The Maritime Silk Road Initiative: Connecting Africa

Mboya, Cliff

doi:10.1007/978-981-33-4013-8_2

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…However, there are significant differences within Africa, the South and the East being more tightly connected with Asia than the rest of the continent Notteboom, 2012, Niérat andGuerrero, 2019). The increasing orientation of African trade towards China has been examined by Mboya (2021), who highlighted the alarming trade imbalance between China and African countries. This author claimed that the investments made by China in African countries have connected them to China rather than to their regional neighbors.…”

Section: The Container: a Tool For Economic Decolonization?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The inflow of large foreign investments and the deployment of services by shipping lines resulted in a dramatic increase in the maritime connectivity of the region. There is some debate among scholars about the ways in which maritime shipping connectivity has improved in Africa (Mboya, 2021). Some argue that connectivity improvements have mainly affected the connections of Africa with Asia, but without significantly changing the connectivity within Africa and with other world regions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Shifting proximities: visualizing changes in the maritime connectivity of African countries (2006/2016)

Guerrero

Nierat

Thill

et al. 2022

Maritime Policy & Management

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As a process, containerization in Africa is still on-going. In the last decades, a number of new port projects have emerged in parallel with the reorganization of services by shipping companies. To reflect these changes, this paper studies several questions on the geographic differentiation of maritime connectivities across the continent as well as on the longitudinal trends in maritime connectivities in relation to evolving economic, trade and logistical contexts.To this end, we propose a synthetic visualization of the country-level containerized links using the Liner Shipping Bilateral Connectivity Indicator (LSBCI). The resulting graph, obtained through Multidimensional Scaling (MDS), shows that West Africa and East Africa appear as relatively separated subsystems, mediated by several countries in the Northern and the Southern parts of Africa. Between 2006 and 2016, West Africa, initially tied to Europe and America, is increasingly tied to Asia. Our results show major improvements in the maritime connectivity of Morocco, Djibouti and several West African ports. Conversely, most of mainland East African countries stagnate or decline. Connectivities have not converged across the continent.In some cases changes in maritime connectivity mostly result from variations in vessel size. We explore a method to identify these situations.

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Section: The Container: a Tool For Economic Decolonization?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shifting proximities: visualizing changes in the maritime connectivity of African countries (2006/2016)

Guerrero

Nierat

Thill

et al. 2022

Maritime Policy & Management

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“…Industry sector, country, or region wide studies are rare. Moreover, only a few give the distribution of benefits attention [51,72,79,96,101]. I am not aware of any large-N studies that look at the costs of the BRI in terms of increasing trade deficits, promoting deindustrialization, or promoting sectoral lock-in.…”

Section: The Project Effects Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Blues: Powering BRI Research Back on Track to Avoid Choppy Seas

Blanchard

2021

J OF CHIN POLIT SCI

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This piece examines and critiques the massive literature on China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It details how research currently seems stuck on the road to nowhere. In addition, it identifies a number of the potholes that collective research endeavors are hitting such as that they are poorly synchronized. It also stresses that lines of analysis are proliferating rather than optimizing, with studies broadening in thematic coverage, rather than becoming deeper. It points out that BRI participants are regularly related to the role of a bit player in many analyses and research often is disconnected from other literatures. Among other things, this article recommends analysts focus on the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) or Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) in specific regions or countries. It also argues for a research core that focuses on the implementation issue (i.e., the issue of MSRI and SREB project implementation), project effects (i.e., the economic and political costs and benefits of projects), and the translation issue (i.e., the domestic and foreign policy effects of projects) and does work that goes beyond the usual suspects. On a related note, research need to identify, more precisely, participants and projects, undertake causal analysis, and take into account countervailing factors. Furthermore, studies need to make more extensive use of the Chinese foreign policy literature. Moreover, works examining subjects like soft power need to improve variable conceptualization and operationalization and deliver more nuanced analyses. Finally, studies, especially by area specialists, should take the area, not the China, perspective.

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“…This research aims to contribute to the current debate on the ways in which containerization is shaping the connectivity of African countries (Mboya, 2021) by advancing the use of effective map visualizations of port connectivities. Previous studies have shown the improvement of maritime connections of African countries to Asia.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%