A new ambassador arrived in Algiers this October and began by giving his honest opinions on the country’s bureaucratic, political and economic challenges. Much perturbed by the fact...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) looks set to bend its rules this month to accommodate Ghana’s rush to raise a US$700 million loan from China to build a...

Many in the governing National Democratic Congress want to boost ties with China to new heights: their target is some US$10 billion of Chinese loans (AAC Vol 3...

On 28 November, Sudan’s Petroleum Minister Ali Ahmed Osman announced that South Sudan would no longer be able to export its crude through the northern pipeline and Port...

European officials left the Busan Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness on 1 December congratulating themselves on having brought China and India closer into the global aid infrastructure.

A Zambia Revenue Authority commission of inquiry has turned up irregularities in a government agreement to purchase security scanners from Nuctech, a Chinese company formerly led by Hu...

President Michael Sata is trying to reassure Chinese politicians and business leaders about his government’s planned reforms.

India’s Essar Group has at last won control of Zimbabwe’s iron and steel works, after months of infighting in the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front threatened to derail...

The multi-billion-dollar housing venture run by South Korea’s STX and a group of Ghanaian investors looks close to collapse, with the partners embroiled in lengthy court actions against...

India’s resource-heavy trade with Africa may be poised to move into the service sector. Indian companies in banking, hotels, agriculture stand to benefit, but African companies will continue...

Twenty-five years after its foundation in response to devastating Ethiopian famines, the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA), a Japanese-funded non-governmental organisation, is looking beyond crop yields to the challenges...

Madhusudan Ganapathi Ganapathi, the new Secretary for the Western Region in the Ministry of External Affairs, hosted the India-Africa Strategic Dialogue on 24-25 November. The event brought together...

Non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch launched the first in-depth report about abusive practices in Chinese-owned mines in Zambia on 3 November. It is based on the evidence of...

The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government has tried to disguise its plan for China Sonangol to finance new airplanes for Air Zimbabwe. The joint venture between...

South Korean companies had worried that they would not receive the same advantages as Chinese companies (AAC Vol 4 No 12, Faith, Grace and intervention). However, Indigenisation Minister...

China is withholding money that is needed to rehabilitate 700 kilometres of railway in Katanga and Kasai, leading the Congolese government to call on mining companies to raise...

The award of the copper and cobalt mines at the Lonshi and Frontier sites to the Hong Kong company Fortune Ahead Limited is causing concern at the International...

The United States Senate is again raising the alarm about Washington losing out to Beijing in Africa. On 1 November, the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs, chaired by...

Chinese companies’ treatment of trades unions in South Africa has come to national attention again, just as the elections in Zambia have highlighted the government’s role in managing...

India-linked mining companies have had less luck than their Chinese counterparts in breaking into the West African market, arriving later on the scene than Chinese companies. However, a...

In the past year, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has devoted renewed attention to foreign policy as he pursues greater regional influence. In August, he led a group...

Mahendra Siregar led a trade delegation to Nigeria and Ghana on 25-30 September. Indonesia is cultivating Africa as an export destination: exports stood at US$3.5 bn. in 2010...

The latest attempt by a Chinese company to secure African mining assets from Australian companies has hit the skids over concerns about insider trading by Hanlong Mining. Several suspicious deals...

President Lee Myung-bak’s government faces another corruption scandal linked to its African resource diplomacy after a little-known mining company claimed to have made a record-shattering diamond discovery in eastern Cameroon. A parliamentary...

C&K Mining has been operating in Cameroon since 2007 and has been working on production plans for the Mobilong and Limokoali diamond mines ever since. President Paul Biya signed a...

Beijing appears to call the shots in relations with South Africa. While the Dalai Lama awaited a visa to attend Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s 80th birthday party on 7th October, South...

Transparency has not been a major feature of China Sonangol’s and China International Fund’s activities in Africa, but one of the investment vehicles is now embarking on a human-resources drive...

South Korean company Samsung C&T has become a collateral victim of the dispute between Belgian company George Forrest International and Congo-Kinshasa’s state mining company, Gécamines. GFI and Gécamines are vying for...

Opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) members of parliament were up in arms when the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) used its slim parliamentary majority to push through approval...

President Alpha Condé’s new government has been investigating the capacity of one of China’s large state-owned construction companies during the last few months. A June trip to China...

Guinean President Alpha Condé has removed the most attractive clauses of China International Fund’s joint venture agreement with the former military junta of Captain Moussa Dadis Camara. The...

