CGD Podcast: China and Africa Cooperation with Hannah Ryder and Yunnan Chen

Gyude Moore: Hello. Welcome to the CGD Podcast. My name is Gyude Moore. I'm a resident fellow here at the Center for Global Development. On today's podcast, we're going to be talking about FOCAC 9. FOCAC is the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. FOCAC 9 was held in China, in Beijing, in September of 2024. We've been thinking about how to channel the financial commitments that we've made in such a way that is beneficial to African governments. A big part of our recommendation, which is coming out in the policy note, is the reauthorization of the Africa Growing Together Fund.

For Africa, FOCAC is such an important event. The commitments that we've made at FOCAC go a long way in alleviating problems, especially when it comes to infrastructure finance in Africa. This is a really good jump off point for this conversation because today, the US sectors did announced that the purging of USAID is complete. 83% of the programs have been ended eminently, but also China's two sessions just ended.

In his public remarks, the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, spoke about the importance of Africa to the global future. He talked about how the prospect of future modernization depends on Africa, and if Africa doesn't modernize, that's going to be a disadvantage for the rest of the world, not just Africa. It's an excellent point to start off so that we can talk again on FOCAC. Today, I have two of the most knowledgeable people to have this conversation with me. Without much ado, I'll ask them to introduce themselves. We'll start in alphabetical order. Hannah?

Hannah Ryder: Thank you, Gyude, and thanks for having me in your podcast. I'm Hannah Wanjie Ryder. I've been working in the development field for over 20 years. I'm the CEO of an African-led and African-owned international development consultancy called Development Reimagined. We have offices in Beijing, Nairobi, and London. We're really well known for our work on Africa-China relations, especially on advisory, but we also do a lot of practical work on trade and investment between African countries and China.

Gyude Moore: Thank you. Yunnan?

Yunnan Chen: Hi, Gyude. It's a pleasure to be here and joining you and Hannah. I'm Yunnan Chen. I'm a research fellow at ODI Global. We're a global affairs think tank that works on a range of issues from humanitarian affairs, to climate to -- in my field, development and public finance. We have offices in London, Brussels, and more recently, in Washington D.C. At ODI, I lead a portfolio of work focusing on China's overseas financing, its development finance institutions, implications for debt restructuring, and for policy implications for the donors of the Global North.

Gyude Moore: Yunnan and I, were overlapped at one point at CGD where we were. It's such a pleasure having you here. Hannah, you were quoted in a piece in Semafor. The question everyone has been talking about is, does USAID's withdrawal from Africa meaning that this is a benefit to China?

Hannah Ryder: I feel this question is quite a hard one because, in the sense, it's framing any cut of finance that was in the short term supporting thousands, if not millions, of people getting access to healthcare, education, et cetera. As a benefit to anyone, I feel that's a very difficult proposition in itself, but let me engage with it. Two key points. I think first, and this is what I said to Semafor and my colleagues at Development Reimagined have said to others, is that China's aid doesn't really work in the same way as USAID. There is no channel, for example, for an African non-governmental organization or a non-governmental organization from any other country to apply for Chinese finance.

Even if African governments apply for Chinese aid, it usually has a link to specific technical assistance or equipment. Most or many USAID projects don't have those aspects at all. I think the overlap is a fairly small one, but where the overlap is, is in particular, I'd say, aid to UN organizations. You might remember, back in 2020, when the US pulled out of the World Health Organization, China contributed $30 million to the World Health Organization literally a week after. Now, while that's big for China, China usually contributes about $200 million to WHO, the US usually contributes over $1.2 billion. You can see $30 million is not going to replace $1.2 billion.

That said, even since 2020, the China-UN relationship has strengthened. We might see a bit more of that as a result and more contributions from China to the UN system actually in the context of the Global Development Initiative. My view is that it will most likely happen more organically because of what's happening within China and so on. Just secondly, there are good reasons for China to step in, but I think very differently to how the US and even how China itself has really traditionally worked. I think there's a real seizing opportunity even in bad times, like we did with COVID, of thinking through what exit strategies for aid might be.

I would say the focus has to be localization, localization, localization. If that can happen, then I think there's definitely an opportunity for China to step in and do more. It has to be different to what USAID has been doing before.

Gyude Moore: Yunnan, what is your take?

