China’s grand re-entrance into Africa
Moreblessings Chidaushe tackles the issue of development aid to Africa, comparing the approach of the West and the new player, China. What is significantly different, she states, is that instead of the top-down language used by the West, China has instead used language that speaks of partnership and friendship. The West should not see China as a threat to its hold over Africa. Africa should be left to decide who it wants to engage with, she concludes.
This article interrogates China’s new approach to Africa in the specific context of development aid (grants, loans, technical experts). The rationale is to compare the Chinese approach to the traditional western donor approach and analyze the extent to which Africa may or may not benefit from this new approach. Some of the questions it tries to explore are; is China necessarily offering Africa a better development aid option than the west? Where is the new relationship taking Africa? Will Chinese aid move Africa towards achieving the MDGs? Is China a new friend or a new imperialist? What will be the west’s role in this new paradigm? And most importantly is this engagement not just a case of whose turn it is to colonize a continent up for grabs anyway?
Background/context
Chinese-African relations date back to 50 years ago when in 1956, China first established diplomatic relations with Egypt, since then, China has not looked back in advancing its relationship with the continent. To date, it has established co-corporation with 48 African countries (supporting the One China Policy). Africa and China share common historical experiences which have significantly contributed to cementing of what is now described as an “unshakable friendship”. Fifty years of engagement has borne more than 720 Chinese projects in Africa, huge infrastructural projects (TAZARA railway, major highways, stadiums, mining, energy ventures, oil in Angola and Nigeria) 18,000 governmental scholarships, 800 Chinese enterprises, 15,000 medical personnel and much more. Trade between the two parties has risen from an estimated 4 billion in 1995 to 40 billion in 2005 and still growing, trade agreements brokered during the Nov 2006 Sino- Africa Summit point to $100 billion by 2010.
China’s cooperation with Africa has previously not been particularly outstanding. We however begin to note some significant changes taking place around 2000 with the hosting of the first Forum on China-Africa Cooperation – Ministerial Conference in Beijing which received massive participation from the African partners. The Forum principle was based on “carrying out consultation on an equal footing, enhancing understanding, increasing consensus, promoting friendship and furthering cooperation”. China’s gentle and appealing attitude coupled with growing concerns and restlessness about a largely unproductive engagement with the west contributed to a stronger desire by both parties to strengthen the relationship. Furthermore, China’s growing superpower ambitions have resulted in more aggressive efforts to strengthen this relationship especially around the strategic resource endowments in Africa. The climax of these efforts culminated in the development of a policy that was announced in January 2006.
China’s policy on Africa
In January, 2006, China unveiled its new policy on Africa, an all-round, coherent roadmap articulating China’s objectives and strategies in Africa in areas ranging from high-level exchange visits, consultation mechanisms, trade, investment, financial, agricultural, resources, tourism cooperation, infrastructure, debt relief and cooperation in human resources development, science and technology and cultural exchanges and many more.
One of the most striking features of the China-Africa policy document is the language in which it is coined. China uses friendly language and its soft power to appeal to Africa’s hand. The document is coined in a language that provides a gentle, friendly, caring attitude one to which Africa has been wholly enticed. Exploitation, heavy hand top-down relationship has been typical of Africa’s relationship with the west, one approach China has deliberately opted to reverse – presenting itself as a potentially better friend to Africa.
While China has a clear policy to engage with Africa as a block, on its part, Africa’s approach to China still remains largely ad hoc. Although several countries have adopted the “Look East” policies, these are still at individual national levels with each country pursuing maximum benefit for its own best interests and specific needs.
One can’t help wondering if, without a comprehensive and structured policy, African countries are individually smart enough to deal with this growing force of a friend without being shortchanged. Although the relationship is supposedly based on an “equal” partnership – the level of equality in the partnership is questionable given the different contexts of the two parties.
Both simple logic and experience tells that it is impossible to engage on an equal footing as long as the parties are not on the same level. China is coming in as a donor and Africa as a recipient much like it has been with the west. The departure platform is thus already tipped in China’s favor making it difficult for Africa to bargain a genuine partnership – some kind of domination is likely to take place between the two.
A way out would be the development of a comprehensive African policy on China. This would result in more structured, secure and beneficial engagement and indeed potentially create the platform for a win-win situation as is the intention of the relationship.
An African policy on China would have to be developed through a continental body like the African Union with multi-stakeholder collaboration at all levels beginning at grassroots and feeding into regional blocks like SADC, EAC, ECOWAS etc. Such a policy would increase African countries security and benefits in dealing with the superpower wannabe rather than individual approaches easily susceptible to manipulation. Others might argue that different national interests would call for different policies and engagement mechanisms with China. Under such circumstances, individual countries could well be encouraged to develop national policies on China but these should be anchored within the framework of a continental policy, in other words, the various national and the regional policy should be complimentary.
