Tag: African Union

Africa’s Donkeys Are Coveted by China. Can the Continent Protect Them?

Media Library

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…

Can India Challenge China for Leadership of the ‘Global South’?

Media Library

For more than a decade, China has courted developing countries frustrated with the West. Beijing’s rise from poverty was a source of inspiration. And as it challenged the postwar order, especially with its global focus on development through trade, loans and infrastructure projects, it sent billions of much-needed dollars to poor nations. But now, China is facing competition from another Asian giant in the contest to lead what has come to be called the “global south.” A newly confident India is presenting itself as a different kind of leader for…

Biden Courts African Leaders, but Some Are Skeptical of Big Promises

Chin@Strategy

The African Union chairman, President Macky Sall of Senegal, enumerated Africa’s priorities including fighting terrorism, boosting democracy and negotiating “a just and fair energy transition” with the West. He also called out the United States on two issues. He pushed for the lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe, and he criticized a proposed American law that seeks to limit illicit Russian activities in Africa, such as supporting mercenaries. If the bill passed into law, he warned, “could gravely harm the relationship between Africa and the United States.” In addition to planning…

China and the World Wait

Chin@Strategy

Beijing’s waiting game A new coronavirus outbreak in China’s capital has raised concerns that Beijing may become, after Shanghai, the next Chinese megacity to put life on hold to contain the spread of the Omicron variant. Seventy people have tested positive in Beijing since Friday. In the capital’s fashionable Chaoyang district, home to most of those cases, the government initially ordered all 3.5 million residents to take three P.C.R. tests over the next five days. Bloomberg later reported that mass testing would take place in 11 of the city’s 16…