 So welcome everyone to this first event in a new seminar series, War and Peace in Africa. My name is Kieran Mitten. I'm a senior lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. I feel I should also mention I'm from Bradford, so it's a special honor to be part of this collaboration. And this series is a collaboration of the John and Elmora Ferguson Centre for African Studies, based in the Department of Peace Studies and International Development at the University of Bradford, together with the Africa Research Group in the Department of War Studies at King's. And it builds on a long history of collaboration and competition between the two departments, not least on the football pitch. Some of you might be familiar with the Tolstoy Cup, the Battle of War and Peace. And we've put this series together, Dr David Harris and myself, to explore some of the common interests of the departments around security, development, peace and conflict, obviously with a particular interest in the African continent. And today's topic is an important one, talking about contemporary Africa and the future trajectory of Africa. It's China and India in Africa. And we are going to look at some case studies and we're going to take a comparative angle on this in particular. Before we proceed, we just wanted to mention that we're we're kind of dedicating today's seminar, the memory of Ian Taylor, and he was a professor at University of St Andrews. Many of you will be very familiar with Ian, his work on Africa in particular, his interest in China and Africa, written numerous books, many articles. And it's not just that, you know, it's his relevance, if his work that we're remembering today, it's also that he was a great guy. And for David and myself, we had lots of great conversations within conferences, not just about academic work, but I know he had a great sense of humor, great taste in music. So he's very much missed. So we're dedicating today's seminar to Ian. And to do so, to launch us off on this series, I'm very pleased to introduce an excellent panel. I'm going to introduce each panelist first. And this will be the order in which they're going to speak. Each panelist is going to speak for roughly around 10, 12 minutes. And then we will we will crack on the way the seminar is going to work is we're going to have the presentations one after the other. And then we're going to have questions from the audience. If you have questions, if you can type them into the dedicated question box, then when it comes to the Q&A, I'll go through those questions and put as many as I can directly to our panel. We would really welcome comparative questions, questions that perhaps we can address to every single speaker and think about, you know, the contrasts and the similarities between the different cases mentioned. So let me just begin by introducing our first speaker, who is Han Guai Li. Han Guai is a PhD candidate in politics and international studies, as well as a teaching fellow at SOAS, University of London. And Han Guai's worked as a journalist previously in a researcher for several years in Africa and has monitored elections in various countries, including Zambia and Malawi, as an international observer. And her research interests include a particular focus on China's political and economic engagement with Africa. And Han Guai is going to talk about China in Zambia. Following that presentation, we'll then hear from Dr. Oscar Mea Otheli, who will speak about China in Kenya. And Dr. Otheli is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Nairobi. And he's currently undertaking research on understanding Kenya's agency in the management of Chinese development finance, and his main interests are around politics and government in Kenya and African politics and China and Africa relations. We're then going to have a team effort. We're going to hear from both Dr. Simone Vittorini and Dr. David Harris, co-chair of this series and head of the Eleanor Ferguson Institute. And they're going to talk about India and West Africa. Dr. Simone Vittorini is a senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS. And Dr. Vittorini specialises in South Asian politics. And the main focus of her work is on post-colonial nationalism, processes of construction of collective identities and the performative and symbolic aspect of politics. She's also the author of Ritual Symbols and Politics of Indian Nationalism. And together with David Harris, she's co-authored a number of chapters and articles on India's expanding presence in Africa, as well as South-South cooperation. David Harris is a senior lecturer in African studies at the University of Bradford. And he's the director of the John and Elnora Ferguson Centre for African Studies, the co-chair of this series. And he's published widely on elections and West African politics, including the book Sierra Leone of Political History, and more recently, as mentioned, he's written chapters on India-Africa relations too. Our final presenter will be Professor P. B. Anand. And he'll be talking about BRICS in Africa. Dr. Anand is Professor of Public Policy and Sustainability at the University of Bradford. And he's the head of the Department of Peace Studies and International Development. He's currently the PI, the Principal Investigator of a three-year British Academy project on infrastructure governance for inclusive, smart and sustainable cities, working together with colleagues in India. So, without further ado, I would like to hand over to Hanway, our first speaker. And I will leave you on the table. Okay. Hello, everyone. And thank you so much, Dr. Meaton, for the very kind introduction. And it's my pleasure to share some of my insights on China in Zambia here today. And I'd like to start from giving a short and brief introduction on China's engagement in Zambia, especially for those who don't have much background knowledge. So, China and Zambia officially established diplomatic relations on October 29, 1964. And this is just five days after Zambia achieved independence from Britain. And in the official discourse, China-Zambia relations has been described as all weather friendship by both Zambia and Chinese government officials. And even in the term of pandemic, top Chinese diplomat, Yang Jiechi, paid a visit in Zambia. And this was just two months ago. And he promised that China would continue to support. And of course, we know that the reality is much, much more complicated. Many of you probably have heard how the late populist politician, Michael Satter, played the anti-Chinese card in his presidential campaigns in 2006 and also 2011. And he was calling Chinese investors rather than investors. And he was threatening to kick out all the Chinese workers from Zambia. Zambia has also been one of the top 10 destinations for Chinese investment in Africa. And China is the top investor in the country. And Chinese FDI in Zambia reached 3.5 billion US dollars in 2018, according to the size carry database. And there is no accurate figure for the number of Chinese nationals currently living in Zambia. But according to my previous interviews with multiple