Category: Finance

China’s Role Looms Over Ethiopia’s Stalled Debt Talks With Bondholders

Ethiopia’s debt restructuring negotiations are facing renewed strain as private bondholders push back against objections from the Official Creditor Committee, led by China and France.  Bondholders are complaining that they are being unfairly treated in comparison with bilateral lenders. China is the ...

Kenya Cuts Debt Costs With Yuan Swap as China Ties Reshape Financing

Kenya reduced its external debt-servicing costs by about $167 million after using a yuan-for-dollar currency swap linked to its debt with China. This is the first time Nairobi has specified the exact figure, after announcing the swap in October. The transaction lowered ...

Vanuatu Courts Hong Kong as Pacific Economies Seek New Partners

Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Jotham Napat led a delegation to Hong Kong this week, meeting Chief Executive John Lee to seek cooperation on regulatory reform, investment, and tourism as the Pacific island nation looks to diversify its economic partners. The talks highlight ...

China Faces Rising Local Debt and Weak Land Revenues

China’s local government debt has reached unprecedented levels as a weak real estate market slashes land-sale revenues that cities once depended on. According to a report that cited Nikkei Asia, total debt raised directly by local governments and via ...

Indonesian Finance Minister Will Join Rail Debt Talks with China

Indonesia’s finance minister, Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa, will join a top-level delegation preparing to fly to China for debt-renegotiation talks on the Jakarta–Bandung high-speed rail project. Purbaya is joining the talks while Jakarta debates whether to commit any public funds ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

Confusing Developments in “Development”

This week I’m in Brussels, where I took part in a workshop on how the EU should shape its development strategy in response to China’s global influence.
I have joked in the past that it feels like I’ve attended this same ‘EU, Africa, and External Development Partners’ conference for ten years straight. 

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Landmark Report Tracks China’s Global Lending

The conversation about China’s rise as a global lender has been held back by two large trends. First, the data is hard to get and mind-numbingly vast. Second, studies tracking this data have so far tended to focus on the Global South in isolation, rather than putting ...

Chinese versus U.S. Foreign Direct Investment in Africa

Deborah Brautigam, a prominent expert on Chinese global financing flows, responded to recent discussions about comparisons in Chinese and U.S. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Africa. It was sparked by a BBC report, which used 2023 data from the China-Africa Research Initiative, a platform pioneered by Brautigam, to ...

U.S. Is Top Recipient of Chinese State-Bank Loans: New Data

The U.S. is the top recipient of Chinese state-bank loans and grants, according to new AidData figures that trace more than $200 billion across roughly 2,500 U.S. deals since 2000. The new data emerges despite years of U.S. warnings to ...

Swapping Sides: How a U.S. Bailout Could Shift Argentina’s Geostrategic Compass

Since day one of the Trump administration, the United States has sought to reassert its presence and tighten its influence in Latin America. In doing so, Washington is working to push back against what it perceives as China’s growing preeminence in the region — a rise made ...

How to Lure Chinese Financing Back to the Global South: Report

Global South countries face increasing financing pressure, endangering their ability to keep developing while also implementing measures to deal with a growing climate crisis. The disruption of global trade is coupled with a larger megatrend: flows of international capital to the developing world have turned negative. This ...

Taiwan Boosts Spending to Support Few Remaining Diplomatic Partners in Latin America

Three years after the Taiwan government said it would no longer compete with China using so-called "checkbook diplomacy," Taipei is now backtracking a bit on that pledge, with millions of dollars budgeted to bolster ties with its few remaining allies in Latin America.

Crude Deals or Clever Design? Unpacking China’s Resource-Backed Finance in Africa

It is not every day that a highway is paid for with barrels of oil. Yet in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, that is exactly how some of the region’s largest infrastructure projects are being financed. Instead of tapping their treasuries or issuing sovereign bonds, governments are ...
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