Cowries And Rice

The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) just ended on December 4-5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. For historical context, FOCAC was initiated in 2000 in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country. Hosts Winslow Roberson and Lina Benabdallah (Yiting Wang was unable to join) wanted to assess FOCAC's sustainability and environmental initiatives and brought back on the pod Ms. Li Nan and Ms. Louise Scholtz from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) China and WWF South Africa respectively, as well as a new guest from TRAFFIC China. Ms. Li Nan is policy manager of China's Green Shift Initiative at WWF China; Mr. Zhou Fei: head of TRAFFIC China, the wildlife trade research network; and Ms. Louise Scholtz is manager for the policy futures unit at WWF South Africa.

The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) just ended on December 4-5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. For historical context, FOCAC was initiated in 2000 in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country. Hosts Winslow Robertson, Lina Benabdallah, and Yiting Wang wanted to assess FOCAC in relation to the 2012 iteration and brought Dr. Bob Wekesa back on the pod to share his thoughts. Dr. Wekesa received his PhD in international communications at Communication University of China and is currently a Research Associate at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, as well as a founding research coordinator at the African Communication Research Centre at the same university. His journalism experience spans reporting, editing and leadership across multiple media platforms; in addition to numerous articles, Wekesa is the author of two books and his third, on China-

Prof. Deborah Brautigam is one of the foremost China-Africa scholars in the world, perhaps most famous for her 2010 book The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, published by Oxford University Press. She is the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies' Bernard L. Schwartz Professor in International Political Economy, as well as Professor of International Development and Comparative Politics, and Director of the International Development Program and the China-Africa Research Initiative (SAIS CARI). She recently published a wonderful myth-busting book on China-Africa agriculture, titled "Will Africa Feed China?" and published again by Oxford University Press, which is available now for purchase. Hosts Winslow Robertson, Lina Benabdallah, and Yiting Wang, discuss Brautigam's book, her research, and how agriculture fit into the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

We are continuing to discuss the Sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) for the rest of the month. FOCAC will be held in three weeks, December 4-5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. For historical context, FOCAC was initiated in 2000 in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country. Hosts Winslow Robertson and Lina Benabdallah connect FOCAC to the idea of rising powers: what FOCAC means to South Africa and what these summits do for China as a member of the Global South, the developing world, or whichever nomenclature one may prefer. Joining them is Dr. Sven Grimm, a political scientist who has worked on external partners’ co-operation with Africa since 1999. He is a Senior Researcher and the Coordinator of the Rising Powers program at The German Development Institute (DIE) in Bonn. Since 2006 his research has focused on emerging economies’ role in Africa, and s

Note: This episode was recorded live in a cafe, and has considerable ambient noise which we were unable to remove. In addition, we could not properly edit in a typical intro, recommendation, and contact section for all the speakers and hope to add them in at a later date. We are continuing to discuss the Sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) for the rest of the month. FOCAC will be held in three weeks, December 4-5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. For historical context, FOCAC was initiated in 2000 in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country. Hosts Winslow Robertson and Lina Benabdallah managed to meet up with Prof. Tang Xiaoyang, Resident Scholar at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center for Global Policy and an associate professor in the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University, and Sun Yuzhou, an MA student in African Studies at the Univer

Note: This episode was recorded live over lunch, and has considerable ambient noise which we were unable to remove. We are continuing to discuss the Sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) for the rest of the month. FOCAC will be held in three weeks, December 4-5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. For historical context, FOCAC was initiated in 2000 in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country. This week, hosts Winslow Robertson and Lina Benabdallah examine China-Africa security issues with Amb. David Shinn, who was U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. He is currently an Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, and co authored China and Africa: A Century of Engagement with Prof. Joshua Eisenman, which was published in 2012 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. In add

We are continuing to discuss the Sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) for the rest of the month. FOCAC will be held in three weeks, December 4-5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. For historical context, FOCAC was initiated in 2000 in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country. This week, hosts Winslow Robertson and Lina Benabdallah hope to discuss how how FOCAC will engage with sustainable development and have three guests from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Kenya, WWF China, and WWF South Africa respectively to explore the linkages between FOCAC and sustainable development: Jackson Kiplagat is the Interim Policy & Research Lead - Africa for WWF Kenya, Nan Li is Policy Program Manager for China's Green Shift Initiative at WWF China; and Louise Scholtz is Manager: Special Projects: Policy Futures Unit of WWF South Africa.

South Africa is hosting the sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) this December. FOCAC was initiated in the year 2000 and in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country - and this time, will mark the first instance that FOCAC is held at a summit (instead of ministerial) level in an African country. To discuss FOCAC today as well as its media permutations, hosts Winslow Robertson (and Lina Benabdallah in spirit) invited Dr. Bob Wekesa on the show. Dr. Wekesa received his PhD in international communications at Communication University of China and is currently a Research Associate at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He is a leading expert on all things relating to China-Africa media, and he actually attending the previous FOCAC in 2012, held in Beijing.

The Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research Network aims to strengthen and widen the reach of emerging cross-regional communities of research and practice in the area of China-Africa studies. Originally established in 2007 as a small research working group at the Centre for Sociological Research, at the University of Johannesburg, the Research Network has grown rapidly to become a global network of researchers and practitioners. It provides a dynamic, virtual platform where members meet, debate, inquire, and stay in touch. Hosts Winslow Robertson and Lina Benabdallah (who are members of the Network) wanted to look at the Network's most recent outreach efforts and invited Dr. Tu Hyunh, who is the cofounder of the Network as well as a recent postdoctoral fellow at Jinan University on the pod to discuss these efforts.

