China in the heart of Africa

Opportunities and pitfalls in a rapidly expanding relationship

By: Kingsley Ighobor

 

"China’s gift to Africa.” The new headquarters of the African Union, a towering 20-storey building in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is so called because China picked up the $200 million tab for the state-of-the-art complex. Ethiopia’s tallest building, completed in December 2011 in time for an AU summit the following month, includes a 2,500-seat conference hall. The gift prompted Ethiopia’s late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to refer to Africa’s current economic boom as a “renaissance,” due partly to China’s “amazing re-emergence and its commitments to a win-win partnership with Africa.”

Not all Africans have welcomed China’s gift. West African political commentator Chika Ezeanya considers it an “insult to the AU and to every African that in 2012 a building as symbolic as the AU headquarters is designed, built and maintained by a foreign country.” However, as African leaders savoured the swanky complex in January, they took turns thanking China.

China’s largess to Africa is not new. Previously China had either donated or assisted in building a hospital in Luanda, Angola; a road from Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, to Chirundu in the southeast; stadiums in Sierra Leone and Benin; a sugar mill and a sugarcane farm in Mali; and a water supply project in Mauritania, among other projects. At the fifth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, held in Beijing in July 2012, Chinese President Hu Jintao listed yet more, including 100 schools, 30 hospitals, 30 anti-malaria centres and 20 agricultural technology demonstration centres.

African leaders continue to insist that the relationship with China is not a one-way street and that it includes more trade than aid. Indeed, trade between Africa and China was $166 billion in 2011, according to the Economist, a UK weekly. “The good thing about this partnership is that it’s a give and take,” Faida Mitifu, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s ambassador to the US, told the Reuters news agency.

 

Eye on the pie 

 

What then is China taking? In China Returns to Africa, a collection of essays published by Columbia University Press, the editors Chris Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira note, “The overarching driver has been the Chinese government’s strategic pursuit of resources and attempts to ensure raw material supplies for growing energy needs within China.” The world’s second-biggest economy currently buys more than one-third of Africa’s oil.

In addition, China’s industries are getting raw materials such as coal from South Africa, iron ore from Gabon, timber from Equatorial Guinea and copper from Zambia.

Chinese industries also require new markets for their products and Africa is a potentially enormous outlet. “China is repositioning itself continuously for the new Africa that’s emerging,” says Kobus van der Wath, founder of Beijing Axis, an international advisory and procurement firm based in Beijing.

Chinese products have flooded markets in Johannesburg, Luanda, Lagos, Cairo, Dakar and other cities, towns and villages in Africa. Those goods include clothing, jewellery, electronics, building materials and much more. “Even little things like matches, tea bags, children’s toys and bathing soaps are coming from China,” says Bankole Aluwe of Alaba market in Lagos, Nigeria.

African consumers like Chinese products because they are affordable. “Chinese goods are cheaper than those from Europe and North America. In our business, price is very important to customers,” Mr. Aluwe says. 

 

Not all is rosy 

 

China’s inroads into Africa’s agricultural sector include the 20 demonstration centres that President Hu said will “help African countries increase production capacity.” But there was a backlash when the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo leased thousands of unutilized hectares of land to ZTE International, a Chinese company, in a deal that Oxfam, a UK charity, and others have labelled a “land grab.”

The “land grab” accusation may be overstated, according to a study by the UK’s Standard Chartered Bank. But the authors of the study believe that in the longer term China could well seek to import much more food from Africa which, by World Bank estimates, has 60 per cent of the world’s uncultivated land. “Given Africa’s potential, China is likely to turn towards it.”

The furore over land adds to growing criticisms of the manner of China’s aggressive Africa penetration. Many Africans often refer to the poor quality of Chinese products and blame their low prices for the collapse of local industries. Continue reading here.