This weekend was a rough one for South Africa. On Sunday, the country watched as fires around Table Mountain slowly started creeping downhill, towards the beautiful campus of the University of Cape Town (UCT). Soon it was confirmed that the university’s African Studies library, which housed a unique collection of African film, and one of the biggest repositories of historical documents related to Southern Africa, was on fire. Librarians are still trying ...
Category: Labor
Five Reasons Why Chinese Private Investment is Flowing Into Africa
Almost a decade, China passed the United States to become Africa's leading source of foreign direct investment. LSE Senior Visiting Fellow Shirley Ze Yu explains why Chinese companies are looking to Africa for new opportunities and how today's African market is reminiscent of what China ...
New Stats Reveal China-Africa Trade, Aid Flows Rose in 2019, But FDI Kept Falling
Researchers at the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. published a highly-anticipated update on Wednesday to their data sets that track Chinese economic engagement with the continent. The new figures for 2019 can't be summed up in a single, simple ...
Conservation Group Reports “Appalling” Human Rights Violations Aboard Chinese-Owned Fishing Trawlers in Ghana
The London-based conservation group Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) published a damning report on Monday that details "appalling" human rights violations aboard Chinese-owned fishing trawlers that operate in Ghanaian waters. The report details extensive exploitation of local crew members by Chinese managers ...
Laos and the Chinese Debt Crisis in Africa
The small, impoverished landlocked Southeast Asian nation of Laos is a focal point of China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative and also emerging a case study in how Beijing is handling a burgeoning debt crisis in the country. ...
Report: Number of Chinese Workers in Africa Has Steadily Fallen Since 2015
Reduced Chinese lending activity in Africa has prompted a steady exodus of Chinese laborers from the continent over the past five years, according to a new report published by the Beijing-based consultancy Development Reimagined and The Oxford China International Consultancy.
Chinese Workers May be Leaving Africa, But They’re Not Necessarily Returning Home Says Researcher
The two figures show the number of Chinese workers in the world and in Africa: The first graph includes the workers sent abroad by Chinese ...
Foreign Policy Elder Statesman Herman Cohen Explains Why China is “Not a Problem for the U.S.” in Africa
Former United States diplomat Herman J. Cohen is one of Washington's foreign policy elder statesmen. Ambassador Cohen served as the U.S. envoy to Gambia and Senegal in the late 1970s and then later as the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the George H.W. Bush ...
The Joy and Pain of Developing Kenya’s Specialty Tea Production
Tea farmers in Kenya’s central highlands say Chinese interest in their tea is improving their income, but the journey for Chinese tea enthusiast and founder of the Chinya Tea Development Company Lewis Gao has not been easy. He came to Kenya ...
9 Nigerians Killed, 1 Chinese Kidnapped in Violent Assault on a Road Construction Site in Niger State
A group of heavily armed Muslim Fulani bandits raided at a road construction site on Monday in the central Nigerian state of Niger. The assailants apparently targeted expatriates and began shooting. Nearby private security forces responded and forced the gunmen to retreat, but not before ...
Claims of a Cover-Up and Intimidation Cloud Investigation of Labor Abuse by Chinese Steel Company in Nigeria
Anonymous accusations of widespread labor abuses at a Chinese-owned steel company in the Nigerian state of Abia have sparked a heated controversy, as the company and its allies rebut the charges. Last week, an unknown individual using the Twitter handle @Truthfully83