Last month, Taiwan’s leader, Lai Ching-te, visited Eswatini aboard the Eswatini King’s private jet. This came after his earlier planned trip was called off following several African countries’ refusal to grant overflight clearance to Lai’s chartered plane. Eswatini is the only African country that recognizes Taiwan — a province of China — as an independent […]

In May 2026, President Xi Jinping and his Egyptian counterpart H.E Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi exchanged congratulatory letters in commemoration of a very important moment in China-Africa affairs. Seventy years prior, in a move whose ramifications nobody would have predicated, Cairo became the first modern day nation on the continent to formally commence diplomatic relations with the […]

At the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2024, President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) confirmed that Beijing and Africa had agreed to designate the year that we are in now as the China-Africa Year of People-to-People Exchanges and true to his word, the said vision has been the hallmark of diplomatic […]

On 17 June 2026, I represented the Development Watch Center at a Seminar on commemorating 70 years of China-Africa and China-Arab Diplomatic Relations: Jointly Building a Community with a Shared Future. Organised by the government of China, this was a high-level gathering reflecting on the diplomacy that has aged seven decades, and also charting a […]

Many keeping a close eye on the influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on global affairs will know about the moment in 2023 when President Xi Jinping first presented the Global Civilization Initiative during a keynote address to the Communist Party of China in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting. A similar […]

Historical imagery is filled with cinematic circumstances around the surrender of a global power by a contending new hegemon. Great Britain became the foremost global empire following the Napoleonic Wars, having obtained naval supremacy and colonial prominence over France. Having ruled from 1878 to 1918, the Ottoman Empire surrendered to European powers at the Berlin […]