Category: Governance

The Ghanaian government's efforts to monitor and report illegal fishing activities on trawlers operating under its flag, many owned by Chinese companies, has been critically undermined through intimidation and bribery, according to a damning new report by the London-based non-profit Environmental Justice Foundation.

So…How have you been? Since we last spoke, my country exploded. If you’re not up on South African news, the current government has finally managed to get a charge to stick to its predecessor – former president Jacob Zuma. This took ...

June’s been an eventful month for China, Africa, and the internet. On June 5th, Nigeria’s government suspended the use of Twitter in the country, indefinitely. The next day, the Foundation for Investigative Journalism reported that the Nigerian government had also reached out to the Cyberspace Administration ...

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is getting support from his ruling party allies in the House of Representatives to further the crackdown on social media and introduce even stricter "Chinese-style" regulations. "In China, social media is being regulated and such a thing ...

U.S. and French media were surprisingly quiet about yesterday's inauguration of a new national data center that was built with Chinese financing and equipped by Huawei. The new facility, located in Diamniadio outside of the capital Dakar, marks an important milestone in Africa. This is the first time ...

The revelation of what appears to be massive illegal Chinese gold mining and logging operations in rural Sierra Leone could open a contentious new front in Africa-China conversations. Or more accurately, it could revivify one of the ur-themes underlying the whole relationship: the idea that China is a ...

The Nigerian government justified the banning of Twitter on the basis of protecting the country's national interest, security, and sovereignty. Although the move was done for purely domestic political reasons, the government's defense is strikingly similar to the language that China ...

We now have the full details about that shocking video that circulated on social media on Wednesday, showing an employee of the China Railway Seventh Group (CRSG) attacking inspectors from the Sierra Leone Mining Association, who were conducting an unannounced inspection of the repair ...

Nigeria's decision to ban Twitter last week is just the latest example of how access to social media platforms in Africa is narrowing, according to a new report by the Virtual Private Network company Surf Shark. They report that 30 countries across the continent have ...

Lawyer Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa is adamant that Nigeria's recent crackdown on Twitter is nothing at all like what authoritarian governments in other parts of the world restrict access to social media platforms. “I do not agree," he said in a story that is widely circulating today on ...

Less than 24 hours after the Nigerian government announced that it would impose a ban on Twitter, officials in President Muhammadu Buhari's office reportedly made contact with the  Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) to discuss how to implement a Chinese-style firewall in Nigeria, according to ...

Chinese officials are no doubt celebrating Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's decision late last week to ban Twitter.  The move marked the most important endorsement in Africa to date of Beijing's long-held view on "internet sovereignty." The Chinese have never accepted the ...