With the other Asian powers vying for business elsewhere, Singapore has focused on two sluggish oil-producing countries in Central Africa: Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon. President Denis Sassou-Nguesso’s government is...

Born in 1953 to a prominent Communist revolutionary, Xi Zhongxun, China’s presumed president-in-waiting, is a ‘princeling’ groomed to the elite class. Xi Jinping grew up in privilege in...

Taiwan has kept a low-profile in Africa lately but that will change in late December when Premier Wu Den-yih pays a visit to Burkina Faso. Wu is set...

South Korea’s new Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Kim Sung-hwan took office in October, pledging closer engagement with Africa. His first emissary is Deputy Minister Kim Jae-shin, whose...

Sudan is set to split into two next year, and China – the Khartoum regime’s most important international backer – is stuck in the middle. Under the 2005...

India’s diplomats are looking for both commercial and ‘preferential’ means to access oil acreage and to increase oil supplies. However, the Indian government will need to speed up...

Growing demand for Africa’s minerals, oil, gas and farmland will shape China’s next five-year plan (2011-2015) due to be approved in March 2011. The planning committees have to...

The ruling Communist Party makes policy and the state bureaucracy implements it but decisions on economic strategy are taking in a wider range of opinion and expertise.

South Korea is beginning to take its trade and aid more seriously, and Africa stands to benefit. The Seoul government’s hosting of the G-20 Summit in November again...

Seoul intends to keep the promises made at November’s G-20 summit and began by hosting a gathering of Asian development agencies on 19 November.

Opposition politicians and trades unionists have gone on the offensive since Chinese managers at the Collum coal mine shot protesting Zambian workers on 21 October. The charge is...

African countries, like most states at the Group of 20 summit in Seoul on 12-13 November, saw their core concerns about growing protectionism and investment flows overshadowed by...

The 12-13 November Group of 20 Summit in Seoul afforded a great opportunity for South Korea to boost its Africa diplomacy. This is based on a modest aid budget, multibillion...

European powers are blocking billions of dollars of debt relief to President Joseph Kabila’s government until it agrees to revise some of its trade and financing deals with...

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak is due in Kinshasa in early 2011 to reciprocate Congolese President Joseph Kabila’s visit to Seoul in March. This month, the Korean International...

China has breached the United Nations arms embargo on Darfur by failing to ‘take the necessary measures to prevent the supply of arms and related materiel of all...

China’s flagship African railroad project continues to lose money, and Chinese management may be brought in to avoid throwing more good money after bad. Built in the 1970s,...

Critics of President John Atta Mills’s trade deals with China are claiming that two of the biggest financing arrangements are unlikely to go ahead as planned. These are...

China’s Deputy Permanent Representative, Wang Min, puts South-South diplomacy into action at the United Nations. Even after surpassing Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, China frequently sides with...

The Essar Group’s overseas expansion is accelerating into Africa. In April, Ravi Ruia announced that his sojourn in London would become permanent. The city became his capital-raising base:...

Mayhem broke out on 15 October at the Collum Coal Mine in southern Zambia after Chinese owners shot workers protesting over dangerous and difficult working conditions. The workers...

The stratospheric figures – all in billions of dollars – emerging from President John Atta Mills’s grand tour of Asia last month suggest the love affair between Accra...

As political candidates and generals were locked in negotations about the second round of the presidential elections due by the end of October, interim President General Sékouba Konaté...

In return for huge investments in housing and roads, the China Hyway Group has asked for several mining permits that would give it access to at least...

Mozambique has a new Trade and Industry Minister following the sacking on 12 October of Antonio Fernando. President Antonio Guebuza has selected a young economist, Armando Inroga, as...

When Prime Minister Aires Aly and Planning and Development Minister Aiuba Cuereneia met the delegation from China Tong Jian Investment Corporation in late August, they signed a...

Security experts reckon that cyber warfare and espionage will be this century’s new battlegrounds. With that in view, Beijing is now considering whether to allow the Nigerian government...