Chinese community leaders, they estimate that there are 30,000 to 50,000 Chinese migrants in Zambia and more than 1,000 Chinese companies in the country. Zambia is also one of the countries where China is the biggest bilateral creditor and the major provider of development finance. And I know many of us are also very concerned on Zambia's death distress at Zambia as the first African country to default on that during COVID. And depending on different sources, Zambia currently has 25% to 30% of all its external loans owed to China, almost the same percentage as owed to the private sector via euro bonds. In October and also November 2020, respectively, Zambia became the first country to announce and deferred payments to its Chinese creditors, and namely the China Development Bank and also the Exxon Bank. And we know that there is limited transparency in Chinese lending and also the Chinese financial flows to Zambia. And there is also very little accurate data on loan conditions. So in this case, rumors in accurate information and also misinformation are raised, which oftentimes led to generalization and simplification. And sometimes I think it's quite striking for me to see scholars are still using rumors and also false information to support their arguments. For example, there has been some reports in Zambia saying that China is going to take over Zambia's international airport, its national broadcasting company, ZNBC, and its state-owned electricity company, Zesco. However, the truth is that Zesco and ZNBC and the airport were never avoided as collateral. And Zambia has not offered any of its assets as bilateral or multilateral loans. And there were no state enterprise at risk of being repossessed. Next, I'd like to maybe break down the concept of China, because we know that China is really, a big, big concept. And when we speak about China and Africa, we often think about China, the China that is central government-led and it is very driven by geopolitical interests. That certainly exists, but I think the reality is much, much more complicated as there is no monolithic China and Africa. Even for state-owned enterprise, they often have conflicts of interests and they are all competing and keep competing fiercely. For instance, in 2015, Zambia media reported that the unhealthy competition between Sino-Hijia, China's state construction engineering corporation, which is also called CSCC, and China Geodroba Group, over the CAFU power station contract. And these three companies are all state-owned, but they were still competing for the same project. They were operating with a significant degree of independence from the state. And it was actually a big headache for the Chinese economic and commercial councillor in Zambia as he was not able to coordinate the financial interests and also conflicts. So I think it's also worth to mention that 90% of the Chinese firms in Zambia are private firms rather than state firms. Most of these companies have no connection to the Chinese government. They have invested in many sectors such as real estate, manufacturing, agriculture, service, and even gambling, a sector that is totally forbidden in mainland China. And a considerable number of them are small or medium-sized private firms with limited experience operating internationally. And some of you might have heard or have seen some news on labor law violations by Chinese firms and I spoke to some of them and oftentimes it turned out to be that this small entrepreneurs did not realize that regulations in Zambia were very different than what they were used in China. And some of the Chinese community leaders and associations have been working on some initiatives such as translating local laws into Chinese and assisting first-term Chinese investors in understanding local regulations. So in a article I published with Dr. Xie Xiefei on the social and political rails of Chinese associations in Zambia, we emphasized that it is important to recognize that there are multiple Chinese actors acting in the country and Chinese associations are also significant actors while we are analyzing contemporary China-African relations. Last but not least, I'd like to maybe highlight some institutional challenges in Zambia when dealing with China. So we talk a lot about China, but what does Zambian really want? What are the visions of the Zambian? If China is so important, does Zambia have a coherent China strategy? And I'm afraid the answer is no. I have spoken or interviewed many Zambian officers in the past seven years and I really do not see that. I'd like to quote one of my interviewees was here and so he said that Zambian ruling elites are short termists while dealing with China and pushing diversification need long-term strategy so they don't bother. In 2019 I did some fieldwork in Zambia along with Dr. Dominic Kompisky and Dr. Andrew Polis and the late professor Yan Taylor and we were focusing on the spillover effects of Chinese FDI in Zambia. We spoke to a number of Zambian ministers and also Zambian researchers, journalists and also scholars. What we found during our fieldwork is that Zambian institutions that supposed to regulating monitoring and facilitating foreign investors are in fact understaffing and underfinancing. They are very ineffective in meeting their mandates and objectives. For example, the major Zambian institutions which was established for the sake of FDI spillover creation is ZDA, Zambian Development Agency. And ZDA is basically unable to fulfill its functions due to the very low budget. They've only got around three million quattros in 2019 and they have no presence outside Lusaka. Its office in Andola, Ketway and Livingstone have all been closed down. They have only also got a three person for monitoring the entire country and none of the Chinese companies we visited were even aware that they were supposed to coordinate with ZDA and our respondents at ZDA also condemned that the situation when state institutions were used for personal and family benefits and even government related think tank ZEPA, it basically bases estimates on secondary data. For example, when we were asking for some data on Chinese investment in the country and the researchers at ZEPA actually suggested us to look at sex carries data because they simply don't have it. So a new patrimonial practice is still very striking on the ground and it has been detrimental to the Zambian economy. And if we take into account the real danger of default and also the neoliberal narrative of the need to create favorable conditions for FDI, Zambian should have relatively strong institutions which can actually assure investors that the country is predictable at least in the short and also medium term. But I guess the question is how especially at Zambian is having another election very soon it's going to have another election August this year. So I guess the questions are really what is going to happen after the election and again what do the Zambians want. And so thank you. I guess I'll end here and questions are very welcome in the Q&A section. Thank you very much Angui. Dr Tali, over to you. Yeah, we