Africabeat

I was asked yesterday to comment on Chinese investment in Africa for Radio France International’s English news service (Broadcast #1, Broadcast #2).  This was in response to comments made on Saturday by Maxwell Mkwezalamba, Commissioner for Economic Affairs for the African Union at the summit currently underway in Kampala.

Reuters ran a sensational headline: ”AU says must replace Western partners with China.”

Here’s the far less controversial thing Mkwezalamba *actually* said (emphasis my own):

“We need to diversify our partners that we work with and hence for us, working with China is something that we have welcomed.”

He’s promoting an idea I first encountered several years back in Uganda, while talking to a government official who dismissed fears of China’s takeover of Africa as overblown.  He said Uganda had and would continue to engage with Western donors, but that China was increasingly giving Uganda the freedom to dictate their own terms.  So, for example, if the flavor of the month, whether it was fighting TB or promoting women’s microcredit or abstinence-only HIV/AIDS prevention, didn’t align with the government’s actual needs or interests, they’d have more room to say: actually, what we really need is funding for agricultural implements or to pay teachers’ salaries, or what have you.  He said what China was increasingly doing for Ugandans was giving them the ability to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Although on the one hand donor coordination is important to give aid policies some semblance of coherence, there are very few markets where monopolies lead to good outcomes.  Considering the West’s track record in ending poverty in Africa, I think Western donors could stand some competition.

I’m aware I often come off as a cheerleader when I should be a critic.  Don’t get me wrong, there are many things that are problematic about Chinese investment in Africa, but many of those same things are what is also wrong with Western investment.  China offers a few unprecedented opportunities that I think at least some countries, if leaders are savvy and the public holds them to account, will make work to their advantage.

Shawel Hailu stands in front of Laphto, a new multi-purpose entertainment
center which will feature luxury apartments, an art gallery, bowling
alley, pool hall, arcade, night club, cafe, fusion restaurant,
shopping, swimming pool, health club, running track, movie theatre (for
indy/art house films), VIP center, rentable shopping/office space, Wifi
hotspots, a Montessori school and, eventually, a world-class pediatrics
hospital. He’s part of the wave of returned Diaspora Ethiopians driving the current building boom.

His materials?  Sourced from China, of course, via Guangzhou.  The foreman on his work site are also Chinese.

The (now former) Chinese Ambassador to Ethiopia, Lin Lin, sits with Mr. Wen, the head of CRBC in Ethiopia at opening of a new road linking a Chinese glass factory to a main thoroughfare.  CRBC, a state-owned Chinese roads and bridge construction company, has broke ground on dozens of new roads in Addis Ababa since it launched its first Ethiopian project in 1998 known simply as “the ring road,” a name and a concept which ought to make residents of Beijing smile.  The mayor of Addis Ababa and the head of the Addis Ababa Roads Authority also officiated.  The mayor thanked the Chinese and compared Ethiopia to the US and China saying, “if there are no roads, there is no development.”  The Chinese officials praised the EPRDF for their wisdom and for bringing development to the Ethiopian people.  (No comment.)

Also originally appearing on Global Voices:

Blog politique au Senegal explains the difference between Senegal and China
[Fr]: “Aside from the obvious differences like the color of their skin,
the enormous disparity in the size of their populations, their
respective demographic differences, I also know that there exists
another fundamental difference…Us, we play football, we dream of
footballs, we talk about football, we worship the professional football
players, we beg in order to pay for this time-wasting game that brings
the country to a halt whenever there is a match. All the while the
Chinese also dream of footballs: those that they will manufacture and
sell to us in cash!”

(I love Blog Politique au Senegal by the way.  One of the most incisive and prolific political blogs in all of French-speaking Africa.)

Last week, Dubai World, Dubai’s investment holding company, announced it will invest $230 million in Rwanda’s tourism industry. Dubai World plans to build a five-star tented park at the base of the country’s famed gorilla preserve at Volcanoes National Park, an airstrip and hotel at Akagera Park, and a tea estate adjacent to a proposed four-star hotel at Nyungwe forest. 

The Rwanda Investments and Export Promotion Agency (RIEPA) is aggressively courting ICT and tourism investments as part Vision 2020, an ambitious plan to transform Rwanda into a middle-income country by the year 2020. 

