Reflections on the legacy of Jiang Zemin, China’s president from 1993 to 2003, who passed away on Wednesday, emphasized how he presided over a decade of explosive economic growth. Fewer have pointed out that he was also a key architect of China’s current relationship with Africa.
After the Mao era, emblematized by Chinese involvement in African anti-colonial struggles, the relationship went dormant as China focused on building economic ties ...
Category: Agriculture
Commodity Exporters in Developing Countries Fret as China’s Worsening COVID Outbreaks, Protests Prompts Sell-Off
Commodity sellers in Africa, the Middle East and the Americas are becoming increasingly anxious over the situation in China, where days of street protests and COVID outbreaks across the country are weighing down the price of their key exports.
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Jiang Zemin Created the Africa-China Relationship As We Know It Today
Kenyan Purple Tea Wows Hunan
The first shipment of 240 kilograms of a rare kind of Kenyan purple tea has arrived in Hunan province. The tea, which is a clear lilac color when brewed, is only the latest African agricultural commodity processed in Changsha, Hunan. The province is setting ...
Kenyan Avocado Exports to China Gather Speed
A 24-ton shipment of Kenyan avocados arrived in China’s Guangzhou harbor this week. It took years for Kenyan producers to clear import protocols, but the shipment shows that China is finally moving forward with its pledge to increase agricultural imports from Africa via so-called ...
Netting Investment Flows? Why Aquaculture Has Been Slow to Catch on in Chinese Overseas Investment
By Rebecca Ray China’s demand for imported seafood is booming, projected to double by 2030. Domestically, consumer demand is primarily satisfied by aquaculture, the raising of aquatic plants and animals for food, but the sector has stagnated as the Chinese government tightened environmental regulations. Its deep-water ...
First Avocados, Now Coffee Beans… Kenya’s Expanding Agricultural Exports to China
A first batch of 2.04 tons of raw Kenyan coffee beans arrived in the southern Chinese city of Changsha this week, marking the opening of yet another new market for Kenyan agricultural exports in China. The shipment arrived on Friday on ...
Hunan’s Growing Clout in African Agricultural Trade Now Extends to Honey
The Chinese province of Hunan this week ran online courses in beekeeping and honey processing for African farmers. Hunan is quickly emerging as the world’s most innovative hub for African agricultural trade, with a cocoa trading center, a currency clearing hub and numerous trade deals with different ...
Finally! Kenyan Avocados Make It to China
The first batch of Kenyan avocados will soon appear on store shelves in Shanghai. This follows last week's arrival of the fruit after more than three years of prolonged, often difficult negotiations. All of the negotiations, testing, and ...
Star Power Boosts Rwandan Coffee in Online Sales Session
The famous Chinese actress Liu Tao recently hosted a live sale of Rwandan coffee on Alibaba’s e-commerce website Taobao. She sold 500kg of coffee beans in 5 minutes. It usually takes two to three months to sell that much on e-commerce sites. ...
“Food Diplomacy” is the New “Vaccine Diplomacy” in Africa
If 2021 was the year of so-called "vaccine diplomacy" in Africa where the world's major powers stingily distributed COVID-19 vaccines to low-income countries while preaching to their geopolitical rivals, 2022 is going to be the year of "food diplomacy." ...
Nigerian Garment Union Calls Out Local Officials in Fight Against Cheap Chinese Imports
Nigeria’s national union of textile workers is complaining about the complicity of customs officials in the flooding of the local market by Chinese textiles. While cheap imports from China have long been blamed for undercutting the local garment sector, the National Union of Textile, Garment, and Tailoring ...
China’s Australia Tensions a Win for South African Wines
South Africa doubled its exports of wine to China last year, following the souring of relations between Beijing and its biggest wine seller, Australia. While we’ve seen sporadic reports of how Western Cape wine farmers are leaning into their ...