Latest Edition: Emerging Powers News Round-Up

1. General

Wal-Mart acquires half of Massmart
Wal-Mart made a $2.3 billion formal bid for control of Massmart, giving the world's largest retailer a substantial presence in South Africa and paving the way for further expansion across the fast-growing continent. Tieing up with Wal-Mart will help discount retailer Massmart speed up its expansion in sub-Saharan Africa and its plan to increase its food retailing business, the South African firm's chief executive said on Monday. The deal will also likely pit Wal-Mart, which has long battled with organised labour in the United States, against South Africa's powerful trade unions, some of which have threatened to strike against the US firm.
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Western Donors Embrace China for African Development
For many years, China has caused unease in the international community for its investment-driven aid to Africa without strings attached. Though such an apprehension largely remains today, some major development players are showing a more embracing attitude toward the emerging Asian donor. One of the most vocal is the United Kingdom. In October, Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell indicated that the U.K. wants to partner with China to help end poverty in Africa.
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Africa investment answer to global imbalances
Developed and emerging nations have been bickering about economic policies for weeks amid global tensions that have raised the spectre of a currency war and trade protectionism. At a G20 summit last month, leaders pledged to avoid competitive currency devaluations and underlined the critical importance of bolstering trade, but were short on detail. Meles, who was one of only two African leaders invited to the Seoul meeting, said the world's poorest continent was desperate for investment and could offer a solution to global economic woes.
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2. China in Africa

China Contributes $1.32 Million To African Union
China has made a contribution of $1.32 million to the African Union (AU) Commission to help support its capacity building and the African Union Peacekeeping Mission in war-torn Somalia. China's Ambassador to Ethiopia and Representative to the African Union, Gu Xiaojie, handed over the amount to AU Commission Chairperson Jean Ping at a ceremony held at AU Headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Thursday.
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‘Chinese investors should respect Zambia’s laws’
CHINESE investors should respect Zambia’s labour laws in order to foster unit, says Ambassador Li Qiangmin. In an interview after officiating at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation at Lusaka’s Golden Bridge Hotel on Friday, Ambassador Li said there was need for Chinese investors to learn and respect laws to avoid misunderstandings. “Our people need to learn the labour laws of your country to avoid situations like what happened at the Collum Coal Mine in Sinazongwe.
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Govt, local contractors must talk
Government should take the recent complaints against the award of projects to Chinese companies at the expense of citizen contractors, seriously. There have been growing calls to the government to come up with a way of equitably distributing government tenders between foreign and local contractors. Local construction companies complain about a calculated bias towards Chinese companies. In this issue we carry an article in which local contractors have petitioned President Lt Gen Ian Khama about government’s apparent preference for Chinese construction services.
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CNMC Kicks off Production at Copper Mine in Zambia
Non-Ferrous China Africa (NFCA) of China Non-Ferrous Metals Mining Corporation (CNMC) on Saturday commenced production of its 1 million ton Chambishi Copper Mine West Orebody project. Zambian President Rupiah Banda officiated the commissioning ceremony and commended the owners of the project for having progressed as scheduled and worked tirelessly during the past three years to make this a reality. "The expansion of mining by Chinese investors is uplifting the lives of the people by creating jobs, reviving economic prospects in this district," said the Zambian president. According to NFCA General Manager Wang Chunlai, the total reserves of the West Orebody are estimated at 45 million tons with a copper grade of 2.25 percent.
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China willing to see EU's help for Africa's sustainable development: ambassador
China is willing to see the European Union provide effective help for Africa's sustainable development, said the Chinese Ambassador to Libya Wang Wangsheng on Tuesday. "China will be glad to see the EU member states provide tailored and effective assistance to Africa countries to foster their sustainable development," Wang told Xinhua in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the third Africa-EU Summit.
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China welcomes growing African trade, but not the Africans who facilitate it
As the southern city of Guangzhou hosts the Asian Games, which will come to a close on Nov. 27 in China, the prosperous city is putting its best face forward and has welcomed foreigners from all across Asia. However, the sweet welcome the visitors are receiving puts the treatment of a growing presence of African immigrants in the city into stark relief.
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China could transform EC
Working with China could transform the Eastern Cape from being one of the poorest provinces in the country into a diverse economy with improved employment levels and prospects. This is the view of economists and politicians in reaction to an increased Chinese business presence in the province recently. In July this year, a Chinese company opened a diamond polishing plant in the East London Industrial Development Zone (Elidz); This month, an agreement was signed with a leading Chinese solar energy company to build a 100MW photovoltaic facility within the boundaries of Buffalo City Municipality; and Last week, a Chinese delegation came to the Elidz to present their idea of establishing a sweater factory in partnership with local entrepreneurs.
