It might be one of the most dramatic changes in Africa in the last decade or so, and it’s crept in so quickly that it is hard to identify when it all happened. Go to Gabarone or Lusaka or Windhoek and you see a new construction project. Look closely. The odds are pretty good that you’ll see Chinese characters on the signs and Chinese workers all over the site.
Neocolonialism on the part of the Chinese? Savvy brokering of east versus west on the part of Africans? Unintended consequence of globalization? Or potentially any of these or all of these depending on the circumstance?
A recent story in the New York Times revealed the tensions between African workers and the Chinese management operating coal mines in Zambia. Naturally there are likely to be tensions between Chinese investors serving one master and Africans with very different interests. Investment rarely comes without the potential for tension.
And yet the only thing that Africans might fear more than the encroaching power of Chinese investors is the possibility that those investors will disappear. One of the many, many discoveries from the Wikileaks documents is revelations of concerns from Kenya that Africa will suffer from agreements between the United States and China. Tellingly, the biggest concern seems to be that the Americans will try to manage Chinese involvement in Africa in ways that would lead to less bilateral cooperation. (Kenya also was stung in Wikileaks when one of the American cables referred to the country as a “swamp of graft.”)
This could very well to prove to be the defining paradigm of African relations with the world. Ideally African states and private interests would be able to play Chinese and American interests off one another to broker the best deals. But that requires certain conditions. Africans rightfully don’t entirely trust the West. It remains to be seen if they ought to place faith in the power in the East.
