Malawi has profitably switched its allegiance to China from
Taiwan with a price tag of over US$350 million. In the past two
years, China has taken over road and building projects from Taiwan
and added more soft loans. Lilongwe's official relationship w...
A fly-by-night Indian company registered in Hong Kong has packed
its bags and disappeared after mining diamonds and not paying
taxes for more than four years. Kasaï Oriental's Direction
Provinciale des Recettes (DPR) and the parastatal diamond
mi...
The shadowy joint venture between Angola's state-owned
oil company and the nebulous China International Fund has reached
a new stumbling block in its three-year-old pursuit of a major
stake in Tanzania's national airline. Infrastructure Minister
Shuku...
The on-again off-again plan to renovate the railway
linking coastal Lagos to Kano in the north may formally start up this
year, but questions about the validity of any contract signed between
the Chinese companies and the Nigerian government remain unt...
More than a year and two amendments later, progress is finally being
made on little-known China Union’s US$2.68 billion deal to redevelop
Liberia’s Bong Mines. In her apologetic New Year address, President Ellen
Johnson-Sirleaf announced that a second ...
Cambodia: peacekeeping and trade, Indonesia: the spirit of Bandung, Malaysia: agribusiness and oil, North Korea: vanity projects and arms sales, Pakistan: smuggling and fraud, Singapore: business junket, South Korea: good intentions, Thailand: expanding t...
The details of the US$8 billion China Sonangol/China International
Fund are becoming more apparent as subsidiary deals are signed.
On 7 December, Zimbabwe's Transport and Mining Ministries signed
mining and construction deals with China International F...
Gabon's politicians continue to question the delays in the
starting-up of the Bélinga iron ore mine and its associated
infrastructure works. But financing issues and constant threats
of renegotiation have not inspired confidence. As may happen t...
World Bank President Robert Zoellick's plan to bring
the Asian hyper-economies into the international development community
is now bearing fruit. On 3 December, Zoellick told London's Financial
Times that Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming showed
'...
- Vol 2 No 11
- September 2009
Aggressive investment by the China Investment Corporation, which manages nearly US$300 billion of Beijing's $2.1 trillion in foreign reserves, is leading to a boom in Africa-focused investments. In early September, World Bank President Robert Zoellick beg...