Analysis

U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in the United Kingdom on Wednesday ahead of a three-day G7 summit, where confronting China in various arenas will be among the top issues on the agenda. The President hopes he will be able to rally the ...

Lawyer Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa is adamant that Nigeria's recent crackdown on Twitter is nothing at all like what authoritarian governments in other parts of the world restrict access to social media platforms. “I do not agree," he said in a story that is widely circulating today on ...

This week, the prominent Financial Times commentator Gideon Rachman argued that the upcoming G7 summit in Cornwall could be ‘the west’s last chance to lead.’ He acknowledged that the seven rich democracies that make up the group (the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, Germany, Japan, and Canada) have seen ...

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 ...

This week the Biden administration announced an expansion of a Trump-era ban on U.S. investment in 59 Chinese companies seen as having ties to the Chinese military and surveillance sectors. The announcement is another confirmation of how ex-president Trump’s vision of a U.S.-China rivalry has ...

The battle over so-called "vaccine diplomacy" between the United States and China is beginning to intensify as Washington moves closer to finally shipping surplus jabs to developing countries around the world. Foreign policy leaders from both countries issued veiled critiques of ...

The World Health Organization granted emergency use approval to Sinovac's COVID-19 vaccine, the second Chinese jab to get the global health body's seal of approval. In a statement on Tuesday, the WHO said Sinovac “meets international standards for safety, efficacy, and ...

This week provides numerous examples of China's complex presence in West Africa. Take Ghana for example:  even as Chinese entities are building multiple vocational training centres across the country, Chinese citizens are being rounded up for illegal gold mining and Ghanaian cocoa farmers are grappling with the implications ...

After walking out of the COVID-19 vaccination clinic in Nairobi, with my arm slightly sore after receiving my first free dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, I felt hopeful that this reflected a new stage in Kenya’s COVID-19 response. However, a few weeks on, it has become clear ...

The Chinese-backed African fintech platform OPay is reportedly in talks with investors to raise as much as $400 million at a valuation of more than $1.5 billion, according to a report in The Information. That valuation, by the way, is three times higher than the ...

There's growing unease in Washington that last month's launch of a new Chinese digital yuan threatens the dollar's preeminence as the world's reserve currency. Questions about the new cryptocurrency have come up repeatedly in recent weeks during Congressional testimony, particularly regarding places like Africa, where U.S. anxieties ...

Last week I ran into a friend who’s a media studies scholar. We caught up about our work – she’s busy with a paper about the media representation of face masks. What am I working on? A paper on China’s provision of coal-powered electricity in Africa. Oh, ...