Djibouti Wins Jackpot –  Renting Out Desert for Military Bases

By Edward Paice

Edward Paice is the Director of Africa Research Institute. He studied African history as part of his degree course at Cambridge University and returned to Cambridge as a Visiting Fellow at Magdalene College in 2003-04. In the 1990s and early 2000s he was based in eastern Africa where, among other projects, he wrote the first guidebook to independent Eritrea. Since then, he has written and lectured extensively on diverse African topics and is the author of “‘Tip and Run': The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa” (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2007). Edward was Managing Editor of ARI for 15 months before becoming Director in January 2011.

China is constructing its first overseas military base just a few miles from one of the United States’ largest and most important foreign bases — Camp Lemonnier in the small East African nation of Djibouti.  Five other nations have put up bases there, and Saudi Arabia will soon join them.  The Cipher Brief’s Kaitlin Lavinder asked Edward Paice, director of the Africa Research Institute in London, why China chose Djibouti, what the U.S. thinks about it, and why several other nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, focusing military attention on the coast of the Horn of Africa.

The Cipher Brief: Why is China building its first overseas military base in Djibouti?

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