[WEBCAST] What Is China Doing in Africa?
VIEW EVENT DETAILSEric Olander of the China Africa Project in Conversation With Aleksandra Gadzala
Africa has become the fastest-urbanizing region of the world. Rural migrants move into cities at a higher rate than in China and India. This ongoing transition represents challenges, but also opportunities for infrastructure investments. China has responded to the call for investments in Africa like no other country. Since the end of the 1990s, the intensity and volume of financial and economic dimensions, pertaining the relationship between China and various African countries, has led to critical debates. Questions arise whether China’s major investments are a good alternative to Western aid. Additionally, the current COVID-19 crisis is probing Chinese-African relations as the virus may have lasting implications.
How do the Chinese government and Communist Party perceive their engagement? Why has China been driving the continent’s infrastructure initiatives? What countries are in their focus? How has China’s presence in Africa changed over the last decades? To what extend does the coronavirus outbreak impact current relations? And how do African counterparts, e.g. the African Union and public sectors, deal with China?
These questions and more will be addressed in our webcast with Eric Olander, Co-Founder and Managing Editor of the China Africa Project and Aleksandra Gadzala, Head of Research at The Singularity Group, Senior Nonresident Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, and a lecturer in international relations at the University of St. Gallen and the University of Zurich.
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Eric Olander is the co-founder of the China Africa Project (CAP), an independent, non-partisan media initiative dedicated to exploring every facet of China’s engagement in Africa. Eric is also the co-host of the weekly China in Africa podcast that is now among the top-10% most downloaded shows worldwide. Eric is a fluent Mandarin-speaker and a longtime China-watcher with more than 25 years of journalism experience at many of the world’s leading media companies including CNN, the BBC, and FRANCE24 among others. He received his undergraduate degree in East African History from the University of California at Berkeley and holds a master’s degree in Chinese Public Affairs from the University of Hong Kong.
Aleksandra W Gadzala is Head of Research at The Singularity Group, Senior Nonresident Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, and a lecturer in international relations at the University of St. Gallen and the University of Zurich. She is author of the acclaimed book, Africa and China: How Africans and Their Governments are Shaping Relations with China, and Founder of Magpie Advisory, a political risk and global foresight research and advisory firm. She holds a PhD and M.Phil in Politics from the University of Oxford, and a BA from Northwestern University.