Wherever China goes in Nigeria, India tends not to be too far behind. Chinese contractors may have landed all of the major railway deals in Nigeria (AAC Vol...

The Chiadzwa/Marange alluvial diamond fields remain off limits to Zimbabwe’s Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy. Amid growing reports of Chinese involvement, Mines Minister Obert Mpofu remains...

Korea National Oil Corporation is discussing a potential strategic partnership with the parastatal Congolaise des Hydrocarbures. KNOC President Kang Young-won and Cohydro Chairman Séraphin Tshibambe Ndjibu were in...

Ratan N. Tata is the Chairman of the Tata Group, an industrial conglomerate that began life as the cotton trading company of his great-greatfather, Jamshetji Tata. The Group now has...

Known as a ‘China hawk’, Seiji Maehara moved to the Foreign Ministry just as Japan-China relations are at a low. In September, a dispute with China over the...

Ghana is among the most stable of China’s African allies but as new emissary Gong Jianzhong will be keeping an eye on recent attacks on Chinese businesses in...

Indian and Chinese companies have joined the race for Uganda's oil assets in the Lake Albert Basin, where at least 2 billion barrels of oil have been discovered....

From energy and construction to transport and agriculture, President Jacob Zuma's 23-26 August trip to China has garnered billions of dollars in potential investments across the economic spectrum....

President Jacob Zuma's August trip to China completed the final stage of his tour this year of the BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India and China - economies. The...

Beijing hopes that business and non-interference will win the day in Sudan. Liu Guijin, China's highest-ranking Africa envoy, told Africa-Asia Confidential that in Sudan China's 'overall concern is...

The International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir continues to cast clouds over China's Africa policy. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki invited Omer...

Vietnam hosted its second African investment forum on 17-19 August in Hanoi with the theme 'Vietnam-Africa: Cooperation for Sustainable Development'. Attended by delegates from 30 African countries including...

South Korea cannot match the deals made by China nor can it provide the same levels of aid as countries in North America and Europe. Still, that does not stop...

South Korea has come late to the African party. Seoul's anxiety to match Japan, China and India's engagement with the continent has seen it emulate many of their multilateral development forums...

Since taking power in 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has struggled to distinguish itself from its long-ruling predecessor and turn around Japan's economy. In African relations, however, it projects...

China has diverse commercial and political interests in Algeria, leaving Ambassador Liu Yuhe with plenty to do. Investigations into the US$12 billion East-West Highway project, in which Chinese companies are involved,...

An espionage row in which Libya expelled one of Seoul’s secret agents is holding up progress on a US$438 million project signed on 6 August between South Korea’s...

Members of Ghana's opposition are demanding more due diligence on the government's US$1.5 billion housing deal.

Beijing's 20-26 July seminar for developing countries on the topic of 'actively guiding' public opinion and creating a 'sound national image' is its latest response to the tide of Western criticism...

Journalists and activists, pointing to the lack of press freedom and weak civil society in China, argue that Beijing's engagement will only encourage the same in Africa.

The startling growth of its economy in the three decades after its war with the United States means Vietnam's strategies are of huge interest to many African states, war-torn or...

More so than China or India, Vietnam has much in common with Africa's developing countries. Hanoi is also showing itself to be keener on learning from African experiences...

A record US$100 million signature bonus for Andry Rajoelina's regime from Chinese investors will not be enough to compensate for the loss of aid funds as Western governments try to...

Economic relations between Luanda and Beijing are getting even closer as Angola struggles with mounting debts while China becomes more dependent on Angolan oil. In mid-August, Finance Minister Carlos Alberto Lopes...

Seeking hard cash and a platform for his disavowals of the West, President Robert Mugabe flew to Shanghai's spectacular trade expo, where on 11 August he thanked Beijing for being...

Singapore is making a renewed effort to boost its African trade. It falls to the Minister of Trade and Industry (MTI), Lee Yi Shyan, to make that happen. In July,...

