Day: November 29, 2021

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France Watches FOCAC 8 With Skepticism

Coverage of this week's FOCAC 8 in the French media is considerably higher than in previous years, most likely because it's taking place in Senegal -- a francophone country that Paris has long viewed as in its traditional sphere of influence. ...

On the Eve of FOCAC, China Publishes White Paper That Details Ties With Africa

The Chinese government laid out an ambitious blueprint for its ties with Africa detailed in a 36-page white paper published by the State Council (China's equivalent to the cabinet in the U.S.) on Friday, just two days before the opening of the eighth FOCAC ...

Gyude Moore Reflects on China’s New White Paper and Weighs How African Stakeholders Should Respond

The release of the White Paper on Friday provoked a lively discussion online among scholars and analysts. W. Gyude Moore, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C., and a prominent Africa-China observer weighed in with a lengthy, nine-part Twitter thread:

China’s Critics Are Piling On Over the Entebbe Airport Story, Even the Originator of the “China Debt Trap” Meme

The online flurry over the Entebbe Airport story is drawing out commentators and critics from all sides of the debate, including the New Delhi-based author and analyst Brahma Chellaney, the man who first coined the phrase "debt-trap diplomacy."  ...

The U.S. State Department Has All But Abandoned the Chinese “Debt Trap” Line, But Pentagon Officials Haven’t

One of the many differences between the Biden State Department and that of his predecessor Donald Trump is that today's U.S. diplomats rarely make any public reference to Chinese "debt traps," very common taking point just a couple of years ago. Inside the State Department, a number ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

Plugging into African Agency

After several years of declining funding, the African end of the Belt and Road Initiative seems to be roaring back. The newest Griffith University/Green Development Finance Center data on the Belt and Road Initiative shows that engagement with Africa jumped by 395%, while a few big projects boosted engagement in Nigeria alone more than twelvefold.

These shifts indicate a window of opportunity for African electrification. 60% of Africans still lack ...

Millions of Leaked Bank Transactions Reveal Massive Corruption by the DR Congo’s Former President Kabila, Some Linked to Chinese Entities

A pair of blockbuster investigations have been published this month by separate organizations in France and the United States that detail how millions of dollars were illicitly siphoned out of the country by the former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila and his allies, including millions from Chinese ...

Former U.S. Diplomat Peter Pham Draws China’s Ambassador to the DRC Into a Twitter Feud

Long time Twitter rivals J. Peter Pham, a U.S. diplomat during the Trump administration and a vocal critic of China in Africa, and China's ambassador to the DR Congo, Zhu Jing, squabbled again over the weekend after Pham tagged the ambassador personally in a critical post related ...

Ethiopia’s Civil War Isn’t Slowing Construction of the Chinese-Financed and Built Africa CDC HQ

China's Ambassador to the African Union, Liu Yuxi, led a topping-out ceremony on Friday of the new headquarters of the Africa Center for Disease Control in Addis Ababa. The event marked the completion of the first phase of the project, which 

Bad Journalism and a Poor Understanding of International Contractual Law Triggers Uproar in Uganda Over Chinese Loans

Officials from both the Chinese and Ugandan governments took to Twitter over the weekend to furiously denounce a report published late last week in the Daily Monitor newspaper, which erroneously claimed that China will seize the Entebbe International Airport as a result of defaulting on ...

FOCAC is Now Underway in Dakar. Here’s What to Expect

The eighth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation opened on Sunday in the Senegalese capital of Dakar. It was a rather low-key first day where Chinese and African representatives met as part of the Senior Officials Meeting, which effectively plays a similar role as that of an organizing committee, ...

FOCAC 8: Building Africa-China Relations That Are More Profitable for Africa

This column was written by CORA, the Collective for the Renewal of Africa, based in Dakar. CORA brings together over 100 researchers and scientists, writers, and artists from across Africa and the diaspora.  The Africa-China Summit currently taking place in Dakar will close ...