The US$2.68 billion China Union plan to revitalise Liberia's Bong Mines has not taken off, almost a year after it was first signed. Initial concerns about the little-known Chinese mining company's...

In January, Liberian officials are set to finalise negotiations for a US$1.6 billion palm oil investment deal with Indonesia's Golden VerOleum. The past year has seen a number of feasibility studies...

Accra is leading the way forward on housing development, bringing in South Korean company STX Group to build 200,000 housing units over the next five years at a cost of...

Although Chinese companies have not yet bid for Kosmos's 30% stake in Ghana's Jubilee field, the China Development Bank has bought Beijing's companies a great deal of capital. The Ghana National...

After winning a court battle over the Nigerian government's attempt to cancel its oil production licences, South Korea's Korea National Oil Corporation is offering to finance billions of dollars of new...

South Korea's state-run Land and Housing Corporation is offering investments and technical cooperation in the oil-rich Niger Delta, a move that might help the ambitions of Seoul's energy companies and appeal...

The second iteration of India's Congress Party-led federal coalition has augmented its diplomatic, strategic and commercial thrust into Africa in pursuit of hydrocarbons, minerals, agricultural land and markets. By selecting Shashi...

At the India-Africa Hydrocarbon Conference in Delhi on 8 December, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna preached the benefits of 'a close alignment on major international issues and an abundance of socio-political...

The details of the US$8 billion China Sonangol/China International Fund are becoming more apparent as subsidiary deals are signed. On 7 December, Zimbabwe's Transport and Mining Ministries signed mining and construction...

Gabon's politicians continue to question the delays in the starting-up of the Bélinga iron ore mine and its associated infrastructure works. But financing issues and constant threats of renegotiation have not...

Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya is finding more time to develop budding relations with Africa. In a modest step toward that goal, Kasit presided over the launch of a flashy, official website...

As eyes turn to Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's handling of cases against Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir, Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba and the authors of Kenya's 2007 post-election violence, a South...

Billionaire Stanley Ho is in the vanguard of Chinese investment in Lusophone Africa. His companies will operate the casino in Luanda's soon-to-be-completed Hotel Intercontinental with Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angola's...

While some were left asking if the US$7 billion deal signed by the China International Fund and its sister company China Sonangol International in early October had actually...

The China International Fund and China Sonangol are being used to bail out troubled regimes when international pressure on them is at its highest. First, there was the...

In comparison to the festivities of 2006, the 8-9 November Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC IV) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, was a much less hyped-up affair. It was...

China proclaimed that it had accomplished its goals of doubling aid and meeting the eight goals established at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in Beijing in 2006,...

The Sharm El-Sheik Action Plan sets out China-Africa cooperation goals for 2009 to 2012. Chinese officials emphasised that the 2006 Beijing Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was more a...

Conventional wisdom has it that the Chinese economic juggernaut is sweeping across the African continent, devastating already weak manufacturing sectors. Yet in many countries, statistics show a far...

On 23-25 November, Seoul continued with the summitry programme it started in 2006, which gives African countries and their resources a privileged place in its hierarchy of foreign...

India is launching its own mini-offensive in the electricity sector, following Chinese-style financing and contracting practices. On 29 October, New Delhi announced a new US$263 million credit line...

A US$2 million deal by a major Vietnamese rice exporter points to the corruption found on both side of the Africa-Asia commodities trade. Unlike Thailand, where the private...

China's chief envoy to Morocco is an experienced Africa hand, managing the 2006 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) held in Beijing. Now Ambassador to Morocco, consistently placed among China's ten largest...

China has expressed interest in buying 49% stakes in 23 soon-to-expire oil block licences. The London Financial Times reported in September that the China National Offshore Oil Corporation...

Beijing's Foreign Ministry officials are energetically distancing themselves from a US$7 billion minerals deal announced on 9 October by the increasingly isolated military regime in Guinea with the Hong-Kong based China...

The business people, politicians and state officials behind the China International Fund (CIF) and China Sonangol International (CSI) entered the public eye in 2008 with the purchase of the publicly traded...

The China International Fund (CIF) was born in the aftermath of Angola's civil war as the Luanda government embarked on Africa's costliest post-war reconstruction, fuelled by oil, gas and mineral resources....

Despite the protestations of China's Foreign Ministry, the China International Fund is linked to an array of private entrepreneurs and Chinese state-owned enterprises.

On the face of it, the speculation that China could take over US$50 billion worth of Nigeria's oil reserves currently licensed to Western oil majors is on the outer reaches...

