Day: February 17, 2021
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Beijing and Taipei: The Latin American Geopolitical Connection
By Dr. Alvaro Mendez Some observers insist that the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) presence in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is not geopolitically motivated. I acknowledge that Chinese foreign policy may be driven currently mostly by economic, diplomatic, and ...
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WEEK IN REVIEW: Kenya’s Monetary System Struggling Under the Weight of Chinese Debt Servicing Obligations
The demands of servicing debts, largely to China, are weighing heavily on Kenya's monetary system. The shilling dropped again in Monday trading and the central bank reported that foreign exchange reserves have plunged by $899 million over the last three months. Analysts say beyond the hundreds of millions ...
Chinese Involvement in the “Congo Hold-Up” Corruption Scandal
19 media outlets together with five NGOs in the U.S. and Europe pored through 3.5 million leaked documents from a Gabonese bank to produce Congo Hold-Up, a landmark report that detailed breathtaking corruption in the DR Congo during ...
China Reaffirms Commitment to Redistribute Its Share of the IMF’s New Special Drawing Rights
China's top diplomat for sub-Saharan Africa, Wu Peng, tweeted on Tuesday that Beijing remains committed to redistributing its share of the International Monetary Fund's recent issuance of $650 billion in new so-called "Special Drawing Rights" (effectively the currency of ...
Blinken Arrives in Kenya, Kicks Off Week-Long Africa Tour
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the Kenyan capital on Tuesday to begin a three-nation, five-day Africa tour that will also take him to Nigeria and Senegal. While the worsening security situation in Ethiopia will top the ...
Wang Yi, China's Foreign Minister and S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs of India
In the space of 24 hours, between Sunday and Monday, the foreign ministers from both China and India laid out their respective governments’ positions on the escalating war in the Middle East. In Beijing, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, was unsparing in his criticism of ...
Our COVID Conundrum
We face a massive conundrum: while more and more global problems are coming our way, almost all our problem-solving power remains ensnared by the apparatus of the nation state. States are inherently insular, and self-obsessed. The mythos of an imagined community, ...
Africa’s Most Indebted Countries Caught in a Vice Between Creditors and Credit Ratings Agencies
Chad, Zambia, and Ethiopia are among a growing number of African countries seeking debt relief under the G20's common framework (CF) and while that might provide some temporary relief, one of the world's largest credit ratings agencies warned on Tuesday that it's going to come at a ...
Kenya to Finally Extend the SGR to the Ugandan Border… Without Any Chinese Financing
Kenya's parliament approved funds to extend the Standard Gauge Railway from Naivasha in the Rift Valley all the way to Malaba on the border with Uganda. Several years ago, this extension was known as "SGR Phase 3." President Uhuru Kenyatta's requests for the financing of this phase ...
Zimbabwe to Kick Off Vaccination Drive Using Newly-Arrived Chinese Jabs
The Zimbabwe government will begin a national COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Thursday using the first batch of Chinese-made Sinopharm jabs that arrived in Harare on Monday. Health workers, police, and military personnel will be first to receive injections. ...
Landry Signé: The U.S. Can Catch Up to China in Africa…But It Has to Move Fast
A robust discussion is underway in Washington, D.C.'s think tank and policymaking circles over what the Biden administration's future Africa policy should look like. Although there's been no formal announcement of any new initiative, there does seem to be an emerging consensus that the disproportionate focus on ...
Counterpoint: Why Some in Africa Remain Frustrated With the U.S. and Choose to Embrace China Instead
While U.S. stakeholders are working to figure out what they want to do in Africa, they would be advised to listen carefully to some of the widely-held frustrations about America's less-than-supportive attitudes towards the continent over the years, which bubbled to the surface during the Trump administration. ...
UAE PM Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Tweets in Chinese to Congratulate Xi Jinping on Mars Mission
It's rare for the head of a foreign state to tweet in Chinese, but today the UAE's Sheikh Mohammed congratulated China, and President Xi Jinping specifically, on the Tianwen-1 spacecraft joining the Emirates' own Hope Probe in its orbit around Mars. ...
The Future of Chinese-Financed Infrastructure in Kenya
The China Road and Bridge Corporation is building a massive new half-a-billion dollar expressway right through the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. But this project is very different than previous Chinese-financed infrastructure initiatives in Kenya, like the ailing Standard ...