can hear you fine. I don't know if you're aiming to share your screen. We can see your camera but not your slides. Just a minute. There we go. We can see your slides as well. Excellent. You can see, all right. Momentarily. They disappeared again. So I don't know what could be the issue. They're back. We can see them. They're back. Yeah. Okay, so but it's refusing to move. Okay. Can you see now? Yes, we can see. We can see. All right. Thank you. Thank you organizers for organizing this webinar. It's my pleasure to make a big presentation on China in Kenya. And I want to start by giving a brief context of China in Kenya, an engagement that has taken place since Kenya attained independence in 1963. And to help us appreciate this context, I will begin by recognizing that since 1963, under the past leadership of Kenya, the engagement of China in this country has actually followed a standard template of China-Africa relation. And just like my previous presenter has alluded, China was the fourth country to sign a diplomatic relation with Kenya. And at the height of Cold War happening, China was seen as an alternative to capitalist model of development. But again, the reality of that particular moment predisposed policymakers to indeed appreciate that China offered the external source of development finance. But as you know, the political reality of newly independent Kenya sort of gravitated the political elite towards the West, because Kenya was a Western colonized by British. And therefore, Western colonial legacy made it difficult for China to penetrate Kenya's political economy. This is not to say that China did not make any inroads indeed. At that particular time, China will offer little assistance here to build a hospital here, a road there, and so forth. And again, the diplomatic role just lasted briefly up to March 1963. And from there, there was attention between the two countries. And so we'll see relations going down all the way up to 1978 when the two countries are coincidentally experienced political transition. So when the new leadership took place in 1978 under the leadership of the late Daniela Ra Moi, the revival, you know, the new president revived the relation. And we'll see now a high state visits on both sides. China and Kenya entered into several technical and economical agreement. We'll also see a number of Chinese companies began operation in Kenya as early as 1984. But it's also important to note at this particular time that the implementation of Chinese infrastructure project at that particular point tended to follow the African politics dynamic, the neo-patrimonial logic in the sense that a Chinese project will favor a certain region inclined towards the leadership of the countries. It's also important to note that as Kenya implemented the structural adjustment program under the neoliberal reform, this actually opened a country to significant influx of Chinese exports. Now a number of Kenyans would be able to export, you know, cheaply manufactured products from Kenya. And at this particular point, we also witnessed a high level engagement at a political level, exchange in political parties and military exchange. And towards, you know, the end of that century, Kenya was among the countries that attended the inception meeting of Fokak in August 2000. Now, when the leadership, when Mike Baki, I don't know if we've lost Oscar completely, I assume that's not just for me. No, we also, we can't hear him as well. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think Oscar is disconnected. What I suggest we do is we continue on to our next speakers, Simone and David. And hopefully when Oscar's back, we can go back to his presentation. It might take him a bit of a while to disconnect. Is that okay, David and Simone? Yes, that's fine. We're going to need to move Oscar's screen share up. Just like magic. So, sorry about that. We'll try and get Oscar back. But in the meantime, we'll move on to David and Simone. Okay. So, can you see my screen? Yes, we can. Excellent. Okay. I'll put myself up as well. Ah. Can you still see it? Not only can we see the slide, but we can also see you. So, the best of both worlds. Kind of. Okay. All right. So, now for something slightly different. So, Simone and I are going to talk about India in West Africa. We wanted to first thank Lucy Scott for digging deep in the Desk of Suburban. We wanted to thank the Margaret Anstey Centre as well for providing us some funds, which so far we've been mostly unable to use for obvious reasons. Now, there has been a, as everybody knows, a huge increase in Indian presence in Africa and in West Africa since the mid-2000s. And we tried to capture that in our 2018 article about Ghana. But here, we wanted to find out how large Indian influence was across the whole of West African states and during the last 10 years. Now, what we do know is there is a large Indian business presence. So, companies like Airtel, Tata, Mahindra and oil companies. And there is a fairly large Indian community in some countries. So, up to 10,000 in Ghana and 50,000 in Nigeria. But it is primarily the Indian state that we're interested in here. So, the talk has been split into two. The first one, I'm going to do, which is the arguments for a significant Indian presence. And then Simone is going to actually argue against that. And she's going to come to a conclusion at the end, where breaking down that presence into Indian capacity, visibility, and then the reception by African countries, sorry, West African countries. Total statistics, as I think Hengwei said, about China are unreliable. Even the well-known $10 billion that India promised as loans to Africa in 2015, even that is unreliable as well. Hence, we have adopted a more qualitative view across political, cultural, and economic realms. Starting that then, on politics and diplomacy, two Indian presidents have visited West Africa and visited in total five countries over the last 10 years. And vice presidents have visited a further three. These countries have included Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, and Nigeria. On the flip side of that, most West African countries have sent presidents, or they did send presidents to the IIFS, the Indian Africa Forum in 2015. And if they didn't send presidents, they sent prime ministers. And they were the first ever state visits from Benin, Mali, and Liberia to India. So there's quite a bit of diplomatic and political activity there. Secondly, in terms of more cultural elements, or perhaps soft power, India has been very keen in trying to project or promote yoga in West Africa. But one thing it certainly hasn't had to put an effort into is Bollywood, which remains very popular in many West African states. But perhaps here, the more interesting, more recent development is the planned Mahatma Gandhi International Convention Centre. This has been described as Delhi entering China's turf. Now, there are four in the pipeline in West Africa, in Togo, Burkina Faso, the Gambia, and Liberia. And the first one has just been opened in Niger. And this was built with an Indian grant, not a loan on this