In Uganda, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation has taken the pole position in discussions to buy out part of Irish oil company Tullow's interests in more than one billion barrels...

South Korea is desperately trying to manage the political fallout as it negotiates the acquisition of 100,000 hectares of farmland with the Tanzanian government. It is trying to avoid a...

Ethiopia has signed contracts with Chinese construction companies to build two huge dams as part of a US$12 billion, 25-year Power Sector Master Plan to harness the country's hydropower potential. It...

China Development Bank Vice-Governor Zhao Jianping has taken the reins of the China-Africa Development Fund from CDB colleague Gao Jian. Zhao's career is marginally more cosmopolitan than that of the man...

One of the Taiwan's most experienced Africanist diplomats now appointed as Foreign Minister, Chin-tien (Timothy) Yang keeps carefully to the new script which paradoxically downplays the importance of Taipei's African allies....

Appointed as Minister of State for External Affairs for Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, Shashi Tharoor brings his experience in the United Nations to the post. As a...

The new president of Vietnam's state oil monopoly is increasingly looking overseas to shore up the country's reserves. Phung Dinh Thuc is a Soviet-trained engineer with a long career at Vietnam...

China's relations with Angola suffered a setback this month when Luanda turned down the acquisition by China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Sinopec of a coveted oil block. Worse, lower than...

Guinea's military ruler Moussa Dadis Camara set up a commission on 28 August to manage a planned US$1.6 billion investment from the China International Fund. The CIF is 70% owned...

Untitled Document Indian companies are behind three now somewhat troubled bids to take over the choicest assets in the African telecoms business: Bharti's US$23 billion merger with MTN, Essar's takeover of...

Beijing faces a new round of criticism over its heavy investments in Sudan's oil business following the publication of a report by British lobbyists Global Witness(1) on 7 September pointing to...

Tokyo's pledges to double aid to Africa and offer US$4 billion in concessional loans are in question following the landslide election of the Democratic Party of Japan on 30 August....

Aggressive investment by the China Investment Corporation, which manages nearly US$300 billion of Beijing's $2.1 trillion in foreign reserves, is leading to a boom in Africa-focused investments. In...

New Delhi made one of its most important energy and resource deals in Africa on 31 August, signing an accord with the Namibian government to allow for trade...

The latest result of the close ties between Kinshasa and Seoul was revealed on 8 September by Générose Lushiku, Congo-Kinshasa's Minister of Urbanism and Habitat, who announced that...

Oil industry officials in Accra are linking Finance Minister Kwabena Duffuor's 18 September statement that Ghana had applied for a US$2 billion concessional loan from China to...

African trades unionists are stepping up their criticism of the Chinese companies in countries like Algeria, Nigeria and South Africa. In mid-August the Congress of South African Trade Unions called on...

African Labour Research Network investigators found that many factory inspectors at Kenya's Labour Ministry took bribes from Chinese and other companies to overlook bad practices. Despite reports that in Malawi, workers...

Chinese officials are discussing ways to use some of their country's $2.1 trillion in foreign reserves to finance what could be the world's biggest development aid programme, as Western economies are...

In mid-August, Nigeria's Federal High Court overturned President Umaru Yar'Adua's revoking, in January, of Seoul-based Korea National Oil Company's rights to 60% of Oil Prospecting Licences 321 and 323 in a...

Both sides are claiming victory this month in the long-running negotiations on debt relief between the Kinshasa government and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Kinshasa has won promises...

Opposition politicians in Delhi are pressing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress Party government for a full investigation into allegations of corrupt deals worth 25 billion rupees (US$520 million) in rice exports...

Long-serving diplomat Gurjit Singh distinguished himself as one of the most activist ambassadors in Addis Ababa and personally raised the substance and profile of Ethiopia-India relations. Singh has just ended a...

As the political head of a more outward-looking Japanese military, the Self-Defence Forces, Yasukazu Hamada is taking a robust line against pirates based in Somalia. In March, he ordered two SDF...

Jiang Weiqiang and his State Council Information Office colleagues will play a leading role in Beijing's media courtship of Africa ahead of the fourth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Sharm el-Sheikh,...

The arrest of Namibia's powerful Public Service Commissioner, Teckla Lameck, on 9 July by investigators of the Namibian Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in connection with a contract between China's Nuctech and Windhoek...

Until now, Hu Haifeng, the 38-year-old son of China's paramount leader Hu Jintao, has managed to stay out of the limelight. While Hu senior climbed the party ranks - through unglamourous...

