Not trying to recycle the heavily discussed issue of China and Africa, but I completely forgot to update you all on a conversation I had with a former Ethiopian Airlines executive. I’ve already covered how China brings its own people to African countries to do the industrial work that African governments let them do, and I took issue with that because I felt like there was no exchange of knowledge/training between the Chinese and the Africans, thus limiting the growth/advancement opportunities that would benefit some Africans.

Chinese supervisor watches over Ethiopian worker

When I shared my concerns with the former executive, he laughed and said that it all comes back to politics and money. Basically, when bidding on a project, the Chinese will give you the cheapest costs and they will finish the project on time if they use their own Chinese workers. He witnessed that on more than one occasion, and he was impressed with the dedicated/disciplined work that the Chinese bring to any job.

When he came across projects in which Ethiopian workers were mixed with the Chinese workforce, he was amazed by what he observed. He was walking by a road construction site in his neighborhood, and as he was walking near a ditch that was dug for a foundation, he saw 3 Ethiopian workers down there playing cards. He looked around and saw all the other Chinese workers nearby hard at work. The Ethiopians, according to him, had no incentives to work hard. The reason being because they can VOTE. They can be swayed into any direction, and as long as they are capable of casting a vote, they will be taken care of, since they are assets to the local jurisdiction.

I thought that was simply amazing… and to add to it, this is just one of the funniest things I’ve heard in the history construction equipment… the shovels used for these construction jobs were cut down into shorter sizes so that the Ethiopian workers won’t lean on them and take breaks all the time… to which the workers reacted by simply creating makeshift padding of some sort so they can sit down on the shorter shovels. UPDATE: I’ve been told by a friend that recently returned from Addis Abeba, that the shovels look normal. Thank God.

And that ladies n gents, is another spin on the story of Chinese-African issues. Granted this is not something that can be used to draw a strong conclusion… not all workers act as described here, not all projects get finished on time, and sometimes there may be a cost overrun or two… but still, given similar circumstances, you can get a job done on time at low cost, or you can employ an unreliable workforce… what would you do?

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been debating on the benefits and setbacks of China’s involvement in Africa with a good Chinese friend of mine, and we finally agreed on one thing: right now, as in today, African people are suffering by getting the short end of the stick (big surprise there!).

He thinks that the future for Africa will be brighter, while I feel like by the time the light shines on us, we will have little to no natural resources to use for our people’s benefit, cuz by then, every single hand around us would have taken its share from the cookie jar, to leave us nothing else but crumbs… at least I hope they’re the good kind of crumbs, maybe with a chocolate chip or two left in there somewhere (now you know my favorite cookie type).

But all jokes aside, I asked Dr. George Ayittey (see previous post) for his view regarding China’s involvement in Africa, and he referred me to an excellent piece he calls Chopsticks Mercantilism:

Chopsticks Mercantilism

Throughout its history, Africa has been a playground where all sorts of foreign entities competed to advance their interests, not those of the African people. They came in all sorts of colors. The Brits, the French, the Portuguese, the Belgians, the Americans, the Soviets, the Arabs, the Chinese, etc. In my view, the most stubborn and dogmatic were the Portuguese. They had no intention – none whatsoever — of granting their African colonies independence. The Belgians were probably the most contemptuous of their colonial subjects and imposed the most stringent conditions on them. The African could not travel in the Congo without a permit, possess firearms, or drink anything stronger than beer. He could become a carpenter or a mechanic, but not an engineer. He could be a bishop, a journalist, an accountant, a medical assistant, a teacher, a civil servant, or a druggist, but not an architect or an attorney. By the 1930s there were several lawyers in British and French West Africa, but not a single one in the Congo. To the Belgians, lawyers meant politics, and politics would instigate demands for political rights outlawed for the Africans.

The Brits were more pragmatic and flexible, seeing the eventual grant of independence to their African colonies. In fact, in 1843 the African Committee of the British House of Commons passed a resolution expressing Britain’s reluctance to further engage in colonial affairs. According to Boahen and Webster (1970), the British resolved that their future policy in Africa “should be to encourage in the natives the exercise of those qualities which may render it possible for us more and more to transfer to the natives the administration of all Governments, with a view to our ultimate withdrawal from all, except probably Sierra Leone” (p. 210). Of course, all that changed when intense commercial competition among Europeans led to the Berlin Conference in 1888.

