Author: Cobus van Staden
Dr. Cobus van Staden is an accomplished scholar, journalist, and think tank analyst with more than 20 years of experience in Africa and Asia. Previously, he was the senior China-Africa researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) in Johannesburg. Cobus completed his Ph.D. in Japanese studies and media studies at the University of Nagoya in Japan in 2008. He focused on comparisons of Chinese and Japanese public diplomacy in Africa during postdoctoral positions at the University of Stellenbosch and the SARCHI Chair on African Diplomacy and Foreign Policy at the University of Johannesburg before joining the Department of Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2013. His academic research focused on media coverage of the China-Africa and Japan-Africa relationships, as well as the use of media in public diplomacy in the Global South.
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Nigeria’s China Moment
The current anti-Chinese sentiment in Nigeria is a fascinating sign of the times, but I'm a it baffled about what it signals. I don't know enough about Nigerian society to be able to unpack it in detail. However, it seems like a symptom that China's narrative of ...
Nigeria’s Conversation About Chinese Debt
The first thing to say about the ongoing controversy about Chinese loans purportedly compromising Nigerian sovereignty is that it's based on a misreading of standard language found in loan contracts. Rather than stating that, in the case of a default, China will have the right to seize ...
The Country, the People, and the Debt
The news last week that South Africa has received a $4.3 billion loan from the IMF to help tide it over the COVID-19 crisis resulted in a revealing moment online. Rather than celebrating this lifeline to an economy that was already weak before the pandemic, ...
Excuse Me. Who Exactly is Mike Pompeo Referring to When He Talks About “The Free World?”
I'm afraid I've devolved into the kind of person who checks Twitter before even putting on my glasses in the morning. On good days it jolts me out of my lockdown torpor at least long enough to make coffee. On bad days it makes me want to ...
New Words = New Lives
One of the weird realities of the current moment is that while we're seeing much more widespread popular energy behind social justice causes, many of these campaigns seem siloed and isolated from each other. For example, over the last few months we've spent much energy tracking the ...
Why Are We Still Talking About Chinese “Debt Traps?”
My own focus on China-Africa relations is filtered through my background in media studies. One effect of this training is that I'm fascinated by the narratives that shape the relationship, how they spread and what they reveal. One of the hardiest ...
A Not-So-Extraordinary Summit
This week's 'Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity against COVID-19' was largely uneventful. The initiatives announced in President Xi Jinping's address were either projects that had already been announced before (China building the Africa CDC, which will now be accelerated) or long-term Chinese standard operating procedure ...
So. Many. Ironies.
Wow. The ironies are popping up so fast they're going fractal. As protests mount in the United States against the systemic and structural racism that has turned institutions like the police into something akin to occupying forces in certain neighborhoods, guess ...
The Geopolitics of COVID-19
The COVID-19 crisis is proving an interesting case study in the impact of different ways of conducting public diplomacy. Any public diplomacy is dependent on two factors: staying on message, and making sure that message doesn't play into negative perceptions about you in the wider world.
Nigeria’s Emerging Role in China-Africa Relations
One of the unexpected outcomes of the COVID-19 crisis is its rapidly escalating impact on the relationship between Nigeria and China. Several African governments have protested the treatment of African migrants in Guangzhou, but Nigeria is emerging as the epicentre of a diplomatic crisis in China-Africa relations. ...
Economics Versus Narrative in the China-Africa Relationship
As the COVID-19 crisis drags on, we're seeing the emergence of two contradictory trends. On the one hand, the crisis has revealed the relative fragility of public diplomacy ties between China and Africa. While high-level government-to-government diplomacy continues, the Guangzhou crisis ...
The Thorny Politics of Gratitude
The COVID-19 crisis is nothing if not instructive. It has functioned like an X-ray, revealing hidden weaknesses in systems across the world. This isn't only true in the narrow sense, relating to health care, insurance, and protective gear manufacturing systems. It's also true in the wider, political ...