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Chinese company due to deliver stretch of road in Mozambique in December
Chinese company China Henan International Cooperation group (Chico) is due in December to hand over the road between Xai-Xai and Chissibbuca, a 100-kilometre section linking the provinces of Gaza and Inhambane in Mozambique, a company source told Macauhub. Rebuilding work on this section, which began last January, is budgeted at over 1.26 billion meticals (around US$35 million) and is jointly funded by the Mozambican central government and the World Bank.
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Sany looks to overseas expansion for revenue
China's expansive spending on infrastructure projects has encouraged the domestic machinery producer Sany Heavy Industry Co Ltd to look for other countries experiencing a similar urbanization process, and try to increase its revenue from overseas activities to 50 percent. "In the next two years, Sany plans to build plants in overseas markets of great potential, such as Indonesia, Russia, North African countries and South Africa," said Zhou Fugui, vice-president of Sany Heavy Industry Co Ltd and chairman of Shanghai Sany Science and Technology Co Ltd.
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Chinese aid to Africa in the spotlight
China's approach to humanitarian assistance to African countries is set to shape aid architecture on the continent at a time inflows are projected to dwindle, a senior official with the African Development Bank (AfDB) said last week. The Asian economic giant has been accused of ignoring human rights violations in countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan, where it continues to pour in millions in aid every year. China says it is neutral when it comes to governance issues and its aid programmes mainly hinge on exchange between preferential resource extraction arrangements, mining deals and tradeoffs among others. Zimbabwean-born Mthuli Ncube, now chief economist and vice president at AfDB, told journalists here that the Chinese model “is a fascinating and new model in terms of how aid is flowing into Africa and how infrastructure investment is being conducted and supported.”
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3. India in Africa

India-COMESA Trade and Investment relations grows from strength to strength
India and COMESA Countries have maintained robust bilateral trade relations, which have been witnessed across the years. The COMESA region accounted for 38.2 percent of India’s total exports to Africa during the 2009-2010, while 13 percent of India’s imports from Africa were from the COMESA region. This was revealed in the Export Import Bank of India ( Exim Bank) Research Brief distributed to Africa Regional Economic Communities(RECs) delegates who recently visited New Delhi India from 14-16 November 2010, at the invitation of the Government of India. COMESA Secretary General Sindiso Ngwenya led the COMESA delegation.
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Mixed reactions as Indian company becomes major agro-investor in Ethiopia
Indian billionaire Ravi Ruia has flown to Africa at least once a month for the past year and a half. He’s invested in coal mines in Mozambique, an oil refinery in Kenya, and a call center in South Africa. Soon, he may also have a power plant in Nigeria. “Africa looks remarkably similar to what India was 15 years ago,” says Firdhose Coovadia, director of African operations at Essar Group, the $15 billion conglomerate headed by Ruia and his brother, Shashi. “We can’t lose this opportunity.” Faced with increasing competition and a welter of bureaucratic obstacles at home, Indian companies are looking to Africa for growth. Since 2005 they have spent some $16 billion on the continent, vs. at least $31 billion for the Chinese, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and the Heritage Foundation, respectively.
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India won't allow Marange stones
India’s Gems & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) last week said it would not permit diamonds from Zimbabwe ’s Marange diamond fields into the country if they did not comply with Kimberley Process (KP) standards. The organisation dispelled reports suggesting the gemstones from Marange had been sold to four firms from India. “Under no circumstances will we allow the diamonds to enter India if they not in compliance with the Kimberly Process,” said Sanjay Kothari, GJEPC vice-chairman, said in a statement.
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Keen on Indian cotton tech, Africa makes an ‘open’ offer
The export of Indian cotton technology and expertise to Africa and the import of different types of African cotton by India were the main points of trade discussed on the last day of an African delegation’s two-week tour of India. A delegation from eight east-African countries had landed in Mumbai two weeks ago, proceeding to Nagpur and then to Ahmedabad to visit cotton fields, ginning and weaving units as well as major textile houses in India’s largest cotton-producing state.
