South African President Denies China Pushes Countries into Debt Trap

 Reuters published on 5 September 2024 an article titled "China Is Not Pushing Africa into Debt Trap, South African President Says" by Joe Cash.

Speaking in Beijing, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said he does not believe that Chinese loans to African countries, including those for large infrastructure projects, end up in a debt trap or a debt crisis

China's Role in Kenya's Debt Crisis

 The Voice of America published on 28 June 2024 an article titled "Deadly Kenya Protests Spurred by International Debt Woes" by Kate Bartlett.

Deadly protests in Kenya resulted following parliamentary action to pass legislation for raising taxes to pay for debt servicing.  Most of Kenya's debt is owed to international financial institutions and holders of Eurobonds.  China has provided Kenya more loans than any other single country but Nairobi's debt to Beijing is well below what it owes to all other sources of loans.  

Narratives in China-Africa Relations

 The Africa Policy Research Institute, an independent think tank based in Berlin, published on 12 June 2024 a policy brief titled "Exploring the Role of Narratives in China-Africa Relations." 

The report questions the importance of tracking and interrogating the role of development narratives in the context of global power shifts by focusing on China-Africa relations.  It contains the following narratives:  

--Going beyond binary narratives of China-Africa relations by Lina Benabdallah.

--Debt traps and other stories: The Western counter-narration of Africa-China relations by Cobus van Staden.

--Borrowing for belts and roads: The double edge of China's infrastructure lending in Africa by Yunnan Chen.

--What the Indo-Pacific narrative tells us about China and Africa by Yu-Shan Wu.  

Controversy Over China's Loan Agreements with Kenya for Railway Construction

 The Conversation published on 10 November 2022 a commentary titled "Kenya Standard Gauge Railway Contracts: What Released Documents Say, And What They Don't" by Deborah Brautigam.  

The three loan contracts recently released by the government of Kenya establish that Mombasa Port was not in any way pledged as collateral for the Chinese loans in the event of Kenyan default.

China's Belt and Road Initiative in Kenya

 The Foreign Policy Research Institute published on 18 May 2022 an analysis titled "China's Belt and Road Initiative in Kenya" by Phebe Wilson-Andoh.

Kenya offers a good example of how China's Belt and Road Initiative works in Africa.  While Beijing's financing in Kenya has improved the country's infrastructure, it has highlighted tension between China and Africans.

China and Debt Trap Diplomacy

Area Development and Policy published in December 2019 an article titled "A Critical Look at Chinese 'Debt-trap Diplomacy': The Rise of a Meme" by Deborah Brautigam.

The article looks at the claim that China deliberately seeks to entrap countries in a web of debt to secure some kind of strategic advantage. The author largely debunks this claim.

China's Response to Debt Trap Diplomacy

Panda Paw Dragon Claw blog, which is run by a team "to tell a better story about China's involvement beyond its borders," ran a lengthy analysis on 17 July 2019 titled "Assessing China's Most Comprehensive Response to the 'Debt Trap': The Belt and Road 'Debt Trap Sustainability Framework'" by Xinyue Ma, project leader of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University.

It provides links to many recent studies and reports that deal with China's debt issues globally. It looks at countries that have signed Belt and Road agreements with China (40 in Africa) and are debt distressed (6 in Africa) or at high risk of debt distress (11 in Africa).