South Korean President Lee Myung-bak prides himself on his government’s resource diplomacy, but now a corrupt Cameroonian diamond deal has taken its first political casualties. The CNK International...

President Idriss Déby Itno’s government has finally reached an agreement with the Chinese owners of the troubled Djermaya refinery. Discussions between the government, led by Justice Minister Abdoulaye...

A bruising election year in Ghana kicked off with President John Atta Mills’s 9 January announcement of the death of South Korean company STX Corporation’s US$10 billion housing...

The two-day state visit of India’s Commerce Minister Anand Sharma in mid-January gave Indian investors the opportunity to complain about the restrictions and obstacles that – despite decades...

Zimbabwe had an unexpected, dramatic effect on Thai politics in January. When Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra announced her new cabinet, the opposition Democrat Party suddenly remembered that one,...

Officials are building up expectations for the fifth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC V), which Beijing will host in the last quarter of this year. The showpiece summit,...

Beijing’s cooperation with the International Monetary Fund often goes unnoticed. China has been quietly working with the IMF to pressure African governments to remove fuel subsidies, after its...

The Indian government starts 2012 aiming to almost double bilateral trade with Africa from US$46 billion to $70 bn. by 2015. Such plans disguise the fact that, so...

Japan’s cycle of political instability and the long recovery from the tsunami and Fukushima nuclear crisis signal another year of inward focus for the governing elite. Prime Minister...

President Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang (KMT, Chinese Nationalist Party) won a second term on 14 January and now has another four years to carry forward his China-friendly...