African Development Bank affirms China’s growing role
May 17, 2007 (BEIJING) — African finance officials have welcomed China’s growing involvement in their continent, but with the caveat that Beijing not reprise old methods of colonial exploitation.
The comments came as the African Development Bank on Thursday drew the curtains on its annual meeting, held for the first time in China in a potent symbol of the growing economic links between the industrial powerhouse and resource-rich continent.
Much of Africa’s estimated 5.5 percent economic growth last year was attributed to China’s near-insatiable demand for the continent’s oil, gas, timber, copper and other natural resources. Two-way trade soared 40 percent to US$55.5 billion last year, and Beijing says it believes that figure will rise to US$100 billion by 2020.
While meeting participants applauded the opportunity for growth in their nations, they called also on China, one of 24 non-African shareholders in the bank, to be mindful of local sensitivities and to help create sustainable development.
Among its most important achievements, the Shanghai meetings offered a chance for African leaders to convey those views to their Chinese counterparts, said Ng’andu Magande, finance minister of Zambia, where protests have erupted over poor working conditions and low pay at Chinese-run copper mines.
“We don’t want a paternalistic arrangement where someone gives us scraps while he’s taking the majority of the revenues,” Magande said.
“We want a partnership that is a win-win partnership, both for those that own the mineral and those who want it,” he said.
Chinese demand was portrayed by many at the meeting as offering African economies a new lease on life, a chance they need to grab before growth again cools.
However, Maeleksi Mbeki of South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand warned that the trade in African resources for Chinese manufactures already closely resembled former colonial arrangements, calling that arrangement unsustainable.
Ken Kwaku, an adviser to former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa, said China needed to ensure that investment in infrastructure such as roads benefited local communities, and did not only facilitate the export of natural resources.
“Africa has already had the latter experience,” he said. “It was called colonialism.”
Others bemoaned the vulnerabilities of local industries to competition from cheap Chinese imports. China, they said, needs to support the export of African value-added products such as furniture from native woods.
“If China just wants resources, it could lead to another plunder,” said Peter Anyang Nyongo, a former Kenyan minister of planning and national development.
African Development Bank President Donald Kaberuka largely dismissed those fears.
“My only concern about Chinese investment in Africa is there’s not enough of it,” Kaberuka said at a post-meeting news conference.
Kaberuka had said earlier that Africa now finds itself in its best economic shape in decades, despite persistent poverty in much of the continent.
Demand from China was driving much of that growth, he said, while also crediting factors from improved peace and stability to lower debt ratios and a flood of remittances from Africans working abroad.
“Therefore to have this meeting in Asia at a time of growing resurgence in Africa … and to have Asia-Africa trade being one of the drivers, it is clear to me this meeting takes on added significance,” said the Rwandan economist, who took over as bank president in 2005.
China made use of the meetings to broadcast its good intentions toward Africa, with Premier Wen Jiabao vowing at Wednesday’s opening session to cancel another 10 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion; A960 million) in African debt, on top of the 10.9 billion (US$1.4 billion; A1 billion) already forgiven.
“We are truly sincere in helping Africa speed up economic and social development for the benefit of the African people,” Wen said.
China has come under fire from some quarters over its African polices, with groups in the West claiming China’s extensive economic ties with Sudan were prolonging the humanitarian crisis in war-torn Darfur.
Others criticize Chinese-funded projects such as dams for failing to meet environmental standards, and say Beijing’s policy of offering aid without political conditions undermines efforts to fight corruption and build stronger government institutions.
While no such criticisms were openly expressed in Shanghai, a key Chinese aid official was prepared to refute the claims.
“Chinese aid and investment will in the long run help in the resolution of the Darfur problem,” said Li Ruogu, the chairman of the state-owned China Exim Bank, which handles most of China’s overseas aid loans.
“We definitely won’t make the mistakes of the Western colonial powers,” he said.
(AP)