Author: Cobus van Staden
Our COVID Conundrum
We face a massive conundrum: while more and more global problems are coming our way, almost all our problem-solving power remains ensnared by the apparatus of the nation state. States are inherently insular, and self-obsessed. The mythos of an imagined community, ...
If China’s Vaccine Rollout Is the New Normal, What Was the Old Normal?
It's true, if redundant, to point out that if 2020 was the year of COVID-19, 2021 is shaping up as year of the vaccine. Like every aspect of the pandemic, the vaccine rollout acts like an x-ray, revealing the bones of ...
Inclusion Talk and Its Limits
On Friday, the official White House Twitter account posted a brief video featuring a message from President Joe Biden to the African Union. In the message he expresses support for the AU summit, and solidarity with the peoples of Africa in dealing with crises like ...
Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Washington’s China-Africa Groupthink
This week’s confirmation hearing for Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s to become the next United States ambassador to the United Nations provided a glimpse of how Africa might be dragged into growing tensions between the U.S. and China. Thomas-Greenfield faced hostile questioning about a speech she gave in 2019, ...
What did Xi Jinping Really Say at Davos?
It’s fascinating to read Xi Jinping’s address to the World Economic Forum and then to read the comments about the speech. What U.S. commentators focus on, and what they ignore, reveal much about the challenges posed by China’s rise to established powers like the United States.
The Full Picture: China, Africa, and the Global South
The last year has seen the China-Africa space undergoing massive changes. The impacts of COVID-19, the pandemic-induced debt crisis and rapid shifts in Chinese financing to Africa have shifted some of the core assumptions underlying what we think of as ‘China-Africa relations.’
How Will Biden Shake Up Africa Relations? Let’s Watch
Tomorrow, the whole world’s eyes will be on the inauguration of Joe Biden. Stepping into a moment of unprecedented domestic crisis, he will probably have relatively little bandwidth for Africa. Indications are that the Biden administration plans to steer away from the Trump era’s unilateralism. While ...
Unpacking the Chinese Government’s New Development Vision
This weekend the Chinese government released a new white paper on development. It comes in unassuming guise – it’s basically a MS Word Doc with the workaday title of China’s International Development Cooperation in the New Era. But in its own way it’s eye-popping. If (like ...
China’a Confusing, Contradictory Environmental Agenda
While scrolling today I came across this great piece by the China expert and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, laying out the wider implications of China's much-discussed commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. Rudd points out that ...
What It Was Like to Watch the Insurrection in the U.S. From South Africa
Lordeee…I went to bed early on Wednesday night, only to wake up to a full screen of notifications from the New York Times, and pictures of horned men storming the US Capitol. On the edge of the world in Johannesburg, I’m struck by the ...