The BBC posted on 5 July 2026 an article titled "The African Fishermen Who Blame Chinese Trawlers for Their Woes" by Ed Butler.
Illegal fishing is a major problem in the waters off Sierra Leone. Local fisherman charge that Chinese trawlers are responsible for most of it and assert it is exacerbated by collusion with corrupt local officials.
The Africa Center for Strategic Studies published on 17 March 2026 an analysis titled "Chinese State-Owned Enterprises and Market Capture in Africa" by Paul Nantulya.
China has the largest state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector in the world, accounting for about 20 percent of China's GDP. African economic sectors such as mining, railways, and power generation can become dominated by large Chinese SOEs. They can then out compete African companies and other investors, create supply chain dependence on Chinese firms, and reduce the bargaining power of African governments.
Gallup just released its "World Happiness Report 2026" that assesses 147 countries from 2023 through 2025. The 2026 edition highlights the role social media plays in social connection, trust, and shared experiences worldwide.
The happiest African countries based on the social media focus were Mauritius (73), Libya (81), Algeria (83), Mozambique (93), and Gabon (96). The least happy African countries were DRC (140), Botswana (143), Zimbabwe (144), Malawi (145), and Sierra Leone (146).
Comment: There are surprises, at least for me, at both ends of the scale. The focus on social media probably accounts for them
The Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford published the World Happiness Report 2025. The focus of this year's report is the impact of caring and sharing on people's happiness. It includes factors such as giving money to charity, volunteering, and helping strangers. It tries to measure the degree of benevolence in each of the 147 countries that it evaluates.
The five highest ranked African countries are Mauritius (78), Libya (79), Algeria (84), South Africa (95), and Mozambique (96). Seven of the ten lowest ranked countries are in Africa: Lesotho (138), Comoros (139), DRC (141), Botswana (142), Zimbabwe (143), Malawi (144), and Sierra Leone (146).
The Calabash Newspaper published on 24 October 2025 an article titled "To Boost Sierra Leone-China Trade Relations . . . Vice President Hails Inauguration of 5th Chinese Chamber of Commerce" by Alvin Lansana Kargbo.
China is Sierra Leone's largest trading partner ($1.8 billion in 2024) and biggest source of foreign direct investment, which has surpassed $2 billion. The two countries recently inaugurated the 5th Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Sierra Leone, which brings together 17 Chinese companies.
Sierra Leone's vice president commented at the inauguration of the Chamber of Commerce that when development aid to Africa is declining, private sector investment becomes critical for Sierra Leone's economic resilience.
Comment: The vice president's comment is a lightly veiled reference to the dismantlement of USAID and cutbacks in development assistance by some European countries. The question now is whether Western private companies will actually step up investment in countries like Sierra Leone.
China-Africa Security Radar posted on 24 August 2025 an article titled "China's Recasting of Safe Cities in Africa."
A Chinese safe city project in Sierra Leone is being described as a "concrete measure to implement the Global Security Initiative (GSI)." This raises questions as to how China defines security and views both GSI and safe cities in Africa.
The White House published on 4 June 2025 a fact sheet titled "President Donald J. Trump Restricts the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats."
The proclamation fully restricts and limits the entry of nationals from twelve countries found to be deficient with regards to screening and vetting and determined to pose a very high risk to the United States: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
The proclamation partially restricts and limits the entry of nationals from seven countries who also pose a high level of risk to the United States: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
Comment: Seven of the twelve fully restricted countries and three of the seven partially restricted countries are in Africa.
Four of the fully restricted countries--Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Eritrea--were included because nationals from those countries have a history of disproportionally overstaying their visas after coming to the United States. Three of them--Libya, Somalia, and Sudan--were included because the governments have no competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports.
All three of the partially restricted countries--Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Togo--have a history of disproportionally overstaying their visas after arriving in the United States.
Clearly, this proclamation, at least in the case of the African countries, has little to do with combatting terrorism and a lot to do with keeping people out of the United States from certain countries for other reasons.
Reuters published on 18 November 2024 an article titled "Russia Vetoes UN Security Council Action on Sudan War" by Daphne Psaledakis and David Brunnstrom.
Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called on warring parties to cease hostilities immediately and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid. All other countries of the 15-member UNSC voted in favor of the resolution drafted by the UK and Sierra Leone.
The massive World Happiness Report 2024 is now available online, published in partnership with Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, The UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the World Happiness Report's editorial board. The six key variables in the study are GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption.
The overall global happiness 2021-2023 scores are based on individuals' own assessments of their lives, in particular their answers to the Cantril ladder life-evaluation question in the Gallup World Poll. They are not based on any index of the six key variables in the study. See pages 14-17 of the report.
Out of 143 countries in the study, the five highest ranked African countries are war-torn Libya (66)!!, Mauritius (70), South Africa (83), Algeria (85), and Congo Brazzaville (89). The five lowest ranked African countries are Lesotho (141), Sierra Leone (140), Congo Kinshasa (139), Zimbabwe (138), and Botswana (137). For purposes of comparison, the United States ranked 23 and China 60.
The South China Morning Post published on 2 March 2024 an article titled "Sierra Leone Leader's Visit to China Shines a Light on Xi Jinping's Challenge to the West" by Jevans Nyabiage.
