Ananta Centre

In December, Somalia announced it was granting tuna fishing licenses to 31 Chinese vessels along its coastline. 

Somalia has the longest coastline on mainland Africa and has struggled to tap its rich fishing resources or stop external fishing vessels from poaching in its waters. 

The one-year agreement would allow China Overseas Fisheries Association, a trawling company created by Beijing in 2012 to exploit overseas fishing rights, to have exclusive rights for tuna…

A leaked report by Kenya’s auditor general reported that the country’s main port of Mombasa would be in danger of Chinese takeover if Kenya’s rail system failed to pay off a loan from China. The media reports were partly denied by the government but a number Kenyan newspapers demanded that Nairobi come clean on the terms of the loan. Some cited the example of Hambantota, the Sri Lankan port taken over by a Chinese firm as part payment for a loan. “Sri Lanka and Zambia have become textbook…

The United States announced a new Africa strategy that would seek to counter the growing influence of “great power competitors” China and Russia. The new Africa Prosper strategy was outlined by the Trump administration’s National Security Advisor John Bolton on December 14th in a speech at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. 

There were three broad elements to the Africa strategy. 

One, the US would advance free and fair trade and commercial relations with the…

Africa was the largest recipient of overseas Chinese development finance between 2000 and 2014, says a study by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. 

The report calculated that China provided a total of $354 billion in loans, grants and other assistance to countries around the world. Just over a third of this was provided to Africa. China gave $ 121.6 billion for 2,390 projects, with 60 per cent of these being in the transport and energy sectors.…

The United States is moving towards ending Western isolation of Sudan. US State Department officials met with Sudanese Foreign Minister Al-Dirdiri Mohamed Ahmed in Washington last month to finalise plans to remove the “state sponsor of terrorism” designation that is presently applied to Khartoum. 

Sudan was blacklisted in 1993 and has since been unable to attract foreign investors, access multilateral financial aid and otherwise benefit from the global economy. The Barack Obama…

Africa suffers the worst brain drain problem of any developing region with even medium level skilled workers like nurses and technicians among those who leave. In the field of science the loss is even greater. The Global State of Young Africa survey of young African scientists has been trying to identify the barriers that they face to staying in the continent. The survey concluded that “the extreme factors include war and political instability. But the more common ‘pushes’ are a desire for…

Politics in Angola, Africa’s second largest oil exporter, has caught observers by surprise. The new president, João Lourenço, has launched a vigorous anti-corruption crusade that has directly targeted his predecessor’s family, the powerful Dos Santos Clan. 

Lourenco, known popularly as J-Lo, was expected to quietly acquiesce to the family’s enormous  economic power, accrued during the 38-year rule of President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos. Instead, Lourenco has launched a number…

Congo, one of Africa’s largest but most fractious countries, saw its opposition parties agree in November to a single candidate for the December 23 presidential election, the relatively unknown politician Martin Fayulu. In keeping with Congo’s confused polity, this unity of purpose lasted just a few hours. The country will now face a three-way electoral battle, but one that is still likely to spell the end of Joseph Kabila’s 17-year long rule of the country.

Fayulu was chosen to run…