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Chinese pharmaceutical companies have finalized production licensing agreements with seven countries around the world that will enable the production of just under 600 million COVID-19 vaccine doses every year, according to data from Bridge.

Bridge notes that at this point the manufacturing process is quite simple, with these production facilities largely re-packaging bulk quantities of vaccine ingredients imported from China, rather than making any vaccines from scratch.

The confirmation from the Bridge tracking report that the overall quantity of Chinese vaccine deliveries to Africa is comparatively low provides a new perspective on the constant vaccine-related propaganda news coverage produced by China's state-owned media outlets and its official diplomatic Twitter channels across the continent.

A lot of the messaging focuses on the shipments arriving at airports and the inoculations of governing elites, as was the case this week in both Somalia and Gabon.

That said, it's nonetheless important to note that in countries like Zimbabwe and Cameroon, Chinese vaccines have been used to help kickstart national vaccination campaigns, albeit on a limited scale.

This Week's Chinese COVID-19 Relief Headlines:

• GABON: President Ali Bongo Ondimba and his wife Sylvia Bongo Ondimba on Wednesday received their second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by Sinopharm. (CGTN AFRICA)
• MAURITIUS: Foreign Minister Alan Ganoo led a ceremony at the arrival to welcome the arrival of the first batch of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines imported from China. (CGTN AFRICA)
• UGANDA: Outgoing Chinese ambassador Zheng Zhuqiang on Wednesday delivered an unknown quantity of COVID-19 nucleic acid diagnostic test kits to Health Minister Ruth Aceng. (@MINOFHEALTHUG)

One day after the South African government suspended the rollout of the U.S.-made Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine due to worries about blood clots, opposition leader and head of the Economic Freedom Fighters party Julius Malema called on the government to grant emergency approval for the use of Chinese and Russian vaccines.

The often bombastic Malema went on to warn President Cyril Ramaphosa that if he didn't something, and fast, that it could lead to violence. "Let people choose which vaccines they want to use... Cyril must buy vaccines and vaccinate our people, otherwise, we are going to the streets," he said.

Read more on this story on the Cape Talk website.

There was widespread outrage in the U.S. last year when Chinese propaganda outlets and Foreign Ministry spokespeople issued false claims and sowed doubts over the safety of Pfizer vaccines. Now, it appears that the U.S. government-owned media is doing something similar, with poorly reported thinly-sourced stories that appear intended to sow doubt about the safety of Chinese vaccines.

On Wednesday, Voice of America published a story on its website that claimed "Cameroonian health workers doubt the efficacy of Chinese COVID vaccines," yet the story included a comment from just one nurse who never directly mentioned the use of Chinese vaccines and then implied that "washing of hands with soap and water, wearing face masks, social distancing and avoiding overcrowded places" would be a suitable alternative.

And the only other source featured in the story is "the leader of the Association of Female Traders" who said that she has doubts about the quality of Chinese vaccines because of what she's heard on mainstream Cameroonian news outlets. First, she doesn't appear to be a healthcare worker as the headline suggests. Secondly, this is a person who doesn't appear to bring any professional expertise to the matter of evaluating vaccine efficacy. Finally, is quoting someone whose only insight is what she's heard on the news really that credible?

Bad journalism. Propaganda. Whatever you want to call it, in this particular instance, it's hard to distinguish the difference between the output of Xinhua and VOA.

Read the article on the VOA website.

A front-page story on The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday highlighted renewed worries in Nigeria about the country's debts to China. 

There was no new information in the story as Chinese lending to Nigeria has remained largely flat over the past year. Instead, it channeled a lot of the pent-up anxieties that many Nigerians have felt over the past year over whether the transportation infrastructure projects financed by Chinese loans are economically viable, the secrecy of Chinese loan contracts, and, yes, again, anxieties over whether the loans will compromise Nigerian sovereignty (an issue that seemingly won't go away, no matter how many times it's debunked).

Nigeria, according to its Debt Management Office, has borrowed $3.12 billion from China (all concessional loans at a 2.5% interest rate) which accounts for just 3.94% of the country's total public debt.

Read the story on The Guardian website.

Two years after it was founded, a new Ghana-based China-Africa research center launched on Tuesday with a virtual ceremony. The Afro-Sino Centre of International Relations is an Accra-based think tank that aims to provide policymakers, scholars, and the public with critical analysis on contemporary issues in China-Africa relations.