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4. In Other Emerging Powers News

South Korea to farm Tanzania site in early 2011
Tanzania expects South Korea to begin farming 15,000 hectares of land in the east African country early next year for food production and processing, a senior official said on Thursday. Aloyce Masanja, director general of Tanzania's state-run Rufiji Basin Development Authority (RUBADA), told Reuters the initial cost of the Korea Rural Community Corp (KRC) project was estimated at $50 million. State-run KRC signed a memorandum of understanding in August and will develop the land in partnership with RUBADA over the next five years at a projected cost of $50-million.
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Apex-Brasil opens Business Centre in Luanda, Angola
Brazilian export and investment promotion agency, APEX-Brasil, is due Monday to open a Business Centre in Luanda, Angola, the Brazilian press reported. With this centre, Apex-Brasil aims to increase bilateral trade, improve customs processing and open up the way to new businesses in a country that is recovering from a civil war and requires every sector of economic activity.
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Mauritius: China and India invest in island
Mainly known for tourism, sugar cane and the extinct dodo, Mauritius is reinventing itself as a high-tech gateway to expanding African markets for the world’s two fastest-growing economies: China and India. But, as the emerging giants prepare to set up rival economic zones on the island, there is growing unease among locals over what this new wave of colonization will bring. The scene is already being set in the lush fields of Terre Rouge, north of the capital, Port Louis. It is early evening and plantation workers are heading home with their tools slung over their shoulders, past a group of Chinese workers toiling at a road construction site. In a few years time, the new motorway will lead to Jinfei, a self-contained Chinese city with office blocks, hotels, high-tech factories and a university.
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Mauritius bids to become 'springboard' to India and China
Mauritius, a tiny island located off the south-east coast of Africa, is an "ideal platform" for investors looking to tap into Asia's growing economies, according to one of the country's financial experts. One of Africa's most prosperous and stable economies (the World Bank recently ranked Mauritius first in the continent for ease of doing business) Mauritius' government wants to turn the country into one of the world's top business-friendly locations. The island's open and flexible regulatory system already benefits international entrepreneurs, according to Sunil Benimadhu, chief executive of the Mauritius stock exchange. "We tell investors investing into India and China that we've got a big competitive edge in terms of locating their businesses in Mauritius and using Mauritius as a springboard to invest in those countries," he told CNN.
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16 firms express interest in coal mining in Kitui
At least 16 international coal mining companies have expressed interest to extract coal in the Mui Basin, Kitui county. The Ministry of Energy last week closed bid invitations to firms interested in mining the resource, as the country inched closer to becoming a coal producer. Mr Henry Kiema, a financial consultant who represented Kitui county residents during the opening of the bids, said well known companies from the US, India, South Africa, China, UK and Australia had responded to the invitation by the government.
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In The Name Of Oil, Ghana Is Already Swimming In A Flood Of Debt
Ghana government and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation are entertaining too much offers for cooperation and a stake in the Jubilee oil field from all over Asia. We have therefore started to swim in a flood of debt, looking at the peak of the loans we have taken alone from Asia. Since ExxonMobil’s $4 billion offer for Kosmos Energy's 23.5% stake in the Jubilee field was rejected last month, Asian national oil companies have been rounding about in Accra, aiming to become GNPC's financier and operating partner. Kosmos, however, is contemplating a listing of its shares as an alternate way to go ahead with the project.
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Zuma's nephew poised to strike oil in DRC
A South African business consortium led by President Jacob Zuma's nephew Khulubuse Zuma says SA is on the brink of a billion-barrel oil bonanza after a court ruling this week that appears to clear the way for a lucrative deal in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The deal, which also involves lawyer Michael Hulley, who successfully defended the president on a corruption charge, was given the thumbs up by a High Court in the Caribbean, where it had been held up by a rival company, Tullow Oil. However, Tullow this week said it would look at "other legal options" to block the South African investment bid.
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ANC ponders Chinese policy
This year ANC leaders regularly travelled to China and President Jacob Zuma recently undertook a state visit to Beijing with a large government and business delegation. The ANC also announced that cadres are to learn how to set up a political school broadly based on the Chinese model. But the relationship is more complex than it looks, which may be why the ANC won't go much further than a press release in explaining it. Interview requests are not even answered, let alone granted, and a recent request to cover one of the study visits by the ANC top brass to China was met with a firm "no" from ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe. Why the anxiety?
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5. Blogs, Opinions, Presentations and Publications

Choosing Between China and the West Is No Joke for DR Congo
There are very few who would not agree -- including many in the DRC Government -- that it is very helpful for the administration of President Kabila to have the ICC trial of former Vice-President Bemba at this time. The trial is a very fortuitous way to make him potentially unavailable to contest the Presidential Election slated for next year. Compared to those who believe that the trial is the beginning of a new era where the application of international law becomes the norm, to those of us who know the politics of central Africa more personally, it looks more like the apogee of the DRC Government's respect for international laws than its beginning. Because now there is an alternative to having to listen to the West, and that alternative is China.
