
Chinese residents and businesses in the southern Congolese mining city of Kolwezi report an increase in armed robberies and attempted break-ins. It's not clear from the accounts on the Lualaba Chinese Chamber of Commerce WeChat channel if the assailants ...
While the EU & U.S. Talk About Competing With China to Build Infrastructure in the Global South, Japan’s Experience in Vietnam Should Give Them Pause
Over the past month, the United States and Europe have doubled down on their commitment to challenging China's Belt and Road Initiative by launching new initiatives to build infrastructure in developing countries. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week
Africa Accounts For Just 1.7% of China’s Total Global Investment Stock, Says MOFCOM
Even amid the pandemic, Chinese investment overseas last year increased by 12.3% to $153.71 billion, according to a new report published last week by the Ministry of Commerce, National Bureau of Statistics, and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. 2.8% of ...
Q&A: How Illegal Chinese Logging Fuels the Islamic Insurgency in Mozambique
This Spring’s crackdown on illegal mining activities in Ghana, including by some Chinese nationals, and the recent high-profile incidents of illicit mining by Chinese companies in the eastern DR Congo have put a spotlight on the issue of unregulated Chinese resource extraction in other ...
China Denounces Guinea Coup and Calls For the Immediate Release of Alpha Condé
The Chinese government issued a short but pointed condemnation of this weekend's coup in Guinea that deposed President Alpha Condé. "China opposes coup attempts to seize power," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin (photo) at the regular press ...
Guinea Coup Leader Calls For Mines to Continue Operating, Chalco and Other Chinese Mining Firms Report No Disruptions
London metal traders will be keeping a close eye on the price of aluminum today after it moved higher on Monday following this weekend's coup in Guinea, one of the world's largest producers of bauxite -- a key aluminum ingredient. Soon ...
Why What Happens in Guinea Matters to China
Guinea may be small and far away, but what happens there is critically important to metals manufacturers in China who depend on key ingredients from this West African country to produce huge quantities of aluminum and, eventually, steel. BAUXITE: China relies ...
You Knew This Was Going to Happen, Right?
It took less than 24 hours for the coup in Guinea to get sucked into the vortex that is the U.S.-China propaganda duel. China's foremost provocateur (aka "China's greatest internet troll"), Hu Xijin, the editor in chief of the nationalist tabloid newspaper Global ...
Don’t Worry About the Debt, Assures Kenya’s Treasury Minister as Millions Flow Back to China
Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary in the Treasury, Ukur Yatani defended the government’s recent borrowing spree and urged citizens not to worry about debt since the government has a repayment plan. “If you want fast development you have to borrow. It would take us ...
Chinese Vaccine Shipments to Africa Lag Far Behind Asia and Latin America
China shipped just 500,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines last week, according to the latest data from the Bridge Beijing Vaccine Tracker Report, highlighting how the continent is falling behind other regions like Latin America and Asia in terms of vaccine shipments. ...
People’s Daily Launches Kiswahili Language Website
The People's Daily, China's largest and arguably most important state-run media outlet, launched three new online sites last week including one in Kiswahili, a language spoken widely throughout East Africa. The new site complements an increasingly prominent Chinese media presence in ...
Why Is the Kenyan Government Determined to Hide Its Chinese Loan Contracts?
A growing number of Kenyans are becoming increasingly incensed with Attorney General (AG) Kihara Kariuki for his determination to challenge activists’ demands in court for disclosure of the $3.2 billion Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) contract with China. The move didn’t go down well with ...
Gauging the Effectiveness of Chinese Soft Power in Africa
It is very difficult, if not impossible, right now to accurately public opinion perceptions of China in a region as large and diverse as Africa. There are strong indications that point in opposite directions. African leaders one after another shower China ...
Report: Nigerian Government In Contact With Chinese Cyber Authorities Over How to Build New Internet Firewall
Less than 24 hours after the Nigerian government announced that it would impose a ban on Twitter, officials in President Muhammadu Buhari's office reportedly made contact with the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) to discuss how to implement a Chinese-style firewall in Nigeria, according to ...
AU Official: Chinese Construction of New Africa CDC HQ Moving “Very Smoothly With Full Force”
Chinese construction of the African Union's new Center for Disease Control headquarters in Addis Ababa is proceeding "very smoothly," according to Fantahun Hailemichael, coordinator of the Africa CDC headquarters project at the AU, in a report published by China's state-run news agency Xinhua.
China Restarts PPE Donations in Africa While Vaccine Sales/Donations Trickle Along
There's been a noticeable increase in recent weeks in the frequency of Chinese donations of masks, protective gowns, and other medical supplies to various African stakeholders. On Friday, the Chinese embassy handed over a donation of 50,000 masks to the University of Zambia in ...
