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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How the U.S. is Catching Up With China in the PR Battle Over COVID-19 Relief in Africa
Although U.S. stakeholders have given a lot more money to COVID-19 relief in Africa than those from China, the Chinese have done much better on the PR side. But Judd Devermont, Director of the Africa Program at the ...
165 Kenyan Evacuees Return Home From China
165 Kenyans stranded in China arrived in the early hours Sunday morning at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Kenyan ambassador to China, Sarah Serem, helped to coordinate the charter flight from Guangzhou back to Nairobi and was at the airport in southern ...
Moody’s Warns That Kenya’s High Borrowing Costs Could Prompt a Downgrade
The global credit rating agency Moody's is becoming increasingly concerned that Kenya will not be able to keep up with the payments on its comparatively expensive loan portfolio. Moody's adjusted Kenya's rating from B2 stable to B2 ...
While There’s an Emerging Consensus on Chinese and Other Bilateral/Multilateral African Debt Relief, Dealing With Private Creditors is Going to be a Lot More Difficult
So much of the current discussion surrounding African debt relief focuses on the role of China and the traditional multilateral lenders like the World Bank and the IMF. While there's no doubt these entities play an important role in this issue, the fact that African governments have ...
China’s Ambassador to Nigeria Defends Treatment of Africans in Guangzhou
China's ambassador to Nigeria, Zhou Pingjiang, defended his government's treatment of Africans in Guangzhou in an interview published Wednesday with the Nigerian newspaper Punch. Ambassador Zhou stuck closely to the existing talking points on China's handling of the reported maltreatment of ...
CGTN Responds to Viral Video of African Woman Unable to Enter a Guangzhou Hospital With a Story on How Another African Woman Successfully Gave Birth in a GZ Hospital
CGTN Africa wants everyone to know that African women can deliver babies in Guangzhou. It's a rather odd story for an international news channel to run but this is clearly a piece of propaganda intended to offset a recent viral video that enraged huge numbers of people. ...
Chinese Companies Went on a Global Buying Spree in Q1 But Just Not in Africa
The London-based analytics firm GlobalData released a new report this week that highlights how Chinese companies are looking to buy distressed assets around the world as prices slump due to the deteriorating global economy. The Chinese appear eager to ...
Africa’s Cost of Borrowing is Orders of Magnitude Higher Than the Rest of the World
To understand why African finance leaders are so determined to avoid a default on their Eurobond debt all you have to do is look at the current interest rates that many of the continent's largest economies are paying for their government bonds.
Why so Many Chinese & Africans See What Happened in Guangzhou in Starkly Different Ways
Perceptions over what led to the crisis in Guangzhou back in early April remain starkly divided among Chinese and African stakeholders. Chinese officials vehemently deny that Africans were specifically targeted for additional health COVID-19 health screenings (“epidemic prevention” in the Chinese ...
Uganda President Museveni Subtly Blames “Asia” For COVID-19 and Now Wants All African Debt Cancelled in Return
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni said in a speech this week that because the COVID-19 outbreak is not the fault of his or any African country that the continent's international creditors should in turn help by canceling all of its debts. “The ...
Former U.S. President Barack Obama’s Foundation Sought Out Jack Ma to Work Together on Projects in Africa
Oxford University Senior Research Associate, Folashadé Soulé, noted yesterday that although the U.S. and Chinese governments are currently at odds (that's putting it mildly), trilateral cooperation is nonetheless taking place in Africa between the foundations of two of these countries' most prominent figures. ...
The Plight of Africans in Guangzhou is Now a Topic on Breakfast Radio in Cape Town
To get a sense of just how widespread the discussion of the alleged discrimination against Africans in China has become in many parts of Africa, listen to the discussion between CAP's own Cobus van Staden (whose day job is Senior China-Africa Researcher at ...