Latest Edition: Emerging Powers News Roundup

1. China in Africa

Chinese deal just for elite
Zimbabwe's Defence College, which is being built by the Chinese in a controversial deal with the government, will have a state-of-the-art medical facility for President Robert Mugabe and other top government and military officials. Diamond watchdogs, diplomats, civil servants and others have castigated the deal, with Albrecht Conze, the outgoing German envoy to Harare, dismissing the Chinese investment as "exploitation".
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China Begins to Look Away From Africa
Jasmine blossoms’ fall from grace in the Chinese flower industry is not the only blow Chinese businesses have suffered as a result of the North African and Middle Eastern democratic uprisings this spring. China is evaluating the impact of the Jasmine revolution on its overseas investment and outward business expansion strategy. Africa – once considered the lab for Chinese companies’ reach outside - is being relegated into a destination with too many risk factors. Safer political destinations and countries closer to home are likely to benefit from the shift.
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China plans to light up Africa with solar
China plans to build solar power projects in 40 African nations, aiming at cutting the continent’s reliance on fossil fuels and open a new market for Chinese manufacturers, the biggest producers of solar panels. The programme would require $100 million (R672m) in investment, Sun Guangbin, the secretary-general of photovoltaic products at the China Chamber of Commerce for Import & Export of Machinery and Electronic Products, said in a recent interview.
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Southern Africa and China work at expanding trade relations
China is willing to expand imports from southern African nations and encourage Chinese companies to invest in the region, Vice-Premier Wang Qishan said on Saturday.While there are still many uncertainties with the global economic recovery, China and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) should strengthen their economic cooperation to help both achieve stable growth and advance the global economy, Wang said during the China-SADC Investment and Business Forum in Beijing.
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Angola’s balance of trade surplus increases, with China as main customer
Angola has boosted its balance of trade surpluses by reducing imports and increasing exports, and has China as its main customer, official Angolan statistics showed. According to the latest report from Angola’s Customs Service, imports fell by 12.5 percent in 2010 to US$18.1 billion, whilst exports rose 2.1 percent to US$52.3 billion.
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2. India in Africa

Plea to adopt India’s rural employment guarantee scheme in South Africa
The head of South Africa’s powerful federation of trade unions has asked the government to consider replicating the model of India’s rural employment guarantee scheme MNERGA to address the huge unemployment problem in the country. Mr Zwelinzima Vavi, head of the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), believes that the model used in India could also work in South Africa.
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Eager to fend off China, India seeks diamonds from Zimbabwe
India, the world's largest diamond processing market, is in a bind. The country that imported close to $7.5 billion in rough diamonds last year has not been able to shake off the embargo on the import of diamonds from Zimbabwe. Traders maintain that this has left the door wide open for more imports into China. In a bid to crackdown on reports that conflict or blood diamonds are being smuggled into India and laundered there, the Indian government had earlier blocked the import of roughs from Zimbabwe. The decision was a major blow to India's diamond hub in Surat, which at one point, was the biggest importer of Zimbabwe stones and had predicted high growth in 2011.
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3. In Other Emerging Powers News