occasion, Indian grant. And the other grants available for all the others. So far in Niger, the AU summit and the IOC summit have already been held there. Oh, now I want to be able to show you that picture. But for some reason, here we go. There it is. There is the first Mahatma Gandhi International Convention Centre in Niger. I would like to see that at some stage. Okay, but perhaps the biggest splash is economic. This is in terms of other grants, in terms of lines of credit, in terms of buyers credit, in terms of projects and in terms of Indian companies. So first of all, then India has been involved in a number of small scale donations of things like medicines, rice, agricultural equipment, computers, TV cameras, peacekeeping equipment, barracks, buses, fire engines, Erich shores, and the list goes on. But probably more importantly is the lines of credit. Now, all West African states beyond Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde have had LOCs extended to them. In the case of Senegal, over 300 million worth of LOCs. And across a very wide-ranging arena. So from electrification to very much in the current day, solar projects, farming, health, factories, etc. And there have been some significant completed projects, including the Temma and Pagadan Railway in Ghana, which we understand is nearly finished, the tractor assembly plant in Benin, the National Assembly building in the Gambia, and the Mahatma Gandhi IT and Biotechnology Park in Côte d'Ivoire to name just a few. And then of course, there is the presence now of quite a few African countries who are benefiting from these LOCs because the LOCs, the loans are most often tied to one or more Indian companies. And the tale here of Shapurji Palongi is worth mentioning. So they started by constructing the Presidential Palace in Ghana. And this was completed in 2008. It was problematic in the sense that it went way over budget and it was used as a political football by Ghanaian politicians. But still, Shapurji Palongi came out of this quite well. It was described to us at one point that this was a market entry for Shapurji Palongi and so it turned out. They are now in 10 West African countries and they built the National Assembly in the Gambia and were very much part of building the Biotechnology Park in Côte d'Ivoire. So a great expansion there for this company. Now, India has been involved in other activities, though they've been involved in training West Africans in India and they are also heavily involved in the UN missions in Côte d'Ivoire and in Liberia. But I want to finish this bit by talking about COVID. At the end of February 2021 this year, Ghana became the first country in Africa to receive AstraZeneca vaccines through the COVAX system, crucially produced by the Serum Institute of India and delivered free of charge by India. Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire and the Gambia then followed very quickly afterwards. So India was actually doing well on the vaccine diplomacy stakes and living up to its name as the world pharmacy. So quite a significant presence. I'll now hand over to Simona to show you another possible angle. So yes, I would argue perhaps that this is a case for India actually fully short again. So Newport, for instance, in terms of diplomacy and political support. Yes, it's true, Mali had and especially under Mali, there has been an extensive Africa outreach and since 2014, there has been nearly 29 high level visits from India to Africa, as Dave has just said, from the President, the Vice President and Prime Minister, but Modi has not visited West Africa. It has been elsewhere in Africa but not in West Africa. So clear importance here. And then there was the Gandhi Statute of Controversy in Ghana in 2016, which dropped on until 2018, which had very important international and negative repercussions vis-a-vis with regards to New Delhi and India. And when it comes instead to the political support of Indian global and global institutions that we find that only Benin and Liberia had been explicit in the support of India's bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. But then it's not just a diplomatic and political support that is lacking or disappointing, but there have been also problems with India's LLCs, which are these lines of credit, the main instrument of cooperation and investment of Indian investment in Africa. First, they're tied. They're tied to Indian companies, specifically in the last decade of Sharpojit Palmonji that was just mentioned, although it is true that Indian companies import in such a way to employ local workers and also in some cases also subcontract local companies as well. But there are also additional problems with LLCs. Few of them, quite a few in fact, are languishing on the shelves. But it's not just about delays, but also about debt policy and plans and design. So for instance, from the sugar factory in Ghana, but it's still not operational five years after its completion. It never operated as expected, admired in controversy, political controversy. And now it's going to be relaunched with new partners and strategic investors. And then we had a fertilizer project again in Ghana, which was supposed to use gas to manufacture fertilizer, but it hasn't started it due to shortage of gas. Or the tomato processing plant in Burkina Faso started in 2010, but which is still waiting at reopening after the involvement of the Minister of Commerce. And finally, the tractor assembly plant built in Benin with an Indian LLC using the Indian company, Azharik International. This company at the moment is blacklisted by the World Bank accused of fraud. So what does all mean? So on the one hand, as Dave said, there has been an attempt of recalibrating India's relationship with Africa, especially since Modi took office in 2014. It's a significant presence, but there is also persistent problems of capacity, visibility, reception, and therefore influence in terms of capacity. So let me take all of this one at a time. In terms of capacity, when Deepin and I were in Delhi a few years ago, we were given an amusing comment about India capacity. And India capacity was described as a six-horse carriage of ambition and a one-horse carriage of capabilities. And this is true, we believe, about both India's diplomatic abilities and its administrative ones, of which more in a minute. In terms of diplomatic abilities, India's diplomatic core is notoriously small. There has been a recent recruitment drive. So under Narendra Modi's government, Indian missions in Africa are expected to expand from 29 to 47, meaning sort of a 60% increase of India's diplomatic presence in Africa. So this signaled a strong commitment on the path of New Delhi to strengthen its link with the continent and also with this India diaspora there. But still the India's diplomatic core is stretched and understaffed. Then in terms of visibility, Lucy, our great desk researchers, found it difficult to find commentary and data on India's presence beyond the official Minister of External Affairs reports. But it was not too difficult to find commentary on China. So this