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.

Artistic rendering of the new Gottera Junction, a project by a Shanghai-based construction group.  Pretty, isn’t it?

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.)

The Wall Street Journal’s David Wessel on South-South investment:

(via Africa Unchained)

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

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!

From an opinion piece from the Ugandan newspaper New Vision:

Due to Africa’s lack of understanding of the character and real
intentions of China, its relationship with the emerging Asian giant
remains largely unbalanced and unfavourable to the interests of the
African people

*  *  *

Uganda: African Governments Should Study Communist China

Dr. Kiggundu Amin Tamale
Kampala

MUCH
has been- written about China’s burgeoning global influence and
pervasiveness as well as its seemingly insatiable desire to establish
and maintain strong economic ties with several African countries. Some
top-notch analysts have also described Beijing as a new Mecca for
global trotting- cap in hand African leaders.

However,
before declaring China as a close and dependable friend, African
policymakers need to ask themselves one important and valid question,
that is, does Africa understand communist China well? If the answer is
no, then, Africans need to find a way of understanding this hitherto
insular emerging Asian economic giant.

Continue reading this piece on allAfrica.com

(Listen to me on the BBC!)

I was interviewed in Kampala last week on Chinese investment in Africa for the BBC program Business Daily. 

Sadako Ogata, the head of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and former head of the UNHCR, was the lead interviewee.  It was my very first radio appearance and I have a somewhat, let’s say, "thinner" CV than Ms. Ogata, and so understandably I was more than a bit nervous.

Fortunately, the BBC is awesome.  They cut out the stupid things you say, eliminate the uh…umm….,tone down the Americanisms, and make you sound smarter and more articulate than you actually are.  They even promoted me: I’m a political scientist, and I haven’t even started applying to grad schools!

You can listen to my portion of the Monday, June 25th edition of Business Daily by clicking here.

Howard French, The New York Times correspondant in Shanghai, explains France’s waning power in Chad and the increasing influence of the Chinese:

How did things reach this pass? During the long tenure of Jacques Chirac, France underestimated Africans and China alike, while mistaking America as its rival in a part of the world where Washington has never had grand ambitions or even much vision. (Read more)

Will China Teach Africa How to Fish?

A few weeks ago, Blaise Aplogan wrote (En, Fr) about Li Zhaoxing’s visit to Benin.  He saves what I consider his most fascinating observation for last:

""Smiles, frank handshakes, and community of Third-World experience, are quite
good. But what worries me is what a friend of mine working in the Foreign
Ministry told me. According to this well informed civil servant, agreements with
the Chinese are interesting, but they are often accompanied by a long period of
transfer of technology, not to mention ownership right. Some delays may be as
long as a hundred years! A hundred years, may not be so long for China, an old
nation having behind her a past of several millenniums. But for us Africans who
have been languishing in the shadow of poverty an alienation, finding it hard to
take hold of our destiny and get rid of the fate, we look forward to making our own the Chinese proverb which
says: " it is better to learn to fish rather than be given a fish " and
I shall add gladly: " and not to be reduced to salivate while it is cooking in
our own kitchen, in the Chinese sauce …"

I agree that technology and skills transfer are key, but that
doesn’t happen by accident or simply through passive osmosis.  My guess
is that real skills transfer isn’t going to come unless a) African
governments *really* hammer this point home as a condition for future
business deals (I’m a bit skeptical on this point for the simple fact
that human beings have a difficult time acting rationally in the face
of mountains of cash) or b) when Africans actually start owning a
significant share of Chinese-funded projects. 

Continue reading