Country: Kenya
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Upcoming China-Africa Media Forum Highlights a Key Component of China’s Soft Power Diplomacy
The Chinese and Kenyan governments will hold a media conference next week in Nairobi that's part of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) action plan. While a lot of U.S. and European observers dismiss these kinds of events as mere propaganda exercises, they're often enthusiastically embraced by ...
The Nested Tragedies of Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway
Recently we've seen two new pieces of research on Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR,) which make for fascinating – if depressing – reading. They show that the project was doomed from the start by corruption and bad dealing from ...
Why Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway Was Doomed From the Start
Kenya's new multi-billion dollar standard gauge railway (SGR) was destined to fail even before it launched, argued Kenyan legal scholar Luis Franceschi in a new opinion column in the Nation newspaper. Franceschi joins a growing number of analysts who have long asserted that ...
Kenya’s Spiraling Debt Crisis Worsens as the Cost of Chinese Loans Mount, Currency Weakens and Exports Soften
Kenya is rapidly becoming the next flashpoint in the Africa debt crisis amid a dramatic increase in borrowing that threatens to submerge the economy. The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) warned on Friday that the country's ballooning debt is ...
Q&A: Can African-Sino Agri-Health Cooperation Champion Green Recovery?
For a moment it would seem that climate change has taken a backseat in the midst of a global pandemic, yet we are increasingly seeing the need to make linkages between COVID-19 response and climate action policies. What has been termed as “green recovery” refers to ...
How’s the Belt & Road Doing During the Pandemic? Well, the Answer Depends on Who You Ask
There are conflicting assessments of the health of China's Belt and Road Initiative and how it's fared during the past 7-8 months amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A new report from the London-based analytics and consulting firm ...
Kenyan Newspaper Pleads With Government to Stop Borrowing Money
The influential financial newspaper Business Daily published a sharply-worded editorial on Wednesday that blasted the government for taking on more debt amid the country's worsening economic crisis. "The implications of the rapid accumulation of debt are stark. The rising repayments are ...
Port Competition Along Africa’s East Coast Intensifies With China as a Central Player
After the Dubai-based ports operator DP World was effectively pushed out of Djibouti by China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH), the Emiratis packed up and headed a few hundred kilometers down the coast to set up shop at the Port of Berbera in the self-declared ...
China Dominates Almost Every Layer of East Africa’s Mobile Technology Sector
Chinese technology permeates nearly every level of the East African mobile technology stack with the notable exception of operating systems that are still dominated by Google and Apple, according to a post by Kenya-based technology analyst Michael Kimani. While Kimani focused his analysis on ...
Chinese Farmers Are Now Selling More Online. Can “E-Commerce for Agriculture” Also Work in Africa?
By Anna Baisch and Jade Scarfe, Research Analysts at Development Reimagined In China, e-commerce is everywhere. Walk down any street in a busy city and you come across “Kuaidi” drivers delivering parcels or advertisements for online “Taobao” shops. But beyond China’s ...
There’s Good News and Bad News About Kenya’s Ballooning National Debt
After Angola and Zambia, Kenya is high on the list of countries at risk of encountering severe debt distress due in part to extensive borrowing from China to fund major infrastructure projects like the Standard Gauge Railway and, more recently, its seemingly insatiable appetite for more debt. ...
China Launched a Virtual Trade Show With East Africa This Week That It Says Will Get 10,000 Attendees
With physical trade fairs all shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese trade promotion authorities are experimenting with new virtual models. On Monday, a China-Africa virtual expo kicked off, reportedly with more than a thousand exhibitors from both regions and organizers say they're confident ...