is an interesting difference between India's and China's presence in the continent that needs some attention. And then when it comes to reception, it seems that this depends very much on India's capacity to bridge the gap between its commitments and its implementation of its LOC's found project. So because, crucially, delivering projects on time and reliability of its project necessarily will increase India's potential effect, sorry, the potential effect of India's cooperation and it will create goodwill. The various problems incurred by India's LOCs, which some of which I mentioned earlier, suggest that New Delhi is actually struggling with this. And to be fair, actually there's been changes, there have been changes in LOC policies since 2015 specifically to address some of these issues. And in response of Africa's criticism and complaints about delays and the lack of completions of several projects. And since then, India has introduced more scrutiny, monitoring as well, more competitive tendering. But clearly, these issues are not completely solved yet. And lastly, this is obviously all this is obviously repercussions to India's image and stop power and influence. And the last point you want to make in regards India's the COVID point I just mentioned made by David Harris. India's stop power diplomatic effort, I think at the moment is laying in taxes and I'm referring here to India's vaccine diplomacy. Now, maybe a couple of weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago, India could present itself as Davis just said as the nation, as the farmers of the world, the nation that the entire world was looking at explicitly for its vaccine supplies. In fact, in January launched its vaccine friendship initiative, a major diplomatic effort that they have described to give the supply made in India vaccine to low income and developing countries. But now with the second COVID way that is ravaging the country, the situation has changed dramatically. The Syrian institute has come under pressure to provide vaccines for the domestic market. And it's currently even struggling to get supplies and material key materials from the United States. So New Delhi has put a temporary hold on its exports. But China has continued to hold this position in this vaccine diplomacy turf. Let's see. So what should have been a moment of crowning glory for Indian soft power has become a sad embarrassment. And in addition to this, the Indian Africa Foreign Summit, the fourth Indian Africa Foreign Summit was supposed to be held in 2020 for a COVID reason had to be pushed back to 2022. So this meant seven years after the very successful 2015 one. And so the conclusion that one can draw is in terms of an influence from India is India losing momentum in Africa once again. Thank you so much, Samona. Thank you, David as well. And what I'd like to do is just to see if Oscar is back with us. If not, we will go straight to Professor Anand's presentation. But Oscar, are you in the hood? Are you able to present? Sorry for that. I lost because of connectivity, but I'm back. It happens. No apologies needed. Are you able to share your screen perhaps? Just a moment. Is this showing now? Yeah, we can see it. It's not on slideshow. It's not on full screen, but we can see your slides. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah, please go ahead. Thank you. So you allow me to begin from start? It's entirely up to you. If you want to just quickly go over those first points, that's perfectly fine. Yeah. All right. Thank you and sorry for connectivity issues. Now, I began by saying that to understand China and Kenya is important also to make a possession of the context of engagement, a context that I have categorized in what, in terms of the regimes, Kenya's regime. Now, looking at the first Kenya's president, Jomo Kenyatta, and we, I make an appreciation that since 1963, Kenya's engagement in Kenya has actually, China's engagement in Kenya has actually followed the standard template of China-Africa relations. Of course, China was also among the first countries to enter into diplomatic relations, being the fourth one in this country. And at that particular time, at the height of Cold War rivalry between the East and West, China was perceived as offering alternative capitalist model of development. And of course, the foreign policy makers alive to an alignment movement taught it twice to diversify sources of development finance. And therefore, China will come in, offer finances, build a school, build a hospital here and there. But of course, what really made it difficult for China to penetrate Kenya's political economy at that particular time was the Western colonial legacy, of course, Kenya being a British colony. Now, diplomatic ties went low from much and less engagement ensued lasting up to 1978, when the two countries coincidentally experienced political, political, they experienced political transition. Now, when Daniela Rappmoy, you know, over power, he revived a relation and we'll actually see high level visits on both sides. The two countries entered into several technical and economic agreement that we'll now see, you know, Chinese players, mainly Chinese state enterprises like CBRC, you know, coming on board as early as 1984. Surprised to note that implementation of Chinese infrastructure project will also follow new patrimonial logic in the sense that we'll see a China, you know, rather the implementation of the project, you know, intentionally, you know, going in certain regions of the country. Now, with the implementation of structural adjustment program, and, you know, the whole, you know, economic macroeconomic reform, we'll see Kenya open up to significant influx of Chinese export. And therefore, from that particular time, the trade relation between China and Kenya increasingly favored China. Within that period, there was also high level engagement at political, political level, mainly in form of military and political exchange. It's also important to note that as 20th century, I crossed and, you know, at the time of the new century, Kenya was among the key players at the inception of Fokak meeting in Nagas. In fact, Kenya was among the key players that influenced the formation of Fokak. Now, the leadership that took place at the turn of 21st century came at a time when Kenya's development finance was all low, mainly from the traditional development partner. And there was concerted attempt to diversify sources of development finance. And so China having showed interest in Africa, this naturally provided, you know, window of opportunity for Kenya to diversify, you know, new sources, which will now later be coined as Look East policy. And from that particular point, then the new political elite will now start appreciating the presence of China and quickly, you know, went into implement one China policy that now will see, you know, increased interaction between Kenya and China, mainly beginning with implementation infrastructure projects, mainly in road sector, telecommunications sector, energy and both. But this gradually expanded to other, other sectors. For