When it came to defending its interests in Africa, the French were the most ferocious. And Frech economic interests in Africa are vast. Twenty percent of France’s oil came from West Africa. The Ivory Coast, for example, buys 40 percent of its imports from France and the French own a third of the country’s manufacturing industries.

In 2002, when Ivorian government planes accidentally dropped bombs on rebel positions, killing three French peacekeepers, France reacted swiftly and viciously. It sent in war planes to destroy Ivory Coast’s entire air force! The French would aggressively defend their language and culture. They never equated decolonization with retreat. Charles de Gaulle, assisted by a handful of competent and ruthless men, managed an incredible sleight of hand: not a termination of France’s control over its former African colonies, but a transformation of its control into something quite original — a community of nations, sharing one currency, that was tied to France economically, politically, culturally and, of course, militarily. African children were taught that their ancestors were Gauls and that the deserving among them would gain French citizenship.

France left hundreds of officials in Africa as advisers. Behind the doors of many key ministries in the Ivory Coast and Senegal or Gabon, discreet but powerful French officials kept a close eye on policy.[i] The French also sent teachers to Africa and brought African students and civil servants to France for training. France’s primacy as an external actor in central and western Africa thus continued largely unabated after colonialism. In fact, in 1993, there were more French citizens — about 100,000 — in post-colonial Africa than at independence.

The French did not hesitate to remove or install African despots who did not serve or to serve their interests. After 1960, the French intervened on many occasions to prop up unpopular African regimes against internal dissatisfaction and disorders. The most notorious such occasion was in Gabon in 1964, when French troops were used to reinstate President Mba after a coup. Noting that the French did not intervene to save President Youlou in Brazzaville in 1963, critics charged that intervention was predicated on mineral wealth. (Gabon is rich in oil.)

Another instance was in May 1991, when 9 million rounds of ammunition arrived in Cameroon on a ship from France, destined for the authoritarian government of President Paul Biya. The ammunition helped Biya brutally suppress political opponents, enabling him to win the October 1992 presidential election in a vote that observers said was fraudulent. Two months later France gave Cameroon FF600 million [$110 million] in new loans. In May 1993, Mr. Biya was welcomed in Paris by both Mr. Mitterand and the new French prime minister, Edouard Balladur.

The French were also singularly culpable in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The Hutu-dominated government of Juvenal Habyarimana was French-speaking. Paul Kagame and his Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) trained in Uganda, an English-speaking country, and were closing in. Miffed that Rwanda would become an English-speaking country, panicky French officials provided aid and ammunition to the Hutu government. In fact, it was claimed that Habyarimana’s plane was piloted by French officers. And after 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered, the French provided a “safe passage” to the genocidaires to escape to the then Zaire, another French-speaking country. Afraid that the current commission of enquiry would expose French involvement, a panicky French judge seeks to indict President Kagame on “war crimes.”

Disguised by bombastic gushing of “cooperation,” France’s real intention, however, was to protect its economic interests and gain access to Africa’s minerals. For centuries, the French have always had this thing against “Anglo-Saxons.” Driven by a chimerical belief in their cultural superiority, the French had always wanted to create a “La Grande France” globally – a comity of French-speaking nations with a French culture that can flex its power at the United Nations. France has always regarded its francophone “commonwealth” in Africa as part of its ticket to world-power status. Since General de Gaulle’s time, French presidents have maintained direct personal links with African heads of state, appointing a Mr. Africa as personal fixer and emissary (President Mitterrand sent his son). French officials, sometimes seconded from Paris ministries, sit behind the thrones of many African leaders. French political parties receive donations from African leaders; French companies, especially oil ones, are given extraordinary privileges in African states; French arms protect African allies. And aid has flowed freely. In 1993, France’s budget for overseas aid was $7.9 billion. The French did everything they could to thwart “Anglo-Saxon” designs in Africa.

China too has been an active player in Africa in the post-colonial period. It sought to win adherents to the Chinese brand of socialism. Zhao Ziyang, China’s foreign minister in the early 1960s, reminded African leaders of the presence of Chinese coolies in Africa. (Britain had rounded up more than 60,000 coolies at the beginning of the century to work in South African mines. Ten years later, when their labor was no longer needed, they were deported with little or nothing to show for their suffering.) As members of the Third World, united in poverty, China and Africa were identical, Ziyang once declared.

