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Amid Mounting Chinese Debts, “President Lungu is Running Out of Options.”
A bombshell report in Africa Confidential this reveals that Zambia has borrowed significantly more from Chinese companies than previously reported and now those Chinese creditors are not in much of a mood to negotiate or reschedule those debts. .memberful-global-teaser-content p:last-child{ -webkit-mask-image: linear-gradient(180deg, #000 0%, …
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Huawei’s Share of the African Smartphone Market Declines Due to U.S. PressureWhile Huawei dominates Africa’s telecom networking market, its share of the booming smartphone market has always lagged behind other Chinese competitors, namely Shenzhen-based Transsion who controls more than 50% of the African market. .memberful-global-teaser-content p:last-child{ -webkit-mask-image: linear-gradient(180deg, #000 0%, transparent); mask-image: linear-gradient(180deg, #000 0%, transparent); …
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China-Zimbabwe Sign ICT MoU Where China Will Basically Build Out the Country’s Entire Network
Zimbabwe’s Information Communications Technology Minister Kazembe Kazembe and China’s Vice Minister for IT took time got together on the sidelines of International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Telecom World 2019 that is underway in Budapest, Hungary to sign a comprehensive MoU on bilateral ICT cooperation, according …
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Buying a Train Ticket on Ethiopia’s New SGR Is Not as Easy You Might Imagine
Journalist Ismail Einashe tried to buy a ticket on the new Chinese-funded/built standard gauge railway (SGR) in Ethiopia to travel from Addis Ababa to Dire Dawa. In nearby Kenya, buying on their SGR is a pretty straightforward transaction, as it should be. Not in Ethiopia, …
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Kenya’s Appetite for Chinese Loans May Finally be Starting to Wane
During a meeting last week with Yang Jiechi, Chinese president Xi Jinping’s special envoy for Africa and one of Beijing’s most senior foreign policy officials, Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta gave one of the first indications that the mounting pressure over his country’s rising debt …
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Why Using a Zero-Sum Analysis to Compare Japan and China in Africa “doesn’t work”With the Tokyo International Conference on African Development or TICAD, summit coming up this week in Yokohama, there is often a temptation to compare Tokyo’s engagement strategy in Africa with that of Beijing’s. Furthermore, there are often references to how the Sino-Japanese rivalry in Asia …
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Daily Nation Columnist: Africans Shouldn’t Worry About Chinese Loans as Much as Chinese Organized Crime in Their Countries
Anti-fraud consultant Michael Kuria says he’s not worried about Chinese loans to Kenya. If Kenya defaults on their debts to Beijing, he writes in today’s Daily Nation newspaper, well, that’s China’s problem. “I trust that they are smart enough to know not to throw good …
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Huawei VP: WSJ Allegations of Spying in Africa Is Just “Fake News”
“Fake news” is how Huawei’s vice president of strategy, Andrew Williamson, characterized last week’s Wall Street Journal story on alleged spying in Uganda and Zambia. He made the comments in an interview with the state-led Russia Today television network. .memberful-global-teaser-content p:last-child{ -webkit-mask-image: linear-gradient(180deg, #000 0%, …
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Ambassador David Shinn Shares His Views on Direction of China-Africa Security Ties
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, David Shinn, who is now an adjunct professor at George Washington University, is widely regarded as one of the leading experts on China-Africa military relations. In this talk at the U.S. Department of Defense-funded Africa …
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Japan Starts to Push the “High Quality” Line to Differentiate Its Infrastructure in Africa from China’s
With the 7th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) coming up in two weeks, the pre-summit messaging coming from the Japanese government indicates that it plans to use this event to highlight the differences its approach to infrastructure development on the continent from that …