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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African Studies library, which housed a unique collection of African film, and one of the biggest repositories of historical documents related to Southern Africa, was on fire.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 ...

175 former heads of state, Nobel Prize winners and other illustrious eminences added their support to the call for the U.S. government to mandate a relaxing of intellectual property laws to allow countries in the Global South to mass-produce vaccines without fear of being sued. One of the more revealing details in this discussion is that the mechanism for countries to use a health emergency to momentarily suspend intellectual property rights already exists ...

Today the South African Institute of International Affairs is holding a webinar featuring new work focusing on African agency in the face of Chinese power. How much power African actors have to shape their engagement with China is one of the field’s most fundamental questions. It touches not only how China’s growing power is felt on the continent, but also on how much agency Africa has in its other external relationships too. The ...

As an outfit tracking the Africa-China aspect of COVID-19 since its outbreak, we were aware from early on that the pandemic has laid down a new track in a global geopolitical race. So it’s very interesting to see more commentators in the Global North slowly waking up to the reality that providing the world with vaccines and PPE has been a competition all along, and that China is winning. The resultant ...

U.S. President Joe Biden’s commitment to rolling out infrastructure domestically and internationally is setting up a fascinating race with China. 

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If you’re into curling up with a cup of coffee and an 85-page report on Chinese lending, you can’t go wrong with AidData’s How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments (PDF). One of the most striking findings in a report full of eye-popping ones is the premium China places on secrecy. Many of the 100 examined loan agreements don’t only keep the terms of the agreement hidden ...

Today we feature a fascinating discussion with Deborah Brautigam and Kevin Gallagher, two of the world’s foremost experts on Chinese lending to the Global South. The conversation provides a glimpse of an emerging landscape: how Chinese influence will shift, and how those shifts will impact the Global South.Both Brautigam and Gallagher’s reveal that Chinese lenders are increasingly wary about exposure to debt in certain countries. This was already true in ...

Chinese total carbon emissions could peak by 2028, with emissions coming from the electricity sector topping out as early as 2025. This is according to Liu Zhenya, who runs the Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization, a Beijing-based think tank. Liu’s previous job is maybe more notable: he used to head State Grid Corporation of China – the largest utility in the world, which runs 88% of China’s electricity supply. Peaking ...

So, the first day of the U.S.-China ministerial meeting underway in Anchorage didn’t go so well. Both sides shredded the rigid protocol that usually guides these occasions to launch extended attacks. The effect was a notably undiplomatic clash between diplomats – one that quickly veered into jabs on domestic policy.While China’s nothing-to-see-here denials of the well-documented mass incarcerations in Xinjiang provided a major target for American diplomats, Chinese delegates took aim ...

Recent reports of the debt trap’s death might have been exaggerated. Like a vampire that just won’t die, we keep burying it, but it keeps rising from the coffin. This week we saw reports that Kenyan politicians had to clarify again that the Mombasa port itself hasn’t been put up as collateral for Kenya’s ruinous Standard Gauge Railway loans. Instead, the Port company’s profits might be garnished – a distinction that (again) ...