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Re-positioning Africa for the Emergence of China

Eustace Amuka

The story of Africa is a study in contradiction, unfortunately, every passing day brings its own share of debris that keeps distorting the face of Africa and her quest for so called development.

However complex it may seem, we believe that at any point in time when the right cord is struck, Africa will of itself evolve from fundamental underdevelopment to growth and later on development. From our own perspective, the following analyses , will illustrate the quagmire of this continent.

When external forces looted and left Africa bare, the other continents grew and developed. That was the beginning of the failure that has held Africa down to this day. What has remained the contentious issue to date is how to kick start her on a new path to growth and development. Where some ray of hope glimmered from internal transformation as was the case in Libya, that style of leadership was not accepted by others because it did not emanate from the expected western perspective. The balm being applied to wake Africa form her slumber is like diagnosing high fever as the core sickness without finding out why the fever started in the first place. That is why Africa has failed to grow and develop.

Subsequent efforts by those who underdeveloped her and are pretending to remove the impediments to change has come to naught. They are quick to come up with what they saw as the causes of the failure of Africa and instituted corrective measures based on this perception. Understandably, these measures are just not working because the initial failure and the resultant consequences thought to have been cured were not completely obliterated from the organic system of the laggard, that is Africa. And because it is organic, it remains a debilitating decimal continuously reducing to naught all efforts to make Africa grow.

Examples of such palliatives measures both home made and imported that have been reduced to euphemisms are AGOA, NEPAD, APRM, MDGs etc. These are comical in designation and catastrophic in result. It is comical because it is like apprehending a mad individual (African leaders), washing him up and dressing him in designer wears, then letting him go. What would you expert; a return to worse flit because it is flit in designer wears. African pear review mechanism fits into this mould of theatre of the absurd. We have heard one review and that is of the Ghanaian leader but more than one month after , nothing has been told to us .How long will it take to review the whole continent and how many are ready to subject themselves to this drama. The catastrophic aspect is because rather than lead to growth and development, these acronyms keep under developing Africa, aggravating poverty and undermining existing institutional and structural processes by diverting attention from the real issues, to facades fabricated by those who have refused to face facts in Africa.

More distributing than this is the fact that our leaders have refused to learn from their third world counterparts that swallowed the so called models of growth and development but still remains poor with no fundamental change in the life of her peoples despite increase in urban edifices wrongly viewed as manifesting trends of growth and development.

Writing in the global development networks newsletter issue on September, 2004 Armendo Casterer Pinheiro of the Institute of applied Economic Research Brazil, said “along with many other developing countries Brazil has experienced volatile growth rates since the early 1980’s, fluctuating from 4 %to 8% coupled with a low average expansion, during the 1930 till 1980, growth resulted from a combination of high rates of investment, the rapid growth of the labour force and the rise in total factor productivity, growth resumption has also been harder to accomplish due to Brazils poor social indicators. Poverty has remained very high and income distribution in Brazil is one of the worst in the world”. This article aptly titled “growth today, gone tomorrow sustaining growth in developing countries”, best illustrate the dilemma Africa will face in decades ahead if she continues pursuing growth and development beret of fundamental social transformation of her people. In pursuit of this borrowed concepts of development, Africa is rapidly being trust into the globalization framework and world trade organization manipulation by her leaders. How have they prepared their peoples for the challenges that follows this? It will only lead to a logjam becoming a potpourri of confusion.

Unfortunately for Africa, the world has actually become a global village and the global market is a reality. Now, primary agricultural products produced in the remotest part of the continent is subject to the vagaries of international commodity price manipulation by the forces at play in the world political, economic and social chess board. These forces have suddenly increased. This means fiercer competition. From the bipolar cold war era when ideology was at issue, to a brief American domination, today we are witnessing the emergence of another power point in the international arena.

Welcome Beijing the red dragon. Chinese emergence has taken the world by surprise. In addition to the siege of Western Europe and America, China has become another indispensable factor in globalization and any decisions that will affect it. This fact is compounding the woes of Africa because, though Africa has been desecrated, she still remains the toast of resource suckers and mineral seekers. The global system has been much more merciless in exploitation while at the same time applying false balms of relief to the exploited.

What then becomes of Africa in the 21^st century? What are the likely forces that will shape global discus in the decades ahead?

CHINA THE NEXT POLE: - The emergence of China took the world by storm. It happened so suddenly that the usual masters of the game were ill prepared for such a force. Now it appears that the policy of containment of China being pursued by Europe and America is the surest guarantee to further domination in the 21^st century. Can China be contained?

The answer can only be found in a brief review of the history of this emerging force. Chris Alden writing in an article titled, “leveraging the dragon,” summarized thus “Chinas phenomenal transformation beginning in the late 1970’s from an improvised country periodically seized by ideological campaigns that served to further cripple development, to strong, self-confident emerging super-power,” is a potential force in the emerging new world order.

