Author: Eric Olander
Eric Olander is the co-founder of the China Global South Project, an independent, non-partisan media initiative dedicated to exploring every facet of China’s engagement in Africa. Eric is a fluent Mandarin-speaker and a longtime China-watcher with more than 25 years of journalism experience at many of the world’s leading media companies, including CNN, the BBC, and FRANCE24, among others. He received his undergraduate degree in East African History from the University of California at Berkeley and holds a master’s degree in Chinese Public Affairs from the University of Hong Kong.
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Kenya to Take Control of Some SGR Responsibilities Ahead of Schedule in an Effort to Reduce Debt Burden
Kenya Railways (KR) and Afristar, a subsidiary of the state-owned China Road and Bridge Corporation, have agreed to transfer some of the responsibilities of operating the embattled Standard Gauge Railway years ahead of schedule as part of an effort to reduce the financial burden on ...
How Much Does Kenya Owe China to Build and Operate the Various SGR Lines?
It's not clear at this time if the decision to expedite the handover of some SGR responsibilities from Afristar to Kenya Railways is part of the ongoing debt restructuring talks that are purportedly underway between China and Kenya. Until now, there's ...
CARI: Chinese Lenders Have Provided $7.6 Billion in Debt Relief Since Last Year, Mostly to Africa
Angola is the primary beneficiary of Chinese debt restructuring activities over the past year, accounting for $6.2 billion out of $7.6 billion of total relief provided by Beijing to developing countries in 2020-2021, according to official data compiled by the China-Africa Research Initiative at ...
China Takes a Lot More Risks in Loans to African Countries Than Other International Creditors
New research finds that China has a much higher risk tolerance in its overseas lending practices, particularly to African countries, compared to other major creditors from the U.S., Europe, and Japan. "There is a negative relationship between credit risk and Chinese development finance—a disproportionate share of Chinese ...
Zambia Says It’s Investigating the Chinese “Trolley Man” After Racist Video Goes Viral
Zambian Labor Secretary Chanda Kaziya said an investigation is underway of the Chinese national who was recorded on video being pulled on a trolley by a local employee. He was immediately forced to get off the cart after a group of young men intervened and ordered him down, ...
Tibor Nagy Reflects on U.S.-China Competition in Africa
The Chinese "are kicking our tails everywhere" warned Tibor Nagy in a recent column published in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal newspaper in Texas. The former top U.S. diplomat for Africa called on the new Biden administration to do more to confront ...
Wang Yi Press Conference Provides Insights Into China’s Foreign Policy Agenda in the Year Ahead
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi gave a wide-ranging press conference in Beijing yesterday on the sidelines of the ongoing National People's Congress, the annual rubber-stamp parliamentary event, that provided some of the clearest indications to date as to how Chinese foreign policy is going to ...
Hundreds of Thousands of Chinese Nationals in Africa Will Receive COVID-19 Vaccines
China will launch a new program to provide millions of COVID-19 vaccines to its nationals in Africa and elsewhere overseas, according to Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Wang added that Chinese expatriates would be vaccinated either by a Chinese-made jab or one from another country, but either way, ...
Online Tool: COVID-19 Chinese Vaccine Distribution Tracker
The team at the privately-run Beijing-based development consultancy Bridge Beijing launched a new interactive online tool to track global sales and donations of Chinese COVID-19 vaccines. Information is updated weekly. Check out the new COVID-19 vaccine tracker ...
China’s #2 at the Embassy in Zimbabwe Gets in a Twitter Feud Over Vaccines With Opposition Youth Leader and Media
The outspoken Minister Counsellor (similar to the role of Chargé d'Affaires at other embassies) at the Chinese embassy in Zimbabwe, Zhao Baogang, got into a high-profile Twitter smackdown with a youth leader from the opposition MDC Alliance over the efficacy of Chinese-made vaccines.
The Economist Intelligence Unit Mapped Out Chinese Trade and Investment in Africa
The London-based Forecast Director for the Economist Intelligence Unit, Agathe Demarai, has been posting quite a bit lately on China-Africa issues, albeit with varying degrees of accuracy (her assertion that Africa as a continent had a Chinese debt problem is not correct, for example) ...
South African Retailers Under Pressure to Ensure Supply Chains Free of Xinjiang Cotton
South Africa's major retailers are under scrutiny from civil society groups to ensure their supply chains do not contain any apparel products that use cotton from China's Xinjiang autonomous region. There are well-documented concerns that Uyghur minority populations are forced to pick cotton by hand.