China

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...