Category: Politics

Everyone is cramming in a last flurry of calls and briefings and ‘quickly touching base on’ before the end of the year. It made my week so jam-packed that I can literally not recall what I said to whom. One through-line, however, has been values. This is ...

China's Ambassador to Botswana, Wang Xuefeng, led a post-FOCAC briefing of overseas Chinese diaspora from Africa to bring them up to speed on everything that happened at the conference in Dakar and just to make sure they're all aligned when it comes to key issues like Xi Jinping ...

DR Congo President Félix Tshisekedi fired the powerful head of the country's state-run mining company Gécamines on Friday in an apparent effort to gain control of the narrative following last week's release of a damning international investigation that revealed widespread corruption at the firm.

Senegalese Foreign Minister Aïssata Tall Sall brought this week's Forum on China-Africa Cooperation ministerial conference to a close on Tuesday at a press briefing with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.  Sall conveyed what appears to be the consensus among attendees, both African ...

Fyfy Masuka, the powerful interim governor of the DR Congo's cobalt-rich Lualaba province, wants to ease tensions with the Chinese-run mining company Sicomines. Masuka met with Senate Speaker Modeste Bahati Lukwebo and representatives from Sicomines in Kinshasa. The meeting was an effort to try and resolve some of ...

Coverage of this week's FOCAC 8 in the French media is considerably higher than in previous years, most likely because it's taking place in Senegal -- a francophone country that Paris has long viewed as in its traditional sphere of influence. ...

The Chinese government laid out an ambitious blueprint for its ties with Africa detailed in a 36-page white paper published by the State Council (China's equivalent to the cabinet in the U.S.) on Friday, just two days before the opening of the eighth FOCAC ...

The release of the White Paper on Friday provoked a lively discussion online among scholars and analysts. W. Gyude Moore, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C., and a prominent Africa-China observer weighed in with a lengthy, nine-part Twitter thread:

By Lukas Fiala, China Foresight LSE IDEAS Final preparations are being made in Dakar, Senegal, ahead of this year’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) ministerial summit on the 29th and 30th of November. Next Monday, delegations of almost every African country will meet Chinese counterparts in the West ...

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued two seemingly contradictory messages on Monday in response to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's new foreign policy strategy for Africa, which avoided any references to China. The Secretary went out of his way during last week's three-nation African tour ...

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned home on Saturday after wrapping up a three-nation, five-day tour of Africa with stops in Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal. Throughout the trip, Blinken sought to reassure his African hosts, and stakeholders across the continent, ...

The huge divide between how African governments see their engagement with China and how it's framed by the United States was on full display at a press conference late last week in Abuja with visiting Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his host Nigerian ...