When I was in Kigali last summer, I spoke to some officers at RIEPA about Vision 2020, and they showed me these really beautiful sketches of luxury cabins, best described as castles of glass, perched over a lake.  I believe they had commissioned an American architecture firm to do the drawings.  "All we need is an investor," they said.  It was one of the many moments during my three weeks in Rwanda where I thought, "Damn, I can’t help but admire the sheer audacity of this government’s dreams."

Looks like audacity is paying off.

Here’s some info on the Dubai World investment in French and English.

See also: Notes on Rwanda, Democracy & Authoritarianism

Just to reiterate: I do not advocate ending all aid to Africa.  That’s silly.  I’m advocating a paradigm shift in terms of how we think about aid, its purpose, and Africa’s possibilities.

From a banker who works in Mozambique:

"In one board meeting for the bank we discussed the vision/mission of the bank. (The NGO side creeping into the bank.) One member of the board was the CD of a large American NGO which has been in Mozambique for years. Folks said ‘alleviate poverty’ or ‘eliminate poverty’ and such.

I suggested, ‘what about making our clients wealthy?’ The reaction was immediate – no. That was not what we do. It was very interesting.

In the end, we thankfully dissuaded them of using the poverty word so that we wouldn’t have to tell our clients – in our own mission statement – that they were poor.

Interesting article."

I’ve just learned about the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa which bills itself as "the first institution devoted to the study of China on
the African continent."  They offer a weekly briefing on China-related African news and a research report on Chinese investment in African infrastructure and construction sectors. They also appear to be doing some work on Indian investment on the continent.

This is an absolutely fantastic and important undertaking.  In fact I know of no other academic center dedicated to China-Africa studies in the world, even in China.  I will follow their work with interest!

William Easterly, father of the "aid harms" school of social justice, has an editorial in today’s LA Times that mentions TED in passing ("a recent African conference") and takes aim at the anti-poverty glitterati’s often negative portrayals of Africa:

JUST WHEN IT SEEMED that Western images of Africa could not get any weirder, the July 2007 special Africa issue of Vanity Fair was published, complete with a feature article on "Madonna’s Malawi." At the same time, the memoirs of an African child soldier are on sale at your local Starbucks, and celebrity activist Bob Geldof is touring Africa yet again, followed by TV cameras, to document that "War, Famine, Plague & Death are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and these days they’re riding hard through the back roads of Africa."…

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In response to Africans to Bono: ‘For God’s Sake Please Stop!’ I received several emails asking about how to invest in Africa.  I’m a writer and a wannabe political scientist, which doesn’t exactly qualify me to provide an answer.

So here is what I propose.  Let’s discuss here the following questions (and feel free to add your own):

• Why are so many reticent to invest in Africa?
• Where does the perception of the potential risks (corruption, embezzlement, etc.) reflect or diverge from the reality?
• What are the best industries or countries to invest in?  Lowest risk?  Highest return?
• Help!  I’m have a little bit of money and I want to invest in Africa.  What do I do, how do I get started?  Offer your own investment success stories and advice to first-time investors
• Some probably don’t have the capital or interest to invest directly, but there are organizations that offer grants or microloans to small businesses in Africa.  What are some examples of these?
• At the conference there were a few attendees who are starting private equity funds in Africa.  For which market?  What is the status of initiatives?

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I’ll stand up and shout when I think people are dead wrong or heading in a dangerous direction, but I’m generally the girl who sits back, listens and when she speaks tries to do so with conviction but hopes she won’t rock the boat too much.  The flurry of blog posts, digg, newsvine and reddit comments, del.cio.us bookmarks, and personal emails (both laudatory and critical) since the article on aid/Bono/TED was (finally) published a few days ago has taken me by complete surprise. 

I am really glad that so many people are debating these issues.  And if I’ve been able to spark interest and get people talking about TED, aid, entrepreneurship, and the media’s portrayal of Africa in a meaningful way, even if it meant being uncharacteristically polemic, then I am happy for it.

But a few clarifications:

1) Yes I’ve been to Africa and no I don’t think all African children carry AK-47s – A few lazy readers have suggested I go to Africa and see for myself  how wrong I am to take a few exceptional examples of African dysfunction to generalize for the entire continent. 

Putting aside the fact that I had to be in Africa in order to have attended a conference in Arusha, I’ve been to seven African countries and in none of them have I seen an AK-47-toting child, people dying of famine or war, or any of the other completely ludicrous stereotypes that form the opening paragraph of the article.

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