From May 16-17, Shanghai hosted an annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the African Development Bank (AfDB). The Bank’s decision to meet in Asia for the first time in its history testifies to China’s growing hold over the African continent. During the past decade, China’s political, economic, and military presence on the continent has surged. Notwithstanding Africa’s declining share in world commerce, trade between Africa and China rose approximately 30 percent during each of the past five years. It now exceeds $50 billion annually, making China Africa’s third-largest trading partner. Sub-Saharan Africa currently supplies about 30 percent of [...]
WARRI, Nigeria — It takes two hours by boat to get to Deibu, an isolated outpost of about 17,000 people in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. The town is cut off from civilization by the River Nun and a thick mangrove forest, and first-time visitors who make the journey are struck by the poverty they find — a stretch of rickety mud houses, with canoes lying by the riverside. Deibu is trapped in another age. Children and adults bath naked in the Nun. There is no electricity service or plumbing. The village’s only sign of modernity is a battered health center, a [...]
BANGKOK, Thailand — Iranian money is behind a strategic oil pipeline to be built across Malaysia with the aim of linking the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea — and eliminating a militarily vulnerable shipping bottleneck via Singapore. Almost half the world’s oil tankers pass through the narrow Strait of Malacca bound for East Asia, not least China, on their way from Middle Eastern and North African oil fields. Now the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) is helping finance an estimated $14 billion land transshipment route across northern Malaysia, ostensibly to save three to four days of sea travel [...]