China’s conception of the world was tripolar: the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Third World. In the postcolonial era China viewed the Third World as an adjunct of the West. China competed with the Soviet Union to recruit the allegiance of the African nations by supporting their liberation movements. In the early phases, China was the more aggressive, revolutionary force. The Chinese trained and armed liberation movements in both colonial and independent African countries. At the same time, denouncing Moscow as reactionary and revisionist, China also strove to provide Africa with more nonmilitary aid than the Soviet Union offered. Like the emerging states of Africa, China was a Third World country, and its revolution was a model for all Third World revolution, Ziyang claimed.

Lin Biao, Mao’s designated successor, noted that China’s revolution was won when the Communist Party mobilized the peasants of the rural areas to encircle the cities of China. Similarly, he viewed the Third World as rural areas, and the West, to which it was attached, as the cities. The Chinese global revolutionary strategy was to mobilize these rural areas to encircle the cities. In reality, however, the driving forces behind China’s engagements in Africa had little to do with Africa.

Like Moscow’s, Peking’s interests in Africa were primarily extraneous to Africa. The first of these concerns was to seek international recognition for Mao’s communist regime and, more specifically, votes at the United Nations which would be cast in favor of the transfer of the permanent Chinese seat in the Security Council from Taiwan to China proper.

A second concern, which arose when Sino-Soviet friendship turned into Sino-Soviet rivalry, was to make trouble for the Russians. The conflict between Peking and Moscow, unlike the [ideological] alliance between them, could be furthered in Africa.

China’s perception was that Moscow, not Washington, was its principal enemy. Its strategy was therefore to weaken social imperialism at the expense of monopolistic capitalism. West Africa observed that “in Africa, China increased assistance to old friends such as Tanzania and Zambia. The 2000km Tan-Zam railroad was meant to overshadow the Soviet-built Aswan High Dam in Egypt. China also made friends with old enemies such as Mobutu, helping him during the Shaba uprising in 1978-79; in 1980 they helped him build a naval base at Kinkuzu in southern Zaire to threaten Angola” (Aug 15, 1988; p. 1473).

China’s fortunes in Africa quickly turned into mirages, however. At first, China’s anti-colonial stance was welcomed by African liberation movements. But as independence was gained, China’s emphasis on subversion and its intense enmity toward the Soviet Union became less and less appealing or relevant to Africans. In fact, as early as 1963 Julius Nyerere of Tanzania complained of a new scramble for Africa between the Soviet Union and China. Because their actions were anti-Soviet rather than pro-African, the Chinese themselves did not achieve much by way of influence.

Furthermore, China was no less immune to blunders than the Soviets. Less wisely than the Soviets, China meddled in Burundi ethnic feuds. In 1963 China backed the Tutsi expedition by training a number of Tutsi in guerrilla warfare in China. The subsequent massacres in Burundi earned China much opprobrium. China also supported the Biafran secessionists in Nigeria’s civil war (1967 to 1970) simply because Moscow backed the Federal Government of Nigeria. Similarly, in Angola, China supported the FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola) because Moscow was backing the ruling MPLA.

In Mali and Congo-Brazzaville, China made some headway. But a spate of military coups brought to power new rulers distrustful of China. Only in Tanzania did China achieve some diplomatic and ideological success. China agreed to fund and build the 1,200-mile Tan-Zam railway line at a cost of 166 million pounds sterling, free of interest. The railway was both an engineering and a political achievement. It was completed two years ahead of schedule and was much touted as a model of what foreign aid could do for Africa. But it was one thing to build the railway and quite another to run it efficiently. Maintenance was poor, services degenerated, and the Dar es Salaam terminal became chronically clogged to the point of immobility. Although the Chinese had nothing to do with these shortcomings, their reputation suffered.

Fast forward to 2006: China’s increasing involvement in Africa should be viewed against this backdrop. Despite the euphonious verbiage about “cooperation”, “equal terms,” and “altruism,” the real intentions of China are threefold. The first is to gain access to Africa’s resources by signing with a bow sweetheart deals with African despots. The second is to canvass for African votes at the United Nations in its quest for global hegemony. In this sense, the Chinese are no different from the French. The third is to seek African land to dump its surplus population. Chinese communes are springing up in Namibia, Zambia, Nigeria and other African countries. The Chinese have succeeded in getting African states to accept large numbers of Chinese experts and workers as part of their investment packages: 28 “Baoding villages” have been established, each housing up to 2,000 Chinese workers, in various parts of Africa. But the Chinese are not the problem.

