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April 2010

Vol 3 N0 6

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures
Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

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AFRICA | CHINA

CADF expands Africa network

The state investment fund is launching Chinese companies into overseas markets where they pick up assets abandoned by Western and African companies

AFRICA | CHINA

CADF in Africa: Deals from 2007-2008

The first cooperation agreement signed by the China-Africa Development Fund was with the Tianjin North China Geological ...

AFRICA | CHINA

CADF in Africa: Deals from 2009-2010

April 2009: the China-Africa Development Fund and YTO Group announced a joint venture – the China-Africa Machinery Cor...

BLUE NOTES

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North Korea is mounting a charm offensive in Africa to combat the negative publicity from South Africa’s February seizure of illegal military equipment sent from Pyongyang to Congo-Brazzaville. Praesidium President Kim Yong-nam, North Korea’s number two, embarked upon a tour of Gabon, Gambia and Senegal in late March and early April. In Dakar for the inauguration of the Monument de la Renaissance Africaine (AAC Vol 2 No 10), Kim invited President Abdoulaye Wade to visit Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il. North Korea and uranium producer Gabon signed a cultural cooperation accord. In Gambia, Kim met by Vice-President Isatou Njie-Saidy, who gushed that North Korea was becoming ‘one of the most powerful and influential members of the international community of nations.’ A cooler response has met the tactics of Pyongyang’s football team in Southern Africa. Its request for free lodging and other gifts was rejected in March by Swaziland’s Sports Minister Hlobsile Ndlovu. The team eventually decided to camp in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, but local activists are threatening to make the stadium a ‘centre of resistance’ because of North Korea’s role in training brutal national army units in the 1980s.

AFRICA | INDIA

Wanted: special partners

India plans to increase its annual trade with Africa to US$70 billion – up from current levels of $45 bn. – over the next five years. That is an exponential increase from the $5.2 bn. of 2002/03. The 28 March acquisition by Bharti Airtel of telecommunications company Zain Africa’s assets for $10.7 bn. has almost tripled the level of Indian investment in Africa, a large proportion of which has been in sectors other than hydrocarbons and minerals. The Airtel deal is a further sign of the private sector’s readiness to invest there.

AFRICA | INDIA

For Punjabi farmers, an African frontier

African missions from Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe were invited to a conference in Patiala in Punjab on 26-27 March with farmers from all over the region to examine the opportunities for utilising Indian agricultural technology and expertise in Africa.

CONGO-KINSHASA | CHINA | SOUTH KOREA

More multibillion mining contracts for Kinshasa

Five years after his first official visit, President Joseph Kabila returned to South Korea on 29-30 March. Two protocols were agreed. The first accord seeks to replicate China’s US$6 billion ore-for-infrastructure Sicomines contract, but on a smaller scale.

GUINEA | CHINA

More ore, more problems

A US$3.3 million loan offered by the China International Fund has drawn renewed criticism of the company’s activities in Guinea. On 1 March, Abdoulaye Yéro Baldé, a member of Mouvement Social de Guinée, appeared on Radiodiffusion-Télévision Guinéenne. Baldé excoriated the $7 billion in contracts that CIF and partner China Sonangol controversially signed in October 2009 with the military junta then led by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara.

BLUE NOTES

North Korea is mounting a charm offensive in Africa to combat the negative publicity from South Africa’s February seizure of illegal military equipment sent from Pyongyang to Congo-Brazzaville. Praesidium President Kim Yong-n...

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NAMIBIA | CHINA

Nuctech’s nobody

Why won’t anyone help Yang Fan pay his US$135,000 bail bond – especially when he has $2.3 million stashed in a local bank account and a swish golf estate home in Cape Town, South Africa, completed just in time for the 2010 FIFA Football World Cup there next month?



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