Cowries and Rice

More and more Africans in China are sharing their experiences with the outside world on their own terms. Blogs, videos, songs, etc. are springing up all over the internet to give testimony to their experiences. We are fortunate to have on the pod Shubila Ruth Kikoko, who is pursing a PhD Strategic and Risk Management at Wuhan University of Technology whose memoir "Incubated in China" will be released in August of 2016. This book chronicles her journey from Tanzania to China and will be an incredible resource for anyone that is researching African students in China.

In this episode, we go back to a topic we have previously discussed at Cowries and Rice yet one that we judge timely and important enough to revisit: Sustainable development. Both sustainable development and developing sustainably seem to be important slogans for China - Africa relations and reflect Chinese policy priorities. In order to further look into questions of the impact of development on the environment and Corporate Social Responsibility practices by Chinese firms abroad in general and in Africa more specifically, we have invited to the pod Ms. Xiaoxue Weng who is a researcher in International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)'s Natural Resources Group.

This pod is an excuse to speak with Lily Kuo, who we have been following for quite some time. There is a good chance that, if you are listening to this podcast, you have had the pleasure of reading Ms. Kuo's brilliant reporting, whether on Chinese hackers in Kenya or Zimbabwean elephants headed for China. She is one of the few journalists in the world with a China-Africa beat. Ms. Kuo covers East Africa and China in Africa from Nairobi for Quartz. She previously reported for Quartz from Hong Kong. Before that she covered general news for Reuters in New York and the Los Angeles Times in Beijing. She holds a dual master’s degree in international affairs from the London School of Economics and Peking University, as well as degrees in English and Spanish from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She won the 2014 SABEW award for best international feature for a series on China's water crisis.

Today's episode is going to focus on the Golden relations between Ghana and China, specifically around mining. To discuss this topic, we are inviting Prof. Yang Jiao on the pod. Prof. Jiao earned his doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Florida where he worked on the topic of mining. He is currently a visiting assistant professor at the University of Miami in Ohio where he teaches anthropology and continues to do China-Africa research.

A lot of China-Africa research is done through onsite interview, but what are the strengths of limitations of that kind of research - that is to say, how do people on the ground produce the knowledge they share with researchers and scholars? To help us answer that question, we have invited on the pod Derek Sheridan, a PhD Candidate at the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at Brown University. Mr. Sheridan' dissertation research looks at the China-Africa relationship from the perspective of people involved in the micro-politics of different forms of Chinese business in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: the formation of interpersonal relationships, negotiations over the value of both people and the commodities exchanged between them, and the everyday production of knowledge regarding Tanzania, Africa and China’s place in the world. He just presented his research at the Harvard East Asian Studies Conference.

If you are listening to this podcast, there is a good chance that you have heard of Prof. Deborah Brautigam and her research - "The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa" published in 2010 by the Oxford University Press is, for a lot of young scholars, the gateway by which they became interested in Africa-China affairs. However, not nearly as many people are aware of Prof. Brautigam's research center, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies' China-Africa Research Initiative (SAIS CARI) and we want to remedy that, so hosts Winslow Robertson and Lina Benabdallah (Yiting Wang is sadly absent) invited Janet Eom on the pod. Ms. Eom is the Research Manager at SAIS CARI, and previously she researched the impact on society, environment, and labor relations of Chinese activity in Africa at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. She discusses the SAIS CARI post-doctoral research fellow position and other opportunities for researchers as well as the vision for the Initiative on this episode.

If you are an individual African entrepreneur, what sort of organizations are available to you to help navigate the Africa-China relationship? There are a number of friendship societies, often initiated by ex-diplomats, and trade associations, but today we wanted to highlight a young and dynamic non-profit involved in in this field: the Sino Africa Centre of Excellence (SACE) Foundation. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, they aim to to facilitate China-Africa trade and investment through three pillars: SACE Research Hub, SACE Projects, and Business Advisory Services in partnership with Botho Limited. You might remember them from their publication China Business Perception Index: Survey on Chinese Companies’ Perception of Doing Business in Kenya, which was published last year. To talk more about this foundation and how it serves African entrepreneurs as a whole, we have invited Adedana Ashebir to the pod, who is the SACE Foundation's Africa Business Development Lead.

ALERT: This is a Mandarin-language episode. To celebrate the Chinese New Year of the fire monkey, Cowries and Rice brings to you a a very special edition of the pod. Host Yiting Wang asks five Chinese guests to share with the listeners how they spent their New Year’s Eve and Day as well as their new year plans in their respective African countries, all in Mandarin. First on the pod are: Sun Chuyi from China Minmetals Inc. in Johannesburg, South Africa; Yang Bo from AVIC International in Nairobi, Kenya; and Zhuyang Zhenghong from CITIC Construction in Yaoundé, Cameroon. In the follwing segment, two Fellows from the Nairobi-based social China House – Li Huizhen and Lu Kaili join us to share their stories. 为庆祝中国农历猴年新年，Cowries and Rice特别为听众朋友们带来一期中文播客。主持人王怡婷与五位洒落在非洲各地的中国小伙伴畅谈他们在非洲过年的体验以及新年计划等话题。首先来到节目的是在南非约翰内斯堡工作的中国五矿集团的孙楚宜，在中航国际驻肯尼亚内罗毕的杨博，和中信建设驻喀麦隆雅温得的朱杨正宏。接下来，我们有请到中南屋的李慧珍和陆凯丽来分享关于中南屋伙伴的迎春活动和最新动态。