Taiwan President Lai Ching-te will visit Eswatini next week, his office said on Monday, the \u200bisland’s last remaining diplomatic ally in Africa.<\/p>\n
Taiwan, which \u200cChina claims as its own territory with no right to state-to-state relations, now has formal ties with only 12 \u200bcountries, almost all small, less-developed nations in Latin \u200bAmerica, the Caribbean and the Pacific, like Belize \u2060and Tuvalu.<\/p>\n
Lai will be in Eswatini from April \u200b22-26, his spokesperson Karen Kuo told reporters, for the \u200b40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday.<\/p>\n
Lai is flying directly to Eswatini, which is almost entirely surrounded \u200bby South Africa, and does not require a \u200blayover, unlike visits to Latin America, which require transits via the \u200cUnited \u2060States that routinely anger China.<\/p>\n
This will be Lai’s first trip outside of Taiwan since November 2024, when he visited the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, and Palau, and \u200btransited through Hawaii \u200band the \u2060U.S. territory of Guam.<\/p>\n
The last time a Taiwanese president visited Eswatini, formerly known \u200bas Swaziland and home to around 1.3 \u200bmillion people, \u2060was in 2023, when Tsai Ing-wen made the journey.<\/p>\n
Taiwan has provided large amounts of aid to the small \u2060southern \u200bAfrican nation, an absolute monarchy. \u200bIn 2021, it sent antiviral medication to help King Mswati III recover \u200bfrom COVID.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te will visit Eswatini next week, his office said on Monday, the \u200bisland’s last remaining diplomatic ally in Africa. Taiwan, which \u200cChina claims as its own territory with no right to state-to-state relations, now has formal ties with only 12 \u200bcountries, almost all small, less-developed nations in Latin \u200bAmerica, the Caribbean and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":8,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,30],"tags":[396,344,5029,3078],"class_list":["post-20489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-china","tag-eswatini","tag-lai-ching-te","tag-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20489"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20492,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20489\/revisions\/20492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}