Africa

The October 2007 merger between the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world's largest bank, and Standard Bank, South Africa's largest, is finally showing its potential. After a lacklustre start,...

For the next few decades, the Indian Ocean will be the setting for competition between three great powers: the United States adjusting to an increasingly multipolar world, and the rising military...

China sees India more as a stumbling block than a competitor for its ambitions in Asia. Professor Han Hua, a South Asia specialist at Beijing University, said that China lacks...

China would not be taking up tracts of land in Africa to meet its domestic food requirements insisted Beijing's Deputy Agriculture Minister Niu Dun in April, but reports on the...

On 7 May, Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a long-delayed white paper on foreign aid confirming what Taipei's allies are keenly aware of: Taiwan's foreign aid has dropped...

Taiwanese diplomacy faces an awkward commercial challenge. Stripped of the warm words and diplomatic ambiguities, it is clear that Taipei's biggest trading partners no longer recognise Taiwan as an independent state...

Although China's exports have fallen by more than a quarter from last year's levels, the Export-Import Bank of China is busier than ever financing trade with Africa, Latin America and...

Africa and China escaped the worst direct effects of the global slowdown last year, Africa because its banks were not integrated into international credit markets, and China because its banks were...

The man who was Japanese Prime Minister in 2007-08, Yasuo Fukuda, was in Botswana on 21-22 March for the follow-up meeting of the Tokyo International Conference on African...

Before China, there was Japan, say Kenyans. The Japanese aid model is built largely around supplying technical expertise rather than direct budget support. Japanese experts in agriculture, energy and education are...