Category: Business

Over the past several weeks, Chinese officials have convened a series of high profile forums with key African stakeholders in what appears to be an effort to lay the groundwork for next year's triennial Forum on China Africa Cooperation Summit (FOCAC) that is scheduled to take place ...

Since the COVID-19 outbreak earlier this year, China has struggled to find new ways to conduct the B2B trade shows that have been so effective in the past at connecting Chinese and African merchants. Some of the online-only fairs that took place in the spring and early ...

The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has been rather slow to enter the African market, focusing instead on other emerging markets like Southeast Asia where it's developing its Lazada brand. But now it appears that the Hangzhou-based company is ramping up its engagement on the continent with new ...

In a single file, farm workers carry up to 25 kilogrammes of Virginia leaf tobacco on their shoulders.  Titus Gurupira (45), a farmer on a farm in Mvurwi, 100 km north of Harare, pleads with his workers to hurry with the picking ahead of the hectic marketing ...

The Ethiopian government is moving forward with plans to sell off a 45% stake of the state-owned Ethio Telecom along with two more telecom licenses even though this may not be the best time to do that given the weak economy and the escalating conflict in the ...

Today is the most important day on the calendar for hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers, who are expected to buy an astonishing $45 billion worth of stuff in just 24 hours. Yes, that almost $2 billion AN HOUR. While Singles Day (named for being the anti-Valentine's ...

One of the revealing aspects of Africa's pandemic-related downturn is that, while it's causing financial chaos across the continent this doesn't seem to be slowing the outside interest in certain African consumer sectors. Take TV, for example. For a long time, ...

Dear Eric, As the Representative in Africa for JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization), I would like to comment regarding your column on September 24th, "What It Takes To Compete Against the Chinese in Africa," where you mentioned that ...

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed toured a new Chinese-Ethiopian joint venture on Sunday that will be able to produce up to 10 million COVID-19 test kits per year. The new test kits will be used to help mitigate the spread of the virus domestically and will ...

The appointment of Sun Qiang, a Chinese businessman, to the position of Development Chief (Nkosuohene) in the small southern Ghanaian town of Kwahu-Abetifi has prompted widespread outrage.  Sun was awarded the honor after he donated $5,000 to build a new school ...

Transsion, the Shenzhen-based African mobile phone giant, posted surging revenue and profits for the first half of 2020. The ongoing pandemic doesn't appear to have dented demand for its phones and services. Profits for the first six months of the year jumped 33.4% compared to the ...

Tea farmers in Kenya’s central highlands say Chinese interest in their tea is improving their income, but the journey for Chinese tea enthusiast and founder of the Chinya Tea Development Company Lewis Gao has not been easy. He came to Kenya ...