The cultivation of ties with the African Union is a lynchpin of China's courtship of the continent. To this end, China has built a new conference centre at the AU's...

The Lagos State government, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the China State Construction Engineering Corporation signed an US$8 billion deal this month for a 300,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery and a...

Plans to sell the state-owned Nigeria Telecommunications (Nitel) have floundered after China Unicom announced it would not be contributing to the front-running New Generation Consortium comprised of China Unicom Europe, the...

China's oil interests in Sudan will come under heavy scrutiny again as Khartoum and Juba start negotiations on sharing oil revenues after the independence referendum due in January 2011. Backed by...

When asked about the 12 July reinstatement by the International Criminal Court of genocide charges against Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang did not...

The continuing power of Mines Minister Mahmoud Thiam and the prospect that he will wield influence after the second round of the presidential elections next month is good news for the...

As one of the anchors in the proposed trans-Guinea railway, the China International Fund may consider its position in Guinea unassailable. However, the Bellzone/CIF deal is already persuading other companies that...

National pride comes before a fall. Reports that Tokyo has routinely bribed at least six African countries to vote in support of its whaling policy have embarrassed the Japanese government. This...

Environmental campaigners such as Greenpeace have long protested about the links between voting at the International Whaling Commission and Japanese aid. That was before evidence that Japanese activities, including the paying...

Malawi has profitably switched its allegiance to China from Taiwan with a price tag of over US$350 million. In the past two years, China has taken over road and building...

A fly-by-night Indian company registered in Hong Kong has packed its bags and disappeared after mining diamonds and not paying taxes for more than four years. Kasaï Oriental's Direction Provinciale des...

The shadowy joint venture between Angola's state-owned oil company and the nebulous China International Fund has reached a new stumbling block in its three-year-old pursuit of a major stake in Tanzania's...

Bharti Airtel, India's largest mobile services company, at last acquired long-coveted African assets when it completed the purchase of Zain's Africa operations for US$10.7 billion on 8 June. Bharti Airtel...

Since President Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008, Taiwan has taken a low-key approach to international affairs in order to assuage China. For Taiwan's remaining African allies - Burkina Faso, Gambia,...

In early 2010, Hamidon Ali became President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, which monitors UN progress on development goals. The ministerial session of the Council's annual meeting on...

A pillar of China's diplomacy is the cultivation of links between the Chinese Communist Party and the ruling parties of its allies. The strategy has become more nuanced, as seen...

Chinese companies are caught in the political crossfire between President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his opponents in the military and intelligence services led by General Mohammed ‘Tewfik’ Mediene. The main point...

As the graft wars intensify between factions of the Algerian government, several officials are appearing in court in connection with irregularities on contracts with Chinese companies in the East-West Highway project....

Ethiopia is renowned more for its famines than for its fertile fields but land leasing has become a burgeoning business in some of the most unlikely locations. Vast swathes of...

India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is sending a team of senior officials to resume the difficult negotiations with Mauritius to resolve the lingering stand-off over the 1983 Double Tax Avoidance Agreement....

A storm is gathering over attempts by China’s Zijin Mining Group to buy Platmin Congo without prior approval from President Joseph Kabila’s government, despite generally good Beijing-Kinshasa relations....

On 24 May, Seoul’s Strategy and Finance Ministry identified Algeria, Ethiopia, Congo-Kinshasa, South Africa and Tanzania as ‘strategically important’ countries in its economic cooperation with Africa. South Korea...

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari held a mini-summit of African ambassadors on 2 June to launch Islamabad’s first real forays into Africa. In the style of Beijing’s Forum on China-Africa...

There are two big problems with the new deal between the China International Fund and the small Australian mining company Bellzone announced in Conakry on 24 May to...

Chinese arms are affordable options for African militaries looking to upgrade, and the advisors of the People’s Liberation Army are ready to meet that demand. On 23-31 May,...