Read the announcement on the ASCIR website.

China's push for "global power" emerged as the top threat to the United States using initiatives including the Belt & Road Initiative and COVID-19 vaccine distribution emerged as the top threat facing the United States, according to an important annual intelligence assessment released on Tuesday.

While the report by the Director of National Intelligence identified both Russia and al-Qaeda as potential threats to stability in North Africa and to U.S. interests in the region, it made no mention of China's presence on the continent as a threat to the United States.

Instead, the report framed China's challenge to U.S. leadership more broadly, in global terms.

Key Highlights From the U.S. Annual Threat Assessment Report Related to China and the Global South

• BELT AND ROAD: "Beijing will continue to promote the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to expand China’s economic, political,and military presence abroad, while trying to reduce waste and exploitative practices, which have led to international criticism."

• COVID-19 VACCINES:  "China will try to increase its influence using “vaccine diplomacy,” giving countries favored access to the COVID-19 vaccines it is developing."

SUGGESTED READING:

• The New York Times: China Poses Biggest Threat to U.S., Intelligence Report Says by Julian E. Barnes
• The Washington Post: China maneuvering to expand global influence, undercut U.S., intelligence report finds by Shane Harris

The pressure on African players in China's professional soccer league is going up say two Ghanaian stars who are going to teammates next season on Shenzhen FC.

Midfielder Mubarak Wakaso will be joined by 30-year old Black Stars winger Frank Acheampong in the southern Chinese city. Both expressed their excitement to have the chance to play together but acknowledged that the league is becoming far more competitive with the arrival of more players from Europe.

Separately, Acheampong said that Chinese owners have different expectations of foreign players who they expect to make an almost immediate impact.

The new Chinese Super League season will get underway on April 20th with games broadcast in Africa on StarTimes.

SUGGESTED READING:

• GhanaWeb: Playing in China is difficult -- Frank Acheampong
• Ghana Soccer Net: Chinese League is very competitive- Ghana midfielder Mubarak Wakaso 

Judd Devermont is the Africa Program Director at the Center for Strategic Studies, one of Washington's most influential think tanks, and recently spoke with Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, Director of Research from the German Marshall Fund about how to "re-imagine U.S.-Africa policy."

Once Devermont finished with his presentation, the first question, not surprisingly, was about China and how he thought the U.S. should go about meeting the challenge of the Belt and Road Initiative in Africa (a very popular topic of discussion in Washington these days).

As one of Washington's most prominent Africa analysts, Devermont has the ear of many of DC's highest-ranking officials in both the foreign policy and national security communities, so his views on issues like China are closely followed.

The following is a transcript that's been lightly edited for brevity and clarity of his exchange with de Hoop Scheffer:

ALEXANDRA DE HOOP SCHEFFER: During her confirmation hearings, [U.S. ambassador to the United Nations] Linda Thomas Greenfield presented China as the strategic adversary of the United States and on the African continent she pleaded to offer an alternative to China and investment strategy that has plunged African into colossal debt. So, what could be the American alternative?

And a second question: what could the United States do to capitalize on China's Belt and Road projects in Africa as opposed to trying to counter them?

JUDD DEVERMONT: I certainly agree that China is the strategic challenge for the United States. In sub-Saharan Africa, and ambassador Thomas-Greenfield mentioned this, the Chinese are answering African needs in terms of infrastructure -- $130 billion to $170 billion is [Africa's] infrastructure needs per annum according to the African Development Bank -- and China is trading with Africa at about $180 billion to $200 billion a year, the U.S. trade is about $40 billion. 

So, there's a huge gap between what we [the U.S.] do and what China does.

I have a couple of things that I would say and I think it will answer both of these questions.  In some cases, it's not going to be the U.S. Now, maybe in a couple of years if the Biden administration passes its infrastructure bill and we reinvigorate our infrastructure companies and roads and bridges and have more companies that will be involved but right now Bechtel is the largest American company and that's about it. So, infrastructure is not going to allow us to compete with China.

But we can be work with our European partners and others who invest in infrastructure like Turkey and the UAE to create multilateral, multinational alternatives to China. We can also work with [international financial institutions like] the World Bank and the African Development Bank to provide options [for African government governments]. 