Port and energy deals signed between a private Chinese company and the breakaway government of Somaliland should provide the region with the most important boost it has ever...

Four truck drivers charged as accomplices in a trucking fraud case failed to appear in court in Harare on 25 August and warrants for their arrest were issued....

The list of problems for the STX housing deal grows longer as plans to fly in thousands of Asian workers divide the project’s backers. STX Group of Korea...

Ahead of national polls scheduled for 28 November, the Kinshasa government has decided to sell off state assets to a Hong Hong-based company for a fraction of their...

Smuggling is one of the biggest open secrets in Gabon’s forestry sector. Ever since the government began trying to mandate more local value-added processing of logs, the raw...

A decision by the Namibian state-owned port operator to pre-award an estimated US$285 million contract for the Walvis Bay harbour expansion to the China Harbour Engineering Company ahead...

As the head of an established floriculture business specialising in cut flowers, Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi first expanded his company’s African interests several years ago, opening branches in Ethiopia...

Lu Xingyu, the 24-year-old daughter of a Chinese billionaire, is at the centre of a media row after newspapers and bloggers attacked the legitimacy of the China-Africa Project...

The newly appointed foreign minister faces an uphill struggle in maintaining Japan’s image as a powerhouse of the global economy. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government must...

Uganda may miss the East African Community’s deadline of December 2012 for all member states to switch from analogue to digital television. In early August, Uganda’s communications regulator sounded the...

A raid on telecoms company ZTE has called attention to illegal immigration and the rough competition between Chinese companies in South Africa. The Department of Home Affairs, the South African Police Service and...

Cracks are appearing in China’s solidarity with its African allies at the United Nations’ arms trade treaty (ATT) talks. At a UN Preparatory Committee in New York City on 11-15 July,...

December 2006: Argentina, Australia, Britain, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan and Kenya author Resolution 61/89, ‘Toward an arms trade treaty: establishing common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms’. The...

More than halfway through President John Atta Mills’s ‘Action Year’ and almost a year since the government first announced that Ghana’s Eastern Corridor was to be rehabilitated, a...

With most of Sudan’s known oil reserves now belonging to the South Sudan government in Juba, the Sudanese government needs China even more. For Beijing, though, Khartoum may now be...

Officials at Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) are playing down reports that the government is mulling a naval escort for its ships facing the threat of piracy in the...

B. Prasada Rao views recent events in North Africa and the Middle East with trepidation. As the domestic market grows ever more competitive, the regions become increasingly important...

When World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun took office in 2007, she said, ‘I want us to be judged by the impact we have...

Vietnam is pursuing an economic and political diversification programme and Doan Xuan Hung, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and special envoy of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, has...

Beijing signalled the biggest change in its Africa policy when it decided to accept the National Transitional Council as a negotiating partner in the peace talks between Colonel...

In late June, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced its support for the constitutional changes that will allow King Mohammed VI to maintain power while giving...

Unionists and civil society members point to the close ties between the ruling parties of China and Zimbabwe to explain the lack of oversight of Chinese companies operating...

The trial of Jack Hsieh (Hsieh Ping-sung) and his four truckers, accused of defrauding powerful Zimbabwean interests, rumbles on. Hsieh, who is from Taiwan and has South African...

A year after it was first proposed, the US$1.5 billion housing deal between a South Korean company, STX, and the Ghanaian government is no nearer completion. The contract...

After only two years in office, the National Democratic Congress government has increased Ghana’s total debt from US$8.1 billion at the end of 2008 to $13.4 bn. in...

The Congolese authorities have signalled yet another revision to the historic US$6 billion mines-for-infrastructure deal between the government and a Chinese consortium. China Railways Engineering Corporation, Sinohydro and...

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak (aka “Bulldozer”) secured Pyeongchang’s 2018 Winter Olympic bid on his trip to Durban, South Africa, that began 6 July. He then signed deals...

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Abdul Razak inaugurated a coordinated attempt to strengthen economic ties with Africa by hosting the first Malaysia-Africa Business Forum on 18 June. It...

Businessman Vasile Frank Timis, the Chairman of African Minerals Limited (AML), has signed a memorandum of understanding with Chinese partners to develop a project that has already...

Sellapan Ramanathan, more frequently known as S.R. Nathan, will step down at the end of his second six-year term on 1 September. The 87-year-old was still spry enough...

In June, Sumio Kusaka led a delegation to New Delhi for the second India-Japan Dialogue on Africa. With his counterpart Gurjit Singh, Additional Secretary at India’s Ministry of...

