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Debate
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Diamonds: everlasting, and blood-stained
Why Africa considers China an opportunity
12/2006 |
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Why Africa considers China an opportunity
Early last month, Beijing hosted a three-day summit to promote cooperation with Africa. While Western governments are uncomfortable with China’s growing engagement in Africa, the continent’s experience has so far been positive.
[ By Mohamed Guèye ]
Many African leaders and intellectuals consider cooperation with China a win-win partnership. The Chinese are very encouraging. Instead of rhetoric, they deliver action. Assistance often seems easier to get from the People’s Republic than from Europe or the USA. It is no longer unusual to see Chinese engineers sweating away with black construction teams along Africa’s roads and railway lines. On the other hand, aid conditions imposed by Western partners tend to be so tight that they are hardly ever met.
In the 1990s, US President Bill Clinton launched the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The idea was to grant African products – especially textiles – access to the American market. Almost ten years on, however, Africa has still hardly benefited. Other Western-designed plans to bring Africa out of its miserable condition have equally failed. Too often, the rich world does not apply the principles it preaches. Its leaders have been advocating “trade, not aid” for some time, but not acted accordingly.
“Free trade” has become just another slogan. It’s meaning seems to change with every player in the field. Trade between Africa and the West has never been done on equal terms. The rules always depended on the currently prevailing interests of the strongest partners. To many Africans, therefore, the emergence of another strong partner in East Asia is a blessing. China, after all, respects the terms of various agreements, and African leaders hope to escape from the heavy burden that goes along with the West’s much boasted “assistance”, which really only comes in small doses.
Of the African Union’s 53 member countries, 48 took part in the summit held in Beijing early last month. Some observers said it was the most important gathering of African Heads of States ever. After all, China embodies the kind of success African leaders aspire to. In the 1950s, many Chinese were starving, whereas today the world envies China’s growth rates.
Those who attended the Beijing summit did not come home empty-handed. China’s President Hu Jintao pledged to double aid to Africa by 2009. The media are excited about his promises of preferential loans to the tune of $3 billion, export credits of up to $2 billion and a $5 billion fund to encourage Chinese investment in Africa. So far, no other country has ever pledged such sums at any single date.
Beijing wants to do business, but is also prepared to aid, as is evident in recent experience. Last year, China became the main exporter to Africa, ahead of France and Germany. Chinese-made cars are cheap. They run reliably on our streets. Far Eastern goods are thus helping to improve African standards of living. Today, China is the second most important destination for exports from Africa, behind the USA. According to an estimate by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), African-Chinese trade will triple by 2010. From Dakar to Maputo, Chinese entrepreneurs are investing heavily. China is not just exploiting oil and raw materials, but also building hospitals, roads and schools. The $ 1.9 billion worth of deals signed in Beijing cover a wide range of sectors – including commodities, infrastructure, finance, technology, textiles and communication.
While human rights matter hugely to the West, this issue does not seem that relevant to African people, who think that the West’s track record on the continent disqualifies it from pontificating. Moreover, the USA and the former colonial powers shy from getting involved in resolving the conflicts in Africa – with only few exceptions.
Generally speaking, Africans are grateful to China. In the meantime, the continent’s intellectuals hope that the political leadership will be clever enough in handling the new opportunities as not to replace dependency on one set of rich nations with dependency on another, newly emerging power.
Mohamed Guèye
heads the business and economics desk
of Le Quotidien, Senegal’s leading daily paper.
mgueye@lequotidien.sn
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