Yunnan Chen: I think to engage with the question on what's the impact for China, does China gain from this? From a political perspective, I have to say, China can sit back and doesn't have to do very much to get a huge credibility boost from not just what the US is doing, I think it's also important to step back and see this in a global context of what's happening from other northern donors.

We've seen a systematic pullback in commitments to ODI over the last five years or so. We've seen recent cutbacks that have been quite dramatic from the UK, slashing aid to fund its defense spending, from the Netherlands, and generally European donors, all going in the same direction. Perhaps not as dramatically as the US, but we are seeing a pullback and perhaps a disillusionment with the idea and this model of aid as a form of development cooperation that Hannah was describing.

There are unfortunate aspects to this. We've been in this model for the last 50 plus years of aid and development as a form of soft power for many of these northern donors and global powers, but to really use aid and development cooperation strategically, it depends on, as one of our previous papers at ODI argues, it really depends on your consistency as a partner.

To segue this to how China acts as a donor, I think the case of FOCAC is a very good demonstration of China's soft power as a very consistent and politically engaged donor that doesn't just deliver material benefits, but is able to turn up, and show up, and maintain that stability of relationship over a really long time.

Gyude Moore: What China does and what USAID does, it's not a one-for-one replacement. Just the consistency, the reliability, and dependability of China as we're seeing this upheaval across the West, not just the US, is also going to be a big boost to the Chinese, too. However, China has an independent relationship with Africa. It has absolutely nothing to do what West is doing. That is the focus of our podcast today. For the last almost 25 years now, FOCAC has been the centerpiece in terms of mechanism for China engages with its partners in Africa. Hannah, I want to come back to you. For someone listening to this who doesn't know what FOCAC is, what is FOCAC, and why is it important?

Hannah Ryder: Okay. I will plug a briefing that we have at Development Reimagined on FOCAC. If you look up FOCAC Development Reimagined, you'll come to it. FOCAC was created in 2000. It was created in response to African countries' requests and in China seeking more coordination in their bilateral relationships with China, but there were some other models at the time. There was France-Africa Summit, which had been going since 1973. The Arab-Africa Summit from 1977, which since 2010, talking of consistency, has been every three years like FOCAC, and the Tokyo International Conference on African Development which started in 1993, and that is held every five years.

There was a model, and there are a huge list of things that are different about FOCAC. Maybe I can just mention a few which really stand out. I think speaking to some of the points that have already been made around consistency, it has a regular fixed fixed timetable and even has annual preparation meetings at the senior official level. It also alternates venue between China and an African country, something that France, for example, is planning to do with its next France-Africa summit, but since 1973 hasn't done.

Importantly, process-wise, it's got an African co-chair, which none of the other summits have. We'll come to this at some point, I hope, but it makes a huge difference to the agency that African countries can express through the forum because they can work really actively on the outcome documents if they want to or they're organized enough to. I think you do see the difference in that.

Substantially and most importantly, what also differentiates it is that it's not just aid focused, it's also investment, loans for infrastructure, manufacturing, tourism. In the latest one, you saw stuff around space collaboration, AI, and much more. To be honest, sometimes I feel it's far too much, like far too busy, but other summits do focus on more specific themes or have only recently branched out. Again, it's really important in the context of what we just discussed around USAID because the relationship of a country to another set of countries or even another country is not just about aid, it's about a whole set of other things, and FOCAC manages to cover all of those.

Gyude Moore: The thing about these Africa Plus One summits or uni/multilateral summits is that toward the end, the host makes a big announcement of commitments over the next three years, and then FOCAC is no different. It started around 2006 with $5 billion. The highest is being about $60 billion in 2015 and 2018. This year, the calculation comes up to around $51 billion. There's a policy note that will accompany this. One of the recommendations I'm making is that-- the observance I'm making is that some of that money is channeled through debt, through loans. The ability of African sovereigns to accommodate more loans is significantly constrained.

How FOCAC is-- how its commitments are channeled will determine if it's really useful to the African countries. That's why it's really good we have Yunnan here because she has a working paper on which she tracks the rise of commercial lenders in portfolio of lending, at least from China to Africa. Yunnan, can you tell us a little bit about your working paper and what you've found in terms of the commercial composition of the lending?

Hannah Ryder: Sure. I'll make a couple of points from this paper. I want to shout out to my collaborator, Tianyi Wu, who worked with me on this commercial creditors paper, and a lot of the findings draw from her PhD research. I also want to shout out to another collaborator, Teal Emery. We have a forthcoming paper, which I'll discuss some of the findings from that.

