Analysis
Diverse voices, unique insights on key issues shaping China’s engagement throughout the Global South.
analysis
Kenyatta Urges African, Caribbean Leaders to “Wake Up” on COVID and Debt Issues
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta used his opening address at a virtual summit of African and Caribbean leaders on Wednesday to issue an urgent plea to fellow leaders that they have to "wake up" to the challenges presented by the pandemic and the worsening debt crisis ...
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 ...
China’s Improbable Resource Bonanza in Afghanistan
By Lukas Fiala and Hugo Jones, China Foresight LSE IDEAS Over the past week, the crisis in Afghanistan continued to push all else to the periphery. China and Russia abstained from a United Nations Security Council resolution requiring the Taliban ...
Why the Myanmar-China New Passage is Potentially a Very Big Deal For Africa
China successfully completed its first test run of an important sea-road-rail trade route that connects the Port of Yangon in Myanmar to the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu in southern China. A shipment arrived from Singapore at the capital ...
Africa-China Nerds, Get Ready!
Today was a landmark day for the China-Africa Project. We got to interview Wu Peng, the Director-General of the Department of African Affairs at the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Director-General Wu is China’s most senior official focusing on Africa, and it was a rare privilege to speak with ...
Q&A: Why Now? The Domestic Politics Driving the DRC’s Review of Chinese Mining Contracts
Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi is fulfilling the promise he made last May to investigate foreign mining contracts to ensure they are fair and equitable. While the President did not single out the Chinese specifically, they're no doubt going to be disproportionately impacted given their outsized role in ...
China’s Tech Lead in Africa Highlights B3W’s Biggest Problem
When Joe Biden took over from Donald Trump, many predicted that Trump’s foreign policy would soon follow him out the door. A few months down the line, it’s become clear that they agreed more frequently than expected even if their styles are very different. One example is ...
Hichilema May Find Out Getting Elected Was the Easy Part, Fixing Zambia’s Debt-Ridden Economy Will Be a Lot Harder
A peaceful transfer of power took place in Lusaka on Tuesday when opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema (photo) became Zambia's seventh president in the post-colonial era. President Hichilema made clear right from the start that the economy, specifically reducing the country's heavy debt load, will be ...
Q&A: Why Banning Chinese Fish Imports Is Not a Good Idea in Kenya
Soon after reports emerged that Kenya’s Agriculture Committee in parliament proposed legislation that would restrict Chinese fish imports into the country, Safina Musa, a fisheries scientist at the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, called for a reconsideration of the plan in a column she ...
The China-Mediterranean Observer: Greece Settles Port Dispute With China But Concerns Linger
Although many countries, such as Iraq, Algeria, and Syria, continue to underline the positive outcomes of their relations with China, the search through the media outlets of the wider Mediterranean also showed that there are raising concerns over a rising Chinese political presence in the MENA region, ...
Global Leadership Stories
The United States’s hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan revealed the messy space where the discourse about international leadership meets leadership on the ground. Even as many are criticizing the role that various Western fantasies of nation-building/democratization/containment/management have played in the debacle, it’s still unclear what a Western reckoning ...
Tshisekedi Keeps Promise to Re-Negotiate Foreign Mining Contracts, Launches Investigation Into China Moly
DR Congo President Félix Tshisekedi is following through with his promise to review all foreign mining contracts, mostly with Chinese companies, to evaluate whether the deals that were struck during his predecessor's tenure are equitable.