India– which held its second India-Africa summit in Addis Ababa on 24-25 May – is challenging China’s previously unparalleled reach across the African continent. The Asian hypereconomies are...

New technical studies have found that the Bélinga iron ore mine in northeastern Gabon contains almost four times the original estimated resources and the Libreville government is actively...

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is ratcheting up its African diplomatic offensive, touting the ‘moderate Islamism’ of the ruling Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party,...

On 23 May Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Abdullah Gül and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held talks in Ankara with the Chairman of the Libyan Interim Transitional...

On 2 June, Congress of South African Trade Unions General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi called on the government to launch an investigation into Aurora Empowerment Systems and the Pamodzi...

In early June, Guinea’s President Alpha Condé set the tone for more tense negotiations with mining investors when he declared that Chinese-style mines-for-infrastructure deals are unacceptable. The government...

Bangladeshi companies will be the next Asian businesses scouring African countries in pursuit of land. With a growing population, rapidly disappearing arable land and rising food prices, the...

While playing down the notion that it is in competition with China, India has stepped forward with offers that demand attention. At the India-Africa summit in Addis Ababa,...

The world’s largest electronics company has set its sights on the burgeoning African consumer market. At the Samsung Africa Forum, a flashy five-day conference in Nairobi, Kenya, in...

With soaring energy consumption and declining production from its own petroleum reserves, Indonesia has launched a quest for overseas assets. In May, the state-owned company PT Pertamina bid...

China Sonangol and its subsidiaries continue to make Angolan acquisitions. In February, China Sonangol won three deep-water pre-salt oil (equity) concessions in Blocks 19, 20 and 38, adding...

Japan played a diplomatic blinder in Dakar in May, collecting not just a sackful of goodwill but solid sub-Saharan support for two of its key international priorities –...

It began with ‘China is a developing country’ and ended by shedding some – but not much – light on Beijing’s global aid programmes. In April, China’s State...

New Delhi’s not so secret competition with Beijing is heating up ahead of the second India-Africa Forum in Addis Ababa on 24-25 May. India’s diplomats are adopting Beijing’s...

Singapore is widening its net in Africa. The city-state’s trade with sub-Saharan Africa reached US$8.4 billion in 2009 and it punches above its weight in financial terms. Geographically...

London-listed Madagascar Oil’s battles with the Malagasy government are heating up. The two sides are now heading for international arbitration. The dispute arose when the Haute Autorité de...

Few believe the official explanation that 87-year-old President Robert Mugabe’s frequent visits to Singapore are to monitor his February cataract operation or that he is being the doting...

The Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda chief was in Kenya and Mozambique in late April, forging better links with their ruling parties and media. He took his message of...

India-Africa trade will grow to US$75 billion by 2015, according to Anand Sharma, India’s Commerce Minister. With trade now at $45 bn., India’s most influential business association and...

Robert Mugabe’s pet policies are souring the milk of friendship he shares with China. Chinese Deputy Premier Wang Qishan visited Harare in late March with a basket of financial support....

The Kimberley Process suspended diamond sales from Marange in 2009 due to concerns about transparency in the production chain and the illicit activities of the security services in the region,...

A month after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated its northeast coast, Japan faces a humanitarian tragedy, a drawn-out nuclear crisis and an expensive reconstruction. In the tightly...

The World Bank’s African team dispatched a delegation to Tokyo in mid-March to boost its Japanese personnel, as part of Bank President Robert Zoellick’s ongoing reform of the institution. Some...

The corruption trial of Malawi’s former President Bakili Muluzi at the Blantyre High Court exposes the lack of transparency and good governance in Taiwan’s aid to African countries. Bakili Muluzi,...

Michael Sata of the opposition Patriotic Front says: ‘Under Rupiah, there are two laws: one for Chinese and one for other investors.’ He was reacting to news that Zambia’s Director...

Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal will decide this month whether FG Hemisphere, a United States-based vulture fund, is entitled to seize US$100 million from payments due to the Congolese...

Energy is at the centre of South Korea’s strategic agenda and the Seoul government wants to improve the country’s position in the African energy market. To that end, Seoul dispatched...

Seoul’s African diplomacy continues its vigorous new pace. Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan completed his second trip of the year to the continent, visiting Gabon, Congo-Kinshasa and Ethiopia on 2-9 April. Kim...

