by Guy Arnold
Any suggestion of external intervention has been bitterly opposed in the post-independence years, but times were changing. At the end of the twentieth century the Nigerians had dismissed a US proposal for a base in the north of the country (the United States was primarily concerned with safeguarding its regional oil interests). By 2015 the terrorist threat had become a top priority. Britain’s interest in Sierra Leone earned that country military aid in the form of 700 troops who helped end the civil war and rescue trapped UN forces. It was, as always, about who was being assisted by whom. Blair gave a speech in 1999 in the United States in which he stated: ‘We cannot turn our backs on conflicts and violations of human rights in other countries if we still want to be secure.’ By any analysis, this statement provided the justification for intervention. Foreign companies trading in Africa do not feel it incumbent upon them to lecture their hosts about human rights: they can always leave. In any case the African countries can turn to China as an alternative source of aid: China claims not to mix politics with trade or investment while obtaining the contracts it wants.
Throughout the debate in the United States and Europe as to whether they should resort to ‘boots on the ground’ to face the Islamic State (ISIS) menace, France maintained 4,500 troops in Mali in support of its besieged government and sent a further 700 as peacekeepers in the civil war in the Central African Republic (CAR). France had extensive investments in Mali as well as 800 of its own citizens. These interventions followed an old colonial pattern. Britain, ambiguous and condescending, linked any assistance it provided with requests for companies to allow for greater foreign investment. Aid will be easier to obtain if recipients make it easier for companies to invest. Blair made Africa the lead problem in his foreign policy until the invasion of Iraq intervened. By championing NEPAD, Blair fell into a trap of his own making since a majority of African leaders showed little interest in it. Oil and security became the top concerns in both Europe and Africa and changed the urgency and scope of new policies. At the same time Africa offered positive potential for foreign interests and cheap labour made it an attractive base for multinational companies, provided a degree of stability was maintained.
China, whose activities in Africa attract a great deal of attention, sees Africa as a resource base waiting to be tapped. The United States sees Africa more in strategic terms: how can the bases and military ‘facilities’ it is establishing along the Sahel and elsewhere help contain the war on terror and also (unstated) spread US power and hegemony in the continent as a whole to match that of the Chinese and the Europeans? The EU sees Africa as an extension of European influence and economic control. Britain and France, the two major imperial powers, are concerned to maintain their influence as long as possible, even though China and the United States are steadily outpacing them. The collective of NGOs expect Africa to provide scope for their continued activity.
Half a century after the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), development is still largely dependent upon aid and assistance from outside the continent. One way in which to understand how a country operates is to study its relations with other powers. The competitive nature of aid assistance from China and the EU brings the continent ever closer to the economic interests of those two major sources of aid when Africa should be working to lessen their influence on its development. China, which currently commands a great deal of attention, is as much a colonial power as are the United States, Britain or France. At present, half a century after President Nyerere’s Arusha Declaration (1967) called for caution in the use of aid or reliance upon it, Africa remains as dependent upon it as ever.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Africans fought successfully for an end to the colonial system. Now colonialism, courtesy of the Chinese, the Americans and the old colonial powers of Europe, has returned to a continent that those powers would prefer to keep dependent – though, as yet, only for resources rather than colonies Between them they constitute a new ‘Scramble for Africa’.
RESOURCES
A base in minerals is one of Africa’s greatest strengths – and attractions. The continent possesses possibly 30 per cent of the world’s base minerals (it produces 15 per cent of the world’s copper and 70 per cent of its cobalt). Several African countries – Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Africa and Zimbabwe – are especially richly endowed with minerals and attract a great deal of attention outside Africa as a consequence. China’s emergence as a major economy, for example, has altered many of the world’s trading patterns; in particular it seeks minerals for its industrial growth and countries that have such minerals but lack investment to exploit them are a target for China’s attention. China has now overtaken the United States as the world’s leading importer of minerals. Poor countries in Africa are usually only too eager to accept investment in their mining operations.
One of the most controversial African resources is coltan (colombite-tantalite), a dull black metallic ore from which the elements niobium and tantalum are extracted. Tantalum is employed in the manufacture of electronic capacitors which are used in consumer electronics products such as mobile phones, DVD players, video-game systems and computers. Given these uses, it is a highly valued resource. Coltan mining became the centre of accusations that it was financing serious conflicts in the east of the DRC during and after the so-called African ‘Great War’ (1998–2003). The illegal extraction of coltan from the eastern DRC at the turn of the century made headline news. The Rwandan occupation of eastern DRC had made it difficult or impossible for the DRC to exploit its coltan and, according to a 2003 UN Security Council report, a great deal of the ore was mined illegally and smuggled out of the country’s eastern region into neighbouring Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. This smuggled coltan then provided finance for the militias operating in the area. It has also been purchased by Western companies in the full knowledge that it has been illegally mined – and is a highly profitable business.
