On 29 December, Park Young-june, an associate of President Lee Myung-bak and a familiar face in South Korea-Africa relations, hosted 13 African ambassadors at the Korea-Africa Roun...

India is seeking African supplies to cope with a looming coal shortage. Dependent on coal, India has large reserves – 58.6 billion tonnes in 2009 – but environmental regulations ob...

With the other Asian powers vying for business elsewhere, Singapore has focused on two sluggish oil-producing countries in Central Africa: Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon. President De...

Born in 1953 to a prominent Communist revolutionary, Xi Zhongxun, China’s presumed president-in-waiting, is a ‘princeling’ groomed to the elite class. Xi Jinping grew up in privile...

Taiwan has kept a low-profile in Africa lately but that will change in late December when Premier Wu Den-yih pays a visit to Burkina Faso. Wu is set to attend the re-inauguration o...

South Korea’s new Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Kim Sung-hwan took office in October, pledging closer engagement with Africa. His first emissary is Deputy Minister Kim Jae-shi...

Sudan is set to split into two next year, and China – the Khartoum regime’s most important international backer – is stuck in the middle. Under the 2005 peace deal between the Nati...

India’s diplomats are looking for both commercial and ‘preferential’ means to access oil acreage and to increase oil supplies. However, the Indian government will need to speed up ...

Growing demand for Africa’s minerals, oil, gas and farmland will shape China’s next five-year plan (2011-2015) due to be approved in March 2011. The planning committees have to tak...

The ruling Communist Party makes policy and the state bureaucracy implements it but decisions on economic strategy are taking in a wider range of opinion and expertise.