Xia Huang’s short tenure as Ambassador to Niger has been anything but uneventful. Since his arrival in Niamey in November 2009, Xia has contended with a coup that...

After the resignation of New Delhi’s point man on Africa, Shashi Tharoor, in May, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna is taking an even more hands-on role in the cultivation of...

India is changing its tax laws in a bid to introduce greater transparency into its financial transactions with Mauritius. The aim is to stem ‘round-tripping’ of funds by politicians, businessmen and...

Minister of State for External Affairs for Africa Shashi Tharoor considered himself a modern diplomat for his embracing of the internet messaging website Twitter. Yet his tweets from...

Equal measures of optimism and scepticism greeted China’s announcement of an agreement to build three oil refineries worth US$23 billion. The terms of the memorandum of understanding are clear; the...

When Gabon’s President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba was alive, his ministers had nothing but praise for the nearly US$4 billion Bélinga iron ore mine and associated logistics projects, described...

The Ghanaian government is proposing to put up US$1.5 billion of its future oil revenues to finance the first phase of a controversial housing project with the South Korean construction...

Beijing’s relationship with the China International Fund is much clearer than it likes to admit. When the Hong Kong-registered CIF signed multibillion-dollar deals with pariah regimes in Guinea...

Five years after Senegal’s break in diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the island state which only has 23 diplomatic allies continues to haunt political life. At the heart of the affair...

Oppositionist Michael Sata’s rhetoric against China is not slowing down Chinese investment plans ahead of Zambia’s national elections, which are due in 2011. Chinese companies operating Zambian mines will now have...

Faced with popular outcry about profiteering from electricity shortages and opaque ties between political parties and businesses, South Africa’s governing African National Congress is being forced to abandon its stake in...

On his April trip to North Africa, Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet ramped up interest in the second Vietnam-Africa forum, set for August 2010. In Algeria and Tunisia,...

Lessons from India’s rise can be fruitfully applied to Africa – another group of a billion or so people: this was the message Ajai Chowdhry brought to Tanzania....

Taiwan’s entrepreneurs are loath to let geopolitical concerns stand in the way of a good deal. In the 1980s, while the governments of Taipei and Beijing continued to...

The China-Africa Development Fund’s expansion plans moved a step forward with the opening of a new branch in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 30 March. The office will pursue greater cooperation...

The first cooperation agreement signed by the China-Africa Development Fund was with the Tianjin North China Geological Exploration Bureau, a state-run mining enterprise, in December 2007.

April 2009: the China-Africa Development Fund and YTO Group announced a joint venture – the China-Africa Machinery Corporation – to manufacture agricultural and construction equipment. YTO agreed to invest US$20.1 million for...

India plans to increase its annual trade with Africa to US$70 billion – up from current levels of $45 bn. – over the next five years. That is...

African missions from Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe were invited to a conference in Patiala in Punjab on 26-27 March with farmers from all over the region...

Five years after his first official visit, President Joseph Kabila returned to South Korea on 29-30 March. Two protocols were agreed. The first accord seeks to replicate China’s US$6...

A US$3.3 million loan offered by the China International Fund has drawn renewed criticism of the company’s activities in Guinea. On 1 March, Abdoulaye Yéro Baldé, a member...

Why won’t anyone help Yang Fan pay his US$135,000 bail bond – especially when he has $2.3 million stashed in a local bank account and a swish golf...

Jia Qinglin, the number four in China’s leadership, has just completed his second tour of African nations. At each stop, Jia sought to build ties with presidents and...

Lee Myung-bak has kept Africa high on his agenda and has continued his predecessor’s Africa-friendly policies. A second Korea-Africa Economic Cooperation Conference was held in 2008, emulating the...

While the cosy ties between Beijing and Taipei make headlines, Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Agency has become a surreptitious agent of foreign policy. More surprisingly, the Agency is led...

State prosecutors have ordered more arrests this month, as investigations intensify into the Chinese companies and European middlemen dealing with Algeria’s US$12 billion East-West Highway project. The probes,...

