Africa

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.

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...

Of the 251,287 United States State Department cables leaked to Wikileaks, 1700 or so have been published, most through The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel...

Wikileaks, or its helpers in the mainstream press, have failed in at least five instances to protect sensitive sources quoted by United States’ diplomats in cables that they...

The first big question for the European Union-Africa summit in Tripoli on 29-30 November is who will be there. By convention, the Libyan hosts choose their guests. The...

Africa has won its first big victory in the ongoing reform of the international financial institutions in Washington by securing a third seat on the Executive Board of...

The main protagonists in the current currency skirmishes are the United States and China but developing economies are caught in the crossfire as governments talk of competitive devaluation...

Central African finance ministers will face more awkward questions about fraud at their central bank, the Banque des états de l'Afrique centrale, at the annual meeting of the...

The latest Index of African Governance from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation does not explain whether African economies are doing better in spite of or because of more authoritarian,...

New or renewed deals to explore for or produce minerals must be licensed by governments. When deals are signed, companies expect to hand over a bonus or other...

Optimism about Africa's economies is in fashion, as commodity prices stay high thanks to demand from Asia and Western investors seek outlets for capital that they find no...

After peaking at US$72 billion in 2008, foreign investment in Africa fell to $59 bn. in 2009 but is now growing again and could exceed the $80 bn....

On 14 July, troops from 13 African countries marched down the Champs-Elysées in the annual Bastille Day parade, while elderly sub- Saharan veterans of the French colonial army...

The continuing crisis of the rich world’s financial system has thrown off balance the main surviving element of France’s African empire, the franc of the Communauté financière d’Afrique....

The initials CFA once stood for the Communauté française d’Afrique, later changing to Communauté financière d’Afrique. The name is a colonial legacy and considerable monetary powers are still...

The resignation of Alain Joyandet, secretary of state for cooperation, will reinforce the grip of the Elysée Palace on France’s Africa policy. Joyandet, who was forced out after...

Asylum-seekers in Britain will find it still harder to win their cases following the closure of the biggest advice charity, Refugee and Migrant Justice, which ran out of...

Two of the world’s biggest and most controversial commodity traders, Trafigura and Glencore, are building up their metals businesses in Africa, to compete with Chinese rivals and meet...

The United States Department of Defence is considering assigning a permanent army to its Africa military command, Africom. At present, Africom has to source all the troops it...

The hiatus in Africa’s economic growth caused by the global financial crisis appears to have been ‘mercifully brief’, according to the International Monetary Fund’s Africa Director, Antoinette Sayeh.

The United States Africa Command (Africom) wants help with its task of promoting stability and fighting terrorism on the continent and hopes to get it from the European...

In budget-cutting Washington DC, European cooperation is welcome even if European budgets are a fraction of United States’ funds. The US government has cut its Africom budget to...

Among the offending banks named in a new Congressional report on money laundering and corruption are HSBC Holdings, Europe’s largest bank, and Bank of America. They are accused...

In February, the United States Senate Subcommittee on Investigations produced evidence on the transfer of illicit and suspect funds from African regimes to the USA. Its report highlighted...

The United States’ military strategy in Africa, much criticised under President George W. Bush, looks much the same over a year after the inauguration of President Barack Obama....

Theresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for African Affairs, General William ‘Kip’ Ward, Commander, Africom, Anthony Holmes, Deputy to the Commander for Civil-Military Activities, and Vice-Admiral Robert...

The United States Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany, represents a remarkable shift in policy over little more than a decade. In 1995, a Defense Department memorandum concluded that...

As the industrialised world struggles, a return to fast-growing commodity demand from Asia and a tentative Western recovery will boost African exports in 2010, although trade and budget...

'African assets were undervalued and China's presence has helped correct that, whether in bonds or foreign direct investment', said Victor Lopes, Africa Economist at Standard Chartered Bank. Multinationals...

A report by the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Africa* points out that the rise of emerging-market trade and investment may be just as likely...

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...

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...

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...

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...

With limited domestic markets and poor infrastructure, the building of African refineries by Asian countries is often interpreted as cementing political ties rather than economic ones. China’s Sinopec balked at the...

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...

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...

Smaller Asian energy companies are intensifying their exploration and production efforts in Africa, following in the wake of the Indian and Chinese oil and gas giants. Pakistani, Thai and Vietnamese companies...

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...

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...

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,...

As one of the less developed Asian countries, Cambodia’s diplomats do not travel as much or have budgets as large as their Indian and South Korean counterparts. Nonetheless, the Phnom...