More often than not, players’ career fortunes pirouette on the altar of time and chance. Taiwo Awoniyi can attest to that. Had Awoniyi paid for his university exams on the day he was supposed to, in Ilorin, north-central Nigeria, playing in the Premier League for Nottingham Forest, where his decisive goals saved them from relegation last season, might never have happened.

“My dad actually borrowed the money to pay for my exams,” he says. “I went to the person that was supposed to help register me for the exam in the morning and he was not around. I went there again in the evening and they told me he still wasn’t around. “It was on my way back from that trip that I got a call from the Imperial Soccer Academy [in Nigeria’s Ogun State], that they wanted me. I went back to my dad and said: ‘I do want to keep on going to school. But my passion is football, so let me use this money to get myself down to the academy.’ I think that was the turning point for me.”

Awoniyi (right) has been flying Nigerian flag high in Premier League

Awoniyi had been with the Unicorn Football Academy in Ilorin since he was “six or seven” and played for Nigeria as a 14-year-old at the Copa Coca-Cola Cup, a tournament for African teams, in London in 2011. A call-up to the Golden Eaglets, Nigeria’s Under-17 side, that won the 2013 World Cup in the UAE, earned the opportunity he had dreamed of – a five-year contract with Liverpool in 2015. But he never played for the club.

“We discovered that we needed a work permit and to get a permit I needed to play for Nigeria’s first team,” he says. “When I signed, my Nigeria teammate Kelechi Iheanacho got the work permit under the special talent scheme [to join Manchester City]. It was after him that they closed the special talent scheme.

“The only option I had was to keep on going on loan, with the hope that if I do well on loan and I play for the national team, I’ll be able to get the work permit and come back [to Liverpool]. I kept on going on loan. And the national team call-ups still didn’t come, so I didn’t have any other option than to keep on striving.”

In six years, Awoniyi went on loan to six clubs in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium: FSV Frankfurt, NEC Nijmegen, Royal Excel Mouscron (twice), Gent, Mainz and Union Berlin. Then Union bought him from Liverpool for £6.5m in July 2021, before his move to Forest in 2022.

“It was really a hard and tough situation,” he says of the early years on loan, recalling how his family and Seyi Olofinjana, the former Wolves and Stoke midfielder who founded Imperial Soccer Academy, helped him through it.

“I didn’t really play a lot of games [at Frankfurt] … the team was relegated. I then went to Holland [Nijmegen] and that was another strange experience … we also got relegated … I said to myself, about the third year, if I go down again or I don’t make anything happen, I have to think about my football career.

“It was at Mouscron that I really discovered myself, that I saw myself as the player I wanted to be … I scored a goal in my first match and [10] goals with Mouscron that season.”

Taiwo Awoniyi shone at Mouscron

Liverpool gave him a second five-year contract but his journeyman status continued, at Gent and Mainz, via Mouscron again, until he found a real home at Union.

“I remember my first conversation with the coach. He said: ‘Taiwo, I’ve seen you. I think I can make you who you want to be as a player. But it is your decision to come.’ It was just an amazing club. It is what a football club should be, in terms of the people, the administrators, everything, especially the fans.”

Awoniyi’s form made him a cult hero, with his final goal for Union earning them a Europa League spot for the first time. “We needed to win. I remember that in the first half I had a penalty and I scored. We were then in the 88th or 89th minute … I was checking the time and I said: ‘No, these people have come a long way for us not to win …’

https://efb9095dae39658896226d0b4cb40cdb.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html “It’s taken them to where they want to be and where they should be as a club. And from there, they’re now playing in the Champions League. These people deserve even more than that … But they’ve always known that one day I will leave for the Premier League.”

Forest signed Awoniyi after ending a 23-year absence from England’s top division and he knew helping them stay up would constitute a successful season. Years of relegation battles had fortified him for the challenge.

“I was never in doubt that the team would stay up, because I know how much they wanted the club to be where they wanted it to be. I was not really afraid at all. I just said: ‘OK, this is what I want. This is my dream to be in the Premier League and I have a club that is really, really ready to give me the opportunity.’ “So I said I would go for it. When I had the [initial] meeting with the owners and the coach, I was so impressed with the plan and the structure.”

Awoniyi in pre-season training with Liverpool

Awoniyi says his objective was to “exhibit everything that is in you” and that came to the fore in Forest’s penultimate game, when his goal against Arsenal – the club he supports – secured their top‑flight status.

Forest fans have taken Awoniyi to their hearts and voted him this season’s player of the month for August after he scored three goals in his first three games. The feelings are mutual.

“Looking at the difficulty that we found ourselves in last season, they were still behind us, pushing everyone to keep on fighting … They never gave up on us and that gave us more power to push forward.”

The champions Manchester City host Forest on Saturday and Awoniyi expects to face Manuel Akanji, the most difficult defender he has faced. He will relish the challenge.

