Somali border markets show how checkpoints shape trade
Trade corridors in the Somali borderlands cannot be understood only through roads, customs posts and official tariffs. New PeaceRep research argues that checkpoints themselves function as economic and political institutions that shape the movement of goods and people...
Botswana’s diamond strategy joins a wider African producer bloc
Botswana’s decision to join Namibia and South Africa in the Beijing Declaration on Natural Diamonds and Sustainable Development is more than a marketing exercise. It reflects a producer-country attempt to influence how natural diamonds are positioned in one of the...
Botswana–Oman Deals Span Minerals, Oil Storage and Solar
A landlocked country in the centre of southern Africa and a sultanate on the edge of the Arabian Sea share little geography and less history. What they increasingly share is a problem of the same shape: each is trying to convert a finite resource endowment into a more...
Industrial parks: Value-chain infrastructure, or just serviced land
Economics - Industry & Resources · Editorial By Moakanyi Magazine · China-in-Africa · June 2026 An industrial park can be two very different things. It can be serviced land - a fence, a substation, a road to the port, leased by the hectare. Or it can be...
Made in Africa, sold to China: why zero tariffs are only the doorway
Economics - Trade & AfCFTA · Editorial By Moakanyi Magazine · China-in-Africa · June 2026 The phrase "Made in Africa" suggests factories, brands and finished goods. Yet the trade now flowing into China under Beijing's tariff concessions is still...
Early-Warning Systems: Two Islands, One Test of Resilience Infrastructure
Climate early-warning systems for Seychelles and Madagascar are the quiet end of the green portfolio. Modest in scale, they may be the most directly protective of lives – if they reach beyond two
Africa Solar Belt: A Demonstration Pledge Meets a 600-Million Access Gap
China frames the Africa Solar Belt as a clean-energy access story. Yet the materials it lists – streetlights, kits, one power station – sit against a shortfall of more than 600 million people.
Cheap and Clean: Can Low-Cost Renewables Make African Factories Competitive
Chinese-built solar and hydro promise the low tariffs manufacturers need, but cheap clean power only sharpens competitiveness when the rest of the industrial base is ready.
Selling Sunlight Downhill: Ethiopia and Djibouti Wire a Regional Power Trade
A second 230-kV line will lift Djibouti’s import capacity from Ethiopia toward 220 MW – turning surplus hydropower into an export and a neighbour’s reliable supply.
East Africa’s Dams: Chinese Hydropower Tests the Industrial Promise
China-built dams now anchor East Africa’s grids, yet cheap megawatts alone have not delivered the factories and jobs the projects were sold to underwrite.
Floating the Shortfall: Bui Adds Solar to Steady a River-Bound Grid
Bui’s hydropower output swings with the Black Volta. Ghana’s answer is to float solar on the same reservoir – turning one dam into a planning platform.
Transport as integration: China’s footprint and the regional-knitting test
Beijing frames its railways and ports as a contribution to African integration. The continent’s own plans, PIDA and Agenda 2063, are the yardstick.
Corridors over showpieces: why the link between projects matters most
A single railway is a ribbon-cutting. A working corridor is an economy. The gap between the two is where most African trade still loses money.
Ports as gateways: where China’s African infrastructure meets the trade test
Beijing’s white paper counts almost 100 ports built across Africa. Whether those quays move African goods, or mostly imports, is the harder question.
Kano-Maradi: A Rail Line Built to Loosen a Landlocked Country’s Knot
The Kano-Maradi railway is sold as regional integration – landlocked Niger reaching Nigerian ports. But its lead builder is Portuguese, its earthworks Chinese, and its bill near US$2bn.
Nigeria’s Coastal Rail: A 1,400km Promise Against a Decade of Delay
Nigeria frames a Lagos-to-Calabar coastal railway as the spine of corridor industrialisation. Yet the line has been launched, stalled and relaunched since 2014, its funding switching hands more than
Abuja-Kaduna Rail: The Safe Corridor a Single Attack Reframed
Nigeria’s first modern intercity railway became prized as the safe way to travel a kidnap-prone road. In 2022 an attack on a train tested that promise.
Djibouti-Ethiopia Rail: When Sea Access Runs Through a Neighbour’s Port
A railway can carry a landlocked country’s trade to the coast in hours. It cannot make that coast its own.
The Regulation, Accountability and Ownership Debate in Kafue National Park’s Conservation-Led Repositioning
Interrogating the trade-offs in Kafue’s revival – ownership, enforcement, community livelihoods and the accountability reforms the partnership still needs.
Mombasa Port and the inland chain: where corridor efficiency is won or lost
Mombasa’s throughput nearly tripled and dwell time fell sharply. Yet trucks still face seven to ten stops to Kampala – proof the corridor’s bottleneck moved inland, it did not disappear.