Essentially, in our research, what we're seeing is there's been a gradual and secular shift in what we think of as the model of Chinese infrastructure finance in Africa over the last 10 years. We have this idea of how Chinese lending works. It's usually an export buyer's credit. It's very much dominated by China Exim Bank and CDB to a lesser extent. It's a policy bank finance that supports the exports of Chinese goods and services, and it usually rides on an EPC contractor from a Chinese company.

Over the last decade, we've seen several changing trends in how this model works. Actually, there's been a greater diversification in these financing modalities when it comes to infrastructure, but also more broadly, as we'll discuss in the most recent FOCAC commitments.

Firstly, the role of commercial creditors in Africa has really boomed over the last decade, particularly in certain countries like Ghana and Zambia that you've also seen borrowing a lot from international capital markets. If you think of the big commercial banks, ICBC, Bank of China, CCB, their role in financing infrastructure alongside certain SOEs, has risen quite substantially since 2015. That really came after a policy push from on top within the Chinese government. You'll see it in the FOCAC of that year, to push for greater private sector participation in Africa and in some of these overseas projects.

This has been quite consistent even as policy bank lending declined massively. The downside is, and some of the riskier aspects of this commercial lending, though, is that it's higher cost, it's shorter tenor, and negotiating debt restructuring with these commercial banks is it's going to be a very different story compared to the debt restructurings that we've seen to date with Exim Bank and CDB.

The second trend I want to note is also that we've seen a much bigger emphasis in the last decade on risk mitigation, on project bankability. As part of that, there's been this decline in bilateral lending, particularly after 2018 to Africa. Commercial lending has made up some of that shortfall, but it's still not what it used to be 10 years ago. With the rise of commercial banks, we're also seeing more innovative approaches to risk sharing.

In a forthcoming paper from myself and Teal Emery, we look at the rise of co-financing and syndicated loans in financing infrastructure. This is very much dominated by these large international commercial Chinese banks like ICBC and Bank of China. There's a shift in model. There's a bigger emphasis on private sector. In the most recent FOCAC as well, in the language, you see this emphasis on investment promotion, supporting the private sector to take on more risk rather than that state-led model of the last decade.

Gyude Moore: The changing of the composition of loans from China is also reflected across the portfolio of most African sovereigns. We've come from more bilateral lending to now a significant portion of the debt that most African countries carry is commercial, whether from domestic commercial banks or from the international capital markets in Eurobonds. We're seeing that. It carries this risk, as we saw with Zambia during COVID. When it comes to negotiating a default, it's much harder to do with private creditors than it is to do with bilateral creditors.

One of the recommendations that I'm making my piece is that maybe for the next five years or so, we can see us not slow down in that trend, at least when it comes to Chinese lending to the continent. I present it as the core piece of the argument of the piece is that there was a fund that was created about 10 years ago in Africa. It was a collaboration between the African Development Bank, China Exim, and People's Bank of China, called the Africa Growing Together Fund. It was $2 billion. It was at the African Development Bank and lent alongside.

I'm recommending that-- It ended last year. It was mentioned at FOCAC, but it was not reauthorized that the African side requests of the Chinese to reauthorize it or make it slightly bigger and experiment so that other African MDBs can have access to it, for example, like your Africa 50, your AFC, your TDB. The possibility of national lenders like the Development Bank of South Africa can also have access to it because-- especially for those national lenders who lend outside of the core markets.

Hannah, I want to turn to you on these recommendations that I made. This is the space that your company works with African sovereigns and with the Chinese government. What do you think about these recommendations for the Africa Growing Together Fund, whether at the African Development Bank or China through the African Development Fund?

Hannah Ryder: What Yunnan has mentioned around emerging trends, supporting or investing into African financial institutions, African multilateral financial institutions is something that Chinese government and African side have both been advocating for and increasingly interested in. The AGTF really stands out, the African Growing Together Fund really stands out because it was not just for its size, $2 billion at the time. This was in 2014. This is a peak in Chinese lending to African financial institutions to date, and different from the peak to bilaterals. It was co-financed. It was to be disbursed over 10 years.

Before then, China had been in the African Development Bank since 1985. It was based on that experience and seeing what the AFDB is doing, but trying to find a way to the perhaps deliver in a way that's more understood by Chinese stakeholders because you had-- the PBOC actually checking every project that goes through. We've seen over 40 different projects over the lifetime of the AGTF go forward. Some pretty large ones including a Nigerian electricity project. There are lots and lots of really good examples. The question is what next?