Judging from the African leadership enthusiasm towards the strengthening of Chinese relations, it would seem China is the ultimate solution to the continent’s problems. It is crucial to note that while China might assist Africa to a certain degree, it is not, will not and should not be expected to solve all of Africa’s problems. It remains the responsibility of Africans to craft a way out of their quagmire. A simplistic view of the upcoming Chinese deal reveals that benefit from the Chinese aid is minimal, for example the proposed 100 schools will only translate to 2 schools per country in a continent whose member countries need more than 100 schools each, the same applies for the proposed 100 agricultural experts to be sent to Africa and the 50 clinics.
Thus it is clear that benefits of Chinese aid per individual country is minimal and will not add a significant difference to the achievement of the MDGs in Africa. It is therefore still crucial for Africa to maintain good relations with other partners (west) to compliment efforts towards the achievement of the goals. A huge concern is that currently China and Western relations with Africa are being approached from a competition point of view. A way should be sought to combine these efforts for maximum benefit for Africa.
Development Aid in Africa
A traditionally perceived way out of Africa’s quagmire has been the use of development aid. The crisis of western aid has been that, the more the industry has grown, the more distorted it has become and the more detached from reality it has become. Strategic dynamics have grown to undermine the fundamentals of aid thus it has largely failed to achieve its objectives and thus been rightly criticized. The concern is that there is a rather weak link between the aid intentions, amounts poured into development and the worsening situation on the ground.
China and development aid
Critics and even development practitioners themselves have long made recommendations on how development aid can be improved. They have recommended that Africa needs more grants than loans, less technical aid, cheap loans and aid without conditionalities and they have also called for more trade not aid. This sections examines the extent to which the supposedly better Chinese aid is meeting these recommendations in order to assess the extent to which Chinese aid will be better in addressing Africa’s challenges.
China is itself a developing country but it got freedom earlier and adopted an aggressive approach to its development. Because it has not depended on aid to the same level as Africa, it has since achieved impressive development in the past 50 years. It is no wonder Africa is ready to embrace engagement with China as it considered it as having a crucial experience from which Africa can tap. China chooses to concentrate more on the huge infrastructural investments, production and trade and the turnover from these have proved more beneficial than development aid. Thus, unlike the western approach, China concentrates more on trade and investments and less on charity and social sectors.
While Africa excitedly welcomes China as a better development partner, it is important to be cautious and not go into the relationship blindly, it is critical for Africa to take time to analyze the implications and real benefits of the China policy and engagement with Africa. After all, China has aggressive superpower ambitions which it is advancing and may in the long-term harden its approach/stance to ensure the achievement of its objectives.
The excitement around the “new” Chinese approach brings about the general perception that China is offering Africa a better aid package – but is this necessarily true? Much like the west, China’s development aid to Africa has centered around grants, loans and technical expertise, therefore the two’s departure points are similar. The Chinese approach therefore begs an interrogation to assess any differences between Chinese and traditional western approaches. Currently, the technicalities/dynamics of Chinese aid are not very transparent as the deals are brokered at bilateral (government to government) level. This discussion therefore bases some of its facts on experience on the ground which translates to/implies possible similar existing bilateral agreements between the two parties.
Technical expertise
Technical expertise has remained a major concern of the development industry. As a conditionality, western donors have traditionally attached technical expertise to their development aid.
On technical expertise the Chinese have proved worse than the west. Chinese projects are typically accompanied by droves of Chinese nationals. What has been particularly difficult for locals, is that in many cases the Chinese even import Chinese casual labors, leaving the majority of locals in the cold and yet Africa has an abundance of unskilled labor which could immensely benefit from these projects.
Chinese aid, and especially technical aid should be adjusted to consider such circumstances. While it should be targeted at reducing unemployment in Africa, it is instead targeted at reducing unemployment in China.
Technical aid is thus undoubtedly one of the areas in which Africa will have to battle with in regard to Chinese aid as Chineses labor does not seem to be a negotiable part of Chinese aid. Earlier than later, Africa should draw up its own policy on technical aid/labor to ensure that collaboration with China will assist in reducing the unemployment pandemic typical of the continent.
Trade
Europe has for long been Africa’s largest trading partner – but with the coming in of China, tables are certainly turning. China’s continues to develop insatiable energy needs and Africa is more than ready to plunder its natural resources to satisfy China. The danger of this benefit though is that it is only being calculated in monetary terms at the expense of issues around environmental sustainability and resource depletion, which are crucial to the continent’s future. Both China and Africa should develop policies to safeguard environmental and sustainability concerns of the extraction of resources from the continent. For now, China’s preoccupation is the extraction of Africa’s resources, raising the question of the long-term sustainability of these resources.