As China emerges as the biggest outside financier of the power-sharing government, differences in Harare over policy towards Beijing are growing. The first public row broke soon after Prime Minister Morgan...

The world's biggest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal, is cutting back sharply on its operations in West Africa, which were part of a plan to provide about two-thirds of the company's iron ore....

The planned US$20 billion merger of Africa's Mobile Telephone Networks (MTN) and India's Bharti Airtel would bring together two continental giants to form the world's third largest mobile phone company. The...

A tangled web of financial holdings stretching from South Africa to Ghana and Lebanon could delay plans for a US$20 billion merger of India's Bharti Airtel and South Africa's Mobile Telephone...

Malaysian timber conglomerate Samling, which faces accusations of illegal logging, is at the centre of a storm over the bidding by foreign companies for 25-year contracts in Liberia's timber sector. The...

More signs are emerging that China is being drawn inexorably into Africa's internal politics and is being compelled to take sides in wider geopolitical disputes. This time, the trigger was the...

Japan is to add another US$4 billion in new concessional loans to Africa over the next five years, outpacing the spending of the China-Africa Development Fund, according to Koji Yonetani, the...

Seiko Hashimoto brings Olympic glamour to the Africa-Asia axis. Born in 1964 in Hokkaido, she competed in seven Olympic Games, four as a speed skater and three as...

Dai Bingguo was last in Africa in February, when he accompanied President Hu Jintao to Saudi Arabia, Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Mauritius. The low-key diplomat's nondescript title of...

Najib Razak's political pedigree is impeccable, but he struggles with the common touch needed to enact his liberal, but potentially unpopular, economic policies. Born 1953, Najib is the...

The Beijing-Harare axis is thriving under Zimbabwe's power-sharing government. Despite opposition claims that China would lose influence because of its close relations with President Robert Mugabe and its historical support for...

Beyond the political controversy about relations with the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front regime, Chinese businesses are set to provide an important source of new investment and jobs for Harare's shaky...

Kawsara in the Koran is one of the heavenly gardens promised to virtuous Muslims. In Dakar, it is the name of an ambitious property development, the Cité des Affaires Kawsara, which...

The International Monetary Fund's pressure on Kinshasa has led to the first sign of the government buckling. At the end of 2007, President Joseph Kabila's government agreed a US$9 billion deal...

Western investors are waiting around on the sidelines, nervous that the outcome of Côte d'Ivoire's elections, scheduled for 29 November, may bring more instability, but Chinese investors are heading straight for...

China is taking advantage of the global economic crisis to restructure its mining industry. A 4 trillion renminbi (US$586 billion) stimulus plan, announced late last year, encompasses sector-specific reform measures put...

The list of countries with multibillion-dollar, Chinese-backed projects is growing longer, with Mozambique the latest country to receive a golden handshake. In late May, China Exim Bank announced US$2.3 billion in...

While China's leading dam-builder Sinohydro was busy dealing with complaints from Western non-governmental organisations about its refusal to engage with local populations, an East African NGO shut down one of Sinohydro's...

The October 2007 merger between the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world's largest bank, and Standard Bank, South Africa's largest, is finally showing its potential. After a lacklustre start,...

R.S. Sharma has the top job at India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), a state-owned company with a growing global agenda. Market capitalisation makes ONGC India's second-largest company, trailing Reliance...

Its revolutionary days are long over and CPV General Secretary Nong Duc Manh leads an outward-looking Vietnam committed to multilateral diplomacy, which this year has taken steps to mend relationships (and...

Malaysia's Sime Darby has signed a US$800 million deal securing a 63-year concession to 220,000 hectares in Liberia that include the troubled Guthrie Rubber Plantations. Sime Darby, a government-controlled plantation operator,...

Zhang Ming rose to his position through the West Asia and North Africa Department of China's Foreign Affairs Ministry, which he joined in the early 1980s. Postings at the embassies in...

Western mining houses are pulling out of Zambia due to the copper price slump, leaving Chinese and Indian investors to battle over the abandoned assets. As the copper price crashed...

The combination of lower world oil prices, tighter credit and production cuts has increased Luanda's reliance on its countertrade credits with China. As Angola holds the presidency of the Organisation of...

China would not be taking up tracts of land in Africa to meet its domestic food requirements insisted Beijing's Deputy Agriculture Minister Niu Dun in April, but reports on the...

The junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara's order that all mining licences are subject to immediate revocation if the government does not approve of their development plans has added more confusion...

Just before President Jacob Zuma's inauguration on 9 May, India's state-owned National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) signed a commercial cooperation agreement with the Congress of South African Trade Unions' (Cosatu)...

On 7 May, Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a long-delayed white paper on foreign aid confirming what Taipei's allies are keenly aware of: Taiwan's foreign aid has dropped...

Known for his polarising effect in Thai politics, his flight from justice and his interest in football teams in England, Thaksin Shinawatra also presided over a sharp increase in Thai trade...

Born in 1945, the Keio University graduate began his career with Asahi Chemical Industry in 1968 but turned to politics in 1983 after his father, Yasuhiro Nakasone, became...

After Mao Zedong completed his first Soviet-style Five Year Plan in 1954, China's economic problems deteriorated sharply. That year, China's Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Yuan Nansheng, was born, and his...

The South African authorities' refusal of a visa to the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet in late March shows how the 'One China' policy extends into relations with...

China may be popular amongst some politicians, but support on the ground can be much thinner. In spite of increased trade and warmer relations, there has been a rise in...

On closer scrutiny, the agreement between China Union and the Liberian government to resume iron ore production at Bong Mines hugely favours the Chinese company with only a minimal share...

The Minerals Development Agreement between China Union and the Liberian government, which Africa-Asia Confidential has seen, offers China Union royalty payments and tax exemptions that are far more generous than the...

Almost all Nigeria's countertrade deals with Asia have been abandoned after investigations by President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's officials into their viability.

South Korea: Nigeria is South Korea's third largest trading partner and the largest market in Africa for Korean construction companies. In January 2006, Korean companies were working on 60 projects valued...

Kinshasa's negotiators are preparing for more talks with the International Monetary Fund's debt experts at the Fund and World Bank's spring meetings in Washington on 25-26 April. The fundamental problem remains...

China's Huawei and China International Telecommunication Construction Corporation are working on two information technology projects for Congo-Kinshasa's Ministère des Postes, Téléphones et Télécommunications (MPTT, Post and Telecommunications Ministry). China Exim Bank...

Taiwanese diplomacy faces an awkward commercial challenge. Stripped of the warm words and diplomatic ambiguities, it is clear that Taipei's biggest trading partners no longer recognise Taiwan as an independent state...

Japanese and Indian interest in Mozambican coal is growing and export prices are rising again. In a deal in March between the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance and Japan's Nippon Steel with...

Although China's exports have fallen by more than a quarter from last year's levels, the Export-Import Bank of China is busier than ever financing trade with Africa, Latin America and...

A year after Malaysian company Ramatex abandoned its US$100 million textile factory in Windhoek, the authorities are at last tackling the environmental impact of the operations of the...

If effort can be measured in miles, Thailand's new Commerce Minister is earning her pay. Pornthiva Nakasi has been travelling constantly this year, in India in February and China, Japan and...

Nobuhide Minorikawa plays a leading role in the development of Japan's African diplomacy. With wide experience of development economics and diplomacy, he is a familiar face on the African conference circuit....

After the India-Africa summit in April 2008 set out Delhi's new policies for the continent, Pradeep Kumar Chaudhery was given a leading role in the strategy with his appointment as Additional...

The posting of Wu Zexian, one of Beijing's most experienced Francophone diplomats, to Kinshasa in March 2007 shows the seriousness of China's Africa strategy. Initially, it looked like a surprising detour...

Africa and China escaped the worst direct effects of the global slowdown last year, Africa because its banks were not integrated into international credit markets, and China because its banks were...

The man who was Japanese Prime Minister in 2007-08, Yasuo Fukuda, was in Botswana on 21-22 March for the follow-up meeting of the Tokyo International Conference on African...

Before China, there was Japan, say Kenyans. The Japanese aid model is built largely around supplying technical expertise rather than direct budget support. Japanese experts in agriculture, energy and education are...

The arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir issued by the International Criminal Court on 4 March comprehensively overshadowed the golden jubilee of Chinese-Sudanese relations. March...

Almost as soon as he seized power on 18 March, putchiste President Andry Rajoelina cancelled a proposed contract to lease over a million hectares of land to South Korea's Daewoo...

On top of the Madagascar saga, South Korea's loss of oil acreage in Nigeria in February is the biggest of several setbacks for Korean companies in Africa in recent months (AAC...