There's a very strong case certainly for reauthorizing the AGTF. There's also a case for China making a bigger direct contribution to the African Development Fund, which again has slowly increased its contributions to that, but there's an opportunity there. There's an extra replenishment of that coming up this year. Also, with regards to other African banks, we've got Afreximbank, TDB, BOAD, a whole range of different African multilateral financial institutions, they have also borrowed from China in very different ways. Some of them will have China Exim Bank as a shareholder, some of them even have some of the Chinese private sector contributing. They've also got CDB. Afreximbank in 2023 secured an additional $400 million from China Development Bank. China Exim is already actually Afrexim's seventh largest overall shareholder. It's the largest non-African shareholder in fact.

The interest is there. Again, coming back to what you were saying around risk, the benefit that it offers is being able to shield some of the very specific shareholders from some of the very specific risks that you might face project by project but still supporting and getting the return, of course, still supporting these projects to go forward. What they also do is they still provide that return. That's key. China still got those foreign reserves which drove the opportunity for borrowing from China. This is certainly a really strong way to do it.

Gyude Moore: Part of the reason that I make this proposition is that first of all, development lenders, because of their portfolio lending, because of their quality in project selection, because they already have in terms of project implementation, the quality of project implementation means a significant numbers of this project will be done. When the African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank were making an argument for SDRs transfer to them, they argued that for every dollar for them, they can leverage four.

It means whatever money is transferred to them, means they can use the balance sheet to leverage that in ways that just lending project to project can't. Most importantly, an increase in commercial lending to African settlements at a time when other development partners are holding back, exposing them to risks. What do you think about this recommendation, especially now that you've documented an increase or China's willingness to do more from the commercial side? Basically, I'm asking them to step back and do more bilateral, but through regional lenders instead of directly country to country. What do you think?

Yunnan Chen: I heartily agree, Gyude. In the forthcoming paper that we're writing on co-financing, and we dig a little bit into the AGTF, and some of these co-financing funds that have been established at the MDBs that China set up in 2014, the AGTF, African Development Bank, the co-financing fund with IDB, there's another co-investment platform at IFC. These have been really prominent in supporting green investments and in supporting energy transition infrastructure in Africa.

I would very much support this policy recommendation of replenishment. I struggle to see how that will happen because I do think that their origins, the creation of these funds took place at a slightly different political moment back in 2013. We know that it was Zhou Xiaochuan at PBOC who was quite a strong instigator in creating a lot of these funds and in deepening China-Africa relations at the time.

China's foreign exchange surplus, although still substantial, it suffered quite a big decline after 2015. We've seen a general greater risk aversion. I'm a little more pessimistic, perhaps, on the potential or possibilities for PBOC to play that same role with these kinds of big billion-dollar funds. That said, I'd agree with Hannah that partnering with MDBs and using the experience, the technical capacity, the ability to manage risk that MDBs and other public development banks provide is something that benefits Chinese commercial and policy bank lenders.

We are seeing more appetite for these kinds of on-lending transactions and MOUs to support future co-financing and future project pipeline development between Chinese and regional development banks as well. There's a positive step or a positive future direction.

Gyude Moore: I agree. What's happening in the domestic economy in China would be indicative of what kinds of risks the Chinese are willing and able to take on forward. There's another piece from ODI. I think you read it. It was about the convergence we didn't ask for, where DAC countries were beginning to converge in terms of their lending to match the Chinese and what the Chinese were doing. I'm willing to accept here where for some of this chambering to the MDBs, if China added some add-ons, there has to be a certain amount of Chinese representations, stuff like that. It simply means that money continues to flow in this direction.

Hannah, I want to come to you because there are two massive funds that were created in the China-Africa relationship, CADFund and CAFIC. Each of them capitalized $10 billion that are supposed to do more private lending, direct equity. Could you tell us a little bit about them and what are they, how are they different, how useful they can be in Africa as we're trying to channel more money to Africa through FOCAC?

Hannah Ryder: CADFund or China-Africa Development Fund, that was set up in 2006. It has a mandate specifically to support Chinese companies going out to African countries. This is not one of the commercial creditors I was talking about as a set of different organizations, private firms. It's managed by the China Development Bank. Any project that's agreed by China Development Fund, by CADFund, has to go through the CDB.

