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Chinese-Built Nairobi Expressway to Open to Cars Next Week, But First It Was Runners’ Turn to Use the New Road

Thousands of Kenyans filled the new Chinese-financed and built Nairobi Expressway on Sunday when they ran/walked along the new road as part of the Nairobi City Marathon. President Uhuru Kenyatta was on hand to start the race and told everyone that ...

Huawei Quietly Becomes a Dominant Player in Africa’s Burgeoning Mobile Money Sector

Quietly and largely out-of-sight, Chinese telecom giant Huawei is becoming one of the most important actors in Africa's mobile payment business. Many people don't realize that the popular Kenyan mobile payment service M-Pesa runs on Huawei Mobile that each year processes tens of billions of dollars in transactions ...

Chinese Vaccines Shipments Around the World Plunge 97% Last Month and We Now Know Why

For much of last year, China was seemingly unstoppable in its drive to ship vaccines to developing countries around the world. Hundreds of millions of doses went to Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and then suddenly, beginning last fall, shipments came to a grinding halt. ...

Lockdown “Shout-Out” Videos Featuring Africans Raise Controversy

The ongoing COVID-19 lockdowns in cities like Shanghai are sparking a cottage industry of commissioned viral videos commenting on the crisis. Recently, videos of shirtless African men, dubbed Wolf Warriors, dancing or posing with messages in Mandarin have become trendy. While many Chinese consumers see ...

Flurry of Coverage on China’s Rise in the Global South Reveals Indian Anxieties

Few countries are as anxious about China’s rise than India. However, a recent flurry of coverage shows that in contrast to the United States, India’s focus falls squarely on the Global South. These articles also show how central the Indian press and think tank community have been ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

Revealing Reactions to China’s Festival of Optics

In terms of geopolitical optics, this week was nothing short of a banquet. It served up at least two sets of images that seem to crystallize our historical moment and that will live on in the Wikipedia of history as shorthand for where the world was in 2025.
One is the waves of uncannily synchronized soldiers and a bewildering array of high-tech weaponry gliding down Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue. The ...

Ethiopia’s Ambassador to China Rebuffs Debt Trap Narratives

Ethiopia’s ambassador to China, Teshome Toga Chanaka pushed back against the idea that loans from China are plunging African countries into debt traps. He recently sat down for an interview with Wang Huiyao, the head of the Center for China and Globalization, a prominent foreign policy think ...