When China is under constraints, they can actually provide decent quality infrastructure. So, there's a study from the China-Africa Research Initiative that says when China is working under a World Bank contract then that road is as good as any other OECD road. And we've seen the African Development and World Bank assign a lot of money to Chinese vendors but we've also seen them disqualify a lot of them for corruption and fraud. 

So we need to work with African governments to make sure if China is going to build a project that it is responsible, that it is transparent, that it meets the standards that Africans set and I think by both creating more alternatives with our global partners but also creating more constraints led by Africans I think we can minimize the most negative things that China does, although not all of them and we need to be vigilant.

Watch the entire one-hour webinar on the German Marshall Fund of the United States YouTube channel.

China's normally bombastic diplomatic Twitter accounts in Africa were uncharacteristically silent on Monday with regards to the controversy that broke out over the weekend when Gao Fu, the director of the China CDC, acknowledged that Chinese vaccines are not as effective as the Pfizer and Moderna jabs.

Typically, when negative stories about China fill U.S. and European media, as this one did, China's diplomatic accounts rally to the defense. But in this case, only Ambassador Zhu Jing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Egypt posted any rebuttals. 

Although China's vaccines may not be as effective as those from the U.S. and Europe, Beijing's propaganda strategists may have determined that it's best to lay low on this story given that the Chinese still have a considerable advantage over their rivals in terms of actually delivering vaccines to developing countries -- something that neither the U.S. or Europe is doing in any meaningful way.

For years Ghana's president Nana Akufo-Addo has touted his "Ghana Beyond Aid" agenda. Back in 2017 during a visit with French President Emmanuel Macron, the Ghanaian leader said "we have to get away from this mindset of dependence."

Well, GhanaWeb columnist Kwesi Atuahene thought it was a bit odd that an administration seeking to avoid aid and dependence would then go ahead and accept the donation of a free building that will house none other than the Foreign Minister's office. 

Read the full column on the GhanaWeb website.

Shenzhen-based electric vehicle giant BYD (aka Build Your Dreams), the world's second-largest EV-maker, recently made a stunning announcement that it will no longer use cobalt in any of its vehicles. Instead, the company is going all-in on LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate) batteries in place of NCM (nickel, cobalt, manganese) across its entire model line-up.

Last year Telsa said that it too was exploring a cobalt-free battery but, unlike BYD, has yet to make any announcements that it would actually make the switch.

Although it's still early in the transition cycle to electric vehicles, the fact that two of the world's largest automakers have announced plans to abandon the use of cobalt is a potentially worrying sign for the DR Congo where approximately 60-70% of the world's known cobalt reserves are located.

This highlights a potentially huge problem for Africa's raw material exporters. When China and other advanced economies decarbonize and "go green," what will happen to those economies in the DRC, Nigeria & others that depend on supplying resources for industries that won't exist?

Read more on this story on the Mining.com website.

Concerns over Chinese debt sustainability in Nigeria have resurfaced recently due to the government's jump-starting the construction of a $5.3 billion standard gauge railway that will be built and financed through concessional lending by the Chinese government. 

Also, a new report published by the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University revealed that Nigeria is among the African countries with the fastest-growing levels of Chinese debt from 2000-2019. 

Amid growing public anxiety over the risks of borrowing too much from China, the fact-checking team at the Africa Check website debunked a lot of the myths surrounding Chinese loans to Nigeria.

Read the full article on the Africa Check website.

While the controversy over the effectiveness of Chinese vaccines raged back in China and online, Somalis seemed either blissfully unaware or simply unconcerned when a shipment of 200,000 Sinopharm jabs arrived at the airport in Mogadishu on Sunday. (@CHINESESOMALIA).

Elsewhere in Africa, Comoros President Azali Assoumani received the inaugural injection of a dose of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday. The president's injection was from a batch of vaccines that arrived in the Indian Ocean island state on March 15. (XINHUA)

The Japanese Prime Minister's office is indicating that infrastructure and building an alternative to China's Belt and Road Initiative will be high on the agenda when Yoshihide Suga visits Washington on Friday for talks with U.S. President Joe Biden.

For now, it looks like the focus of those infrastructure talks will be confined to Asia as there's no indication that either country appears willing or even financially capable of mounting a credible challenge to China's BRI globally.

