Category: Podcast

Even though the five countries in Central Asia are among the world's largest fossil fuel producers, the region faces chronic electricity shortages due to a lack of refining capacity. The energy crunch is further compounded by a reluctance to become overly ...

Just over a million new vehicles were sold in Africa last year, a relatively small number given the continent's enormous population, estimated at 1.5 billion. Chinese auto brands are looking at that discrepancy and think it provides a unique opportunity for ...

India and China have reached a deal to de-escalate tensions along their bitterly disputed border in the Himalayas, potentially ending a contentious four-year stand-off between the two Asian powers. Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said ...

The European Commission's Global Gateway initiative will turn three years old in December. The $300 billion infrastructure initiative was launched with great fanfare to provide developing countries in Africa and elsewhere with an alternative to China's Belt and Road Initiative.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang is in Pakistan this week to get ties with its South Asian neighbor back on track after a series of terrorist attacks this year. The latest incident occurred earlier this month near the airport in the southern ...

U.S. President Joe Biden was supposed to be in Angola this week, fulfilling a pledge to visit the continent he made back at the 2022 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. But with massive hurricanes pounding the southern United States, the president was forced ...

Chinese lending to African countries rebounded in a big way in 2023 after seven consecutive years of decline. Last year, Chinese lenders approved loans totaling $4.61 billion to African borrowers, a dramatic increase over the $922 million lent in 2022, according ...

Africa is the only region in the world where access to electricity is actually shrinking. Prolonged drought across large swathes of the continent has severely impacted hydropower production, triggering large-scale electricity outages — most notably in Zambia.

The U.S. and China plan to spend billions of dollars refurbishing key railway lines in southern Africa that link critical resource mining hubs in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with ports on both sides of the continent.

The rapidly escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon prompted a strong reaction from the Chinese government this week. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bou Habib on Monday at the UN in New York ...

China's new ambassador to Ghana, Tong Defa, spoke out forcefully this week to condemn the ongoing problem of illegal mining in the country and issued a fresh warning to his compatriots that if they are caught breaking the law, the embassy ...

For much of the past thirty years, since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been largely unrivaled in its power in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Today, that is no longer the case as the ...