BULLETIN: 022
Ukraine tech deals and East Africa trade: Sam Hogg's British Diplomacy Tracker
As a reminder: all opinions expressed in these Telegrams are my own personal opinions, not my employers. This is a project I run in my free time looking at issues under the geopolitical radar.
Hello from lovely Oxford,
Travel may broaden the mind, but it limits time. This week’s Telegram takes the form of a bulletin: briefer than usual, but no less pointed. As ever, it focuses on developments slipping beneath the radar of Westminster and Fleet Street. You will find no further analysis of the Chagos Islands (previous issues have covered that ground) and no commentary on the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.
Instead, I examine two economic engagements that speak to Britain’s evolving international posture: one with East African states, the other with South Korea on reconstruction in Ukraine. Both reflect the government’s ambition to project influence through infrastructure, trade finance and strategic partnerships, where traditional diplomacy gives way to geoeconomic tools.
I have used these Telegrams, which go into the inboxes of some influential people - advisers, policy shapers, FTSE leaders - to try and draw awareness around the intersection of AI, economics and geopolitics. This week has seen another significant moment, with the release of a new model from a firm called Anthropic.
I would urge you to read this brief analysis of the model’s capabilities and ask: how will this affect my prime minister, my board, my budget, or my country’s place in the world? Even walking through the cobbled streets in a place as timeless as Oxford, you realise the future is fast upon us.
— Sam Hogg
East Africa Trade & Ukraine
KEY POINTS:
The UK hosted the first-ever East Africa Trade and Investment Forum (EATIF), bringing together governments and businesses from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
British International Investment (BII) and Standard Chartered announced a $100 million trade finance facility to support cross-border trade in Kenya and Tanzania. It confirmed a $5 million investment to support the rollout of 5,000 electric motorbikes and battery-swapping infrastructure in Kenya, expected to reduce annual CO₂ emissions by over 100,000 metric tonnes.
Britain signed an MoU with South Korea to work together on projects in Ukraine. It’s efforts to replicate the ‘Third Country Cooperation’ model, pioneered by Japan, could see further applications in countries beyond Ukraine.
A flurry of strategies and reviews are expected to land on desks in Westminster over the next month. Some of these, such as the China Audit and Strategic Defence Review, have received ample media coverage, political punditry and Westminster speculation, and will probably end up being largely damp squibs. In a quiet corner of Whitehall, yet another is being drawn up: the UK’s ‘Africa Reset’ approach, commissioned by Foreign Secretary David Lammy early into his arrival.
Noted
Per in-house British Diplomacy Tracker analysis, this will be the fourth British Government-led effort to ‘reset’ relations with Africa - a continent of a billion and a half people - since 2010.
Efforts to compile views from across the continent, via diplomats, private sector, NGOs and other stakeholders have been underway for months. And while the document may never have a public component, Britain’s foreign, trade and security approaches to the region continue. The premier East Africa Trade and Investment Forum (EATIF) should be viewed through this lens. An effort to de-risk trade (via $100M finance facility with the Foreign Office’s investment arm, BII, and Standard Chartered) and greening mobility (via $5M investment in e-motorbikes and battery-swapping infrastructure), it reflects an attempt to leverage science, technology, and private sector investment to assert long-term geopolitical influence.
The summit attracted a relatively senior political turnout. Lord Collins, the UK Government’s Minister for Africa, represented Britain; other attendees included Abubakar Hassan Abubakar, Principal Secretary State Department for Investment Promotion, Kenya, and the CEO of the Kenya Investment Authority (KenInvest), John Mwendwa; General Wamala, Minister for Works and Transport in Uganda; and Msafiri Lameck Mbibo, Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Minerals in Tanzania.
The forum is best read not in isolation but as part of a broader effort to reassert British presence in a region where China has long been dominant. Between 2000 and 2022, Beijing extended over $170bn in loans to African governments, dwarfing UK bilateral aid or commercial finance by orders of magnitude. London, lacking the financial firepower of its Chinese counterpart, is instead seeking out narrow bands of competitive advantage: digital regulation, climate finance, and frontier tech partnerships. It’s also worth noting that the average interest rate on Chinese development loans in Africa is 3.2%, versus the BII’s at 2%.
Quoted
“Progressive realism means anticipating how the dynamics between continents are about to change. By 2050, more than one in four people on the planet will live in Africa. The continent can and will generate vast growth. Yet [former British Foreign Secretary Robin] Cook would be dismayed to see the poverty that endures there, despite his generation’s efforts. The next Labour government must therefore produce a new Africa strategy that does more than merely offer aid. The United Kingdom must once again become a leader in development, but to do so, it has to adopt a model that emphasizes trading with other countries to build long-term win-win partnerships—rather than following an outdated model of patronage.”
Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Progressive Realism essay, April 2024
Kenya, as noted in previous Telegrams, has emerged as a pilot country for UK-backed AI and data governance collaboration. Electric vehicles and climate adaptation are additional vectors. Whether these initiatives add up to a coherent strategy remains unclear, but they hint at an approach that blends commercial alignment, green industrial policy, and geopolitical signalling.
Meanwhile, Britain is looking beyond Africa for diplomatic leverage. This week, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with South Korea to cooperate on reconstruction in Ukraine and infrastructure projects in third countries. Known in development jargon as "third-country cooperation", this model has long been championed by Japan, whose JICA-led schemes combine capital, contractors and governance standards in joint ventures with allies.
Noted
According to the World Bank, as of 31 December 2024, the total cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine is $524 billion (€506 billion) over the next decade, which is approximately 2.8 times the estimated nominal GDP of Ukraine for 2024.
Under the new UK-Korea MoU, Seoul is expected to contribute engineering know-how and cost-effective project delivery, while London supplies advisory services and finance via institutions such as UK Export Finance. Areas of potential investment which shrewd city folk should observe range from smart cities and modular healthcare to water infrastructure and transport corridors. The partnership fits within a wider pattern. Since the 2023 Downing Street Accord, UK-Korea ties have deepened significantly, driven in part by mutual wariness of Chinese coercion and the volatility of American politics. Such third-country platforms could become a recurring feature of Britain’s post-Brexit economic diplomacy, particularly where bilateral heft is lacking.
Whether this amounts to a new era in British geoeconomic statecraft or simply the latest iteration of policy theatre will depend, as ever, not on the launch but the execution.