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Zambian President Returns Home From Week-Long Visit to China, No Updates on Debt Restructuring Deal

Zambian President Haikinde Hichilema returned home this weekend from a week-long trip to China that appeared to be as much about sightseeing as it was about conducting substantive diplomacy. During the last stop of his tour in Beijing on Friday, Hichilema met ...

Is China Setting the Agenda for Global South Debt Restructuring?

In June, Zambia reached what's been described as a landmark debt restructuring deal that for the first time brought together the country's bilateral creditors including China, traditional Paris Club lenders and bondholders. While the deal ...

A New Chapter of ‘Going out’ in the Making? 

By Lukas Fiala  Walking through the halls at the Paris Air Show, the world’s largest aerospace exhibition, last week demonstrated once more the emergence of a novel chapter of China’s global outreach: high-tech aeronautics and aerospace cooperation. From the Aviation Industry ...

Investors Cautiously Optimistic About Zambia Debt Deal, But Still Wary About China’s Role

Investors welcomed the news of Zambia's debt restructuring deal with a mini rally on Friday in the country's dollar-denominated bonds. Government bonds from Ghana, Pakistan and Sri Lanka also saw similar bumps prompted by new optimism their debt restructurings will follow Zambia's example.

Hichilema Refutes Western Accusations China Was to Blame for Delays in Zambia’s Debt Restructuring

Zambian President Haikinde Hichilema rejected longstanding accusations by Western governments and institutions that China was to blame for how long it took to reach a debt restructuring agreement. The president told Bloomberg TV after the deal was announced on Friday in ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

2026: Africa-China Relations in a World Shaped by North-South Geopolitics

When talking about Africa–China relations, one is always moving along a sliding scale. There are myriad interactions with Chinese entities that concern only individual African countries, segueing into trends affecting the whole continent and sliding further into global dynamics shaping the developing world, of which Africa is the heart.

The Africa-China relationship is its own thing, but Africa’s fate can’t easily be separated from factors affecting the wider Global South, ...

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud on Africa’s Green Transition

This has been a week of revealing contrasts, so revealing that a screenwriter might find them a bit on the nose.  Most prominent was the global attention focused on the underwater fate of a small group of rich people and the general ...

Paris Summit Takes Triple Aim at Debt, Climate, Development

The Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, aimed at reforming the increasingly dysfunctional development financing system, kicks off in Paris on Thursday. Its aims are huge. In the words of Catherine Colonna, the French Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs, the goal is ...

Backgrounder: Why China Matters So Much at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact

In Paris, all eyes are on Chinese Premier Li Qiang, representing the People’s Republic at this week’s Summit for a New Global Financing Pact. China’s rise is perhaps the most important mega-trend that led to the current rethinking of the global development finance system, but it remains ...

China Raises the (Already Sky-High) Stakes at This Week’s Summit for A New Global Financing Pact

The Global South faces dual existential crises: speeding up development to match growing population rates while trying not to become climate roadkill. Both are worsened by a broken international development financing system increasingly hijacked by geopolitics. This week’s Summit for a New ...

Lightning Round: Africa-France Summit, FOCAC & UK Port Deal

An often contentious leaderless summit took place last in Montepellier where African youth activists did not hold back in telling French President Emmanuel Macron what they thought needed to be done to improve ties between the two regions. Eric & Cobus ...