example, real estate like housing, agriculture, and of course, trade and trade and wholesale. And this will also now see, you know, in terms of migration of Chinese workers and, you know, other Chinese businessmen coming to Kenya to, you know, to engage in various activities. Of course, implementation of infrastructure project was in line with the, you know, broad China's action plan as envisioned in, you know, the outcome of Focac, but mainly targeting to connect African country through, you know, regional integration. And from that particular point, that that thinking coincided very well with Kenya's ambition, you know, of implementing region centric infrastructure project. And we'll see Kenya come up with mega project like LAPSET infrastructure. For example, as you can see, this project was in line with the, you know, China's thinking within the Focac framework to enhance a regional integration, connecting east part of the continent and the western part of the continent. This project is important because it will actually shape Kenya's interest within region, within East Africa region. And of course, by extension, you know, shaping it is a political economic dynamics with other neighboring countries. It's also important to mention that even though this project, LAPSET project was not financed by China, but the mere fact that the implementation of this project has been overseen by Chinese company, that in a way has also offered opportunity for China to extend its engagement in the country. Now, turning to the current regime, Ohuru Kenyatta's regime, he built on the foundation laid by his predecessors, and when he came to power in 2013, five months down the line, he made his state, made a state visit in China. And of course, the visit was mainly influenced by, you know, the talks revolving implementation of one of the major, largest infrastructure projects since I independent this is a standard gauge railway. And this implementation of this project came at a very opportune moment when China had just intercepted a Belt and Road initiative. And so it became natural to, you know, incorporate this project within the BRI framework. And we'll now see fast tracking as far as the initial talks and disbursement of funds and of course, implementation, you know, beginning immediately. However, concerns were raised over the economic viability of this project given that it was actually running parallel to the traditional railway system that was put in place by, you know, colonial masters. Other concerns, of course, related to the economic viability, debt set and ability and economic economic hazards. So, as you can see on that slide that I'm sharing, the initial thinking around the implementation of SGR was to link Kenya and its neighboring countries, mainly Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan. And of course, given that the project will begin from the Kenyan side, Kenya was given that mandate to begin implementing it is to begin implementing on its side from Mombasa to Nairobi, from Nairobi to Akisuma and so on. So far, Mombasa, Nairobi up to past Naivasha, Narok, which is phase one and and bureau phase two have already been completed. But there have been concerns that, of course, given that I was thinking about the desire to have, you know, port authority provide adequate stock to the, you know, railway transit that has not really, you know, transitioned to the much desired output as far as the revenue generation is concerned. And there have been a lot of concern over, you know, repayment of the debt, given that, you know, the digits that have been provided by Kenya revenue authority indicates that, you know, the Kenyanya corporation is really struggling to accumulate adequate stock to have, you know, repayment as initially planned. And so because of that concern, there has been, you know, debate nationally and internationally over potential, you know, debt repayment issues, as we have, as we have had cases, for example, as Hanway has talked about, you know, in Zambia, we have had cases from Sri Lanka. And so there has been that fear about repayment plans. However, it's also important to note that despite the concerns, and of course, COVID dynamic setting in as late last year, 2020 and early this year, China and Kenya have actually got into an agreement to look into the repayment plan in the context of the challenges that have been brought forward, so that then the country can, you know, have some, you know, financial flexibility as far as the repayment of debt is concerned. As we are speaking, China is the leading lender of Kenya's, you know, development finance, you know, in terms of looking at the loan, and of course, the Chinese loan in this country, if you look at the number that have been provided by China Africa Research Institute, Kenya is the number six of African countries, top African countries that have acquired a significant Chinese loan. So those are the dynamics that have characterized China in Africa in 21st century, and we'll be discussing, you know, more issues during the plenary, back to the moderator. Thank you so much, Oscar. We'll move straight along to Professor Anand and then we'll go to Q&A. Thank you. Can I share my screen? Yeah, we can see it. Great. Can you see in presentation? Yeah, it's there in full screen. Thank you. Thank you very much. And after those fantastic and detailed presentations, I'm going to take a slightly different tack, but I'm hoping that it is still connected to some of the issues already raised. I'm Pibi Anand, and it's a real pleasure to be part of this new initiative. As the chair has mentioned, we had the football relationship with the kings, but to have this intellectual kind of discussions, I think is a new chapter, and I'm very, very excited with this. And thanks to David and Kiran for getting, you know, getting this, go ahead. Okay. I'm not ashamed of publicity, but I think it's relevant. Our book has just been published earlier last month. This is the Handbook of Bricks and Emerging Economic Economies with Oxford University Press. It's a collaborative project over 60 authors from various countries contributed to the 43 or so chapters. So what I'm going to speak to you is not about the book, you can read all about the book, but in the process of doing the book, I have spent considerable time looking at bricks and thinking about bricks themselves. And also in the past, I have done over seven years, 2007 to 2014, I have worked very closely with the China Development Bank, trying to build their own capacity for thinking about and delivering projects. So in the process, try to understand a little bit about China's approach to thinking about investments, especially with the China Development Bank, and also had a brief opportunity to present some of that to the Africa Alpatry parliamentary group on China's role in Africa. So I take a long historical perspective. So I'm an economist. I'm not a political scientist. So my tools and theories are slightly different, but I'm still sure that there are a lot of things that we discuss are still relevant. So I'm very, I'm always interested in trying to