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G21 ASIA: THE CHINA-AFRICA SUMMIT: Contributor KEN KAMOCHE reports from Hong-Kong on the implications of the recent overtures of China in Africa.
HONG KONG - The China-Africa Beijing Summit is the latest in a sequence of efforts at closer cooperation between Africa and Asia in the last fifty years. What makes this latest Asia-Africa dalliance markedly different in character and substance is the fact that is it being orchestrated by one Asian country, China.
Ken Kamoche Before considering the significance of this summit it is worth putting the whole Asia-Africa dialogue in context. This dialogue can be traced back to the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955.
That conference brought together 29 nations that represented more than half the world's population. Why did these countries, many of which were still under the colonial yoke, see a need for kinship and fraternity? Precisely because they felt marginalized by the great Western powers which not only controlled the destinies of these poor African and Asian countries, but also paradoxically, effectively ignored them as if they didn't exist.
Few people are aware of this 1955 seminal meeting. Yet the seeds of cooperation amongst the marginalized states that were sowed then ultimately resulted, six years later in the Non-Aligned Movement. So in fact opportunities for coop eration between Asia and Africa go a long way. Last year during the Golden Jubilee of the Bandung summit, participants affirmed the need for even closer cooperation in the wake of the hiatus created by the end of the Cold War.
The trouble with these meetings and declarations is that there are typically long on rhetoric and short on action. I suspect that more people have heard of Doha given its association with WTO than have heard of the Bandung summits. While the Non-Aligned Movement can boast more success, relatively speaking, in creating what Nehru called a third force in the spirit of neutralism, the same cannot be said of Asian-Africa cooperation.
One reason for that lies in their mutual disregard for each other. For fifty years, they have issued declarations that evolve around abstract notions like mutual respect and mutual benefit, but little of this culminates in any real meaningful progress. And when it does, it amounts to Asian countries exporting their goods to Africa and importing little in return.
African countries have, up until fairly recently, also tended to ignore the East as they court their old colonial masters even as they profess their commitment to so-called neutralism. Mutual disregard also entails mutual ignorance about each other, and the reliance on one-sided media reporting which focuses on negatives and leaves ordinary citizens in each region virtually ignorant about each other's historical, economic and social-political circumstances, as well as business and trading opportunities.
The upshot is that the gap in the world order has been yawning even wider following the end of the Cold War and the failure of globalization to deliver the economic dividend that Africa in particular so badly needs. I have always maintained that there is more mileage to be gained by interacting with Asia than by treading the well-worn path to the capitals of the Western world. Countries like Kenya and South Africa have started to make fruitful inroads into the East.
When the history of the West's economic hegemony is written, Africa will feature more as a series of footnotes than a complete chapter, unless something radically changes in the way the West treats Africa. The sooner African leaders recognize this, the better Africa's chances are to raise itself from its current economic morass.
The evidence is there. The West ignored China until China started to rock the world economic order a decade ago. When China was exporting porcelain, silk and tea to Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte is supposed to have pointed at China on a map, saying, 'There is a giant. Let him sleep. If he awakes, he'll shake the world.'
And sleep he did, the giant in the Orient, for the next century and a half or so. But after Deng Xiaoping's revolutionary reforms two decades ago, the great sleep came to an end.
China recently overtook the UK as the fourth largest economy in terms of GDP, but in terms of purchasing power parity, China is now the second largest, although it is still rated as lower-middle income and 150 million of her people fall below the poverty line. China is expected to overtake the USA as the world's largest economy by 2020. Africa ignores China at its peril.
Which leads us to the question, what exactly do China and Africa hope to gain from the Beijing meeting? By all accounts, this is more than just another talking shop where leaders wine and dine, issue tautological statements and sign a bunch of business deals. The sheer magnitude of activities and arrangements to accommodate the African leaders suggests that China is taking Africa quite seriously.
From clearing the streets of traffic, shortening school hours, decorating buildings with murals of African landscapes and game park, to showing movies about Africa in public squares, there seems to be a real effort to create an awareness of the importance of Africa to the Chinese people. This has never been attempted before on such a scale. This is to be welcomed, since ordinary Chinese know so little about Africa. It is symbolic that Kenya's contact with China goes rather far back. During the Ming Dynasty, Chinese sailors, under Admiral Zheng He reached East Africa a good 65 years before Vasco da Gama set foot on the continent. But for the next five hundred years the Chinese and Africans ignored each other until Chairman Mao mooted a new era of cooperation which is perhaps best known for sponsoring African students to study in China.
It hasn't been all that smooth sailing for China, which is having to deny the charge that this friendship is just another form of colonialism, and that they are only interested in Africa's raw materials. China's thirst for raw materials, especially oil, is on a scale that is totally unprecedented.
Africa is the answer. But what does Africa get in return? Development funds, loans, manufacturing technology, management and technical skills. Trade is expected to top US$50 billion this year. But that trade is largely skewed in favour of China. Furthermore, China's investment activities in Africa haven't always been welcomed.
Apart from the problem of unbalanced trade, and violence against Chinese businesses in places like Zambia, the Chinese are accused of mollycoddling rogue regimes like the one in Sudan, refusing to cooperate with the rest of the international community to pressurize dictatorships to reform because they prefer a softly-softly approach.
It remains to be seen whether China can play a meaningful role in facilitating change through a better form of engagement than the more aggressive approach favoured by the West which is seen as tainted by a neo-colonial mentality and unreasonable conditionalities. China's role as Africa's new economic partner will remain mired in controversy until China addresses two main concerns. First, the imperative to guarantee fair investment and trading terms for Africans who have bad memories of exploitation, both political and economic, by Western nations and lenders like the World Bank and IMF, as well as Western multinational firms.
Secondly, they must re-define and relax the quiet diplomacy dogma which is technically a surrogate for detachment while pursuing economic ends. Given the level of corruption and poor governance in Africa, this dogma is decidedly anachronistic. Even the African nations themselves have recognized that you can no longer sit back when your neighbouring country is on fire. Life isn't all about signing contracts and turning the whole world into a market place. China should also beware of lending money to leaders who have shown themselves to be masters of profligacy and non-accountability. My worry is that by accepting China's largesse in a context of inadequate checks and balances, the African eating chiefs who partied in Beijing have effectively mortgaged Africa's assets and livelihoods, in a repeat performance of their experience with Western nations and lenders.