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SA’s politically biased Africa agenda in urgent need of revision
It’s ironic, but business’s grasp of the importance of the rest of Africa to South Africa’s growth fortunes seems to be firmer under the Presidency of the relatively parochial Jacob Zuma than it was under Thabo Mbeki, despite all of his “I am an African” efforts. South African companies are increasingly working on longer-term ‘Africa strategies’, rather than merely viewing the markets as places to dip into when the going is good and to make a hasty retreat, when it’s not – hitherto, the default position. There is most certainly a growing con- versation about the need to enhance intra- African trade, which remains modest, and to put in place the project finance and technical resources necessary for trade- and investment-enhancing cross-border energy and transport infrastructure.
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SA must aim higher than Bric
This was the conclusion of students from the University of Pretoria's Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) who visited some key developed and emerging markets as part of their final MBA module. They visited the US, Japan, Holland and the UK, as well as Brazil, India and China. The countries were chosen as they represented what Professor Nick Binedell, the director of Gibs, called "dynamic economies" that would thrive in the 21st century because to their fundamental strengths.
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In foreign relations, SA elites put ideology ahead of reality
Recently, I had the great pleasure of participating in a conference organ- ised by South Africa’s Institute for Global Dialogue and Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, on the topic of South Africa and the Bric countries – that is, Brazil, Russia, India and China. I was one of two discussants in the session that was mainly, but not entirely, concerned with trade relations between the five countries, that is, I had to listen to the papers presented and comment on what I thought were the most important points they made – or failed to make. Excellent papers were presented by a representative of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and by Standard Bank econo- mists Simon Freemantle and Jeremy Stevens (the article on page 22 in this issue deals with only a part of their paper). Moreover, my fellow discussant did a great job of surveying and highlighting the papers from the DTI and Freemantle and Stevens. That left me, as the last speaker, free to concentrate on the one paper that had given me cause for concern – the paper presented by a senior official from the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, which is, it seems, acronymed to Dirco. (I am not giving the names of any of the representa- tives of the DTI and Dirco to avoid embarrass- ment and possible interdepartmental wrangles.) Note, this official left as soon as the last paper had been presented, apologising and saying that he had to meet a foreign delegation, so I, perforce, had to make my criticisms “behind his back”, as I said to the audience.
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Sindiso Ngwenya: Homegrown think-tanks key for development
In reviewing the role of think-tanks and other institutions, it is advisable that the issue is examined from two angles — the nation state level and the regional level. Anecdotal comparisons of the practice of developed and other developing economies with the African countries enable me to draw some lessons on why perhaps Africa is devoid of innovations in public policy. Africa is a receptacle, not a generator, of philosophical and development paradigms that may not be relevant or appropriate to the subjective and objective conditions of the Comesa region in particular and Africa in general. In most countries, think tanks, research institutions and universities do not contribute to the formulation of public policy. This is because of the lack of appreciation by policy makers of the contribution that these institutions can make to objective and holistic public policy; seeing these institutions as academic only and so are not directly linked to national development; and perceiving them to be antagonistic to national governments when they critique public policy.
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China, the West & Democracy in Africa
Before daybreak on 14 May 2007, engineers at China’s Xichang Space Centre in south-western Sichuan Province launched a Chinese-made communications satellite into orbit on behalf of the West African state of Nigeria. The launch of the satellite, named NIGCOMSAT-1, marked a major milestone both in China and Africa and in the relations between the two.
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The End of the 'Peaceful Rise'?
For all the breathless headlines, there is no real clarity as to what kind of global power China will become over the next critical decade. But if the international community is in the dark about China's 21st-century trajectory, it is likely because there is no real consensus among the Chinese themselves.
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New BRICs study reveals China and India’s rising economic integration with oil and mineral rich nations
Major oil producers and mineral rich countries have been ranked as ‘extreme’ and ‘high’ integration in a new BRICs study evaluating the extent of economic integration of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in the global economy. Research highlights the economic integration of 132 countries with China. Amongst those countries most integrated with China are key producers such as Sudan (4), Yemen (5), Kazakhstan (6), Australia (7), Malaysia (10) and Peru (13).
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Q+A: Troubled trade ties between EU and Africa
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