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China’s Port Presence in Africa

China has built extensive ports and logistics facilities around the African coast. These serve Africa's ambitions to boost exports and the Belt and Road Initiative’s focus on multimodal connectivity through infrastructure provision. A new report from the Pentagon-linked Africa Center ...

New Research Tracks Chinese, Russian Disinformation Campaigns in Africa

The number of disinformation campaigns purportedly initiated by Russia and China in Africa has nearly quadrupled since 2022, according to a new data set produced by the Pentagon-backed Africa Center for Strategic Studies. Researchers documented 189 instances of intentional efforts to ...

Xi’s Third Term Will Power Up Chinese Messaging in Africa

Xi Jinping’s third term will likely see the re-energizing and reshaping of China’s external relationships after its COVID lockdown. But how will China’s political engagement with Africa evolve?  In a new paper Paul Nantulya, a research associate at the ...

Q&A: Africa’s Role in China’s Global Military Expansion: Defense Expert Unpacks a Thorny Issue

The head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral John Aquilino, on Tuesday added to the growing alarm in Washington DC defense circles about the global reach of China’s military.  Speaking in front of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, Aquilino said China is building capacity ...

Is China Planning a New Military Base in Africa? New Paper Weighs the Options

Rumors that China is planning another military base in Africa are rife in Washington at the moment. Now a new paper by Paul Nantulya, a noted expert on Africa-China military links, was published by the Pentagon-aligned Africa Center for Strategic Studies. It unpacks the strategic calculations that underlie the ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

The G20 Summit and the Half-Life of a Joke

When it was announced in 2023 that the African Union would become a full member of the G20, I darkly joked on a podcast that the AU’s entry into the body could very well mark the moment the G20 lost its status as one of the most important global coordination forums. Mark my words, I said, soon The Economist will be like “Uhhh, the G20 is OVER – it’s the ...