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

A French Government-owned TV Network Published a Racist Political Cartoon About China’s Vaccine Pledge to Africa

CARTOON TRANSLATION: "China promised Africa 1 billion vaccines"/(character): "It's a trap"
It’s remarkable that in 2021, no one in the editorial department at the French television network TV5Monde thought that publishing a political cartoon featuring a black African character with a spear and shield ...
by Eric Olander

Europe Unveils Its €300 Billion Alternative to China’s Belt and Road

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a press conference on the Global Gateway at the EU headquarters in Brussels, on December 01, 2021. Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD / AFP
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen revealed the details of its highly anticipated Global Gateway infrastructure development initiative that aims to provide an alternative for developing countries to China’s Belt and Road ...
by Eric Olander

No, Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport Was Not Re-Branded “China Ebb International Airport”

There have been all sorts of rumors, misinformation, and outright fake news circulating over the past two weeks about the fate of the Entebbe International Airport in Uganda. Many have reported that the ...
by Eric Olander

FOCAC 8 Concludes With China-Africa Relations Now Heading in a New Direction

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Senegalese Foreign Minister Aïssata Tall Sall spoke to the media on Tuesday at the conclusion of FOCAC 8 in Dakar. Image via DakarActu.
Senegalese Foreign Minister Aïssata Tall Sall brought this week’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation ministerial conference to a close on Tuesday at a press briefing with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.  Sall conveyed what appears ...
by Eric Olander

African Analysts and Scholars React to FOCAC 8 Outcomes

The Atlantic Council, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, convened an online roundtable on Tuesday of senior-level analysts from across Africa to discuss the outcomes of this week’s FOCAC conference in Senegal ...
by Eric Olander

Did China’s FOCAC Financial Package Go Down? Stay the Same? Or Go Up? It’s Too Early to Tell

The main story from this year’s FOCAC, at least according to Bloomberg and the Financial Times, is that “debt traps” and “debt concerns” prompted China to scale back ...
by Eric Olander

Surprise That China Did Not Commit More of Its IMF Special Drawing Rights Allocation to Africa

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s pledge to reallocate $10 billion to African countries of its estimated $40 billion of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) that it received from the International Monetary Fund took some by ...
by Eric Olander

China is Going to Force Other Donor Countries to Up Their Game When It Comes to Vaccine Shipments to Africa

China’s FOCAC pledge to donate 600 million COVID vaccines to African countries and to jointly produce an additional 400 million doses on the continent is going to put new pressure on other donors, ...
by Eric Olander

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 ...
by Eric Olander

In State of the Nation Address, Kenyatta Called For Kenya to Become the World’s Next “Asian Miracle”

Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta inspects a guard of honour as he arrives at the parliament buildings for the State of address in Nairobi on November 30, 2021. Simon MAINA / AFP
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta delivered his eighth and final State of the Nation address on Tuesday and used the occasion to justify the massive expansion of the country’s debt as part of his ...
by Eric Olander

The Governor in the Heart of DR Congo’s Mining Belt Wants to Put Aside Differences With the Chinese Company Sicomines

The interim governor of Lualaba province, Fyfy Masuka, standing alongside DRC Senate Speaker Modeste Bahati Lukwebo and officials from the Chinese-run mining company Sicomines in Kinshasa. Image via the DRC Senate.
Fyfy Masuka, the powerful interim governor of the DR Congo’s cobalt-rich Lualaba province, wants to ease tensions with the Chinese-run mining company Sicomines. Masuka met with Senate Speaker Modeste Bahati Lukwebo and representatives from ...
by Eric Olander

Congolese Superstar Cédric Bakambu Gets a Funny Farewell From His Beijing Team

Congolese striker Cédric Bakambu bid farewell to his Beijing Guoan teammates and the Chinese Super League to play once again in Europe, most likely with Barcelona.  The 30-year old forward made a huge impact ...
by Eric Olander

Xi Lays Out an Ambitious Agenda For Engagement in Africa With a Focus on Vaccines and Trade

Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled a sweeping package of trade, health, and investment programs that all appear intended to address the continent’s immediate demand for combatting the COVID-19 pandemic and sparking economic growth. ...
by Eric Olander

Xi’s Billion Dose Vaccine Pledge Signals a Huge Increase in its African Provision

China's global vaccine distributions as of Monday, November 29, 2021. Image via Bridge Consulting.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s promise to provide a billion more doses of COVID-19 vaccines to African countries is a dramatic change from the rather paltry 107 million jabs that ...
by Eric Olander

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

CGSP Take: How Does the Venezuela Crisis Affect China’s Relationship with the Global South?

By Cobus van Staden, CGSP Head of Research,
China has sharply criticized the Trump administration’s incursion into Venezuela and its detention of President Nicolás Maduro. 