The President of Sierra Leone was Africa's first leader to visit China this year. While the leaders of both countries said all the right things during the 5-day stay, the president of Sierra Leone did not appear to obtain much by way of new financial commitments.
The China Global South Project published on 15 December 2023 an article titled "The Chinese on the Lion Mountain: Peering into China's Diaspora and Soft Power in Sierra Leone" by Susan Su.
The article looks at the impact of the Chinese diaspora community in Sierra Leone. The capital of Freetown has experienced an influx of Chinese businesses, many attracted by the growth of Chinese infrastructure projects and investments in the mining, timber, and fishing industries. But there are also concerns that the diaspora has become overly involved in local politics.
The Centre for International Governance Innovation published in October 2023 a study titled "Navigating Africa's Digital Partnerships in a Context of Global Rivalry" by Folashade Soule.
The study highlights how African governments are choosing their digital partners. Africa's choice of China as its preferred partner for digital infrastructure has more to do with China offering a suitable mix of financial and technological value and the lack of viable Western alternatives, than geopolitics.
Doublethink Lab and the China in the World network have published a cross-regional ranking to measure China's overseas influence through comparable data titled "China Index 2022: Measuring PRC Influence Around the Globe." It looks at 82 countries, including 11 in Africa, evaluating the following 9 domains: academia, domestic politics, economy, foreign policy, law enforcement, media, military, society, and technology.
The African country ranked as having the highest amount of Chinese influence was South Africa, tied with Peru for position number 5. Other African countries had the following rankings: Nigeria (14), Egypt (17), Tanzania (18), Ghana (20), Kenya (22), Zambia (46), Sierra Leone (47), Gambia (50), Ethiopia (56), and Senegal (74). By comparison, the United States ranked number 21.
The South China Morning Post published on 30 April 2023 an article titled "China Donates Patrol Boat to Sierra Leone to Tackle Illegal Fishing and Piracy off West Africa" by Jevans Nyabiage.
China donated a patrol boat to Sierra Leone to deal with illegal fishing. This is part of a pattern of donations to countries in West Africa to combat both piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and illegal fishing in offshore waters. Much of the legal and illegal fishing is attributed to China's distant-water fishing fleet.
Afrobarometer has just published changes in perceived influence of the United States and China in 27 African countries from 2019 until 2022.
The US experienced an average decline of 11 percent in the 27 countries while China had an average decline of 10 percent. (Click charts to enlarge.)
The US posted a positive influence percentage only in Sierra Leone and Mauritius while China had positive numbers in Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Angola, Liberia, and Namibia. Both the United States and China experienced the sharpest drop in Morocco and Botswana.
The Foreign Policy Research Institute published on 29 August 2022 an analysis titled "Political Training Under the Belt and Road Initiative: A Look at the Chinese Communist Party School in Africa" by Raphael Chan, a freelance researcher in Hong Kong.
The International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) provided $40 million to construct the CPC's first party training facility in Africa. Established by the six ruling political parties in Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School is located in Tanzania. Courses at the school emphasize the importance of strong party leadership across all dimensions of society, how the CPC disciplines itself, its approach to global affairs, and the advantages of a socialist system with Chinese characteristics.
The school in Tanzania may signal the development of additional training facilities in Africa. For example, China is constructing diplomatic academies in Tunisia and Sierra Leone.
India's Economic Times published on 12 May 2022 an article titled "China Expands Defence Supplies with African States" by Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury.
China signed 27 loans for defense purchases with 8 African countries worth $3.5 billion between 2000 and 2020.
The UN General Assembly voted on 7 April 2022 to expel Russia from the UN Human Rights Council because of its human rights abuses in Ukraine. The vote was 93 in favor, 24 opposed, 58 abstaining, and the remainder not voting.
Only ten (Chad, Comoros, Cote d'Ivoire, DRC, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Sierra Leone) of Africa's fifty-four countries voted to expel Russia. Nine (Algeria, Burundi, CAR, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Mali, and Zimbabwe) voted alongside Russia in a failed effort to defeat the resolution. The two major surprises opposing the resolution were Ethiopia and Gabon. Twenty-four African states abstained and eleven did not vote.
The Green Finance and Development Center at Fudan University in Shanghai published on 21 March 2022 a study titled "Brief: China's Role in Public External Debt in DSSI Countries and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2020" by Mengdi Yue and Christoph Nedopil Wang.
The study looks at 68 countries, most of them in Africa, eligible under the debt service suspension initiative (DSSI). It is estimated that 26 percent of the total debt service paid by the 68 DSSI countries in 2022 would go to China, compared to 17 percent to bondholders and 9 percent to the World Bank-IDA.
The five countries experiencing the highest percentage change in outstanding public external debt to China between 2019 and 2020 were Guinea (95 %), Lesotho (60 %), Burkina Faso (55 %), Sierra Leone (43 %) and Rwanda (33 %).
The World Happiness Report 2022 has just been published. The country rankings of happiness are based on a three-year average from 2019 through 2021 for 146 countries globally, including 39 in Africa. The study uses six variables: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption.
The highest scoring African country was Mauritius at number 52. Eight African countries held positions in the bottom ten: Zambia (137), Malawi (138), Tanzania (139), Sierra Leone (140), Lesotho (141), Botswana (142), Rwanda (143), and Zimbabwe (144).
