What can help to protect women’s health, boost the incomes of impoverished families and thus allow girls to avoid early marriage? What – when it disappears – can set back children’s education, damage mental wellbeing, drive conflict within communities and become a vector for racial hatred? The humble donkey has rarely been in the spotlight. Yet Chinese demand for its skin proved so destabilising that African governments agreed to a continent-wide ban on the slaughter of the animal for its hide last year. This week, officials are meeting in Ivory Coast…
Tag: Africa
Poorest 750 nations face ‘tidal wave’ of debt repayments to China in 2025, study warns
The most vulnerable nations on Earth are facing a “tidal wave” of debt repayments as a Chinese lending boom starts to be called in, a new report has warned. The analysis, published on Tuesday by Australian foreign policy thinktank the Lowy Institute, said that in 2025 the poorest 75 countries were on the hook for record high debt repayments US$22bn to China. The 75 nations’ debt formed the bulk of the total $35bn calculated by Lowy for 2025. “Now, and for the rest of this decade, China will be more…
India, Mauritius upgrade strategic ties with eye on China
NEW DELHI — India and Mauritius have upgraded their ties, say leaders of both countries — a move analysts say is aimed at increasing New Delhi’s influence in the Indian Ocean as it seeks to counter China’s expanding footprint in the region. The announcement of upgraded ties came during a two-day visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Mauritius, an island nation that sits along vital seaways in the western Indian Ocean. Modi, who was chief guest at Mauritius’s National Day celebrations on Wednesday, said that the countries had…
African beats entice China and US investors
Africa’s entertainment industry is another stage where global competition between China and the U.S. is playing out. African artists see it as an opportunity. Kate Bartlett has the details from Johannesburg. Camera and video editing by Zaheer Cassim. Voice of America
Angolan fishermen blame Chinese trawlers for declining fish stock
In the port of Benguela on Angola’s Pacific coast, fishermen and fish traders are struggling to make ends meet. They say their catch is getting smaller and they blame illegal fishing by Chinese trawlers. For Joao Marcos, Barbara Santos has this report. (Mayra de Lassalette contributed) Voice of America
New Study Reports Widespread Forced Labor Abuses
Forced labor generates $236 billion a year in illegal profits, a dramatic increase of $64 billion since 2014, a new study by the International Labor Organization reported on Tuesday. The study said the increase is due to a growing population of people forced into labor and the correlation between higher levels of exploitation and higher profits. Traffickers and criminals who use forced labor can generate around $10,000 per victim. The most prevalent use of forced labor is commercial sexual exploitation, the study found. While accounting for 27% of the total…
Number of Chinese Workers in Africa Drops Substantially
Johannesburg, South Africa — The number of Chinese workers across Africa has hit its lowest level in more than a decade, new data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics show. From a record high of 263,696 workers on the continent in 2015, only 88,371 were recorded in 2022, the most recent year on record. The China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, which analyzed data from 2009 to 2022, attributed the drop in numbers partially to the pandemic as Chinese workers left during that period and the country only…
John Kerry: ‘I Feel Deeply Frustrated’
When former Secretary of State John Kerry stepped into a newly created post as America’s top climate diplomat in 2021, the reputation of the United States abroad was, in his words, “in the crapper,” and the pathway to meeting the world’s climate goals looked, to most, very narrow. Kerry, now 80, is stepping down this week to take a role on the Biden re-election campaign. In the last three years, the climate landscape has changed in two big and contradictory ways: The goal the world set in Paris in 2015…
Africa’s Donkeys Are Coveted by China. Can the Continent Protect Them?
For years, Chinese companies and their contractors have been slaughtering millions of donkeys across Africa, coveting gelatin from the animals’ hides that is processed into traditional medicines, popular sweets and beauty products in China. But a growing demand for the gelatin has decimated donkey populations at such alarming rates in African countries that governments are now moving to put a brake on the mostly unregulated trade. The African Union, a body that encompasses the continent’s 55 states, adopted a continentwide ban on donkey skin exports this month in the hope…
Year of the Dragon Not So Fiery for South Africa’s Taiwanese and Chinese
With wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, the specter of a clash between China and Taiwan — which could draw the U.S. into a new conflict — is of global concern. But an ocean away in South Africa, which has seen waves of immigration by ethnic Chinese over centuries, there’s unity, not division. Kate Bartlett reports from Chinese New Year celebrations near Johannesburg. Video: Zaheer Cassim. Voice of America