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Are We Becoming Like the Taliban? Chinese Feminists Grapple with Women’s Rights, Afghanistan, and the Moral Policing

This week, a wave of outrage swept across China’s internet, not just over a university scandal, but over something deeper: growing anxiety that China’s society could be slipping toward Taliban-style moral authoritarianism. At the center of the storm was a disciplinary ...

Myanmar and China Have Lowest Internet Freedom, Says Study

Myanmar and China have the world's worst internet freedom, with declines reported in a number of other countries led by Kyrgyzstan, a study said Wednesday. The further deterioration in Myanmar, a Beijing ally where the military seized power in 2021, marks ...

Nigeria’s Twitter Ban & China’s Cyber Cultural Products

June’s been an eventful month for China, Africa, and the internet. On June 5th, Nigeria’s government suspended the use of Twitter in the country, indefinitely. The next day, the Foundation for Investigative Journalism reported that the Nigerian government had also reached out to the Cyberspace Administration ...

Nigerian House Representative Endorses Chinese-Style Social Media Regulation

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is getting support from his ruling party allies in the House of Representatives to further the crackdown on social media and introduce even stricter "Chinese-style" regulations. "In China, social media is being regulated and such a thing ...

Chinese Cyber Sovereignty & Nigeria’s #Twitterban

The Nigerian government justified the banning of Twitter on the basis of protecting the country's national interest, security, and sovereignty. Although the move was done for purely domestic political reasons, the government's defense is strikingly similar to the language that China ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

The Pain of Un-Polarity

“THE G2 WILL BE CONVENING SHORTLY!”
This post by U.S. President Donald Trump in the run-up to his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week may end up leaving a more lasting mark than the actual summit he attended.

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Report: Asian, African Countries Block Access to Social Media More Than Any Other Regions

Nigeria's decision to ban Twitter last week is just the latest example of how access to social media platforms in Africa is narrowing, according to a new report by the Virtual Private Network company Surf Shark. They report that 30 countries across the continent have ...

Is the Nigerian Twitter Ban Similar to China’s Restrictions on Foreign Social Media Platforms? Yes… and No.

Lawyer Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa is adamant that Nigeria's recent crackdown on Twitter is nothing at all like what authoritarian governments in other parts of the world restrict access to social media platforms. “I do not agree," he said in a story that is widely circulating today on ...

China to Build a New Library at the University of Nairobi

Beijing's top diplomat for sub-Saharan Africa, Wu Peng, announced on Twitter yesterday that the Chinese government will build a China-themed library at the University of Nairobi. The university is already home to a Confucius Institute. Wu added that he ...

China, Africa and the Internet, Again

The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa recently discussed African elections and, not surprisingly, the conversation became about China.  The lawmakers latched on to a narrative that the Chinese Communist Party is actively trying to ...

The Growing China-Africa Information Divide

A heated discussion about the merits and dangers of Chinese loans to Africa is now taking place in the aftermath of last weekend's landmark debt default in Zambia. Analysts, finance professionals, journalists, activists, and various other stakeholders across Africa, the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere are all working ...

Debt Crisis? What Debt Crisis? In China, There’s No Coverage or Commentary About Zambia

It appears that China's censors have moved to restrict media coverage of the ongoing debt crisis in Zambia. A search of major news sites, the market-leading Baidu search engine, and the social media platform Weibo came back with no results related to current events unfolding in the ...

What Is Chinese “Constructive Journalism” and Will It Work in Africa?

The Chinese definition of journalism is significantly different than that in most of Africa and for much of the rest of the world. Most importantly, the news media in China is tightly controlled by the communist party and, as such, is ...
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