Belt and Road in Africa

Africa and the Middle East provide conducive conditions for China and Russia to advance their shared and separate agendas.  

Each country must exercise agency to fully capture the benefits of the BRI. So far, Nigeria hasn’t.

If African countries like Tanzania have any say in the matter, rumors of the BRI’s death are greatly exaggerated.

China’s infrastructure projects abroad often suffer from misinterpretations of the local political climate.

African countries have the agency to use relations with China to their own advantage. Whether African leaders will use their power to benefit their people is another question.

Beijing’s outreach to Africa is largely driven by the desire for support on the international stage from the continent’s 54 countries.

Wang Yi's visit added two new partners for the BRI, among other agreements.

Ethiopia, with dreams of being a textile and apparel manufacturing hub, is following China's blueprint for industrial parks.

China is finding an eager partner in Eritrea, an autocratic state generally overlooked entirely by world powers.

The list of attendees tells us a lot about how the BRI has progressed in the last two years.

Slight shifts in focus reveal China's attempts to shed accusations of “neocolonialism” once and for all.