There are four main strands to the sweeping the anti-corruption investigations launched in the wake of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s win with 90% of the votes cast in the...

The news that José dos Santos da Silva Ferreira is to head a new super ministry which will oversee Chinese contracts and projects is a strong vote of...

The execution of the US$6 billion ore-for-infrastructure deal originally signed in April 2008 between the Congolese state and Chinese companies China Railway Group and Sinohydro has suffered a...

Zambia does not always get what it wants or what it wants at the right time. President Rupiah Banda went on a 10-day official visit to China in...

The United Nations announced in early March that it would begin to withdraw its peacekeeping mission, the Mission des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo (Monuc) from...

Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is taking African advocacy directly to Asia, as he takes up his appointment as Li Ka-shing Professor at the Lee Kuan...

Advocates of Chinese engagement with Africa often take rhetorical swipes at the ‘Washington Consensus’. The fact is that China covets seats in the institutions that underpin it. Justin...

Japan’s Africa diplomacy is taking a royal turn. Crown Prince Naruhito made his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa this month. During his trip to Ghana on 7-10 March,...

Over US$23 million in signature bonuses payable on China’s $6 billion Sino-Congolaise des Mines (Sicomines) deal with the Kinshasa government have been stolen according to a probe by a commission set...

Agreed in November 2009, the second phase of infrastructure deals associated with the Sicomines joint venture is worth US$400 million and is expected to provide Congolese President Joseph Kabila with a...

The Rail India Technical and Economic Services buyout of 51% of Tanzania’s national railway company is set to collapse this month. In March 2006, RITES agreed to buy part of...

A US$40 million concessionary loan from the Indian government is mired in delays, a legal review and accusations of corruption. Moreover, the mix of army-owned enterprises, tied aid and squabbling agents...

In February, after months of political jockeying, Tullow gained control of all of the oil under Lake Albert, allowing it to bring in its preferred partner, the China National Offshore...

The on-again off-again plan to renovate the railway linking coastal Lagos to Kano in the north may formally start up this year, but questions about the validity of any contract...

More than a year and two amendments later, progress is finally being made on little-known China Union’s US$2.68 billion deal to redevelop Liberia’s Bong Mines. In her apologetic New Year...

Chinese investment may attract the ire of the Zambian opposition (see Briefing), but it is an Indian company that operates Zambia’s largest copper mine. Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Resources is hiding, as...

The January trip to North Africa of South Korea’s Kim Hyong-o served two main objectives – to promote trade and to lay the groundwork for a non-permanent seat...

When Premier Yukio Hatoyama and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to power in September 2009 promising to focus on domestic issues and budget cutting, African countries feared that...

The year 2009 was one of broken promises. China declared repeatedly that its relations with Africa would not be affected by the global financial crisis (AAC Vol 2...

Debate within China has been raging for some time over the solution to the problem of slumping exports. One of the more controversial ideas that has been floated is a...

India’s push for more trade and access to African mineral resources in 2010 will be made with one eye focused on Beijing. Indian diplomats and businessmen are trying...

Africa is almost off Taiwan’s diplomatic radar. In contrast to the attention lavished by Chinese leaders on countries across the continent, Taiwan’s relations with its four African allies remain low key,...

Fears of an aggressive Chinese military build-up surfaced again after a People’s Liberation Army Navy Admiral advocated the establishment of an overseas base to fight Somali pirates in...

Indian Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari began 2010 with a seven-day trip to Zambia, Malawi and Botswana. Ties abound between India and the three countries: Vedanta is the largest...

Under President Lee Myung-bak, South Korea is devoting more attention to Africa. In 2009, Lee pledged to double aid to Africa to US$200 million. Shortly after, Seoul hosted...

As he responds to the fiery criticism of opposition Patriotic Front leader Michael ‘King Cobra’ Sata, Li Qiangmin is more outspoken than most Chinese diplomats, staunchly defending his...