Category: Academy

A number of prominent African ambassadors to China joined scholars, business leaders, and think tank analysts this week for a wide-ranging online discussion on how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting ties between the two regions. The event, organized by the Beijing-based ...

The Chinese definition of journalism is significantly different than that in most of Africa and for much of the rest of the world. Most importantly, the news media in China is tightly controlled by the communist party and, as such, is ...

David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador and current adjunct professor at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. published the syllabus for his fall semester graduate-level course on China-Africa relations that will, not surprisingly, take place online due to COVID-19. ...

A new survey published by Arab Barometer, a Princeton University-affiliated non-partisan quantitative research institute, reveals increasingly favorable public perceptions of China in many countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. "In nine of 12 countries surveyed as part of the ...

Zayed University Assistant Professor Johnathan Fulton is seemingly on a one-man mission to try and get everyone to calm down about news of a huge $400 billion, 25-year China-Iran oil-for-infrastructure deal. The deal has sounded alarms in places like Washington, D.C. ...

The German think tank the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) and the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies co-hosted a webinar last week that is now available online about China's growing security role in Africa.  The event included a presentation by 

The European think tank network EuroMeSCo (the Euro-Mediterranean Study Commission) published one of the year's most extensive analyses of China's growing influence throughout the Middle East and North African regions with extensions into the Persian Gulf. The 109-page report ...

Chinese scholars are closely monitoring the deteriorating situation in Libya with an eye on whether instability there will spread to other countries in North Africa, particularly Algeria and Sudan. Sun Xia from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences wondered whether the twin forces of declining oil prices ...

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 ...

There's a huge disconnect between the debt relief discussion currently taking place on many webinars hosted by academics and analysts, and the reality of what's actually happening. We're now five months into this crisis and one thing is clear: bondholders, pension ...

The Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa at the London School of Economics recently convened a discussion on the public policy implications surrounding COVID-19 and debt relief in Africa. Dr. Shirley Yu from LSE and the Harvard Kennedy School provided a robust articulation of the Chinese position on ...

China's foreign aid programs are still relatively new and poorly understood. Until the launch of China's new aid agency in 2018, aid initiatives, most of which went to Africa, were handled by the secretive Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM). Now, two years ...