Category: Aid
A Week After FOCAC, Experts Weigh in with More Nuance
While much of the news coverage in the immediate aftermath of this year's FOCAC focused on the premature calculation that China had reduced its financial pledge by a third, now, a week later, more nuanced analysis from some of the world's leading specialists in the field is ...
FOCAC 2018 vs. 2021
Researchers and analysts are beginning to work their way through the 40-page Dakar Action Plan that provides more detail on the outcomes of last week's FOCAC. If past FOCAC events are any guide, it's likely that it will take at least two to three weeks to fully ...
Surprise That China Did Not Commit More of Its IMF Special Drawing Rights Allocation to Africa
Chinese President Xi Jinping's pledge to reallocate $10 billion to African countries of its estimated $40 billion of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) that it received from the International Monetary Fund took some by surprise as being a bit, well, cheap. "What ...
Mounting Expectations that China Will “Bring a Big Checkbook to FOCAC 2021”
As the 8th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) conference in Dakar nears, expectations in some quarters are rising that China will once again play the role of financier for African development and COVID-19 mitigation. At the previous two FOCAC summits, China ...
A Small Chinese Aid Donation in The Gambia Reveals One of China’s Bigger Priorities in Africa
At a glance, Saturday's announcement that China would provide a $23 million grant to The Gambia for unspecified "economic and technical cooperation" (that's often diplomatic speak for unrestricted aid) doesn't seem remarkable at all. Ambassador Ma Jianchun ...
China, DRC Sign Three Agreements to Reduce Debt and Provide New Aid
Chinese ambassador to the DRC Zhu Jing and Foreign Affairs Minister Christophe Lutundula Apala posed for a ceremonial fist-bump at the Foreign Ministry in Kinshasa following the signing earlier this month of three new accords that will provide additional Chinese aid to the DRC while eliminating some of ...
Burundi Takes Delivery of Its First Shipment of Chinese COVID Vaccines
Once a holdout on the COVID-19 vaccination front, Burundi is now accepting vaccine donations from countries around the world, including China. A batch of 500,000 doses of Sinopharm arrived last week in the economic hub of Bujumbura. The shipment, $3 million ...
Youth Activists at France-Africa Summit: “We Expect to Be Part of the Process”
The young African civil society activists who attended last week's France-Africa summit in Montpellier gave voice to the surging frustration over their countries' ties with France, and by extension other foreign powers. Among the key themes that emerged was the demand ...
China Isn’t Just Shipping Vaccines to Zimbabwe, It’s Also Building Warehouses to Store Them
A new Twitter account popped up recently, intended to provide updates on a new China Aid-funded vaccine warehouse now under construction in the Zimbabwe capital Harare. You can follow the progress of the new warehouse on Twitter at