Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster.
What one makes of the Ukraine crisis increasingly maps on where one lives. This is made clear by a remarkable new set of polling data recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations ...
Category: Trafficking
Shock and Dismay in South Africa After Discovery of “Slave-Like” Conditions in Chinese-owned Factory
South Africa's Home Affairs Minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, was visibly shaken when describing the "inhumane and unspeakable conditions" in a plastics factory owned by a Chinese national that was raided by security forces on Monday. An informant tipped ...
China Announces Sweeping Ban of Eating and Trading Wildlife
China's top legislative body, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), announced a sweeping ban on the trade and consumption of wild animals as part of the effort to stem the deadly COVID-19 outbreak that has crippled the country. ...
Pangolins and Other African Wildlife Could be Among the Only Beneficiaries of This Crisis
The outbreak of coronavirus is being traced back to one of Wuhan's many live animal markets that sell a variety of wildlife including snakes, turtles, and cicadas, guinea pigs, bamboo rats, badgers, hedgehogs, otters, palm civets, even wolf cubs. Now that this ...
Donkey Populations in Kenya and Ghana Are on Track to Be “Devastated” Due to Chinese Demand for Hides
The Washington Post's West Africa correspondent Danielle Paquette and Maxwell Suuk published a compelling story this weekend on the devastation that subsistence farmers in Ghana are encountering due to donkey poaching. The animal's hides are sought after in China where they're used to make the traditional Chinese medicine ejiao ...
A Zambian Ambassador Issues Forceful Denial That Senior Lusaka Leaders Involved in Illegal Timber Racket
Ambassador to Ethiopia and Permanent Representative to the African Union, Emmanuel Mwamba, published a scathing rebuttal to allegations made by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency that accused senior government leaders of running a "cartel" to illegally harvest and export endangered mukula timber, largely to China.
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
Investigation: High-Level Corruption in Zambia Fuels Illegal Timber Trade with China
The Environmental Investigation Agency published a damning report last week that alleged Zambian President Edgar Lungu, his daughter and several high-ranking ministers are all allegedly involved in the illicit trade of rare mukula wood. Mukula is a rare African tree and one of the rosewood species protected under ...
Recent Killing of Kenyan Rhinos Highlights Need to Get Wildlife Issues Back on the China-Africa Agenda
The privately-run Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya provided a sobering reminder this week that even though wildlife conservation issues have largely disappeared from the broader China-Africa agenda, the fate of some of Africa's most endangered animals is becoming increasingly perilous.
How the World's Most Trafficked Animal Is Caught in Africa and Sold in Asia
The small, scaly pangolin is the world's most trafficked animal. Poachers in Africa are capturing and killing vast numbers of these animals and illegally shipping them to markets throughout Asia, but mostly in China and Vietnam. In 2017 the Africa-China Reporting Project at Wits ...
North Korea's Diplomats in Africa Are Making Big Money Selling Ivory to Chinese
The tightening of international sanctions against North Korea is helping to fuel the illicit ivory trade in Africa as the increasingly isolated country searches for new ways to generate revenue, according to a new report from the Global Initiative against ...
Donkey Hide is the New Ivory for the Chinese in Africa
It will likely not come as a surprise to many that once again Chinese consumer demand is responsible for another animal crisis in Africa. Chinese companies don’t want these donkeys for their meat, just the hides that are used as an ingredient in a ...