Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster.
What one makes of the Ukraine crisis increasingly maps on where one lives. This is made clear by a remarkable new set of polling data recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations ...
Country: Sierra Leone
Stadium Diplomacy in Africa is Fashionable Again
Early on in China's engagement in Africa, the Chinese were big on gifting sports stadiums to African governments as part of their soft power diplomatic outreach on the continent. Later, Chinese infrastructure development shifted focus to larger, more conventional projects like bridges, railroads and highways but now ...
Chinese Corporate Communications in Africa
Over the years, Chinese companies in Africa have earned a reputation for not very being good in how they communicate with local stakeholders, particularly with local media and civil society groups. While that remains true for the large state-owned construction and ...
“Fishermen Are Suffering, Families Are Starving” Due to Illegal Overfishing by Chinese Trawlers in Sierra Leone, Says Report
Illegal overfishing by Chinese trawlers in Ghana's coastal waters has been well documented, but now stakeholders in other West African countries including Sierra Leone are sounding the alarm. “The Chinese fleet has been taking the profits of the fisheries for 30 ...
WEEK IN REVIEW: Museveni Swats Aside Allegation Entebbe Airport Will be Forfeited to China
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni issued his first public comments about the media reports that incorrectly alleged the Entebbe International Airport is at risk of being forfeited to China. "I don't remember mortgaging the airport for anything," President Museveni told Reuters over the weekend. "There is no problem, they ...
FOCAC 8 Recap & Review
The eighth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation conference wrapped up this week in Senegal. The event itself generated a lot of news but it was far from the only thing going on this week. The Europeans sought to try and upstage FOCAC ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
One After Another, African Foreign Ministers Waited Their Turn to Meet Briefly with Wang Yi
Tuesday was an especially busy day for Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi who met briefly with at least half a dozen foreign ministers and other senior officials from across Africa on the sidelines of the FOCAC conference in Dakar. While the ...
Tanzanian Authorities Arrest Chinese Farmer For Illegally Pumping Millions of Liters of Water From Local Rivers
A Chinese large-scale farmer was arrested by local authorities in the small village of Kidogozelo in eastern Tanzania for using a high-capacity pump to draw water from the Ruvu river to irrigate his vegetable farm. The unnamed Chinese national is accused of installing and using an illegal ...
A Conversation With Wu Peng, China’s Top Diplomat For Africa
This week Eric & Cobus sit down with Wu Peng, the director-general of the department of African affairs in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for his perspective on a wide range of issues that are impacting relations between the two ...
China Slams Economist Report on Beijing’s Financing of New Fishing Port in Sierra Leone
The Chinese Foreign Ministry seemingly went out of its way on Friday to challenge an August 19th story published by The Economist that was critical of China's plans to finance the construction of a new deep-water fishing port in Sierra Leone: "many Sierra Leoneans fret ...
Chinese Companies’ “Eat Bitter” Management Style Just Doesn’t Work in Africa
Forget debt traps, Huawei ‘back-doors' and vaccine diplomacy. They might be the disputes that define our current polarized moment. But I’m willing to bet they won’t have the staying power of the one – the original – dispute that has haunted Chinese engagement with Africa since the ...