But President Biden's apparent eagerness to mobilize the Japan-Australia-U.S. coalition to focus on infrastructure is generating quite a bit of excitement in some quarters in the U.S. development community -- some are even going so far as to propose the resuscitation of the much-ridiculed "Blue Dot Network."

The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee wants to give a lot of money to local media in BRI member countries "to raise awareness of and increase transparency regarding the negative impact of activities related to the Belt and Road Initiative." 

While there's no doubt that embattled media outlets in Africa and other BRI regions will appreciate the money,  Center for Global Development Senior Fellow Justin Sandefur pointed out the irony of the U.S. government financing reporting with a predetermined conclusion.

It does sound a lot like how the Chinese fund editorial content production aimed at discrediting U.S. activities around the world.

Algeria announced that it would become the second country in Africa to begin local manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines. Pharmaceutical Minister Lotfi Benbahmed said on Wednesday that the government will partner with Russia to begin production of the Sputnik V vaccine in September.

Earlier this week, Egypt's Health Minister Hala Zayed said production of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine would begin shortly. 

Both countries have indicated that they will produce jabs for use in their own countries and to export elsewhere in Africa as well. (REUTERS)

Chinese Vaccine Headlines in Africa:

• ZIMBABWE: The government plans to buy one million COVID-19 vaccines per month in the second quarter from Sinovac, Sinopharm and suppliers in India and Russia, said Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube. (BLOOMBERG)
• MOROCCO: China will supply Morocco with 10 million doses of Sinopharm vaccines during the months of April and May. (MOROCCO WORLD NEWS)
• SOMALIA: Somalia's ambassador to China, Awale Kullane, signed a deal on Wednesday to prucure 200,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine. (@SOMALIAINCHINA)
• EGYPT: Chinese Ambassador to Cairo Liao Liqiang said on Wednesday that China has provided a total of 600,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines to Egypt, done so far in two batches in February and March with another soon. (EGYPT TODAY)

The Chinese embassy in Namibia is one of the first missions in Africa to participate in Beijing's "Spring Sprout" program that aims to inoculate Chinese expatriates. 

The embassy provided the first of two shots to 1,800 people yesterday from the local Chinese community, employees at Chinese companies, and residents of both Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The "Spring Sprout" program was announced in March and aims to provide vaccinations to thousands of overseas Chinese in 50 countries around the world. (GLOBAL TIMES)

Chinese customs authorities granted approvals to 49 Tanzanian soybean companies this week to begin exporting their crop to China. While the opening of this new market could prove to be very lucrative for Tanzanian farmers, it's unlikely that it'll have much impact on China's soybean imports that now average around 99 million tons a year.

Other China-Africa Business Headlines:

• INFRASTRUCTURE:  The Zambian government awarded China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) a $27 million contract for a water and sanitation improvement project in the northern districts of Kasama and Mbala. (XINHUA)

• MINING: Australian mining company Ionic Rare Earths inked a memorandum of understanding with rare earths miner Aluminum Corporation of China or Chinalco over the development of its Makuutu rare earths project in Uganda. (MINING WEEKLY)

After spending years living and working in China as an English teacher at an international school. Elizabeth (last name withheld) returned to her native Zimbabwe inspired by China's prowess in logistics and widespread use of electric scooters.

Now she's leveraging her China experience pioneer Zimbabwe's first-ever all-women-owned, green-powered scooter delivery business. “We sourced the scooters from Guangzhou, China where electric scooters are pretty normal there," she explained. "It was quite easy for me to get them from there since I can speak the language and I lived in China for over 6 years."

Read more on this story on the CleanTecnica website.

Egypt will soon become the first country in Africa to locally manufacture a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, according to Health Minister Hala Zayed (photo).

The minister informed the Cabinet yesterday that a deal between Egyptian state-owned pharmaceutical company VASCERA and Sinovac has been concluded and the two sides are preparing production lines to manufacture between 20-60 million jabs annually.

A similar production agreement is also in place in the United Arab Emirates where a local partner will jointly produce Sinopharm vaccines.

Chinese Vaccine Distributions in Africa Hit a Lull While Focus Shifts to Eastern Europe

After picking up a lot last week, Chinese vaccine distributions in Africa appeared to have slowed. It's possible that the recent long holiday weekend in China to mark tomb-sweeping day may have impacted shipments.

