China’s Belt and Road Initiative turns 10: Xi announces 8 new priorities, continues push for global influence
China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which now includes 44 African countries, got under way 10 years ago. President Xi Jinping launched it in 2013 with a first speech in Kazakhstan and a second one in Indonesia. The initiative is something of a trial-by-doing development policy enigma: it keeps China watchers chasing Xi’s next move to help define just what it […]
Transformation of South Africa’s foreign policy through Brics – why Putin tips the scales
To say that the lead-up to the 2023 Brics summit in Sandton, South Africa, in August has been tumultuous, seems milk-toast mild. The International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, issued on 17 March 2023, thrust South Africa’s foreign policy, in all of its inter-governmental disarray, into the centre of the post-Covid global geostrategic political […]
Muddying the waters in the Musina Makhado economic zone
The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the Musina Makhado Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is touted by the government to be the new “regional economic epicentre” much like other mega-projects in the Global South. Many of these projects drain the fiscus with heavy infrastructural requirements, heighten foreign extraction of resources and raise carbon pollution levels. Multinational […]