CHINAAFRICATELECOMS Uganda to miss digital deadline 31st August 2011 A woman watches a large widescreen TV showing Chinese state broadcaster CCTV as she works in the canteen kitchen of a Chinese company in Kampala. Image courtesy of Panos Pictures As Huawei Technologies hits trouble in Uganda, Chinese communications projects encounter legal problems from East Africa down to Southern Africa Uganda may miss the East African Community’s deadline of December 2012 for all member states to switch from analogue to digital television. In early August, Uganda’s communications regulator sounded the alarm, saying that the state-run broadcaster, the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation, may fail to deliver Uganda from analogue to digital technology by the 2012 deadline. The migration project has also raised concerns because rival companies in Europe had offered better deals before UBC chose China’s Huawei Technologies, according to sources close to the situation. The regulator is now considering stripping UBC of its monopoly as sole digital provider.
SOUTH AFRICACHINATELECOMS Raids and rivalries 31st August 2011 Image courtesy of Panos Pictures View site A raid on telecoms company ZTE has called attention to illegal immigration and the rough competition between Chinese companies in South Africa. The Department of Home Affairs, the South African Police Service and...
CHINAAFRICA Build a better arms regime 31st August 2011 Image courtesy of Panos Pictures View site Countries are calling for a new arms treaty which incorporates human-rights provisions, but China is wary Cracks are appearing in China’s solidarity with its African allies at the United Nations’ arms trade treaty (ATT) talks. At a UN Preparatory Committee in New York City on 11-15 July,...
CHINAAFRICA Arms trade treaty timetable 31st August 2011 December 2006: Argentina, Australia, Britain, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan and Kenya author Resolution 61/89, ‘Toward an arms trade treaty: establishing common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms’. The...
AFRICAASIA Towering trade 31st August 2011 As Africa’s trade with China continues to top its trade with the United States and former colonial powers, African bankers are calling for a united African front. Standard Bank’s Jeremy Stevens predicts that China-Africa...
SOUTH SUDANASIA Get in line 31st August 2011 Asian partners are queuing up in Juba to offer South Sudan, the world’s newest state, aid, peacekeepers and trade China was the first to send a high-level delegation after South Sudan’s independence celebrations. Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi arrived in Juba on 9 August to meet President Salva Kiir Mayardit and outline the...
SUDANCHINA A friend in need 31st August 2011 With most of Sudan’s known oil reserves now belonging to the South Sudan government in Juba, the Sudanese government needs China even more. For Beijing, though, Khartoum may now be...
GHANACHINA Highway to development 31st August 2011 Accra plans to use Chinese loans to integrate the Northern Region into the booming southern economy More than halfway through President John Atta Mills’s ‘Action Year’ and almost a year since the government first announced that Ghana’s Eastern Corridor was to be rehabilitated, a...
TAIWANAFRICA Ready, able and unlikely 31st August 2011 Officials at Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) are playing down reports that the government is mulling a naval escort for its ships facing the threat of piracy in the...
SOUTH SUDAN Nhial Deng Nhial 31st August 2011 Minister of Foreign Affairs, South Sudan Lieutenant General Nhial Deng Nhial, who became South Sudan’s new Foreign Affairs Minister on 27 August, is preparing for a steady stream of global emissaries. One of the...
INDIA B. Prasada Rao 31st August 2011 Chairman, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. B. Prasada Rao views recent events in North Africa and the Middle East with trepidation. As the domestic market grows ever more competitive, the regions become increasingly important...
CHINA Margaret Chan 31st August 2011 Director General, World Health Organisation When World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun took office in 2007, she said, ‘I want us to be judged by the impact we have...
VIETNAM Doan Xuan Hung 31st August 2011 Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vietnam Vietnam is pursuing an economic and political diversification programme and Doan Xuan Hung, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and special envoy of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, has...