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

Hundreds of Thousands of Chinese Vaccines Landed in Egypt, Benin, and Niger Over the Weekend

Niger's President Issouf and Prime Minister Brigi Rafini pose together with Chinese ambassador Zhang Lijun at Niger Capital International Airport to mark the arrival of vaccines from China.
Large shipments of vaccines imported from China landed in North Africa over the weekend, providing some countries with their first jabs needed to kick off national inoculation programs in the region: ...
by Eric Olander

Namibia’s State TV Channel NBC to Broadcast 4-Part Series Produced by CCTV

TV viewers in Namibia will be able to watch a four-part documentary series produced by China’s state-run broadcaster CCTV beginning on Monday at 17:20 local time.  The show, Glamorous Namibia, will be aired on ...
by Eric Olander

One Week Later, Burundi Shows the Statement That It Published in Support of China’s Controversial New Election Law in Hong Kong

Burundi’s official press agency published a flurry of tweets today in both English and French that provide new details on a statement that the government released one week ago in support ...
by Eric Olander

Chinese Medical Team, Vaccines Land in the Comoros Islands

A team of Chinese medical staff from China's Guangxi Autonomous Region landed yesterday in the capital of the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean. Image via Xinhua.
A 12-member medical team from China’s Guangxi Autonomous Region landed in Moroni on Wednesday, capital of the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean. The team is there to help with COVID-19 mitigation and also ...
by Eric Olander

Data Reveals Africa’s Inefficient Distribution of Road Building Projects Financed by China and the World Bank

Source: Tilman Graff, “Spatial Inefficiencies In Africa’s Trade Network,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series, 2019. Note: Circle = project site; size of circle = logarithmic disbursement value of project in U.S. dollars
The Brookings Institution today showcased some of the findings from an earlier working paper by Harvard doctoral student Tilman Graff who studied the spatial inefficiencies of Africa’s transportation industry and its impact on ...
by Eric Olander

Ugandans Unhappy That Chinese-Built Road is Falling Apart Soon After It Was Built, But the Contractor May Not Be To Blame

Potholes on the Chinese-built Gulu-Atiak-Nimule highway in Uganda. Image via The Dispatch.
Residents in northern Uganda are expressing disappointment that a $25 million, 106-kilometer Chinese-built road is pockmarked with dangerous potholes just six years after it opened. The Gulu-Atiak-Nimule highway is a key transport link ...
by Eric Olander

Chinese Jabs Land in Namibia as Beijing’s Global Vaccine Distribution Drive Shows No Signs of Slowing

Namibia kicked off its national vaccine campaign on Tuesday following the arrival of 100,000 doses of Chinese COVID-19 jabs. The shipment came aboard an Air Zimbabwe flight that dropped off 344,000 doses in ...
by Eric Olander

Why Chile’s Growing Trade Dependence on China Provides a Cautionary Tale to Other Small Countries in the Global South

Chile, in recent years, has been very successful in attracting large amounts of Chinese investment in the country’s copper and lithium mining sectors, agriculture, and more. So, successful in fact that it’s sparked ...
by Eric Olander

Kenya’s Treasury Chief Refutes Media Reports that the Port of Mombasa is at Risk of Forfeiture to China

Kenya’s Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yattani denied, again, on Monday that the Port of Mombasa could be handed over to China in the event that Kenya Railways is unable to repay its ...
by Eric Olander

The Star Editorial Board: SGR Needs to Go Regional to Repay Its Chinese Creditors

Kenya needs to invest even more money into the embattled SGR if the railway has any chance of becoming financially self-sufficient to the point where it can repay its Chinese creditors, according to ...
by Eric Olander

MP: Rampant Corruption, Poor Planning and “Pooh Pooh” Leadership to Blame for SGR’s Woes (Not China)

Kenyan Member of Parliament for Kitutu Chache, Richard Onyonka, gave a very entertaining assessment of why the Standard Gauge Railway is facing so many difficulties which all, more or else in his view, relate ...
by Eric Olander

With Chinese Engineers Back on Site, Zimbabwe’s New International Airport is Almost Half Done

File image of Chinese construction of the international terminal at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare. Image via Bulawayo24.
Construction of the new international terminal at Harare’s main airport is now 46% complete according to Zimbabwean officials who credit the return of Chinese engineers for the recent progress.  Chinese staff on the ...
by Eric Olander

While Everyone Focuses on Vaccine Distribution, China Appears to Be Ramping Up Donations of Medical Supplies Again

Chinese donations of PPE and other COVID-19-related medical supplies to African governments appear to be picking up again. In recent months China shifted its focus away from shipping masks, ventilators, and other materials ...
by Eric Olander

A Chartered Air Zimbabwe Jet Took Off From China to Harare With a “Full Tummy” of Vaccines

344,000 doses of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines landed in Harare this morning on a charter flight from China. This latest shipment is part of 1.2 million doses purchase made by the Zimbabwean government. In ...
by Eric Olander

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

BRICS Announces Numerous New Initiatives

The BRICS group wrapped up its two-day leaders’ summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday. The summit’s final communique is a 16,000-word doorstop that covers numerous issues from economics to education.
The communique avoids any direct mention of the United States, and references to “unilateralism” and other coded criticism are also relatively scarce. Rather, the communique keeps the focus on the BRICS’ vision of the strengthening and reform of the global multilateral system ...

