U.S. worried about China’s growing influence in Africa
Posted on November 20, 2011 – 2:55 pm3 Comments
China has recently surpassed the United States as sub-Saharan Africa’s largest trading partner.
China is busy building railways and roads in Angola, Nigeria and Kenya, revving up trade volumes with South Africa and Zambia and, most of all, guzzling up Africa’s rich reserves of oil and minerals.
Increasingly too, Beijing is courting resource-rich countries, like the Zimbabwe and Sudan, that have been marginalized in recent years by the West, and forging partnerships on the strength of its non-interfering foreign policy.
Tags: Africa, Africa Business, China, United States
The key word there is “seems” my friend. However, I will have to respectfully disagree. After all, the model that China offers Africa benefits China more than the Africans. After all, the loans that China gives to African countries is wrought with lots of caveats. For example, only 40% of African companies can bid on the projects while the other 60% goes to Chinese companies. Furthermore, the Chinese companies do not share their knowledge with the African locals since they bring in their own people to do the work. Therefore, there is no knowledge transfer or sharing. On top of that, cheap goods end up flooding the African markets which only hurts local African businesses in the end. Thus the only thing that results is a one sided deal which favours the Chinese, really because they get access to the resources; flood the market with their exports, and get 60% of their loans back to them up front, on top of interest for their money which they loaned out in the first place. Either way, Africans are screwed….
Trading with China affords Africa and the Caribbean more options. – The Chinese model of investing in infrastructure in exchange for resources seems more palatable than the traditional western (US) model of aid – which is completely unsustainable and has completely failed in Africa
America seems to be worried too little too late. America has also been sleeping while China has been investing heavily in the Caribbean and South America right under their noses. However, although China’s investment in Africa, the Caribbean and South America is a good thing, these regions have to be careful that they do not trade one hegemony for another.