Chinese Propaganda Uses Corporate-Style Content Marketing Tactics to Promote Its Vaccines in South African Media
Some unknown Chinese entity in South Africa, most likely the embassy in Pretoria, is using paid content to promote Chinese vaccines in local media. Beyond the fact that this is obviously propaganda, it's not clear from the article who the author is or who actually paid for
In What Could Be Bad News From the DR Congo, the Cobalt-Free EV Battery May Happen Much Sooner Than We Thought
The world's leading automakers are making much faster progress than anticipated in moving away from electric vehicle batteries that contain cobalt. VW, Tesla, and the Chinese EV giant BYD (the world's second-largest EV maker) have all either developed new cobalt-free batteries or are in late-stage development.
Nigeria’s Twitter Ban is a Big Win For China
Chinese officials are no doubt celebrating Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's decision late last week to ban Twitter. The move marked the most important endorsement in Africa to date of Beijing's long-held view on "internet sovereignty." The Chinese have never accepted the ...
The Winding Road of the COVID Crisis
One of the pandemic’s many challenges is how it outflanks our attempts to impose narratives on it. Humans are storytelling creatures – we use narrative to make sense of chaos and to prioritize threats. Each new phase of the pandemic scrambles the stories we used to make ...
Why the New China-Iran Agreement Isn’t a Big Deal
Depending on who you speak with, the 25-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) agreement between China and Iran either marks the emergence of a new "axis of evil" that's going to overturn the balance of power in the Middle East or it's ...
How China Lends: A Landmark Report on Chinese Loan Contracts
A groundbreaking new analysis by researchers in the United States and Germany provides an unprecedented look inside the contracts that China uses to lend billions of dollars to developing countries around the world. The new ...
Egypt Poised to Become First Country in Africa to Manufacture Chinese COVID-19 Vaccines, Says Health Minister
Egypt will soon become the first country in Africa to locally manufacture a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, according to Health Minister Hala Zayed (photo). The minister informed the Cabinet yesterday that a deal between Egyptian state-owned pharmaceutical company VASCERA and Sinovac has ...
E-Commerce Giant JD.com Is the Latest Chinese Tech Company to Expand in the Middle East
China's second-largest e-commerce company, JD.com, is looking to high-end fashion consumers in the Persian Gulf as part of a new expansion in the Middle East. JD signed a partnership agreement with Namshi (photo), the fashion and lifestyle platform owned by Dubai’s ...
Worsening Security Conditions in Mozambique Threaten Huge US EXIM Bank Pipeline Deal Meant to Stymie China
The U.S. Export-Import Bank disregarded warnings about the worsening security situation in Mozambique and went ahead with a risky $4.7 billion loan for a gas pipeline last year that is now in serious trouble. The bank became the largest creditor on ...
Wang Yi’s Busy Day in Kinshasa
On the second stop of his weeklong Africa tour, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spent a very busy day on Wednesday in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he met with President Félix Tshisekedi and Foreign Minister Marie Tumba Nzeza. ...
Congolese Reflect on the Stark Contrast Between the Violence in Washington and Wang Yi’s Visit to Kinshasa
Wednesday was a day of sharp contrasts for Congolese looking at the United States and China from afar. While pro-Trump extremists stormed the U.S. Capitol, China's Foreign Minister was in Kinshasa signing deals and relieving old debts. The stark contrast in ...
The ECFR’s Theodore Murphy Proposes a Radical Idea For How Europe Can Catch Up to China’s C19 Vaccine Outreach in Africa
It's now plainly evident that wealthy countries are hoarding COVID-19 vaccines for their own populations at the expense of millions of people in poor, developing countries will have been pushed to the back of the line. It's also apparent that the ...
African Businesses in China: Meet Ghanaian Tech Entrepreneur Charles Cyril Nettey
Shanghai-based China-Africa watcher Heather Li published the second installment in her new video series that profiles young African entrepreneurs in China. In this episode, she introduces us to Charles Cyril Nettey from Ghana who founded the Africa Diaspora Innovation Group and runs an e-commerce start-up. ...
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 ...
Wang Yi’s Busy Day in Kinshasa
On the second stop of his weeklong Africa tour, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spent a very busy day on Wednesday in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he met with President Félix Tshisekedi and Foreign Minister Marie Tumba Nzeza. ...
Congolese Reflect on the Stark Contrast Between the Violence in Washington and Wang Yi’s Visit to Kinshasa
Wednesday was a day of sharp contrasts for Congolese looking at the United States and China from afar. While pro-Trump extremists stormed the U.S. Capitol, China's Foreign Minister was in Kinshasa signing deals and relieving old debts. The stark contrast in ...
The ECFR’s Theodore Murphy Proposes a Radical Idea For How Europe Can Catch Up to China’s C19 Vaccine Outreach in Africa
It's now plainly evident that wealthy countries are hoarding COVID-19 vaccines for their own populations at the expense of millions of people in poor, developing countries will have been pushed to the back of the line. It's also apparent that the ...
African Businesses in China: Meet Ghanaian Tech Entrepreneur Charles Cyril Nettey
Shanghai-based China-Africa watcher Heather Li published the second installment in her new video series that profiles young African entrepreneurs in China. In this episode, she introduces us to Charles Cyril Nettey from Ghana who founded the Africa Diaspora Innovation Group and runs an e-commerce start-up. ...