When Sinopec Chairman Su Shulin stepped down this month, President Wang Tianpu was the favourite to take over China’s second-largest oil company, but his rise may be stymied. In a...

Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno is choosing the same political strategy as Congo-Kinshasa’s President Joseph Kabila: he has opened the country’s doors to numerous development projects financed by...

After managing a transition which led to the election on 12 March of new President Mahamdou Issoufou, the military junta has announced that it will not hand over...

Concerns are rising over the opacity of the US$6 billion Sicomines deal between the Congolese government and a group of Chinese companies. Congolese civil society groups and oppositionists,...

Chinese construction companies are not just carrying out Beijing-backed projects, they are also winning contracts from international donors. The first phases of telecommunications projects funded by China Export-Import...

Addax, a British-listed oil and gas company controlled by China’s Sinopec, may benefit from this month’s decision by the Nigerian and Cameroonian governments to collaborate in the Bakassi...

Once an opponent of South Sudanese secession, then diplomatically agnostic, China is now making up for lost time in shoring up relations with the soon-to-be-independent Government of Southern...

Veteran oppositionist Michael ‘King Cobra’ Sata often accuses President Rupiah Banda and the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy of being too cosy with China. Now Sata stands accused...

South Africa has been a land of opportunity and peril for Taiwan’s Robert Huang, an essential link in a series of deals connecting Asian companies to the presidential...

Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), the world’s largest palm oil company by land under cultivation, will increase its size by almost 50% with a 220,000 hectare plantation in Liberia. The...

The Tazara Railway that links Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia, to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was built under arduous conditions by thousands of African and Chinese labourers between 1970 and...

The transitional regime led by Andry Rajoelina is threatening to cancel oil exploration licences held by Western investors and hand them to the Hong Kong-based China International Fund....

Mining investors are bracing for a long battle. On 24 January, new President Alpha Condé backtracked on promises to review mining contracts, saying that the government would instead...

Big deals between the Nigerian government and Chinese companies have fallen through, providing yet another chapter to the up-and-down drama between Beijing and Abuja. On 10 February,...

Beijing is offering its biggest financial deal yet in Zimbabwe but the cash-strapped,power-sharing government may yet turn down the investment. For all President Robert Mugabe’s enthusiasm for China,...

A formal study group at the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development is exploring ways to take lessons from China’s development path and apply them to the fight...

Scandals continue to bring Indian investigators to Mauritius’s fine shores. After last year’s cricket financing scandal (AAC Vol 3 No 7), India’s biggest-ever corruption case – linked to...

In November 2010, India’s Essar group (through its Mauritian subsidiary) announced it would take a 54% stake from the government of Zimbabwe in its long-troubled iron and steel...

In his 27 January address at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Takeaki Matsumoto outlined three pillars of Japan’s African diplomacy: peace and stability; expanding assistance and...

President Paul Kagame‘s moves to turn Rwanda into ‘the Singapore of Africa’, a financial and information technology hub, have captured the city-state’s attention. Businesswoman Christina Tan led a...

POSCO, a former parastatal that was privatised in 2000, is the world’s third-largest steelmaker and a key supplier to South Korea’s lucrative shipbuilding and automotive industries. The...

Standing at US$114.8 billion in November 2010, China-Africa trade has bounced back faster than most of Africa’s other foreign trade since the 2008 global financial slowdown. China is...

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh describes Africa as ‘an emerging priority’ for his government, which is poised to reinforce its economic, diplomatic and security links with the continent...

The Democratic Party of Japan’s crisis of popularity forced a cabinet reshuffle and now a new raft of ministers will handle relations with Africa. The replacement of Land,...

Struggles within the Democratic Party of Japan and also between the DPJ, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and smaller coalition parties promise more turbulent politics in Japan this...

China’s invitation to South Africa – rather than South Korea – to join the developing-country top table group of Brazil, Russia, India and China in December has irritated...

Africa is another theatre in which North and South Korea play out their rivalries. This has led to unintended consequences, especially in the case of a South Korean...

West Africa is only a recent target of Tokyo’s donor diplomacy and commercial overtures, and just last year Japan opened embassies in Mauritania and Mali. Parliamentary Vice-Minister for...

On 29 December, Park Young-june, an associate of President Lee Myung-bak and a familiar face in South Korea-Africa relations, hosted 13 African ambassadors at the Korea-Africa Round Table...

India is seeking African supplies to cope with a looming coal shortage. Dependent on coal, India has large reserves – 58.6 billion tonnes in 2009 – but environmental...