Two Events in China and the DR Congo Illustrate Why the Race for Cobalt Supplies is So Important

Soaring demand for electric cars and trucks is sparking a buying frenzy for the critical ingredients used to make the batteries in those vehicles, namely cobalt. Prices for the metal ...
by Eric Olander

BlackLivity’s Láikàn (来看) Series Portrays a Nuanced, Complex View of Black Life in China

BlackLivity, the independent community-based media platform dedicated to showcasing Black life in China, launched a new video this week that highlights the site’s compelling Láikàn series that provides first-person stories about the African diaspora ...
by Eric Olander

Asia, Not Africa, Will Soon be Awash in COVID-19 Vaccines Thanks to China’s Worsening Ties With Rivals

Leaders of the four-nation Indo-Pacific coalition known as “the Quad” (short for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) announced a new initiative after a virtual summit on Friday to distribute one billion doses ...
by Eric Olander

Second Batch of Chinese Vaccines to Arrive Today in Zimbabwe

A chartered Air Zimbabwe flight is scheduled to land at Robert Mugabe International Airport in Harare with the second batch of Chinese-made vaccines. The fact that Ambassador Gao Shaochun mentioned in a Tweet ...
by Eric Olander

China Donates Vaccines to UN Peacekeepers and International Olympic Committee

China will donate COVID-19 vaccines to the United Nations for use by peacekeepers stationed around the world, according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at the regular press briefing in Beijing on ...
by Eric Olander

With a Reference to Africa, Comedian Bill Maher Warns Fellow Americans “We’ve Lost” to China

U.S. comedian and political commentator Bill Maher issued a scathing indictment of the U.S. and failure to keep pace with China in the 21st Century. “We’re not losing,” he said on his show ...
by Eric Olander

Two Fascinating Documentaries on How Chinese Money is Changing Africa

Free Documentary, the independent documentary film distributor, published a pair of very interesting programs on YouTube that explore how Chinese money is changing Africa. The two films were both produced by the South ...
by Eric Olander

China’s Transsion Holds Firm to the Top Spot in Africa’s Smartphone Market

An online ad for one of Tecno's new phones. Tecno is part of the Transsion suite of brands that have propelled the company to the largest mobile device brand on the continent. Image via Tecno Nigeria.
Transsion’s dominance of the African mobile phone market remains fully intact despite last year’s major economic disruption brought on by the pandemic, according to new data released by the research ...
by Eric Olander

China’s Massive New Data Trunk Line Linking Asia, Africa, and Europe is Nearing Completion

A consortium of Chinese companies is nearing completion of the 12,000-kilometer PEACE cable (Pakistan East Africa Connecting to Europe) that will deliver badly-needed bandwidth to large swathes of Africa. The capacity of the ...
by Eric Olander

Chinese Vaccines Arrive in Congo-Brazzaville

Handover ceremony of Chinese vaccines at the Maya-Maya International Airport in Brazzaville.
Chinese ambassador Ma Fulin (photo) led a donation ceremony at the international airport in the Republic of Congo capital Brazzaville on Wednesday to hand over 100,000 doses of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine donated by ...
by Eric Olander

Why China’s Vaccine Outreach in Africa May Not Produce the Soft Power Dividends Many Assume

There’s growing anxiety in many Western capitals that China’s head start in distributing vaccines to African countries will provide Beijing with a powerful diplomatic advantage. While there’s no doubt that China’s vaccine donations ...
by Eric Olander

Chinese State Media Showcase African Scholars, Journalists Who Make the Case For China’s Development Model

Image via China Daily.
Chinese officials typically do not come out and say that their development model should be adopted by other countries as that could be construed as interfering in another state’s internal affairs. Instead, that ...
by Eric Olander

New Crop of Wilson Center Fellows Apparently Not Interested in China-LatAm, Africa Relations

Parsifal D’Sola, director of the Bogota-based think tank Center for China-Latin America Investigation at the Andrés Bello Foundation thought that it was a bit strange that given the high level of concern among U.S. ...
by Eric Olander

Someone Paid a Huge Ransom to Free the Crew of Chinese Fishing Vessel Taken Captive in the Gulf of Guinea

The Nigerian Navy reports that the crew of a pirated Chinese fishing vessel was recently released following the payment of a $300,000 ransom. The crew had spent a month in captivity The 14-member crew, ...
by Eric Olander

Chinese Fishing Vessel Runs Aground in Mauritius, Sparking Fears of Another Environmental Disaster

An aerial view taken on March 8, 2021, shows Chinese fishing vessel Lurong Yuan Yu that ran aground on reefs of Pointe-aux-Sables in Port Louis, Mauritius, on March 7, 2021. L'Express Maurice / AFP
Coastguard and security forces are racing to offload 130 tons of fuel and lubricants from a Chinese fishing vessel that ran aground off the coast of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
by Eric Olander

The Zambian Employee Who Pulled His Chinese Boss on a Cart Says The Whole Thing Was Just a Big Misunderstanding

Two videos surfaced today on Twitter that seem to show a Zambian employee who was recorded pulling his Chinese boss on a trolley cart saying that the resultant outrage is a ...
by Eric Olander
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