D I P L O M AT I C A| DEBATE
Overcoming Africa’s critical challenges
By Robert I. Rotberg
China and Africa
Global commodity prices, which are fuelling Africa’s GDP growth averages, are driven largely by Chinese demand. Propelled by the same impulses, offshore and onshore, Africa is being explored and, over time, exploited. Countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana and Chad have recently joined the known energy exporters of Nigeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and the Sudan, 28
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ustaining sub-Saharan Africa’s current welcome prosperity, especially an average annual GDP growth of five percent, will demand enhanced or better political leadership, improvements in prevailing methods of governance, a canny embrace of Chinese mercantilism and the ability to cope successfully with or effectively manage the many serious problems — demographics, energy shortfalls, paucities of educational opportunity, scarcity of water and new and old diseases — that threaten to halt or marginalize the continent’s progress. The future of the 49 very distinct countries of sub-Saharan Africa is at a critical inflection point. If China itself, on the back of North American and European consumer purchases and domestic demand, continues to grow annually at nearly eight percent a year, African countries will be able to continue very profitably to export their petroleum, natural gas and base minerals across the high seas to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and Chengdu. As long as China wants more and more of Africa’s natural resources, Africa’s people (and especially its elites) will benefit and their living standards will eke upwards. But Africa must also learn to manage China.
This eight-year-old Tanzanian boy received an injection with an HIV-infected needle while being treated for malaria and soon developed AIDS.
but this important momentum depends on China’s relentless appetite. So does the infrastructural boom that is now benefiting Africa. China is building roads, railways, schools, hospitals, party headquarters, stadiums, and almost anything else the African leaders with whom China co-operates want. It is also building dams for hydropower in dozens of countries despite the fervent protestations of environmentalists. As former British prime minister Tony Blair has said: “if a country in Africa wants something done, such as building a road, they go to the [Western] donor community and it ends up…[mired] in months of bureaucracy. If you tell the Chinese you want a road, the next day someone is out there with
a shovel.” By 2013, Chinese operatives controlled about 40 percent of the subSaharan African construction market. Not all Chinese projects turn out well; there are many shoddy examples that have had to be re-done or abandoned. The Chinese have also been slow to employ Africans, even as manual labourers, preferring Chinese workers imported from home. China has also been reluctant to transfer technology along with a completed edifice or transportation improvement. Mining management and supervision of road building are all controlled by Chinese; Africans are not allowed to handle the wheels of real power. The Chinese attitude almost everywhere seems to focus on getting a job done, even WINTER 2014 | JAN-FEB-MAR