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Presidents Sall and Ramaphosa Address FOCAC

Senegalese President Macky Sall (L) and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa (R) both delivered speeches at FOCAC 8 on Monday.
Senegalese President Macky Sall, host of this year’s FOCAC, and President Cyril Rampahosa from South Africa both delivered speeches at the forum on Monday, among the few African leaders this year to speak ...
by Eric Olander

FOCAC is Triennial and So is Africa’s Presence on the Front Page of China’s Largest Newspaper

It’s rare that African issues make it into the pages of China’s largest newspapers, much less to the front page of the People’s Daily, the country’s most important publication. But it does happen ...
by Eric Olander

France Watches FOCAC 8 With Skepticism

HEADLINE TRANSATION: ChinaAfrica: the hour of disillusion
Coverage of this week’s FOCAC 8 in the French media is considerably higher than in previous years, most likely because it’s taking place in Senegal — a francophone country that Paris has long ...
by Eric Olander

On the Eve of FOCAC, China Publishes White Paper That Details Ties With Africa

The Chinese government laid out an ambitious blueprint for its ties with Africa detailed in a 36-page white paper published by the State Council (China’s equivalent to the cabinet in ...
by Eric Olander

Gyude Moore Reflects on China’s New White Paper and Weighs How African Stakeholders Should Respond

The release of the White Paper on Friday provoked a lively discussion online among scholars and analysts. W. Gyude Moore, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C., ...
by Eric Olander

China’s Critics Are Piling On Over the Entebbe Airport Story, Even the Originator of the “China Debt Trap” Meme

The online flurry over the Entebbe Airport story is drawing out commentators and critics from all sides of the debate, including the New Delhi-based author and analyst Brahma Chellaney, the ...
by Eric Olander

The U.S. State Department Has All But Abandoned the Chinese “Debt Trap” Line, But Pentagon Officials Haven’t

U.S. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro speaking to Midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy in October. Image via U.S. Naval Academy.
One of the many differences between the Biden State Department and that of his predecessor Donald Trump is that today’s U.S. diplomats rarely make any public reference to Chinese “debt traps,” very common ...
by Eric Olander

Millions of Leaked Bank Transactions Reveal Massive Corruption by the DR Congo’s Former President Kabila, Some Linked to Chinese Entities

File image of former President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila sitting in a garden at his personal ranch on December 10, 2018 in Kinshasa. John WESSELS / AFP
A pair of blockbuster investigations have been published this month by separate organizations in France and the United States that detail how millions of dollars were illicitly siphoned out of the country by ...
by Eric Olander

Former U.S. Diplomat Peter Pham Draws China’s Ambassador to the DRC Into a Twitter Feud

Long time Twitter rivals J. Peter Pham, a U.S. diplomat during the Trump administration and a vocal critic of China in Africa, and China’s ambassador to the DR Congo, Zhu Jing, squabbled again ...
by Eric Olander

Ethiopia’s Civil War Isn’t Slowing Construction of the Chinese-Financed and Built Africa CDC HQ

The topping out ceremony for phase 1 of the new Chinese-financed Africa CDC in Ethiopia.
China’s Ambassador to the African Union, Liu Yuxi, led a topping-out ceremony on Friday of the new headquarters of the Africa Center for Disease Control in Addis Ababa. The event ...
by Eric Olander

FOCAC is Now Underway in Dakar. Here’s What to Expect

Chinese and Senegal led a discussion on the first day of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation conference in Dakar of the Senior Officials Meeting. Image via @wupeng_MFAChina.
The eighth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation opened on Sunday in the Senegalese capital of Dakar. It was a rather low-key first day where Chinese and African representatives met as part of the Senior ...
by Eric Olander

WEEK IN REVIEW: China Issues Travel Warning For Both Nigeria & DR Congo

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian issued a travel warning this week for Chinese nationals in the DRC and Nigeria. Image via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a travel warning on Monday for its citizens in both Nigeria and the DR Congo and called on its nationals in high-risk areas in both countries to evacuate ...
by Eric Olander

FOCAC PERSPECTIVES: Relieve the “Pressure Points” in China-Africa Ties By Expanding Trade and People-to-People Ties

Every day leading up to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation conference on November 29th and 30th, CAP will feature perspectives from journalists, academics, activists, and business leaders about what they hope will emerge ...
by Eric Olander

Finally, Some Good News For Kenya’s Embattled Standard Gauge Railway

File image of Kenya's Standard Gauge Railway that China financed and built as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. Simon Mania/AFP
While Kenya struggles to repay billions of dollars of loans to the China Exim Bank used to build the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), the government is getting a badly-needed boost from higher cargo ...
by Eric Olander

Chinese Mining Companies Move Forward With Two Huge Deals Worth More Than a Billion Dollars in Ghana, DRC

The Kamoa-Kakula Copper Mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is on track for first production in June 2021. Image via Ivanhoe Mines.
The economic turmoil brought on by the ongoing pandemic has done nothing to stem the appetite of Chinese mining companies looking to expand their presence in Africa. This week alone, Chinese mining giants ...
by Eric Olander

China Ramps Up Criticism of Blinken’s New Africa Policy

HEADLINE TRANSLATION: Want to drive a wedge between China and Africa? U.S. calculations are ridiculous and futile.
China escalated its criticism of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Washington’s new foreign policy approach towards Africa that downplays Beijing.  Whereas the initial reaction to Blinken’s three-nation tour emerged on Monday ...
by Eric Olander
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