Category: Development

The recent striking images of Texans stuck in freezing temperatures without electricity and queueing for water were hard to process.  I felt much solidarity with them, especially when a blackout in Johannesburg made it impossible for me to join Eric ...

Rwanda's Finance Minister Uzziel Ndagijimana and Chinese ambassador Rao Hongwei announced on Friday that Beijing would forgive $6 million of debt and provide a new $60 million grant to the government in Kigali as part of COVID-19 relief efforts. If the debt forgiveness ...

Kenya's parliament approved funds to extend the Standard Gauge Railway from Naivasha in the Rift Valley all the way to Malaba on the border with Uganda. Several years ago, this extension was known as "SGR Phase 3." President Uhuru Kenyatta's requests for the financing of this phase ...

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 ...

The China Road and Bridge Corporation is building a massive new half-a-billion dollar expressway right through the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. But this project is very different than previous Chinese-financed infrastructure initiatives in Kenya, like the ailing Standard ...

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 ...

The Kenyan government, like a lot of African governments, is struggling to find the right balance between continuing to pay for badly-needed new infrastructure while at the same time servicing its enormous debts for older projects -- many of which are now so-called "white elephants" that were ...

A trio of scholars in China recently published an academic paper in the Journal of Contemporary China that included a much more detailed map of China's Belt & Road trade routes in Asia than previously available. One of the key takeaways from the ...

The Chinese government earlier this month published a major update to the country's foreign aid and international development strategy. The new white paper entitled "China's International Development Cooperation in the New Era" maps out an ambitious new vision that integrates Chinese overseas development ...

Since 2010, Africa's been the largest recipient of Chinese foreign aid, even as China's ties in Asia have grown to be more geopolitically consequential. However, when reviewing data in the recently-published white paper on Chinese international development, analysts at the Beijing-based consultancy ...

In January, China published a blueprint for how it plans to become one of the world's leading countries in international development. The white paper on "China's International's Development Cooperation in the New Era" released by the State ...

Scholars, analysts, and commentators in the U.S. and Africa are all offering lots of advice for what Joe Biden should to do to revitalize foreign policy in Africa. Seemingly without exception, the experts agree that Washington urgently needs to shift the focus away from China and towards ...