Peter Parks—AFP/Getty Images

President of Rwanda Paul Kagame (left) and then Chinese President Hu Jintao (right) inspected a People’s Liberation Army honor guard outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing at the start of Kagame’s six-day visit to China, May 14, 2007.

How Rwanda Attracts Chinese Money and Migrants Without the Lure of Natural Resources

A China in Africa Podcast

by Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden, Lily Kuo
November 29, 2016

Eric Olander

Eric Olander is the Founder of the China Africa Project, producer of the China in Africa Podcast which he co-hosts. Olander is a media executive based in Shanghai, China. Currently, he is employed by...

Cobus van Staden is the co-host of the weekly China in Africa Podcast, produced by the China Africa Project. Van Staden is currently the Senior China-Africa Researcher at the South African Institute...

Lily 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...

Quartz’s Africa correspondent Lily Kuo recently returned from a reporting assignment to Rwanda where she discovered a very different side of China’s engagement in Africa. Rwanda lacks many of the resources and large markets that other African states use to attract Chinese investment. Lily joins Eric and Cobus to discuss why Rwanda is becoming an increasingly popular destination for Chinese money and migrants.

Recommendations

“Rwanda Is a Landlocked Country with Few Natural Resources. So Why is China Investing So Heavily in It?,” Lily Kuo, Quartz, November 22, 2016
“China Is on a Mission to Modernize African Farming—And Find New Markets for its Own Companies,” Lily Kuo, Quartz, November 16, 2016

Topics:

Business, Economy

Keywords:

Podcast, Rwanda, Agriculture, Africa, Migration, Sub-Saharan Africa, Foreign Direct Investment, Natural Resources, China-Africa Relations