The South African Institute of International Affairs published in February 2024 a paper titled "China's Central Bank Digital Currency: A New Force in African Finance?" by Lauren A. Johnston.
The paper sets out the basics of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and of China's digital currency, the e-CNY, in the African context. It offers suggestions on areas of debate that might be encouraged to bring the CBDC out of monetary halls and into the arena of public interest debate.
The Nanyang Technological University published on 28 February 2024 an article titled "Ethiopia Is a Frontier for Chinese Crypto."
Attracted by plentiful, inexpensive, renewable electricity and a favorable investment climate, over a dozen Chinese crypto mining firms have signed electric supply deals with the national Ethiopian electric utility. The primary operating cost of a cryptocurrency mining facility is the cost of electricity. Following construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, Ethiopia is poised to become a new magnet for global mining.
In an important speech in London on 11 October 2022 before the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, Sir Jeremy Fleming, Director of Government Communications Headquarters (the UK's intelligence, cyber, and security agency) warned that China is working hard to exploit information covertly in countries big and small.
China is deliberately and patiently trying to gain strategic advantage by shaping the world's technology ecosystems. Technology has become not just an area for opportunity, for competition and for collaboration, it's become a battleground for control, values and influence.
Fleming argued that "we must conclude that Beijing is using all of the levers to challenge the international post-war consensus on economics and technology. And that it intends to rewrite the rules of international security, both close to home and further afield, in ways frankly that none of us have ever faced before." The Communist Party of China is using "its resources to implement draconian national security laws, a surveillance culture, and an increasingly aggressive military." Fleming added that "in a future crisis, Beijing could exploit information covertly. One only needs to look at how China has already sought to do just this, leveraging its influence over many smaller nations in votes over technology, ethics and foreign policy."
Fleming concluded that "this isn't a call to exclude or marginalize China -- even if we could. It's a call for a China to recognize that it's to its advantage to play responsibly inside the global system. If it does so it can help to co-create the rules of tomorrow. But if it chooses not to. To play a disruptive role in international security, technology and markets, then that will come at a cost too."
The South African Institute for International Affairs reprinted on 22 July 2022 an article from Nikkei Asia titled "A Chinese Port in Nigeria Will Change the World Economy" by Lauren Johnston.
Nigeria's deep water port of Lekki, financed and built by China, received its first ship this month. It will significantly increase container capacity for Africa's largest country and economy. It will also expand Nigeria's oil refining and fertilizer production.
The Interpreter published on 17 November 2021 a commentary titled "China's Digital Currency: Next Stop, Africa?" by Cornelia Tremann.
Chinese companies have acquired 50 percent of Africa's mobile phone market and are moving into Africa's mobile money space.
Coindesk published on 3 February 2021 an analysis titled "China Leads Africa's Digital Currency Race" by Michael Kimani, Cryptobaraza, a builder of fintech, blockchain, and crypto products in Africa.
In Africa there is a race to define a digital currency standard for the emerging digital economy. The author concludes that China has already won the race with the People's Bank of China's DCEP, a digital version of China's legal tender, the yuan. Chinese companies had a twenty year head start and effectively subsidized Africa's connectivity.
