In 2009, China surpassed the United States as the continent’s largest trading partner. By 2012, its trade with Africa was double the United States’. Western media tend to inflate the rhetoric surrounding China’s rise in Africa. Headlines are often resentful and sometimes border on fear-mongering: China is “winning” Africa from the West. The United States…
When Europeans began arriving in the New World at the end of the 15th century, they used the region to source silver, gold, coffee, and wool. Today, China is the foremost trading partner with several Latin American countries, and buys oil from Venezuela, Mexico, and Ecuador; iron ore from Brazil; beef from Argentina; and copper…
The million Chinese who’ve landed in Africa are plucky, hugely ambitious and have an eye for opportunity. They’re also helping make China a big player on a continent once dominated by the West. You’ve seen the headlines: China is taking over Africa, and the United States and Africa’s former colonizers in Europe have lost sway.…
Chinese companies and banks were once seen as bold and fearless as they invested in countries Western investors deemed too risky. But this may now be changing. By Jacob Kushner In 2007, when two Chinese state-owned companies struck a deal with the Congolese government to build the biggest mine the country had ever seen, all…
China’s economic rise in Africa has brought a whole army of managers and engineers to the continent. Many of them have come with state-owned companies to extract minerals and build infrastructure. One example where this is happening is the Democratic Republic of Congo. Newsday has spoken to journalist Jacob Kushner who travelled around the country…
To single out Chinese companies for entering into shady business in the DRC is to miss a fundamental point: Western firms have been at it for centuries, and still are. Last January I was in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to research Sicomines, China’s controversial $6.5 billion megadeal in which Chinese companies will construct…
“Kushner is fair-minded and has invested much time and effort in figuring out the interplay between the new superpower and a poor but strategically important African country.” -Ian Johnson, The New York Review of Books What does China see in the world’s poorest nation? An opportunity for big business. Congo is known for poverty and conflict, but…
A bestselling Taiwanese author died thirty-five years ago. Today, millions of Chinese readers, and thousands of Chinese tourists, get their first glimpse of Africa through her eyes. But did Sanmao’s Africa exist? 7 years. 6 countries. 4 continents. Find out why I crisscrossed the world chasing one of China’s most elusive writers. Read: Issue 002…
Jacob Kushner is an international journalist, author, and educator who writes magazine and digital longform stories from Africa, Germany, and the Caribbean. He reports on migration and human rights, foreign aid and investment, terrorism and violent extremism, science and global health, climate change and wildlife, and press freedom. His writing has appeared in The New York…
*Now Available* LOOK AWAY: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants By Jacob Kushner Coming May 2024 by Grand Central (Hachette); Harper Collins UK Not long after the Berlin Wall fell, three teenagers became friends in the East German town of Jena. It was a time…
*Now Available* U.S. | UK LOOK AWAY: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants (U.S.) WHITE TERROR: A True Story of Murder, Bombings and Germany’s Far Right (UK) By Jacob Kushner May 2024 Grand Central (Hachette); Harper Collins UK Not long after the Berlin Wall fell,…
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In 2007, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced an ambitious endeavor: To eradicate malaria across the globe. It was late to the game. That year, Chinese scientists working with a Chinese philanthropist had already begun eradicating malaria from the small African nation of Comoros. Now they’re setting their sights on a more ambitious location:…
Journalists often consult a range of sources as possible to get an accurate picture of their subject. But sometimes there’s a single source who seems to know almost everything—an expert who’s the ‘gatekeeper’ to a castle of information and contacts on the business or deal the reporter is investigating. Enlisting the help of this person…