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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Q&A: Infographic Shows How COVID-19 Made it to Africa
A volunteer group of young professionals and graduate students from around the world recently published a compelling new infographic that uses publicly available datasets to visualize how COVID-19 made its way to Africa. What's interesting here is that despite the widespread concern in many African countries that ...
The Historical Irony That Brits Would be Calling on China to Pay Reparations Over COVID-19
Lagos-based international affairs analyst and CAP columnist Ovigwe Egegu noted the historical irony today about British calls for China to pay reparations for the COVID-19 outbreak. ...
Huawei Expands Teleconference Equipment Donations to West Africa
The Chinese technology giant Huawei expanded its equipment donation program from East Africa, where it provided the health ministries in Kenya and Uganda with thermal image scanners and video conferencing systems, to West Africa. The company donated a pair of fully-equipped video conferencing systems to the Ghanaian ...
President Kenyatta Joins Chorus of African Leaders Calling for Emergency Debt Relief
The Kenya State House public a four-part Twitter thread that renewed calls on behalf of African leaders for emergency debt relief to handle the burgeoning economic and public health crisis brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak. President Uhuru Kenyatta met with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa ...
Nigerian Public Health Authorities Struggle to Dispel Rumors That Donated Chinese Test Kits are Infected with COVID-19
Nigeria's Center for Disease Control is the latest government agency to rebut false allegations that the test kits recently donated by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma came infected with COVID-19. Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, labeled the ...
China Turns to Video Conferencing to Provide COVID-19 Training and Assistance for Doctors in Mozambique
Chinese medical experts from the West China Hospital of Sichuan University recently convened a two-hour training session via teleconference with their counterparts from Maputo Central Hospital in Mozambique. The seminar, that reportedly came at the request of the Mozambican government, focused on the Chinese doctors' experience in ...
China Sends Medical Teams to Africa as Part of New, Stepped-up Aid Push
China is boosting its COVID-19 aid efforts in Africa by sending medical teams to various countries and also connecting local health providers across the continent with infectious disease experts back in China. The deployment of medical personnel to countries like Algeria and, soon, Nigeria, is part of ...
The Future of Chinese Rail Financing in Africa
China famously lent billions of dollars to countries across Africa to build expensive, new railways. Nigeria, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya all used loans from Beijing to build new lines using a standard gauge (SGR) that will one day ...
China Says “Mission Accomplished” in COVID-19 Fight and Wants African Countries to Follow its Example
The Chinese propaganda machine in Africa is cranked all the way up. Newspapers, radio, TV, Twitter, Facebook, you name it, the Chinese are there with a big bold message: "WE DEFEATED COVID-19! WE'RE HELPING AFRICA! NOW SUCK IT AMERICA!" OK, that's somewhat interpretive, but you get the ...
Chinese Pay-TV Operator StarTimes’ New App Will Help You Determine if You’re Infected With COVID-19
Chinese-owned African pay-TV giant StarTimes launched a new service on its StarTimes ON platform that is intended to help users determine if they are infected with COVID-19. Think of this as a sort of pre-diagnosis. ...
David Ndii: “Coronavirus Will be the Final Nail in the Coffin of “Infrastructure-led Growth”
Economist David Ndii, one of Kenya's leading political economy thinkers, a popular columnist and a longtime critic of the government's policy of borrowing heavily from China to build infrastructure, conducted a fascinating hour-long interview with Kenyan philosopher Joseph Kabuthi ...
China Adds Paid Media to its Already Formidable Propaganda Arsenal in Africa
China added yet another channel to its propaganda media distribution network in Africa with paid editorial content in South Africa's leading financial newspaper Business Day. While paid Chinese editorial inserts are nothing new around the world (China Daily famously pays the New York Times, ...