The Beijing Consensus
China’s aid commitments as stated in the China-Africa policy were further elaborated/expounded during the Sino-Africa Summit (Nov 2006) where the eastern nation pledged to double aid to Africa to US$5 billion for direct investments ($3 billion in preferential loans, $2 billion in export credits) by 2009 and increasing the number of loans, development projects in health and agriculture and also in debt cancellation. From the above deal, African loyalty in favor of China is set to grow further in the coming years, making the neo-liberal agenda less relevant.
And yet the doubled Chinese aid will come in the form of loans. What is not yet clear to African publics are the conditions under which Africa is acquiring these loans. Admittedly the Chinese loans are cheaper than western loans and come with less political and other conditionalities and penalties unlike the IFI Poverty Reduction Growth Facility (PRGF). Chinese aid has one major political conditionality attached to it – adherence to the “One China” policy. Any country engaging China cannot engage Taiwan. The caveats of this conditionality may however breed other political conditionalities not yet clear to Africans at this stage.
The Chinese loans also have, attached to them, economic conditionalities to allow Chinese firms access to the exploitation of Africa resources, repatriation of profits and labor as discussed above. It is also not yet clear what the implications of these loans will be on the continent’s debt crisis.
The west has often been accused of double counting/discounting aid and one cannot help but wonder too if the Chinese offer for debt relief, technical assistance, scholarships and exchange visits will not be double counted as a part of the aid package. Thus it is a misrepresentation to claim that Chinese aid is free of conditionalities.
Given the above discussion, it is sensible to conclude that Chinese aid may not be significantly different from western aid and therefore may not move Africa towards the achievement of the MDGs. Currently there is more excitement for anticipated benefits overshadowing the analysis of the actual benefits which are in fact minimal. High hopes/expectations should not be confused for actual benefits because what may seem like the oasis in Africa’s development journey may only be a mirage. So far Chinese aid (grants, loans and technical expertise) has not proved itself significantly different from western aid.
Conclusion
For a continent in such a quagmire, anyone offering a generous hand to Africa will always be welcome. Africa’s resource gap has oftentimes subjected it to exploitation by some “partners” and yet due to limited options, the continent has had to bear with these exploitative relationships, subjecting its masses to deeper poverty, humiliation and desperation for the sake of accessing resources. The IFI conditionality regime is a classic example where Africa has had to subject itself to humiliating top-bottom relationships resulting in the IFIs maintaining a perpetual heavy grip on the continent. To date nearly all African countries are still undertaking IFI imposed structural adjustment programs off tangent to the interests of their peoples. The result of these programs has been increased poverty, debt and dependency.
What has made China a seemingly better and easier to embrace friend to Africa has been it’s seemingly softer approach it has used. Thus embracing China has been a walk in the park for Africa. The west has had to be coerced (by years of lobbying and advocacy) into adopting measures like the Paris Declaration in efforts to tip the scales up in favor of the developing world. Even then this agenda has not been fully embraced by all donors as they see themselves loosing their autonomy in the process. Thus compared to China, the west has generally been a difficult partner to deal with.
The west is in the forefront of criticizing China’s stance in Africa. In some circles, China has been branded as irresponsible and reckless mainly due to the non-interference policy. It is however doubtful that this criticism is a result of genuine concern for African welfare or the reality of the failure to block China from grabbing the traditional domain. Thus the Beijing Consensus to solidify relations with Africa and increase trade seems to pose a challenge to the Washington Consensus.
Yet the two parties potentially have something good to offer Africa, thus it is only sensible to combine the two for maximum benefit. The current competing approach is not beneficial to Africa. The west should not see itself as Africa’s savior but its partner - the “savior attitude” is what is bringing about the competition.
The above discussion has shown that as far as aid (grants, loans and technical expertise), Chinese aid is not significantly different from western aid. For China to increase the effectiveness of its aid, it should urgently revisit its technical aid agreements, increase grants as opposed to loans, and find a beneficial non-exploitative way of accessing African resources.
• Moreblessings Chidaushe currently works as a Programme Officer - Lobby & Advocacy for African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) based in Harare, Zimbabwe. Holds a Masters Degree in International Development from the University of Bath, UK. Dynamic, open-minded person. Follows development aid issues passionately and believes that not until Africa finds a solution to its challenges will there ever be social and economic justice on the continent.
• This is a shortened version of an article by Moreblessings Chidaushe. The full version, including references, will be available in a forthcoming book to be published in January by Fahamu and called ‘African perspectives on China in Africa’. The full articles will also be made available as .PDF files on the Pambazuka News website.
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