It's actually got offices in South Africa, Ethiopia, Zambia, Ghana and Kenya. It has had some really interesting examples and very strong examples of success with a lot of financing, certain Chinese companies. Some of the most successful cases that you'll hear of certain health care projects have had CAD funding to go out. It's basically like what BII does in some way, the British International Investment, that kind of DFC, but it has a very specific targeted mandate.

The second one, China-Africa Industrial Capacity Corporation Fund, CAFIC, is a bit different. It's a bit more flexible. It was announced in 2015. As you said, it also has $10 billion capital. It does equity and loans. It has a different mandate because it's really just about deal flow, specifically around Chinese companies. It can finance African companies, for example, that have a majority share, and again, has done that.

The main question for CAFIC is usually around return, the risk and return balance. They're looking for projects which will have a very clear, obviously, industrial focus, but that will have a clear return. CADFund too, to a degree, but there's a bit more flexibility on that criteria. You'll find that CAFIC, they'll finance certain mining projects or telecoms projects where the business case is really clear.

It's not a very new thing to do, but the mandate is changing because of FOCAC. This is a really important point for everybody to understand that, even though many of these institutions are used to working in specific ways or a private sector might not want to do X or certain state-led companies might not want to do Y, FOCAC is an opportunity to drive in a direction that African governments really want. One of the big demands and pushes from African governments has been can we have funds that can fund smaller projects? One of the big ones. We still want the big ones, don't get me wrong, but there is a missing gap.

For most of development finance organizations, there's a gap where many African projects are $5 million, $10 million, et cetera. Is there a Chinese organization out there that's willing to also support those things with debt, with equity, not grants, but that are real business propositions. That's where your suggestions, Gyude, but also the suggestions of African governments are being taken seriously for the shape of both CAFIC and CADFund. CADFund is experimenting more with Panda Bonds, for example. There are a whole range of things that are happening because of FOCAC that point in a different direction for these funds.

Gyude Moore: I had an opportunity to hang out with CADFund people and talk to them. Initially, they had minimum ticket size of $15 million. Even CAFIC had a minimum ticket size of $15 million to $20 million. But because of the FOCAC that is the center of this podcast now, at that FOCAC, President Xi talked about small and smart or small and beautiful CRMA. All of the China-focused funds were giving directives. They're supposed to do a thousand of these projects in a three-year period. First of all, I don't think that's going to happen.

However, let's try to get as many of them as possible. Do these projects, these CRMA projects, do they present an opportunity to set up the balance, the commercial and non-commercial? What do you think of them as means of being able to channel more Chinese financing?

Yunnan Chen: From the perspective of what's happening in the Chinese system and the changes and trends that we've seen in how China's overseas financing is evolving, I think small and beautiful is one manifestation of this bigger push towards discipline and risk mitigation as well. For Chinese banks, we've seen a recalibration in their appetite for the big ticket infrastructure projects, some of which have not really come to fruition and have caused negative ramifications for debt sustainability. Small and beautiful is a shift or a pivot in some way towards a more commercial orientation in project selection and project development. It coincides very nicely with this policy shift that we've seen towards green investments.

We know that what China is exporting today is very much its own frontier capacities in clean technologies, and renewables, electric vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. These kinds of energy transition projects very much fit the bill for the commercial but disciplined and generally quite small ticket projects that small and beautiful would indicate. These projects also have the advantage that we will be seeing more commercial modalities of financing where it's the suppliers, or the contractors, the corporates themselves, taking on a bigger share of risk through investment, or through potential PPPs, or collaborations rather than the debt financed bank led model of years past.

That leaves the policy banks or the larger financiers to take a bit more of a strategic approach in their portfolio using the concessional financing that China Exim Bank, for example, provides to direct their lending towards more strategic and more targeted projects that can support broader transformation.

Gyude Moore: Hannah, as we close out, what can we do so that we can increase the flow with these so that African projects can finance? Also more importantly, with CADFund, the conversation was there always has to be a majority of Chinese interest. One of the examples is AWA airlines in Ghana. It is co-owned by Hainan Airlines, CADFund, and a local Chinese partner. Those are the kinds of projects that we want. As many of those as we can get, that would be great. How can we increase the flow so that more of these projects happen?

