By Ojonugwa Felix Ugboja
How is Africa going to develop?
While you are pondering on that, China is saying that they have answers.
China is a global player — even the West are not in denial and with their recent focus on immigration crisis, it means that China will have a great time expanding and consolidating its influence, especially in Africa, and with little or no political interference. It’s what you can call the global cracking and crashing space technique by China.
China loaned around $125 billion to the continent from 2000 to 2016.
There is no question that African countries still need debt-funded infrastructures, but the real question is, at what expenses?
Yes, the expenses are great, but what are the alternatives? Is it World Bank? or IMF?
Post-colonial intervention from Bretton Woods institutions have led to more poverty and inequality in Africa. China is not really as political as it is business minded. She doesn’t want to choose leaders for Africa, neither does it limit its areas of development.
The West has become very critical of China’s penetration in Africa, but experts on Africa will tell you that there are several truly win-win deals African nations have closed without the typical onerous conditions associated historically with doing business with western countries.
Rwandan president Paul Kagame said that China’s engagement in Africa is “deeply transformational”,calling China a “win-win partner and sincere friend”
The problem is that some African leaders are usually excited when they see money and wouldn’t mind incurring irresponsible debts for unborn generations. But that is not a single story.
While a country like Nigeria is lagging because of institutionalized problems, countries of East Africa are genuinely developing with China. Kenya has connected Nairobi to its biggest sea port in Mumbasa via light rail. Ethiopia is building a major power dam on the Nile. The story of Rwanda is known to all, and so is that of Tanzania.
China is down to business. Like the author Tim Marshall will write, if a country wants to build a power plant, China will fund and build it, but if the country’s president wants to pay Nicki Minaj $1million to perform at his birthday, that’s his business.
According to the available details, the newly approved $60 billion loan for Africa at the 2018 Forum on China Africa Cooperation will include $15 billion of aid, interest-free loans and concessional loans, a credit line of $20 billion, a $10 billion special fund for China-Africa development, and a $5 billion special fund for imports from Africa.
Major Initiatives that China wants to bring to fruition in the next couple of years are in areas of industrial promotion, infrastructural connectivity, trade facilitation, green development, capacity building, health care, people to people exchange, peace and security.
No one will deny that these are very lofty dreams given that China itself is facing criticisms at home for ignoring domestic problems for foreign expeditions, especially in Africa. Top government critics have been arrested for voicing such concerns.
Making a case for this relationship, the UN Secretary General stated that “China and Africa can cooperate with peaceful, durable and equitable progress to benefit the whole humankind.”
This debt acquired from China comes with huge business for Chinese companies, particularly construction companies that have turned the whole of Africa into a construction site for rails, roads, electricity dams, stadia, commercial buildings and so on.
There is obviously a sense in which China is the bigger winner – simply because it has the upper leverage in most negotiations.
Beijing has fended off criticism it is only interested in resource extraction to feed its own booming economy, that the projects it funds have poor environmental safeguards, and that too many of the workers for them are flown in from China rather than using African labor.
No matter the defense from China, these are the obvious problems. China is not engaging enough African skills in a way that can lead to capacity development, but she seem vocal about the need to make it up.
The biggest question is in the extractive space. Why are African countries giving their mining rights away in exchange for a highway? Yes, a begger cannot choose, but he doesn’t have to give his limbs. There is still room for Africa to improve its status as a helpless loan seeking continent.
That not withstanding, smarter countries will gain from China. The Lagos – Ibadan rail line being built by China will benefit the Nigerian economy, but when such projects are derailed by corruption and unhelpful bureaucracy, it will surely put generations to come in the line of fire.
Some loans have been written off by China, but what is the assurance that the current one won’t be defaulted too? That is the question.
Africa also have to begin a long term vision plan that prevents it from being a perpetually dependent continent.
The future as widely acknowledged is in its youthful population, more than anywhere else. For them to reach potentials, infrastructures need to be scaled up, and it is okay if China can help, but it can’t be forever.
Who Africa should turn to between China and the West is always a difficult choice, partly a price for raising irresponsible governments, but China has mastered how to make itself attractive.