CHINESE VACCINE HEADLINES FROM AROUND THE WORLD:

• EUROPE: “I received the vaccine, and I feel great,” said Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on his Instagram page after receiving an injection of a COVID-19 vaccine made by Sinopharm. “Thank you our great health workers. Thank you our Chinese brothers,” he added. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

• AMERICAS: Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced on Tuesday that he plans to embark on a global tour to China, Russia, India and the United States to personally to make sure that its supply agreements for vaccines against COVID-19 are honored. (REUTERS)

• MIDDLE EAST: An unspecified quantity of Sinopharm vaccines donated by the People's Liberation Army arrived in Lebanon yesterday. The jabs will reportedly be used by the Lebanese military and other public service agencies. (XINHUA)

China's second-largest e-commerce company, JD.com, is looking to high-end fashion consumers in the Persian Gulf as part of a new expansion in the Middle East.

JD signed a partnership agreement with Namshi (photo), the fashion and lifestyle platform owned by Dubai’s Emaar Malls, to provide local logistics, warehousing, marketing, and content creation support in the region.

As part of the deal, according to a report in Arab News, Chinese brands including Baleno, Dodogogo, Latit, and Mo&Co will be sold on the Namshi platform.

Last month, Chinese streaming video platform iQiyi announced that it too is expanding in the Arab market with the launch of a new subscription service.

FACT CHECK: The Arab News article incorrectly states that JD.com is "China’s largest online retailer." JD is actually second to the Alibaba-owned Taobao (TMall).

The U.S. Export-Import Bank disregarded warnings about the worsening security situation in Mozambique and went ahead with a risky $4.7 billion loan for a gas pipeline last year that is now in serious trouble.

The bank became the largest creditor on the $15 billion pipeline project as part of an effort to displace Chinese and Russian investors who also sought a stake in the deal.

The bank had been warned that Islamic militants operating in northern Mozambique near the pipeline could endanger the project, according to documents secured by the environmental group Friends of the Earth through a Freedom of Information Act request.

It seems in hindsight that the bank may have been more focused on blocking China and Russia rather than on the realities surrounding the pipeline itself.

Read more on this story on the Bloomberg website.

U.S. President Joe Biden appears increasingly determined for the U.S. to rally allies in Europe and Asia to develop a rival to China's Belt and Road Initiative. The issue will reportedly be on the agenda next week when Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is scheduled to meet with the President at the White House.

President Biden also raised the same issue last month during a phone call with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Unlike China's BRI, with its global scope, it appears that the U.S. will focus its efforts largely in the Asia-Pacific region, according to some of the early reporting on this issue. Although Japan is quite formidable in building large transportation infrastructure in Asia, such as the new Saigon subway in Vietnam, the two countries are expected to focus their development efforts on telecommunications and clean energy projects -- two areas where both the U.S. and Japan can compete head-on with China.

So far, there's no indication that Africa will be a primary theater for this new infrastructure development competition between the U.S. and China.

3 Reasons Why Any Future U.S. "BRI Alternative" Will Look Nothing Like China's Belt & Road:

• REGIONAL NOT GLOBAL: Unlike the actual BRI, it looks like the U.S. wants to focus on strategically important regions in Asia and the Americas.

• NO STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISES: Unlike China, the U.S. does not have any state-owned enterprises that it can mobilize for both capital and construction.

• MORE NARROW FOCUS: In contrast to China where pretty much any project can be BRI-related so long as someone says it is, the U.S. will likely focus on a select few industries where it possesses a marginal advantage.

There's very good reason to be skeptical of the U.S. drive to mount a meaningful challenge to the Chinese when it comes to infrastructure development. First of all, it's just not something the U.S. has shown to be very good at, both at home and abroad. Secondly, it will take enormous financial resources to compete with China in this realm and the President faces pressure to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure rather than to help people in Southeast Asia and other developing regions.

And, let's not forget the infamous Blue Dot Network, the last effort by the U.S. government to supposedly challenge China's Belt and Road. Based on the U.S. track record to date and the current state of politics in Washington, it's highly unlikely that anyone in Beijing is really that concerned about the U.S. presenting a credible challenge to the BRI.