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The News Feed is curated by CGSP’s editors in Asia and Africa.

Three Days to Go Before the Grand Opening of the Nairobi Expressway and a Lot of People Are Really ?&#)$! at the Chinese Contractor

The highly-anticipated opening of Nairobi’s largest ever infrastructure project is now just days away and while many will be thrilled that a new expressway is finally opening to traffic, there’s widespread discontent with the China ...
by Eric Olander

China’s Economic Slowdown Felt All the Way at the Port of Mombasa While Namibia’s Port Expands to Grab More DRC Cargo

An oil tanker carrying 200,000 barrels of crude oil worth Ksh 1.2 billion is berthed at Kipevu Oil Terminal in Kenya's port city of Mombasa August 26, 2019. AFP.
🇰🇪 Kenyan shipping officials say the lockdowns in China and the long delays for vessels to dock in Chinese ports are having a major impact on the volumes of cargo processed at the ...
by Eric Olander

Chinese Contractors Complete Burundi’s First New Power Plant in 30 Years

Power China staff in Burundi mark the opening of the Hujibazi Hydropower Station.
Chinese engineers completed the first phase of the Hujibazi Hydropower Station in Burundi, the country’s first new power generation facility in 30 years. This project was financed as an aid initiative and when fully operational later ...
by Eric Olander

Chinese Spox Angrily Responds to U.S. Assertion African Governments Put Sovereignty at Risk When Using Huawei

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian responded forcefully on Monday to accusations by the U.S. that African governments should be cautious about using Huawei technology. Image via the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian used especially pointed language during Monday’s regular press briefing in Beijing to denounce U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman’s recent warning to Angola and other African governments not ...
by Eric Olander

Ethiopia Launches Huawei-powered 5G Network in Addis Ababa

Ethio-Telecom Chief Executive Officer, Frehiwot Tamru (top photos) hosting launch event for the company's new 5G service in Addis Ababa. Images via Ethio Telecom.
Ethio-Telecom Chief Executive Officer, Frehiwot Tamru (photo) hosted a glamorous launch party complete with some kind of robot to kick off the company’s launch of its new Huawei-powered 5G mobile network in Addis ...
by Eric Olander

Zambia Wants Debt Reduction As Part of Renegotiation: Hichilema

The President of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, speaks at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town on May 9, 2022. RODGER BOSCH / AFP
Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema is optimistic that Zambia’s debt renegotiation is now on track, following the recent announcement that China and France will head the creditors’ committee. The committee’s first meeting will be next week. ...
by Eric Olander

Sinosteel Signs Iron Ore Deal with Cameroon

Exterior of the Sinosteel headquarters in Beijing, China. Image CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Chinese state-owned steelmaker Sinosteel signed a $690 million deal to mine iron ore at southern Cameroon’s Lobe Mine. The deal is part of China’s ongoing attempts to lessen its dependence on Australian iron ...
by Cobus van Staden

Why Did Chinese Lending to Zambia Go So Wrong? Zambia-China Expert Counts the Ways

Ching Kwan (CK) Lee is one of the most influential thinkers on Africa-China relations working today. While she’s mostly known in academic circles, her analysis has reshaped thinking about the nature of China’s ...
by Cobus van Staden

Star Power Boosts Rwandan Coffee in Online Sales Session

The famous Chinese actress Liu Tao recently hosted a live sale of Rwandan coffee on Alibaba’s e-commerce website Taobao. She sold 500kg of coffee beans in 5 minutes. It usually takes two to three months ...
by Cobus van Staden

Chinese-Built Nairobi Expressway to Open to Cars Next Week, But First It Was Runners’ Turn to Use the New Road

Thousands of participants in the Nairobi Marathon walked and ran along the new Chinese-financed and built Nairobi Expressway. Image via the State House.
Thousands of Kenyans filled the new Chinese-financed and built Nairobi Expressway on Sunday when they ran/walked along the new road as part of the Nairobi City Marathon. President Uhuru Kenyatta was on hand ...
by Eric Olander