Furthermore, in China; “dire threat or dynamic partner”, the South Africa institute of international affairs news letter wrote “Chinas rapid economic expansion in the past decade, evokes a litany of impressions, if not intimidating numbers. The Asian giant’s economy grew at 9.5% in 2004 despite official efforts to slow it down. The combined strength of mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong is $1.5 trillion from 1990 to 2003; according to the world trade organization”.

The most critical element for Africa as far as the growth of China is concerned, is that “this growth of China translated into more digestive language of human supply and demand, means that if Chinese were to reach the American level of car ownership and oil consumption, it would require 80 million barrels of oil per day, China’s insatiable appetite for resources comes at a pivotal moment for Africa; Africa consequently, stands at a crossroads. Will it meet this outside engagement passively or actively?

These are the problems that must be contended with. Interestingly, China did not just discover Africa. During the cold war period, she was a visible player in some countries in Africa. Following the collapse of the Berlin wall, she has spread her tentacles from the horn of Africa to the coast of the continent leaving her footmarks both pleasant and ugly all over the place.

CHINA AND AFRICAN WHAT MANNER OF RELATIONSHIP?

Chinese society is a near homogenous one with close to 98% of the entire population speaking the same language and the rest understanding them. China has a population of close to 1.2 billion people, which mathematically means that for every African, there are about five Chinese. In China internal dissension is a taboo. There is near absence of religion of all persuasion, where there is any, it is completely subsumed to imbibed societal norms. The Chinese educational system is so well organized that banks pay school fees; and the beneficiary pays back upon graduation with a job awaiting him. There is little or no problem of employment. The Chinese society is a disciplined and focused one. Every single Chinese

knows that he/she owns the system an obligation to do an honest days job to earn the days pay. This means that China is a well- organized society that is dogmatically focused. She has the human resources and has been able to grow and develop through the fundamental transformation of her people and their mind set.

In fact the Chinese experience raises pertinent question like; development and openness what real correlation?

What then do we derive from the Chinese setting as it relates to her incursion into Africa? Many; the most fundamental is the disarticulated relationship between the peoples of Africa and their respective states and Government. The state in Africa is like a burden on the people. It is foisted on the people; and used by her leaders as an instrument of oppression, graft and self-enrichment.

In Africa, power flows in the opposite direction that is from top to the bottom but in China, power is based on the people. In Africa power belongs to the leaders and not the people. In view of this distorted world view, the people are not mobilized. There are no bidding factors between the leaders and the led, no focus and no common cause. This means that African countries cannot experience real growth and development as it happened in China.

Conversely, it is not the fault of China that Africa has not kept pace with developments all over the world. What the relationship means is that prepared China is going to re-colonize disorganized Africa. Unfortunately, almost the entire continent is blind to this fact. With the exception of South Africa, most other countries in Africa do not know how to handle their relationship with China and the enormity of the presence of this yellow people. Those who know lack the requisite human resource base and civil society capacity to undertake such highly technical bilateral agreements. The emerging scenario has in turn resulted in China virtually re-colonizing Africa States where they have had contacts. They are moving so swiftly across the continent from Sudan to Liberia, from Uganda to Namibia. They are not constrained by the kind of leadership in power; to China good governance and democracy means nothing. There are in Africa to grab her remaining resources, dump her cheap goods and export her abundant human resources. We are projecting that in the next 10years, the streets of African countries will be bursting to the seams with all manners of Chinese. l

At this early stage, it is important to re-awaken the entire peoples of Africa to the re-colonization plot of the dragon. Africans must rise to the occasion, even if our leaders decide to compromise or turn blind eyes to the impending replacement of western masters by a more deadly eastern master who unlike the old master lacks the social conscience and civil society control from her home country. China is ready to deal and she can deal with anybody anyhow.

In conclusion “just as China’s leadership on the eve of economic reform recognized that there could be no step forward without a cold-calculated analysis of the facts of their situation, so too African leaders need to access their relationship with China on the basis of reality, China’s needs is an opportunity for accountable African governments to arrange for favorable terms on a range of issues”. Despite their continents obvious weaknesses, African States need not assume a secondary position in their dealings with China. As other states in other developing regions have shown, astute and active diplomacy can reap real concessions from Beijing to local interest”.

It is incumbent upon responsible African leaders and perhaps more importantly African civil society to call Beijing to account when it comes up short in fulfilling its promise of mutually beneficial co-operation “A code of conduct, structured to reflect the principles contained within Nepad and the African union should be considered to govern the different dimensions of the relationship. It could be bolstered by an annual review process, modeled on the African peer review mechanism. Concurrently a parallel civil society forum-similar to that introduced into the non aligned movement summits by South Africa, but inclusive of business, labour and consumer groups should be created so as to bring together non-governmental organizations from both regions to share ideas and lobby government on each aspect of this promising relationship .It also needs to be measured carefully against the potential gains and losses of Africa. In so doing, leaders on both ends of the equation will ultimately give substance to a shared sense of destiny so often discussed, in the flowery language of diplomatic communiqués”.

“The history of Chinese/African relations is an important area that requires more studies”.

This is the mission statement of the INSTITUTE FOR CHINA AFRICA RELATIONS.