Category: U.S.-CHINA-AFRICA

The reaction in China to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Ivory Coast, Cape Verde, Nigeria, and Angola has been relatively muted. The trip is likely seen as sensitive, which means that commentary is mostly appearing in the foreign policy-facing press.

It has become customary, as the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tours Africa, to rebuff journalists’ endless questions about China. Senior officials have made it clear that, unlike the Trump era, the Biden administration doesn’t want to put China threat narratives at the heart of their engagement ...

One week after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi wrapped up a four-nation visit to Africa, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday embarked on his own week-long, four-stop tour of the continent that will take him to Cabo Verde, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Angola. ...

Tucked away in a remote corner of the U.S. Senate's version of the massive $875 billion proposed budget for the U.S. Defense Department is a small piece of legislation that aims to boost U.S. exports to Africa. The legislation, known as the ...

Researchers at Boston University's Global Development Policy Center did not mince words in a report published this week, in which they stated that "debt trap diplomacy is not a driver of Chinese lending and overseas development finance." For anyone who follows ...

The influential African polling outfit Afrobarometer has released a glimpse of new polling results among African populations of their perceptions of external powers. Afrobarometer surveys have noted consistently high (and similar) approval rates of both China and the United States in Africa. However, now that popularity seems ...

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is back in Washington, D.C., after wrapping up a week-long, three-nation tour of sub-Saharan Africa over the weekend. Before she left, Harris held a press conference on Friday with President Haikinde Hichilema, where she gently prodded China ...

U.S. Vice President landed in Zambia on Wednesday for the second leg of a three-nation, week-long Africa tour.  During her first stop in Ghana, the Vice President assiduously tried to avoid any reference to China despite persistent questions from the traveling ...

Until the Biden administration released its new strategy for Africa last August, U.S. foreign policy towards the continent had been largely shaped by a longstanding desire in Washington to challenge China's growing presence there.  Going all the way back to the ...

The United States’s people-to-people ties in Africa make it impervious to Chinese competition, said U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, in an interview with CNN. It's interesting to compare it with remarks by her colleague Jose W. Fernandez, the Under-Secretary for Economic ...

In a recent interview, the U.S. ambassador to the UN (and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa) weighed in on China's role in African debt distress in terms that could be described as 'blinkered' at best ('disingenuous' is another possibility): 

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen accused China of blocking progress for Zambia's drawn-out debt restructuring process that is now entering its second year. “I know the Chinese have been a barrier to concluding the negotiations,” she said in Lusaka on Monday, the ...