understand how economic development gets triggered and how economic development and transition actually takes place. In that, in some respects, my kind of source of inspiration is Arthur Lewis. Lewis does a lot of reflection and he himself was based in Manchester when he was doing some of that kind of reflection. And we are based in Bradford, which is very much a product of the industry revolution in some ways, the later part of the industry revolution if you like. But when trying to understand the emergence of BRICS and also the kind of relationships with Africa, I think this historical perspective may give us some insights. So in the context of industrial revolution, we know that there are a lot of debates. Some people even don't like the word industry revolution. And others who accepted, you know, there have been a lot of discussions on what were the most important factors. And in a long discussion with the historian, economic historian, Professor Martin Dunton, who also contributed a chapter in our book, we figured out almost 10, 12 reasons and we could continue. But I think some of the important issues are whenever a country is trying to kind of achieve economic development, how it can overcome some of the constraints, I think is that's where the strategy is. The constraints we know are things such as, you know, you want to expand agriculture because you have to achieve food self-sufficiency. And for that agriculture can be, can be, you know, really crucial. And in order to do that, either you can develop very good relationships with another country and through that process you can import. Otherwise, you know, food self-sufficiency seems to be an important crucial factor. So land becomes an important factor in that kind of economic development. Related to that is the labor, the usual economic kind of a stable land labor capital kind of things. You can mention that. So in industrial revolution, we know that land constraint, you know, England, the United Kingdom itself is relatively a small country in terms of land area. But the expansion and colonialism, if you like, and new colonies enabled England to relax the constraint of land. So to the significant extent that a lot of production of cotton or any other raw material needed for the industrial revolution to take place could take place and land was no longer a constraint. And to some extent food, I think during its structural change, England never suffered food shortages predominantly because there was sufficient kind of arrangement to import foods from this expanded production. Labor, again, in the case of, you know, the historical past is murky. It's very painful, but I think it's reality. Some of the labor constraint was was relaxed through slavery and also in the indentured labor's later part of 19th century. So we know that through this, we know about the North Atlantic triangular trade of ships, you know, we read about in earlier parts of the history about ships, you know, traveling from Africa to Europe to North America as part of the raw material slaves and manufactured commodities kind of for trade. So a similar kind of a triangle, there is also a land triangle. So that is perhaps Europe, India and China. So that kind of a triangle opium and tea are very much part of that. And then we also look at Assamoglu and Robinson argument in terms of the extractive institutions, nature of institutions. So even after 20, 30, 40 years after independence, why institutions and governance arrangements in countries remain locked in certain directions and incentives remain, you know, in a certain way? I think a very good example of that is also not only institutions, but infrastructure can also be significantly biased by these historical past and path dependence. So for example, in the case of India, the predominant commercial city, Mumbai, it did not even exist about 200 years ago. It is a completely a product of colonialism and industrialization in England, if you like. And so it was part of the raw material hub. And the infrastructure created gave Bombay that preeminence as a port and also as a railway hub, then that enabled it to remain in that kind of position. So these are kind of very important examples. So we can begin to kind of understand some of the challenges that African countries faced from, say, 1950 to 2000, as they were becoming independent. They still had to overcome many of these constraints, overcome the problem of land, of capital, and labor perhaps to less extent. But it is also an issue. I'll come back to this. And most importantly, in terms of overcoming the extractive nature of institutions, and countries who were able to do that in bursts, were able to overcome and enjoy growth episodes for a short period of time. Otherwise, again, they fall back into that. And then we have from narrow 1994 onwards, we have a new kind of emergence taking place. And China, I think in that sense, has done quite a lot of institutional infrastructure development before it really took to this kind of a global role of financing infrastructures. So the policy banks created in 1994, laid that kind of a ground. And China's own development, I think, was able to, I mean, in case of China, the land constraint was less important. It's a vast country. So achieving food self-sufficiency, I think was okay. Labor, again, in China's case, you know, largest population. So labor constraint was not there. It is a capital constraint, how China overcame the capital constraint. I think that is a very interesting part of the puzzle that we need to understand. There are other issues, of course, technology, human capability, etc. So these also, I think, work alongside this. In developing this kind of a new institutional infrastructure, initially, China was not thinking of developing those kind of institutions for Africa or other parts, but I think it was trying to overcome its own infrastructure challenge. So that's why these policy banks of which China Development Bank became such an important part of the state-led development, where the sovereign guarantee of the state is the biggest asset that the China Development Bank could use, and then mobilize money from the capital market, which then you can use to invest or fund long-term infrastructure projects. Now, India's case is much more mixed, much more complex. It's not that straightforward. But coming back to, you know, in India's case, to some extent land constraint is not such a serious. India is also fairly large in terms of geographic mass, but food self-sufficiency took quite some time for India, as you all know, the Green Revolution. Before that, 1967-68, India was very close to starvation, and that's what triggered the Green Revolution. And by early 1980s, India began to move towards food self-sufficiency, but food self-sufficiency was itself not fully achieved until early 1990s. So from that, I think, you know, that enabled India to focus on industrialization. Labor again in large population, so I don't think that is an issue for India. Capital, I think India took a much slower route to developing capital markets. So the capital markets were not so much as