The continent also produces about a third of the world’s bauxite (Guinea, Ghana and Sierra Leone), a third of the world’s chromium, while half the world’s gold comes from Africa, mainly from South Africa which also produces a substantial quantity of fourteen leading minerals. These are: chromium, copper, gold, iron ore, crude steel, lead, manganese and nickel, silver, uranium, diamonds, elemental sulphur and coal. However, there is a danger in relying on a single export commodity that most African countries also possess. It is the case that a downturn in the Chinese economy will have repercussions through much of the world – but will have a particular impact on the smaller African countries.
Another important commodity is water, the supply of which will inevitably be affected by climate change. While Africa does have ample water for its coming needs, it is often to be found in the wrong area. Where river water is shared, especially along the Nile, Egypt has several times threatened Ethiopia that if that country should take water from the Blue Nile for irrigation of the Ethiopian highlands, this could be treated as a cause of war between the two countries. The hydro-electric potential of the Congo River is also vast – it is second only to the Amazon in the volume of water it discharges – but the development of this potential has been debated for half a century. Although the earlier Inga 1 and the Inga 2 dams (commissioned in 1972 and 1982 respectively) are undergoing major rehabilitation, the troubled political history of the DRC has held back development. If the DRC remains stable and does not frighten away investors, it is possible that the huge Grand Inga Dam project will go ahead. It is the largest hydro-electric power scheme in the world and could produce up to 39,000 MW of electricity, over twice the power generation of the Three Gorges Dam in China and over a third of the electricity currently produced in Africa. Should the development go ahead, it would ‘light’ Africa to the benefit of the international companies that stand to gain by it and the African states that it would supply with much-needed electricity. There are less ambitious plans to develop Inga 3 (3,500 MW) to export power generated to South
Africa. However, if Grand Inga is to go ahead, the DRC will need to achieve a level of political stability that has long been lacking.
Awareness of the destruction of the ecosystem in Africa is growing, but too slowly. In the DRC, for example, the rain forest covers more than 70 per cent of the country’s total area of 905,000 square miles and timber from these forests is the second such resource in the world after the Amazon basin in South America. Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo also have substantial regions of rain forest, but elsewhere, in countries such as Gabon, huge swathes of forest have already been cut down and the timber exported.
Oil may claim to be the most sought-after and most valuable of all minerals. In 2011 Africa accounted for 132.4 billion barrels of oil – 8 per cent of the world’s output. The principal African producers were Algeria, Angola, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Libya, Nigeria, Sudan/South Sudan and Tunisia. However, significant new finds have been made both onshore and offshore in subsequent years. The discovery and exploitation of oil has always brought political problems with it and this has certainly been the case in Africa. In North Africa, Algeria and Libya are major producers, although as of 2011 there has been a fall-off in production in Libya as a consequence of the Arab Spring and what followed. Nigeria has not produced at full capacity for some years because of the Delta War waged by the minority ethnic groups in the Niger Delta who claim they have not received their share of oil revenues from foreign oil corporations. Meanwhile China has become a major trading partner with Africa for a share of its oil. In 2011 Sudan split and the new state of South Sudan came into being. The exploitation of Sudan’s oil presents difficult political problems since the major oilfield is divided by the North–South border that separates the two Sudans. The United States also hopes to obtain a growing proportion of its oil imports from the West African coast countries that have oil and are discovering more there so as to become less reliant upon oil from the Gulf.
To close with a metaphor, Africa’s resources are equivalent to capital and the continent is in the process of living off its capital while not generating or discovering any more. For foreign countries, Africa is regarded as a breadbasket whose resources (capital) are finite and will eventually be consumed by a hungry world that has no interest in adding value to the resources it extracts.
THE IMPACT OF CHINA
The United States may still claim to be the world’s only superpower, but times are changing as its people and government reappraise what it can and cannot do as it takes account of what China’s intentions are as the new superpower. The US policy of creating a ring fence around China composed of small states that – at the least – are wary of China’s growing power is a defensive measure that unintentionally emphasizes China’s power while downsizing that of the United States. China intends to overtake the United States, first economically and later militarily, and the antagonism of these two powers is becoming ever more obvious. Although both powers are pursuing their own policies in Africa – the United States building up its system of military bases and facilities, and China buying its way into Africa’s resources with its aid – this diplomatic separatism cannot last, mainly because China’s aid policy is undermining the whole Western approach to Africa, so that sooner or later a confrontation will occur. During the Cold War, China provided support for certain liberation movements and aid to selected countries, but its activities were limited by its own poverty and development needs. In a sense China was putting down markers to indicate what it would do in the future. In 1964, while on a visit to West Africa in the course of an important tour of the continent, Zhou Enlai visited the state of Mali where he laid down the principles that should govern Chinese aid. These were:
1. Chinese aid mutually benefits both donor and recipient; it is not a kind of unilateral alms.
2. China respects the sovereignty of recipient countries, and never asks for privileges or attaches any conditions.
3. Aid is provided free or with low interest rates.
4. The purpose of Chinese aid is to help recipients embark on the road to self-reliance.
5. China tries to help recipients to build projects which require less investment while yielding quicker results, thus helping to accumulate capital.