Huawei Quietly Becomes a Dominant Player in Africa’s Burgeoning Mobile Money Sector

Wu Peng is China's top diplomat for Sub-Saharan Africa.
Quietly and largely out-of-sight, Chinese telecom giant Huawei is becoming one of the most important actors in Africa’s mobile payment business. Many people don’t realize that the popular Kenyan mobile payment service M-Pesa ...
by Eric Olander

Lockdown “Shout-Out” Videos Featuring Africans Raise Controversy

Screenshot of a so-called "African Warrior" video that Chinese online users pay to have messages displayed on social media.
The ongoing COVID-19 lockdowns in cities like Shanghai are sparking a cottage industry of commissioned viral videos commenting on the crisis. Recently, videos of shirtless African men, dubbed Wolf Warriors, dancing or ...
by Cobus van Staden

Flurry of Coverage on China’s Rise in the Global South Reveals Indian Anxieties

Image via WION
Few countries are as anxious about China’s rise than India. However, a recent flurry of coverage shows that in contrast to the United States, India’s focus falls squarely on the Global South. These ...
by Cobus van Staden

Ethiopia’s Ambassador to China Rebuffs Debt Trap Narratives

Ethiopia’s ambassador to China, Teshome Toga Chanaka pushed back against the idea that loans from China are plunging African countries into debt traps. He recently sat down for an interview with Wang Huiyao, ...
by Cobus van Staden

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

Revealing Reactions to China’s Festival of Optics

In terms of geopolitical optics, this week was nothing short of a banquet. It served up at least two sets of images that seem to crystallize our historical moment and that will live on in the Wikipedia of history as shorthand for where the world was in 2025.
One is the waves of uncannily synchronized soldiers and a bewildering array of high-tech weaponry gliding down Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue. The ...

WEEK IN REVIEW: African officials Concerned about the Deteriorating Value of the Chinese Yuan

Finance officials in Africa and other emerging markets are becoming increasingly concerned about the deteriorating value of the Chinese yuan that’s weighing down the value of their currencies. The RMB has fallen steeply over ...
by Eric Olander

Tunisia Inaugurates Chinese-Built Diplomatic Academy, Boosting Beijing’s ‘Building Diplomacy’

Exterior of the new Chinese-financed and built diplomatic training academy in Tunisia. Image via Xinhua.
China’s construction of government buildings in Africa isn’t slowing, even as it cuts back on other large-scale infrastructure projects. Tunisia recently became the newest example, with the inauguration of its new Chinese-built Tunisian Diplomatic Academy. ...
by Cobus van Staden

The Implications of China’s Infrastructure-Building in Africa for the United States

The Washington-based think tank, the National Bureau of Asian Research, published a large new report (PDF) on the role of infrastructure in China’s influence-building in Africa. It features prominent scholars providing geostrategic perspectives on ...
by Cobus van Staden

The U.S. Congress Moves Forward With China Competition Bill That Includes a Number of Africa Provisions

File image of the United States Congress. SAUL LOEB / AFP
The long-stalled “America COMPETES Act of 2022” is now revving back up as the Senate opened formal legislative talks on Wednesday on how to pay for large chunks of the $300 billion bill that ...
by Eric Olander

New U.S. Envoy to Ghana Comes With Considerable China and Energy Experience

U.S. Ambassador-Designate to Ghana Virginia Palmer. Image via @USMission2ASEAN.
The new U.S. ambassador-designate to Ghana, Virginia Palmer, is a veteran diplomat who comes to the job with a 36-year background in African affairs, energy policy and two early-career postings in China and ...
by Eric Olander

U.S. and India Could Be Behind Anti-Chinese Terrorist Attack in Pakistan: Chinese Expert

Dr. Liu Zongyi, the Secretary-General of the South Asia and China Center at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, photo via the Discourse Power newsletter
A prominent Chinese expert on South Asia said the United States and India may have been involved in the suicide bombing that killed three Chinese employees of the Confucius Center in Karachi, Pakistan.  Liu Zongyi, the ...
by Cobus van Staden