state-led, as in the case of China. Therefore, the development banks, in case of India, I'm at the moment working on a paper, still half finished, a long way to go. But in Indian case, we see that in the book, Professor John Wise has written a chapter on development banks, and especially a case study of development bank in Brazil. So we have the pandas in case of Brazil, we have the China development bank in case of China, but you don't have a single national development bank in case of India. There are various other development banks, some initially started as development banks and over a period of time, they became commercial banks changed over completely. So I think in Indian case, that lack of development bank, a significant development bank, remains an impotent constraint. Technology, I think technology and human capability, there is not much difference. Okay, so these are individual cases of China and India, but looking at BRICS themselves, obviously, let me frame my arguments in two-fold. So first looking at BRICS themselves, and in the book, in the chapter that I have written with my co-editors, we spent quite a lot of time looking at the summits, 10 BRICS summits, and trying to understand how thinking has evolved, if at all, et cetera. So we called it, you know, BRICS symmetry. Now, the only one summit that has taken place in Africa, the Durban summit that has been a very important one, that was the opportunity for BRICS to engage much more as a collectively, collectively with Africa. But we see some beginnings of some steps taken. But there is a huge challenge because each of the BRICS nations has its own, if you like, perspective in Africa and relationship with Africa. That means taking a collective position for BRICS is much, much more difficult. It's much easy for BRICS nations to stand together and say something about climate change, or say something about sustainability as they did in case of the summits in Brazil, or to say something about technology or something like that. But to say something about Africa, I think it's much, much more challenging, much more difficult. We have further complication in the case of South Africa. If we just look at South Africa, land is to some extent, it is a constraint. It's not a fully, you know, it's a very important constraint, but it remains a constraint. Labor, I think in case of South Africa, labor constraints had to be relaxed by being open and being part of SEDAG, for example, and creating that kind of wider labor pool so that many people can come to South Africa and work in South Africans. Capital constraint, I think, again, is a significant challenge. Technology, human capability, these are somewhat in a middle-level kind of constraint. So this kind of creates a complex playing field, if you like, for each of the BRICS nations, but also BRICS as a collective. And each of them have their own strength to deal with and where they can trade with Africa. Of course, we all depend on China to be the manufacturing hub of the world. And therefore, it is natural that therefore China has to secure the raw materials needed for that kind of a manufacturing process. And that led to China to see relationships not only with Africa, but also with South America in terms of securing the raw material flows in an uninterrupted way, became a very important part of the diplomacy. And that led to, in some respects, many of these kind of diplomatic initiatives, including the focus that my previous speaker spoke about. But all of this is kind of was further complicated by the commodity supercycle we saw between 2002 and 2010. And in some respects, that boom also has led to huge opportunities for, if you like, state capture and also resource nationalism. We see in many countries that was the time when resource nationalism began to emerge. So in this context, what happens to industrialization in Africa itself? This is a paper I have done some work on for the Economic Commission in Africa in Addis. So it's very interesting to see that industrialization in Africa is complicated. If none of these factors were there, perhaps different countries in Africa would have industrialized differently. Industrialization is crucial in the transition in the kind of Lewis model way of structural transition, because that generates huge amounts of surplus, which can be reinvested to increase productivity, and therefore, you know, raise the incomes. And we find that the industrialization process in Africa has been significantly hampered by the resources boom. And therefore, even countries which have very huge amount of natural resources, whether that skewed the nature of industrialization in Africa, I think that remains a huge, huge kind of challenge. And final point is about infrastructure. Infrastructure problem, I think, you know, you cannot wait to wait for industrialization to take place and then solve infrastructure. I think these two are interconnected. In the case of India, I think this is very visible. So India industrializes at the same time, it has infrastructure, both 21st century infrastructure and 17th century infrastructure, both coexisting within a matter of, you know, few square miles of geography. I think that is a huge challenge. And this remains to be an important issue for African industrialization as well. So it is in this context, I think when we think of BRICS, at the moment, we don't have much by way of, you know, there is some literature, but very scant looking at the role of BRICS. BRICS themselves are very quiet. As we saw in the case of vaccine diplomacy, individual countries are delivering vaccines, but there isn't a BRICS kind of role. So there is a kind of an institutional vacuum. The original purpose of BRICS was to provide greater voice for South, you know, if you like, emerging economies in the global institutions. But I think more recent developments, including kind of individual relationships between BRICS members, it has complicated this journey and slowed down the progress a little bit. So it is in that context, I think, looking ahead, what happens with the BRICS in Africa, I think it's too early to predict. So I will stop there. And thank you very much. I hand over back to the chat. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll just ask all of our panelists if they're able to put their cameras on so we can get another look at those beautiful faces. And what we're going to do is we're going to go through a couple of rounds of questions. And we've already got some great questions in the chat. And I will ask the three at the first go. If you could answer them, perhaps as easy as to answer them in the order in which you presented. So we'll start with Henry and we'll finish with Anand. You don't have to necessarily answer each of these questions if you don't want to comment on one, that's fine. But I'll read the questions out now so the audience knows what we're asking. I have questions of my own, but actually these are excellent. So I will save mine if we have time maybe I can raise them. So the first question, we have a question from Sean Ramier. What are the similarities and differences?