The real problem was the retinue of clueless African clods, who attended Chopsticks Conference at Beijing in October. “Clueless” because that was no Berlin Conference for sure. No European powers were present; only one Asian power, China. And no Maxim gun was needed. But lying prostrate at China’s feet were 40 African heads of state, offering themselves for voluntary economic enslavement. Disgusting.

Elementary principles of demand and supply suggest that that was a buyer’s market. When 40 desperate suppliers are competing for one buyer’s attention, the buyer calls the shots. With chopsticks dexterity, China can pick platinum from Zimbabwe; oil from Angola, Nigeria and Sudan; cocoa from Ghana; diamonds from Sierra Leone; etc. – all on its own terms because of its strong bargaining position. Few radical intellectuals and African heads of state see nothing wrong with this huge imbalance because China is perceived to be a “friend of Africa” since it is “anti-West.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” has been the seductive fallacy. Those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it.

Dr. Ayittey also added the following to his email, to update on the article above:

The real intentions of China in Africa are four-fold. The first is to gain access to Africa’s resources by signing with a bow sweetheart deals with dysfunctional African governments. How the people of these governments fare or benefit is of no significance. The second is to canvass for African votes at the United Nations in its quest for global hegemony. In this sense, the Chinese are no different from the French, who used francophone Africa to project “la grande France.” The third is to seek new markets for Chinese manufactures as European markets become saturated with Chinese goods. The fourth is to seek African land to dump its surplus population. Chinese communes are springing up in Namibia, Zambia, Nigeria and other African countries. The Chinese have succeeded in getting African states to accept large numbers of Chinese experts and workers as part of their investment packages: 28 “Baoding villages” have been established, each housing up to 2,000 Chinese workers, in various parts of Africa. In Namibia, the number of Chinese expatriates has reached 40,000, 100,000 in Zambia and 120,000 in Nigeria.

Already, anti-Chinese sentiments have began rising in many parts of Africa. African business groups complain about poor treatment by Chinese companies and competition from a flood of low-cost imports. Unable to compete with Chinese imports, textile factories in Lesotho closed in 2003 and 2004, throwing over 5,000 workers out of their jobs. In the run-up to Zambia’s general election in September 2006, the losing opposition leader Michael Sata made China’s investment in the country a campaign issue. The campaign proved effective, and resulted in a win for Sata in Lusaka and Copperbelt, the two most prosperous provinces, where the Chinese presence is very strong.

According to Sata, Chinese businesses employ relatively few Zambians. “Our Chinese don’t bring in any equipment or create any sensible employment. In fact, to every Zambian in a Chinese company, there are about 15 Chinese. I have done my intelligence research and it is devastating to know that all Chinese companies are paying an average of $50 per month to Zambian employees” (The Washington Post, Sept 25, 2006; p.A16).

Sata called the Chinese profiteers, not investors, in a country where unemployment is about 50 percent and more than 73 percent of people live in poverty. He lambasted Chinese-run businesses, accusing them of neglecting the safety of Zambian workers, and threatened to run “bogus” Chinese investors out of the country. “Chinese investment has not added any value to the people of Zambia,” he charged (The Washington Post, Sept 25, 2006; p.A16). Though dismissed as a demagogue, his campaign struck a chord with many, drawing cheers from many lower-paid Zambians, including taxi drivers, shop workers and security guards, and sparking debate even among Sata’s more middle-class detractors.

I know it was long, but it was a wonderful read. It opened my eyes to so many other factors I did not consider. Recent interviews with Africans from various parts of the continent however yield mixed results. Some believe the involvement of China is very good for the infrastructure, and it creates better opportunities for Africans, while others believe their own government has managed to back-stab them yet once again. Sigh.

I can certainly see the benefits of new roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, and what not, but it all comes down to cost. At what cost is this all happening? It’s great that China is doing something that Europeans/Americans have recently been dormant in, by funding so many new construction, redevelopment, and modernization initiatives, at such a fast pace. I also understand that all societies have been victims of a predator before they got to where they are today. Prime examples are India, China, and many others. They have suffered their share in the not too distant history of natural resource exploitation by others, and now they are at the forefront of global economic development. The question is, can the same faith await Africa? Or is this simply a case of when a good deal is too good to be true, it more than likely isn’t a good deal at all?