Analysis
Diverse voices, unique insights on key issues shaping China’s engagement throughout the Global South.
analysis
African Women Shine in the Chinese Super League
For the second year in a row, the Women's Chinese Super League (WCSL), China's professional soccer league, awarded its top prize to an African player. 20-year old Zambian forward Barbara Banda took home the Golden Boot this week thanks to an impressive 18-goal season with ...
Zambia’s Debt Demand Shows Limits of China’s Checkbook Diplomacy
Zambia’s request for blanket debt-service suspension from creditors edges the country closer to default and highlights the limitations of China’s debt diplomacy. The government has decided to ask all external creditors to agree to debt service suspension on the same terms, ...
The Collectivity Question
Is unrelenting grimness more palatable if it is also instructive? Africa's current debt crisis will soon provide an answer. The continent's slide into debt distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been very revealing of Africa's position in the world. Despite ...
African Debt: At Some Point, the Hole Becomes Just Too Big to Fill
The rapidly deteriorating financial crisis in Lebanon provides a grim preview to other developing countries of what happens when the bottom falls out of an economy. After the government defaulted on its debt last spring, conditions spiraled downwards to the point where
China, Climate Change and COVID-19 Will Force Africa to Re-Think Its Development Strategy
This week, different groups of experts weighed in on how China will handle its many distressed loans to Africa. They seem to agree that the process of renegotiating this debt will be long and messy, and that Chinese actors probably won't seize ...
Q&A: Can Tanzania Resume and Reimagine Agricultural Trade With China in a Post-COVID-19 World?
With the COVID-19 crisis disrupting regional and global trade, the Development Reimagined team spoke with Mbelwa Kairuki, Tanzania's ambassador to China, to get his take on Sino-Tanzania trade and what he and his team are doing to try to respond. DEVELOPMENT ...
Reframing the Chinese Debt Crisis in Africa
Many African civil society stakeholders worry that China is going to take advantage of the worsening economic crisis to seize their countries' strategic assets. It doesn't matter that there aren't actually any precedents for these seizures, in the current era of "alternative facts" if people believe it ...
Q&A: What’s It Like to be Black in China?
After the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests across the United States, Chinese multimedia journalist Daisy Xu wanted to find out more about how her compatriots regard Black people in China. This is an especially poignant issue ...
One Way or Another Someone’s Going to Pay For Africa’s Debts
A new poll of young Arab nationals in North Africa and the Middle East revealed the kind of numbers that give people like Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron nightmares. 87% of the 18-24 years old surveyed expressed concerns about unemployment and ...
Africa’s Strategic Mineral Deposits Now at the Center of an Increasingly Fraught Great Power Competition
Iron ore, tantalum, cobalt, coltan, and a handful of other strategically important minerals and elements are at the center of an increasingly heated battle for the control of global supply chains among the world's largest economies. Leaders in Europe and the ...
StarTimes and DSTV Battle For Audiences in Africa’s Intensely Competitive Pay TV Market
One of the revealing aspects of Africa's pandemic-related downturn is that, while it's causing financial chaos across the continent this doesn't seem to be slowing the outside interest in certain African consumer sectors. Take TV, for example. For a long time, ...
Finding New Ways to Finance African Infrastructure
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta looked like he had a great time in France last week. After all, the weather in Paris this time of year is absolutely lovely and this being his first trip out of the country since the COVID-19 outbreak, he was able to get ...