Last week I met up with an old globetrotter friend who had taken a sabbatical from his business. He had been traveling from Morocco to South Africa, mostly by train and buses, and had wanted to see as many countries as he could within his eight months of allotted time.
And here is what he said, more or less (though he would have written this far more elegantly than I can): "in every single country I visited, a Chinese presence is deeply felt, whether it's in the form of oil & mineral exploitation & mining, forestry, growing food and general infrastructure, they have managed to sew up the entire continent."
What does it mean, I asked my friend. His response was short and succinct: "it means the western world has missed the boat, pure and simple. While we wage unwinnable wars in three continents, the Chinese are busy laying the foundations for their next century, and they are also creating the green jobs & renewable energies that we only talk about."
A quick search of teh Google will provide you with the details: through a judicious program of investment (through the usual suspects, the Chinese State Owned Enterprises) the Chinese Government is securing substantial amounts of oil, mineral and arable land in Africa, a move that will have far reaching repercussions in the next couple of decades.
For example, the city of Kitwe is in the heart of the Zambian copper belt. The new roads and lush green parks intersecting the shanty towns hint at the boom in copper prices, which have quadrupled in six years. But neither Zambian mining firms nor the government paid for them. The roads and parks are a gift from China. In the past couple of years, all over Africa and Asia, Chinese-built roads, railways, hospitals and schools have been springing up. They are part of China's relentless drive to secure access to the natural resources it needs to maintain its economy's extraordinary boom. Source
Surely, most of us remember Darfur and the atrocities committed by the Sudanese henchman, Bashir, who sold 60% of of the 490,000 barrels of crude oil produced daily to the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation. In other words, China has become Sudan's closest economic, military and political partner. It also constructed the 1,500km pipeline that connects the oil fields of the south with Port Sudan in the north - from where the oil is exported.
“Africa’s trade with China has reached unprecedented levels, up more than 1000% from 11 years ago,” says John Thomson, Managing Director of Exhibition Management Services, organisers of Energex Africa. “Sino-Africa trade reached $126.9-billion last year. China has now surpassed Germany as South Africa’s number one trading partner,” he adds.
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Ethiopia is a good place to see the impact of Chinese investment. The capital Addis Ababa is a crowded, busy place - not surprising when you consider that Ethiopia is the second most highly populated country in Africa, home to an estimated 88 million people. The city is alive with construction - everywhere you go you will come across building sites and cranes. And much of that construction is being done by the Chinese.
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As I navigated (googled) throughout the entire continent, I lost track of how many countries have Chinese-built hospitals & roads. The last word my friend uttered on this matter was "pragmatism".