Category: Economy

Acclaimed China-Africa scholar Deborah Bräutigam together with Harvard Business School professor Meg Rithmire published a detailed takedown in The Atlantic magazine of the U.S.-led "debt trap" narrative that remains a bedrock belief among large swathes of official Washington. The two ...

China has dramatically cut back financing overseas infrastructure development initiatives, especially for carbon-intensive energy projects involving oil, gas, and coal. From 2016 to 2019, China's two major policy banks slashed lending by a stunning 85%. ...

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 ...

Early on in the COVID-19-induced financial crisis in Africa, finance ministers and other senior-level stakeholders across the continent called on the IMF to issue new so-called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) that would provide desperately-needed liquidity into their economies. When 

The January launch of the AfCFTA has prompted considerable reflection in both China and Africa as to what role Beijing can play in this new free trade era and whether China's role will be harmful or helpful.  Predictably, Chinese commentators are ...

There was a lot of excitement on January 1st when China's first free trade agreement went into effect with Mauritius, Beijing's first FTA with a country in sub-Saharan Africa. But just a month later many observers are growing concerned about a ...

Ten months ago, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was the first African leader to sound the alarm over the debt crisis that would ensue from the then-nascent outbreak of COVID-19. African economies, he warned face an "existential threat" from the combined effects of an unprecedented ...

The future of Ghana's largest airline is up in the air now that its parent, Hainan-based HNA Group, has effectively buckled under the weight of almost $100 billion of debt and widespread reports of embezzlement. 

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's January visit to Tanzania highlighted the East African country's growing importance to Beijing. It's a strategically located Belt and Road country that has the potential to serve as a major gateway to inland regional markets along ...

News that Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines were smuggled into the Philippines sparked concern around the world that the already thriving black market trade in counterfeit pharmaceuticals will inevitably extend to the coronavirus vaccine. Lebogang Mokoena, a columnist for the South ...

An article in today's Global Times newspaper, one of China's more bombastic nationalist tabloids, provides a glimpse into how determined Chinese officials are to "decouple" their trade with Australia, especially in the hugely valuable iron sector. Sino-Australian relations deteriorated sharply in 2020 over disputes ...

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 ...