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

This Chart Shows What African Union and UN Negotiators Are Desperately Trying to Avoid

Interest rates on Zambian 10-year bonds have more than doubled since January to an astonishing 38%. So, it’s not surprising there’s growing speculation that Lusaka will have no choice but to ...
by Eric Olander

Al Jazeera: African Countries Turn to China for Debt Relief

Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Adow reports from Nairobi on how rapidly deteriorating economic conditions in East Africa due to the worsening COVID-19 outbreak is prompting more governments in the region to look to China ...
by Eric Olander

Paris Club Chief Says She’s Confident China Will Join International Debt Relief Effort for Developing Countries

France's Treasury Managing Director and head of the Paris Club of international lenders, Odile Renaud-Basso. Ludovic MARIN / AFP
The Chair of the Paris Club of wealthy donor states, Odile Renaud-Basso, is increasingly confident that China will join the broader international effort to provide debt relief to countries facing high levels ...
by Eric Olander

Person to Watch: China’s Deputy Ambassador to Zimbabwe is Emerging as a Prominent Twitter Diplomat

Long before it was fashionable, (or, more specifically, permitted,) Zhao Baogang was on Twitter. The Deputy Chinese ambassador in Zimbabwe first opened his account back in 2015, well ahead of most of his ...
by Eric Olander

After a Brief Lull, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian Announces a Raft of New COVID-19 Aid Programs for Africa

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian announced a significant increase in Chinese government-sponsored COVID-19 medical aid missions in Africa. Zhao revealed on Monday that medical teams and relief supplies will be sent to ...
by Eric Olander

One Month Later, Vast Segments of African Civil Society Remain Angry Over What Happened in Guangzhou

The first images of African residents in Guangzhou being forced out onto the streets of the southern Chinese city started to emerge during the weekend of April 10th. Now, a full ...
by Eric Olander

African Finance and Development Ministers Meet With Private Creditors to Try and Reach a Debt Suspension Deal

At least a dozen African finance ministers, along with several development ministers, spoke via video conference with more than 100 private creditors on Monday as part of an effort to reach a consensus ...
by Eric Olander

New Data: The Chinese Government May Claim Credit For COVID-19 Donations but Its the Private Sector That’s Actually Paying For It

The Washington, D.C.-based consultancy RWR Advisory published a set of fascinating new charts that detail China’s COVID-19 donation activities over the past couple of months. The firm revealed that although the Chinese government ...
by Eric Olander

A Popular Nigerian Political Commentator Offers China Some Sobering Advice: Be Careful, There Are More of You Here Than Us Over There

In response to the growing alienation that a lot of Nigerians and other Africans feel about China in the wake what happened in Guangzhou last month, popular online commentator Onye Nkuzi (nom de ...
by Eric Olander

First Moody’s Now the IMF, Warnings About Kenya’s Debt Levels Are Starting to Pile Up

Tweet by Gyude Moore, Liberia's former public works minister and now a fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington.
The International Monetary Fund raised Kenya’s risk of debt distress to high from moderate in a statement on Tuesday because of the costly impact of the worsening COVID-19 crisis. The IMF said that even ...
by Eric Olander

Two Chinese Nationals Arrested for Allegedly Trying to Bribe a Senior Official in Nigeria’s Anti-Corruption Agency

Meng Wei Kun and Xu Koi photographed by Nigerian authorities in front of the cash they allegedly planned to use to bribe a senior anti-corruption official. Photo via @officialEFCC.
Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arrested two Chinese nationals, Meng Wei Kun and Xu Koi, this week for allegedly attempting to bribe the head of the EFCC’s office in the northern city ...
by Eric Olander

BBC Correspondent Danny Vincent Reflects on Anti-Black Discrimination in China

The longtime China-based BBC correspondent Danny Vincent reflected this week on the reports of discrimination and racism towards Africans in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. As a black journalist who has spent ...
by Eric Olander

Africa Confidential: Zambia Close to Eurobond Default

Africa Confidential reports that Zambia is on the verge of defaulting on its Eurobond debt, following similar warnings last month from two of the world’s larger credit ratings agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, who ...
by Eric Olander

South Africa’s President Doesn’t Just Want a 9-Month Debt Reprieve. He’s Now Calling For a Two-Year “Standstill”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa chaired a virtual meeting on Friday with Heads of State & neighboring countries to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo via @CyrilRamaphosa.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called on G20 countries and other international creditors to extend a proposed debt repayment moratorium from nine-months to two years. The president issued the appeal on Friday during ...
by Eric Olander

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

Eye-Rolling Through the Apocalypse

November’s COP30 gathering in Belém, Brazil, marks three decades since COP1 in Berlin in 1995, and raises a sobering reminder of how deep we’ve sunk into a climate morass of our own making amid non-stop warnings. The evacuation of millions of people and the deaths of at least seventeen due to Typhoon Ragasa’s rampage through the Philippines, Taiwan, and China couldn’t have been more pointedly timed as U.S. and Chinese ...