On Wednesday October 7, 2015, Yang Feng Glan, a 66-year-old Chinese restaurant owner in Dar es Salaam station and vice-president and secretary-general of the Tanzania China-Africa business council, appeared in a Tanzanian court to be charged with smuggling ivory between 2000 and 2014. Media reports have dubbed her the "Ivory Queen" and the Elephant Action League, an American NGO, described her as “the most important ivory trafficker ever arrested in the country.” Host Winslow Robertson and new cohost Lina Benabdallah are joined by Hongxiang Huang, owner and manager of the China-Africa social enterprise China House and expert on China-Africa ivory smuggling issues, to look closer at this story. Did Yang Feng Glan fit the proverbial profile of a Chinese ivory smuggler in Africa?

Note: This episode was recorded last year and is missing some content. It has been uploaded as the podcast is relaunching. Clean cookstoves are cooking instruments designed to save fuel, improve health, empower women, and protect the environment. They are rarely mentioned in the same breath as China-Africa relations, but in this episode, host Winslow Robertson has two clean cookstove experts connect the two topics. Jichong Wu, China Program Manager at the United Nations Foundation and Yiting Wang, Program Development Manager at WWF-China, both share their histories with clean cookstoves as well as explain how those stoves fit into the China-Africa relationship.

Note: This episode was recorded last year and is missing some content. It has been uploaded as the podcast is relaunching. No discussion of China-Zambia relations would be complete without examining the TAZARA railway, the Chinese foreign aid project designed to eliminate landlocked Zambia's economic dependence on Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. Host Winslow Robertson asks Prof. Jamie Monson, Director of the Michigan State University's (famed) African Studies Center. Prof. Monson is author of the definitive TAZARA history text "Africa's Freedom Railway.

Aly-Khan Satchu, CEO of Rich Management (http://rich.co.ke), interviews Howard French, author of "China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa", to discuss Chinese migration in Africa and Africa-China affairs broadly. This is a shortened version of the original interview from 2014, which we have been granted permission to post on this podcast. The original interview can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgNOkyZXD0Q.

What did Michael Sata, the recently passed President of Zambia, mean to Zambians who had worked and lived in China, or even married Chinese people? Host Winslow Robertson asks returning guest Kumbukilani Phiri, who worked for a Chinese green energy company in Zambia, Sunshine Kaidi New Energy Group and speaks fluent Mandarin after studying Civil Engineering in Guangxi university. He is uniquely situated to talk about the Zambia-China relationship, and we are delighted to having him on the pod again.

We continue our discussion on China-Zambia relations following the death of President Michael Sata, and host Winslow Robertson wanted to look at what Sata meant to Zambian voters. He asked Mr. Kennedy Gondwe, a freelance journalist based in Lusaka who is an expert on Zambian politics and returning guest Solange Guo Chatelard, an associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. If you wanted to know about domestic Zambian politics, this is the episode for you!

What does the unfortunate death of President Michael Sata, who passed away on Wednesday October 29 due to an undisclosed illness, mean for the China-Zambia relationship? Host Winslow Robertson asked Ms. Hannah Postel on the pod to help enlighten him. Ms. Postel, a graduate of Middlebury College who specializes in economic development, migration, and overseas Chinese communities, just returned to D.C. from her time as 2013-2014 Fulbright Scholar in Zambia and wants to share her reflections of President Sata.

The Africa-China relationship is pretty smooth when you have the Export-Import Bank of China or the China Development Bank throwing billions of dollars in your direction. However, not everyone involved in the relationship is so lucky. In this episode, host Winslow Robertson speaks to an individual Chinese entrepreneur, Liang Zhang, who is a travel consultant, bringing small Chinese tour groups to Morocco to experience the country and its culture. We discuss how he got started, why he chose Morocco, and why everyone should visit the country. If you want to learn more about a different side of the China-Africa relationship, please listen!

There are a variety of media outlets interested in the Africa-China relationship, and in this episode host Winslow Robertson wanted to discuss how these outlets look at the relationship. James Schneider was the Editor-in-Chief of Think Africa Press and is currently the Editorial Director at New African Magazine. He read Theology at the University of Oxford and has a particular interest in the study of political economy, capital flows, and equitable development. Sam Piranty is a producer with the BBC and a recent recipient of a grant from the Wits China-Africa Reporting Project, which allowed him to learn and write about African communities in Guangzhou.

Former President of Tanzania Benjamin Mkapa was recently at Zhejiang Normal University’s Institute of African Studies and the China-Africa Business College. He delivered a lecture, titled “Unscrambling Africa in the New Millennium,” that was attended by an American Fullbright scholar Zander Rounds. Rounds wrote about that speech on his blog "Bridging the Great Wall: A research blog on African students in China" and we found his analysis fascinating and asked him to share his experiences.

The Dalai Lama was recently supposed to visit the 14th World Peace Summit, to be held in South Africa, yet his visa to the country was, for all practical purposes, denied. Dr. Ross Anthony looked at the issue on the Center for Chinese Studies' Commentary: "China, South Africa and the Dalai Lama: costs and benefits" and host Winslow Robertson invited him on the pod to discuss the Dalai Lama's relationship with South Africa in-depth. If you want to learn more about the Dalai Lama Debacle, which The Daily Maverick dubbed the incident, please listen to this episode!