China gives bleak assessment of its battered environment
More than half of China's cities are affected by acid rain and one-sixth of major rivers are so polluted the water is unfit even for farmland, a senior official said on Friday in a bleak assessment of the environmental price of the country's economic boom. The environmental degradation which has accompanied China's breakneck growth has emerged as one of the most potent fault lines in Chinese society, driving protests against Beijing's perceived inability to effectively tackle the problem.
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South Korea seeks slice of Africa
South Korea has become the latest Asian economic giant to challenge China’s dominance on the African continent, with a high-powered business delegation set for Johannesburg next month. SA will host the first trade and investment exhibition organised by Korean companies on the continent. It is expected that 84 South Korean companies will be represented.
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Brazil joins Brics nations in second scramble for pie of African market
We too want a piece of the action. This seems to be Brazil’s new mantra as the emerging economy gears itself up for the second scramble for Africa.Two months ago, a contingent of businessmen, researchers and agronomists from Brazil, the eighth largest economy pitched camp in Nairobi for a 5-day expo. “Brazil wants to have an international presence,” says Marcos Brandalise, the managing director of BrazAfric, the group that arranged the expo. Brazil is behind China, India, and Russia which are entering into Africa to carry out infrustructural projects: railways, roads, pipelines and ports which they are using as bargaining chips to position themselves to tap into the world’s last frontier.
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South Africa wants to sell more value-added goods to BRICS partners
South Africa wants to sell more value-added products to its BRICS partner countries rather than just exporting primary products to address structural trade imbalances, Trade and Industries Minister Rob Davies said. “We are relating as a supplier of primary products like iron ore and we import value-added products like cellphones,” Mr. Davies said commenting on exports to BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and China) partners having quadrupled between 2006 and 2010, while imports doubled.
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SA firms should copy India in seeking growth in Africa
The top 50 companies listed on the JSE need a growth strategy which includes looking at expanding their services and products in Africa. "If South African companies are looking for growth opportunities, they need to look to the African continent, which is becoming increasing attractive to global investors in the wake of the global economic recession," Ajen Sita, CEO of Ernst & Young SA, said this week. "Africa has one of the fastest growth rates and highest returns on investment in the world," he said.
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African issues discussed in Kremlin
Russia will supply Equatorial Guinea with arms and military equipment and also help that country develop offshore oil and gas. Accordingly, the two countries will also take measures to protect each other’s investments. Formal agreements were entered into in the Kremlin after talks between Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Equatorial Guinea's President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
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4. Blogs, Opinions, Presentations and Publications

Is China looking for a profit by dealing with the Libyan rebels?
On June 4 China made its first confirmed contact with the Libyan rebels. The meeting was held in Qatar between a Chinese diplomat and the leader of the rebel National Transitional Council and follows a spate of defections by high-profile figures of the Gaddafi regime, including senior oil official and former Prime Minister Shokri Ghanem. In Beijing, a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said Beijing's ambassador to Qatar, Zhang Zhiliang, had met and "exchanged views on developments in Libya" with Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the chairman of the rebel council that is trying to offer itself as a credible temporary alterative to Gaddafi.
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China's scramble for the African Union
In the thin air of Ethiopia's low-slung, mostly ramshackle capital, a glittering tower complex is erupting from a warren of corrugated tin roof shacks that many locals call home. The China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) is building a massive new complex in an expansion of the African Union's (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa, Africa's "capital" akin, in theory, to Brussels being the capital or Europe. Though the CSCEC describes its efforts there as "aiding" the African Union, make no mistake, it is building the facility wholesale. Stern-faced Chinese foreman command ever-smiling Ethiopian laborers who are working round the clock to finish the project at breakneck speed for its planned January 2012 inauguration.
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India-Africa summit: from agreement to action
Despite ample coverage of IAFS-II, several questions demand objective answers. Was the summit well organised? What are its key outcomes? Does Africa look at India in isolation or within a rapidly changing global context? What are the prospects of a timely implementation of Addis Ababa decisions? And, finally, how would the engagement look like in 2014 when the third summit takes place?
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India health costs a crisis impoverishing millions
When Nasir Khan cried out at night from the searing pain of kidney stones, the entire slum could hear him. A magic healer promised an inexpensive cure through chanting while pinching his side where the kidney stones were lodged, but it only made it worse. His condition became life-threatening, and doctors said he would need surgery for a fourth time. The operation cost him — and his extended family — their home. Without insurance and unable to get a loan, they sold the broken brick shack in the industrial north Indian city of Aligarh for 250,000 rupees, or about $5,500. It had been home to the 35-year-old Khan, his four brothers, three wives and 11 children. "There is no choice. It is my life," Khan said in gasps, writhing atop a crude wooden cot as his relatives hovered helplessly nearby. He screamed for his mother. He screamed for Allah. He screamed for anyone to deliver him from the pain. His story is repeated so often across India it evokes little sympathy, yet it represents one of the biggest threats to India's battle to lift its poor up from squalor.
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