China’s Role in Ghana’s Ballooning Economic Crisis

Former Ghanaian President and current National Democratic Congress party leader John Mahama speaking at Labor Day conference in Accra. Image via CitiTV.
Ghana’s main opposition leader John Mahama issued a dire warning on Monday that the country risks becoming the next African country to default on its debt unless “drastic” measures are taken to stabilize the economy. ...
by Eric Olander

Don’t Shoot Your Employees and Don’t Pay Bribes Are Among the Chinese Embassy in Namibia’s Recommendations on How Expatriates Should Behave Better

HEADLINE TRANSLATION: A compilation of consular cases at the Chinese embassy in Namibia
The Chinese embassy in Namibia really wants its overseas compatriots who live and work in the country to improve their behavior. And to help them, the embassy this week published on its WeChat page a ...
by Eric Olander

Damning Report Documents How Small-Scale Chinese Cobalt Miners in the DR Congo Use Child Labor

The popular Congolese news site Actualites.CD published an in-depth report by Lumbubashi-based journalist Anto Mulanga that details the widespread use of child labor in small-scale mines in the southeastern cobalt mining belt. While the report ...
by Eric Olander

Chinese Lending to Africa Isn’t Ending, But It Is Changing: Here’s How

Johns Hopkins University Professor Deborah Brautigam. Image via VOA.
The Wire China recently interviewed Deborah Brautigam, one of the world’s leading experts on Chinese lending to Africa. In their wide-ranging conversation, Brautigam referred to a few emerging trends of how Chinese financing is ...
by Cobus van Staden

New Insights on How BRI Funding is Changing

A screenshot from Johns Hopkins University China Africa Research Initiative's recent webinar: "Can China Seize Kenya’s Port? The Case of Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway"
Several recently-published research projects added crucial new insights on Chinese lending patterns in Africa. The findings of two of these projects were unpacked by the researchers. These discussions are now available on YouTube. Key Highlights From Recent ...
by Cobus van Staden

COVID Lockdowns Scrambling Strategic Metals Sector

File image of a worker with car batteries at a factory for Xinwangda Electric Vehicle Battery Co. Ltd, which makes lithium batteries for electric cars in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu. STR / AFP
Disruptions caused by COVID-19 lockdowns in China, the Ukraine war and the ongoing crisis at the South African port of Durban are roiling the strategic battery sector, used for e-vehicles. While prices are falling in the ...
by Cobus van Staden

U.S. Senator’s Widely-Held Misunderstanding of the U.S. Response to Chinese Development Financing in Africa

U.S. Senator Tim Kaine appearing in a 2020 Foreign Policy Association webinar. Image via FPA.
For some reason, the Foreign Policy Association last week published a 2020 clip of U.S. Senator Tim Kaine explaining how the U.S. planned to compete with China in development finance in Africa:
by Eric Olander

Chinese Troops in Djibouti Compete in a Military Skills Competition (That Also Made For a Cool Music Video)

Source: Global Times
Chinese troops in Djibouti recently (they didn’t specify precisely when) held the “East African Warriors” military skills competition and leveraged the event to make a Wolf Warrior II-style music video that was no ...
by Eric Olander

Mounting Public Anger in Nairobi Over the Perception of Infrastructure “Apartheid”

While there’s palpable excitement in Kenyan capital about the imminent opening of the new 27-kilometer Nairobi Expressway there’s an equal amount of “anger, resentment, despair, and frustration” about the impact the new highway ...
by Eric Olander

No, Kenya Airways and China Road & Bridge Corp. Aren’t Teaming Up to Hire New Personnel

Copy of the fake job ad used to lure victims to pay in advance to apply for positions that do not exist.
Kenyan scammers posted a fake job ad that claimed Kenya Airways has partnered with the China Road and Bridge Corporation to hire cleaners, toll attendants, and clerks. More than a dozen positions were ...
by Eric Olander
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