For all of the talk about China and its potentially deleterious impact on Africa, there is another potential player in African affairs from the east. India may well provide a useful foil to China, and perhaps even will present a somewhat less predatory visage.
Having a diversity of options can only help African leaders to make the best choices for their people, though bidding wars can also fuel the very greed that has fueled big man kleptocracies in the past. What this reveals is that there are two factors in modern African destabilization; disruptive influences from without and lousy leadership from within. Perhaps the new interest from Asia, coupled with a cultivation of interest from the west, will allow a new era of opportunity to ,open across Africa.