Category: Economy

For 32 years, Chinese foreign ministers like Wang Yi have made it a priority to go to Africa for their first overseas trip of the year but little is known about what goes into selecting the countries for these annual visits. ...

Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda are starting 2022 with an eye on borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars to fund new infrastructure development and to help close the finance gap created by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Kenyan ...

While currencies like the Kenyan shilling and the Nigerian naira lost value in 2021, the Zambian kwacha enters the new year with some serious momentum. The kwacha surged 27% last year, mostly on the hope that President Hakainde Hichilema will turn around the economy ...

Kenya's straight-talking Transportation and Infrastructure Cabinet Secretary James Macheria (photo) bluntly explained why the government consistently awards major infrastructure projects to Chinese contractors: For any project, we go through a very competitive process. I will give you an ...

Two of the world's most prominent development finance leaders, Emmanuel Moulin (left), chair of the Paris Club, and World Bank President David Malpass (right), separately named China as one of the key factors in the worsening debt crisis among developing countries.

Senegalese President Macky Sall launched a new 40-kilometer commuter railway last week that will link the industrial city Diamniadio with the capital Dakar. The debut of the new Regional Express marked an important milestone for Senegal. It is the first rail line to be built in ...

The demands of servicing debts, largely to China, are weighing heavily on Kenya's monetary system. The shilling dropped again in Monday trading and the central bank reported that foreign exchange reserves have plunged by $899 million over the last three months. Analysts say beyond the hundreds of millions ...

Nigeria's total debt, both external and domestic, edged up by 4% to $92.6 billion as of the end of September according to the latest data from the Debt Management Office (DMO).  The DMO said the increase was due largely ...

An interesting exchange took place on a recent episode of the Global Focus program on Sky News Australia where host Chris Pyne wanted to know from fellow Australian author and Africa scholar Jamie Miller whether China is exerting undue economic and political influence in South Africa. 

The moral panic in Uganda about a possible Chinese seizure of the Entebbe airport as a result of a loan default is a rare example of a trend that’s both trivial and serious. In the former sense, the panic is based on misreporting. The loan is still ...

Somidez, the Congolese mining unit of the Chinese mining giant China Nonferrous Mining Corporation (CNMC), posted a series of fascinating photos that show the vibrant impromptu communities that form among truckers from across Africa as they wait for days in line to pick up their hauls of ...

Both the Chinese embassy in Kampala and the Chinese contractor responsible for upgrading the Entebbe International Airport have been working hard this week to move the conversation away from the debt trap story that dominated the headlines over the past three weeks.