“I played against him in the Bundesliga and I know how tough he is. I’ve always believed [success in football] will happen. I’ve always worked hard, I’ve always hoped for it, prayed for it and I’ve always done everything that will make me achieve what I want.”

By Osasu Obayiuwana From The Guardian

Kenyans watch the SGR cargo train as it leaves Mombasa for Nairobi, May 30, 2017. The project was a $3.3 billion investment backed by China. [AP Photo]

As China marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of its global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), new data show lending to Africa has fallen to its lowest level in almost two decades.
A paper released this week by researchers at Boston University’s Global China Initiative said the pandemic, domestic economic woes, a policy shift and concerns about African debt were among the reasons lending in 2021 and 2022 dropped below $2 billion for the first time since the inception of the BRI.
In 2000-22, Chinese lenders loaned $170 billion to Africa — one of its major BRI partners — the research showed. But after peaking in 2016 at over $28 billion, lending to Africa dropped considerably in the past two years.
In 2021, China loaned $1.22 billion to Africa, and last year only nine loans amounting to $994.48 million were signed.
“Trends show that loan averages and amounts are decreasing and policy framing in China is also shifting, which leads us to expect less large-scale lending over $500 million,” lead researcher Oyintarelado Moses told VOA in an email.
“At the same time, this new policy framing of small and/or beautiful coming from China is showing that there will be smaller-valued loans.”
Social, environmental impact
Moses was referring to what Chinese President Xi Jinping has called Beijing’s “small and beautiful” approach, which aims to shift away from investment in large projects like railways and highways to focus on smaller loans that have more of a socially and environmentally beneficial impact.
Another trend the study found was that while previously most lending went to eastern and southern African countries, in 2021-22 there was a shift to western Africa, with countries like Senegal, Benin and Ivory Coast receiving most of the money.
That is because “these countries have historically borrowed less from China, so China had less loan exposure to these countries,” Moses said, noting that countries in other parts of Africa that have borrowed heavily in the past are currently managing debt distress.
Chinese lenders may also have become more cautious, the study found, because several African countries such as Zambia either have defaulted on their debt or are struggling to repay, leading to Western allegations of unsustainable lending.
In 2021-22, several loans for projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Ghana and Zambia were canceled after failed negotiations, the study found.
During that same period, new loans were directed to a wider variety of sectors than in previous years, although transport remained a dominant area.
There were no new investments in energy projects, the African sector that attracted the most previous loans. The paper’s authors think China will continue to look for greener projects to fund after pledging to make the BRI “green” and ending the financing of coal projects overseas.
One of the most recent Chinese investments is a deal with South Africa signed in August to help with its energy crisis. The package will include a grant and emergency equipment from China totaling $30 million.
Two areas in which investments increased in 2021-22 were the environment — such as a loan to Senegal to help in “improving water resources” — and improvement in farming and education, the data showed.
Other reasons for the decrease in lending had more to do with China’s own economic slowdown.
Looking ahead
The study suggests future lending to Africa could include fewer large-scale loans of over $500 million and more loans under $50 million.
“African governments will continue to have demand because of infrastructure deficits and climate goals, but Chinese lenders will likely respond to that demand within these new policy parameters,” Moses told VOA.
“In general, we expect Chinese lending to rebound because of African country demands. But this rebound will likely not return to previous levels,” she said.
Cobus Van Staden, an analyst at the China Global South Project, agreed that lending rates will never again reach the levels seen in 2016.
However, he said, “there’s a tendency, I think, to just see the current decline in lending as, ‘Oh, the BRI’s over,’ which I think is unrealistic.
“I think the BRI has never been a stable thing, and it was always mutating and morphing, and it’s mutating and morphing again at the moment. So it’s going to take on some leaner, greener version of itself, and then we’ll see,” he told VOA.
Van Staden predicted that “as the economy in China improves and comes a little bit back up to speed … I think the lending will creep back up.”
He said he expected this to happen after next year’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.
“I think we’re probably in a kind of flat phase at the moment, and then I think it will start creeping back up, because the thing to remember is that Africa isn’t going away.”
Africa needs China and, likewise, Africa also offers China benefits such as access to the continent’s vast mineral resources, he said.

Winger Jakiya Whitfeld ran in four tries as the Australian Prime Minister’s XIII overcame their Papua New Guinea counterparts 56-4 on Saturday afternoon. 
Whitfeld, who spent this NRLW season with the Wests Tigers, scored a double in each half in an impressive showing which included running for over 200 metres. 

While it was a comfortable win for the visitors in the end, it was a performance likely to have pleased PNG coach Ben Jeffries on the back of the Test side making it through to the World Cup semi-finals last year.
The PNG PM’s XIII came up with a number of impressive goal-line stands in defence across the 70 minutes, before bringing the vocal crowd in Port Moresby to their feet with a try in the second half to Latoniya Norris.
Doubles from both Cassey Tohi-Hiku and Whitfeld gave the Australians a 18-0 lead at the break, with gusty conditions contributing to only one of the tries being converted.