Ireland's Tullow, which has quickly outgrown out its minnow status, enters April stronger, having raised US$2 billion in debt financing and energetically dismissing speculation that it would consider selling...

Ghanaian economist Victoria Kwakwa starts her job as World Bank Country Director for Vietnam in April. It is an important posting, given Vietnam's economic record over the past three...

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has secured Singapore's interest in Rwanda's future. Singapore Cooperation Enterprise's Chief Executive Officer, Alphonsus Chia, was in Kigali in February to talk up investment opportunities. This is...

The International Atomic Energy Agency is to decide on a successor to Egypt's Mohamed ElBaradei as Director-General on 26-27 March. Two IAEA Governors, strong>Yukiya Amano and Abdul Samad...

The US$2.68 billion agreement signed by China Union's Chief Executive Yin Fuyou and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on 19 January to restart iron ore production at the old...

The US$2.68 billion Bong Mines deal hands the Chinese consortium led by Yin Fuyou and China Union a 25-year concession for the formerly German-owned Bong Mines in Bong Country, north-east of...

Falling demand for copper, cobalt and diamonds offers a stark choice for President Joseph Kabila's government: does it accept the onerous conditions of credits from the International Monetary Fund or does...

Chinese money is now a key target for United States' FG Hemisphere Associates LLC, which wants to reclaim a debt of US$104 million owed by Congo-Kinshasa. FG Hemisphere is widely...

The Korean National Oil Company may take legal action in response to Nigeria's revoking last month of two lucrative concessions awarded to the company in 2005. KNOC won operating rights to...

Global financial chaos and falling demand for oil and minerals are prompting recalculations on all sides. The IMF and World Bank have revised down their gross domestic product forecasts...

Having won a dangerous game of brinkmanship, President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba is trying to re-excite China's interest in the Bélinga iron ore project. Since the end of last year,...

Angola has maintained its status as China's biggest trading partner in Africa - with trade volumes between the two countries reaching US$25.3 billion in 2008 - according to Beijing's Minister of...

Beijing is investing 45 billion yuan (US$6.6 bn.) in expanding its Xinhua News Agency and launching a 24-hour English language television news station. The plans envisage more cooperation with African media...

Despite a show of insouciance after December's putsch led by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara in Conakry, China's diplomats and business leaders are closely watching the new regime's policies,...

This month, China's leader embarks on his fourth tour of Africa. The itinerary - Mali, Mauritius, Senegal and Tanzania - shows the range of relationships built up under...

As China's President Hu Jintao tours Africa this month, his Taiwanese counterpart will be conspicuously absent. Ma Ying-jeou has been trying to cool the diplomatic competition with Beijing.

Japan chairs the United Nations Security Council in February. Its two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UNSC began 1 January. Taking the chair, Japan's Ambassador Yukio Takasu presented clocks...

India wants to catch up fast with China's still booming economic diplomacy in Africa and at January's India-Africa Business Partnership Forum, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee called for greater engagement and...

Like every other major economy, China is reassessing its priorities, and worrying about unemployment and falling market demand. Beijing's policymakers will therefore concentrate more on domestic economic growth...

The Beijing-Accra axis, which dates back to the heady Independence days of President Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana, is an important one for both sides. Beijing wants a strong economic relationship with Ghana...

Over the next five years, New Delhi expects India's trade with Africa to reach US$100 billion - despite the global economic slowdown. In an upbeat analysis of relations with Africa,...

Tokyo's promises to double aid to Africa by 2012 are being tested by international financial pressure on Japan's already feeble economy - and by domestic political troubles. Prime Minister Taro Aso...

Most of the impetus for Japanese companies in Africa will be coming from state agencies. The Japanese International Cooperation Agency wants to test its newly expanded powers and wider funding base,...

Cambodia's diplomatic reach in Africa is extremely limited but its rice exports are expanding fast despite questions about their quality. With a record surplus of over 2.8 million tonnes in 2008,...

Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou's new diplomatic strategy of rapprochement with China is making waves from the Taiwan Strait to distant African shores. Agreements have been signed between the two sides' semi-official...

Muhyiddin Yassin is one of three vice-presidents of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the leading member of the Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition, and as Trade Minister, one of the...

Touring Africa in the wake of the global credit crunch has been a sobering experience for China's Commerce Minister, Chen Deming. His 12-19 January trip began in Kenya, where Finance...

The President of KOTRA studied political science at Seoul National University, and has an MBA from New York University and a doctorate in business administration from Hanyang University.