China’s Subtly Revising the Narrative of the Origin of Its “Miscommunication” With Nigerians and Other Africans in Guangzhou

Confronted with overwhelming criticism in Africa following widespread reports of maltreatment of and discrimination against African residents in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou last month, the Chinese government has been trying (largely ...
by Eric Olander

165 Kenyan Evacuees Return Home From China

165 Kenyans stranded in China arrived in the early hours Sunday morning at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Kenyan ambassador to China, Sarah Serem, helped to coordinate the charter flight from Guangzhou back to ...
by Eric Olander

Moody’s Warns That Kenya’s High Borrowing Costs Could Prompt a Downgrade

AFP
The global credit rating agency Moody’s is becoming increasingly concerned that Kenya will not be able to keep up with the payments on its comparatively expensive loan portfolio. Moody’s ...
by Eric Olander

While There’s an Emerging Consensus on Chinese and Other Bilateral/Multilateral African Debt Relief, Dealing With Private Creditors is Going to be a Lot More Difficult

So much of the current discussion surrounding African debt relief focuses on the role of China and the traditional multilateral lenders like the World Bank and the IMF. While there’s no doubt these ...
by Eric Olander

China’s Ambassador to Nigeria Defends Treatment of Africans in Guangzhou

China's Ambassador to Nigeria, Zhou Pingjian, donating PPE to Health Minister Dr. E. Osagie Ehanire. Photo via the Chinese embassy in Nigeria Twitter feed. March 24, 2020.
China’s ambassador to Nigeria, Zhou Pingjiang, defended his government’s treatment of Africans in Guangzhou in an interview published Wednesday with the Nigerian newspaper Punch. Ambassador Zhou stuck closely to the existing talking points ...
by Eric Olander

CGTN Responds to Viral Video of African Woman Unable to Enter a Guangzhou Hospital With a Story on How Another African Woman Successfully Gave Birth in a GZ Hospital

CGTN Africa wants everyone to know that African women can deliver babies in Guangzhou. It’s a rather odd story for an international news channel to run but this is clearly a piece of ...
by Eric Olander

Chinese Companies Went on a Global Buying Spree in Q1 But Just Not in Africa

The London-based analytics firm GlobalData released a new report this week that highlights how Chinese companies are looking to buy distressed assets around the world as prices slump due to the ...
by Eric Olander

Africa’s Cost of Borrowing is Orders of Magnitude Higher Than the Rest of the World

Source: tradingeconomics.com/bonds
To understand why African finance leaders are so determined to avoid a default on their Eurobond debt all you have to do is look at the current interest rates that many of the ...
by Eric Olander

Uganda President Museveni Subtly Blames “Asia” For COVID-19 and Now Wants All African Debt Cancelled in Return

File photo. Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni on November 9, 2019. Sumy Sadurni / AFP
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni said in a speech this week that because the COVID-19 outbreak is not the fault of his or any African country that the continent’s international creditors should in turn ...
by Eric Olander

Former U.S. President Barack Obama’s Foundation Sought Out Jack Ma to Work Together on Projects in Africa

Oxford University Senior Research Associate, Folashadé Soulé, noted yesterday that although the U.S. and Chinese governments are currently at odds (that’s putting it mildly), trilateral cooperation is nonetheless taking place in Africa between the foundations ...
by Eric Olander

The Plight of Africans in Guangzhou is Now a Topic on Breakfast Radio in Cape Town

To get a sense of just how widespread the discussion of the alleged discrimination against Africans in China has become in many parts of Africa, listen to the discussion between CAP’s own Cobus ...
by Eric Olander

A One-Day Social Media Rally Took Place This Week to Show Solidarity With Africans in China

The modified Chinese flag that online activists used for a one-day rally on Monday May 4, 2020 to protest reports of anti-African discrimination in China.
For 24-hours on Monday social media activists and others switched their profile pictures to a black Chinese flag (photo above) and used the hashtag #BlackChina to declare their anger towards the Chinese government ...
by Eric Olander

U.S. Congressional Commission Releases New Report on Chinese Engagement in Africa

The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressionally-mandated commission responsible for monitoring and investigating national security and trade issues between the United States and China, released a new report ...
by Eric Olander

David Dollar: U.S. May Resist Expanding IMF’s Special Drawing Rights as Could Help Expand Chinese Influence

African countries have been lobbying for the International Monetary Fund to provide emergency financing known as Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to help them cope with the economic consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak. But 
by Eric Olander
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