Category: Governance

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 ...

Chinese ambassador to Sierra Leone Hu Ziangliang paid a visit on Wednesday to the headquarters of the SL's Anti-Corruption Commission. He met with Commissioner Francis Ben Kaifala and participated in a handover ceremony of computers and other equipment. While many stakeholders ...

Kenya'snational drug regulator, the Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB), granted certification to a Chinese herbal product that it hasn't fully tested and that the company insinuates, without proof, can be used to help protect against COVID-19. “We have gotten feedback from people ...

Today the South African Institute of International Affairs is holding a webinar featuring new work focusing on African agency in the face of Chinese power. How much power African actors have to shape their engagement with China is one of the field’s most ...

If you’re into curling up with a cup of coffee and an 85-page report on Chinese lending, you can’t go wrong with AidData’s How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments (PDF). One of the most striking findings in ...

Recent reports of the debt trap’s death might have been exaggerated. Like a vampire that just won’t die, we keep burying it, but it keeps rising from the coffin. This week we saw reports that Kenyan politicians had to clarify again that the Mombasa port itself ...

Two of the world's leading experts in China-Africa negotiations, Hervé Lado, Guinea country manager at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) and Folashadé Soulé, a senior research associate at the University of Oxford, led a workshop last October in Cotonou, Benin with 15 negotiators from West and Central ...

A robust discussion is underway in Washington, D.C.'s think tank and policymaking circles over what the Biden administration's future Africa policy should look like. Although there's been no formal announcement of any new initiative, there does seem to be an emerging consensus that the disproportionate focus on ...

President Paul Kagame joined former U.S. National Security Advisor for what has become a trademark for the Rwandan leader to be brutally frank with U.S. and European interlocutors about sensitive political issues in Africa, including China's presence on the continent. President ...