Hannah Ryder: As an economist, I'm going to say we've got to work on both the demand and the supply side, but I'll add something to that as well because I think we also have to do a lot more coordination. In terms of demand side from the African side, we have to do a lot more to actively promote investment projects in China. We've got to be a significantly more targeted, more active, going to China to meet with a huge range of different stakeholders to tell them about different projects and therefore increase the deal flow. Communication is everything.

Many of these issues around risk, whether we're talking about China or anywhere else, and how Africa's viewed, is often to do with an asymmetric information problem. People don't know enough about the continent. The more that African businesses go over to China and promote these projects, that will do a lot.

On the supply side, Gyude, you have talked about shifting mandates for CADFund, CAFIC, 100% agree with that. They do need to be more flexible, both in terms of ticket size, but also in terms of instruments. As cheap as possible, number one, and that isn't always in line with commerciality if we're thinking about that, but these are government supported. That's where they can make a difference and be flexible also in terms of African partnership. This is also what China's own experience was that China got the best in terms of technology transfer and understanding by having joint ventures and so on.

The last thing to make these funds work for the African continent is for a great deal more coordination between African governments and African players. Even in talking about what Yunnan was mentioning or what she's identified are the trends, the commercial banks, we're at 1984-ish, 1985, perhaps 1989 already moment for Africa where we did this before. We had a lot of bilateral lending in the '70s. Suddenly, interest rates went up, we couldn't manage it. We started going to private partnerships, and we couldn't manage it.

Now, we still have similar challenges. The only way we'll get out of that is even if we are going to the private sector, we need to understand the private sector better and push for a race to the top. The only way to do that is through coordination to really get the best deals from the commercials and even from CAFIC and CADFunds. Go together, work together.

Gyude Moore: It is possible now that we've seen this cutback across the West, that one African government should begin to invest more in the China competency because it's appalling that 25 years of FOCAC in and there are still very significant weaknesses in terms of understanding China or engaging China. Maybe some of the resources that were dedicated to the West would now be channeled in terms of dividend to a partner that's reliable, probably we'll see that. We'll actually see also the Chinese opening up and being slightly more flexible because in the way they source their deals and the kinds of deals that you end up taking.

We do not end our conversations or podcast here at CGD without asking our guests two questions. The first one is if you wave a wand, and any policy, whatever policy it is will be changed for the better. Then tell us an inspirational story, an impact story, or something. We started with Hannah, so let's start with Yunnan.

Yunnan Chen: Great question. I don't know about the calculations for the most good, but in terms of the policies I would choose, one would be, I think we need to ringfence what remains of ODA and really preserve and ensure that ODA spending is directly targeted to the lowest income countries and serves its purpose as a development finance instrument. I would open up the rules around the OECD arrangement for export credit to all export credit agencies, China included. It would mitigate a lot of the negative composition and trade wars that we're currently descending into.

The second question was on an interesting story that's happened on the job. ODIA is-- no two days are the same. One of the moments that's stood out to me in my current role in the last few years has been having to step into convening moments when you weren't expecting to. We had an event that was being filmed live. Then there was a medical emergency at the last minute. On film, I had to pivot from being speaker to then moderating the event and leading the discussion. That was a really great conversation that we had. In the end, kickoff for our Brussels series of events. It was an unexpected moment.

Gyude Moore: Hannah, a policy you could change by waving of a wand, and interesting story?

Hannah Ryder: I wish I had a lot of wands or a lot of opportunities to do that. Right now, my wishful thinking would be for African governments not to agree to any mineral or trade deal that doesn't come with a huge injection of foreign direct investment into industrializing and processing those minerals or any other trade. That would be my ideal policy. It would do a lot of good because we need a lot of jobs. We've been commodity-focused countries for far too long. Accepted a lot of deals that we didn't have to accept. I would want a policy of being stronger.

Then a memorable moment, because we don't just do advisory work, we do trade and investment work, my moment was going to a supermarket before a meeting with Kenyan government officials from the agricultural ministry. This was in China. Sorry. I should have prefaced it with that. Going to a supermarket to buy some milk tea products and then taking them to what at the time was the most popular shop for tea when bubble tea was really, really taking off and cheese-topped tea was really taking off in China. It was called Hey Tea. Being in a massive queue with them and telling them about this new market and why they should do a great deal more to sell black tea to China, not just green. China's not just about green tea, or white tea, or other specialty tea, milk tea is also super popular.

Yunnan Chen: The queue for Hey Tea in London is also very long.

Hannah Ryder: See, it goes across.

Gyude Moore: Thank you.