Category: Development

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 ...

The highlight of every FOCAC, at least measured by the quantity of news headlines, is the size of the big financial package that's unveiled at the end of the triennial conference. In 2012 it was $20 billion, then $60 billion in 2015, and $60 billion again in ...

DR Congo President Félix Tshisekedi joined Ambassador Zhu Jing on Monday for a tour of the construction site of the new cultural center that China is financing and constructing in Kinshasa. When finished, the new 36,000 square meter ...

An unnamed senior U.S. official told reporters on Monday that the Biden administration is planning to announce the launch of its Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative as soon as January and that West Africa will be among the key priorities for what's ...

Beginning next May, Kenya's Standard Gauge Railway will be "fully owned and run by Kenyans" declared Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani at a graduation ceremony last week for 2,057 students from the country's Railway Training Institute. Until now, much ...

The Liberian Senate voted on Friday to approve a controversial $2.5 billion iron ore for infrastructure deal with the Chinese mining giant BAO Chico. The origins of the deal date back to the 2018 FOCAC summit when President George Weah negotiated the arrangement ...

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 ...

As the final frontier for trade growth, Africa is the only region where exponential economic and cargo growth is still possible. The continent is home to some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. However, many existing African ports do not have the capacity to accommodate a growing demand ...

Large swathes of the Kenyan capital Nairobi currently feel like one big construction site on account of the ongoing construction of the 27 kilometer Nairobi Expressway that's being built by two of China's largest state-owned construction giants, China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) and Sinohydro. 

NOTE: This is an update to an earlier story that we showcased this week about a primetime talk show on the national Chinese TV network Dragon TV that featured a discussion among the Foreign Ministry's top diplomat for sub-Saharan Africa, Wu Peng, and ...

The governor of the southern Nigerian state of Anambra officially took delivery on Saturday of a new international airport from the China Railway Beijing Engineering Bureau. The project was also wholly financed by Chinese investors. The project took almost four years, and ...

There's growing excitement in the Kenyan capital that congestion-weary motorists will finally get some relief, now that the 27-kilometer Nairobi Expressway is nearing completion. Years of construction have further snarled the city's already miserable traffic but that's expected to improve once the China Road and Bridge Corporation ...