6. China will provide its own equipment at international market prices. If it is not up to agreed specifications, it will be replaced.
7. China will ensure that technical personnel of the recipient country master appropriate techniques.
8. Chinese experts will have the same standard of living as the experts of the recipient countries.
However, from providing small-scale aid that did not compete with Western programmes, China developed into a major donor over the years 1968–76 when it constructed the 1,160-mile TAZARA Railway between Tanzania and Zambia which was opened in 1976. It was the largest aid project anywhere in the world at that time. At the height of its construction, 90 per cent of all Chinese aid technicians were in Africa and most of them were working on the railway. Given its own problems of development at home, for China to pay for the $400 million railway was extremely generous. In addition, a further $53 million was incurred for extra construction: this was also covered by China. The railway was a major triumph, preparing the way for a much greater aid role, though this did not really take off until the 1990s. Even so, at one stage of construction there were 18,000 Chinese, many of them labourers, working on the line. Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, aid to Africa became, for a time, a low priority.
Meanwhile, in the decade 1996–2006, a profound change occurred in China– Africa relations, and by 2006 there were hundreds of major Chinese businesses in Africa and tens of thousands of Chinese labourers, retailers, managers and even tourists. From 1996 China embarked on a programme of resource acquisition in Africa which embraced resources of all kinds – minerals, timber, food and, above all, oil. In return, China supplied aid and concessionary loans without strings, a policy that undermined the Western approach that was to attach various conditions relating to governance to its aid. The attraction of Africa for China lay in its unexploited resources of energy, timber, agriculture and fisheries that Beijing hoped to ‘lock’ into by formal or informal means so as to provide a steady supply of these resources. And yet the apparent generosity of Chinese aid – the rapid construction of prestige buildings or projects by Chinese businesses that brought into Africa their own labourers, sometimes in thousands – was undermined by the failure of the Chinese to use unemployed Africans. Nonetheless, the Chinese brought to Africa their own work ethic which enabled them to produce rapid results.
It is a mixed story. In part the Chinese behave like the former colonial powers, stripping Africa of its resources. On the other hand, they were responsible for the rapid construction and manning of hospitals and schools, as well as the renovation of railways or construction of new road highways linking major towns and centres of development. China’s lavish expenditure on aid from 2000 onwards depended on its position as the driving force of the world economy. It took, for example, four fifths of the increase in the world’s copper supply, while its oil imports are expected to treble by 2030. In its drive for resources, China is prepared to deal with dictators (not approved by the Western aid donors) and separate its business dealings from the politics prevailing in particular countries. The Chinese impact on the continent has spread a range of benefits. The economies of Africa have never grown as fast as they have with the coming of the Chinese, and one result has been to lift large numbers of people out of total poverty in a way not achieved under Western aid programmes. By 2006 the West was beginning to accept that the Chinese drive for resources was bringing benefits to the continent as a whole in a manner that at least equalled the Chinese impact on the continent.
The year 2006 was a pivotal turning point in Africa–China relations. In January of that year, China issued its first Africa Policy Paper, which announced its intention of establishing a strategic partnership with
Africa. This was followed by a number of visits to Africa by leading Chinese political figures. In April, President Hu Jintao visited Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya. In June, Premier Wen Jiabao made a tour of Africa, which included Egypt, Ghana, the Republic of the Congo, Angola, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. By this time the West was beginning to realize the political and economic influence that China was gaining. The Chinese emphasis was on creating a new type of strategic partnership based on respect for equality and sovereignty. Meanwhile, these visits were leading to trade agreements worth several billion dollars.
Yet the all-pervasive presence of the Chinese in various African states and their readiness to offer aid, investment and loans caused an increasing number of Africans to question China’s motives: were they witnessing a new form of colonialism? China might lay down principles of behaviour between donor and recipient, but ignoring problems is a negative way in which to be involved. African critics questioned the total value of China’s aid. South Africa’s Moeletsi Mbeki, the deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs, said of the growing inter-relationship of China and Africa that it was both a ‘tantalizing opportunity and a terrifying threat’. Botswana and Mozambique also raised concerns over managing the influx of Chinese businesses and the resulting unfavourable balance of trade.
China has to be seen in a realistic light and not as a benevolent source of unlimited aid. At the Chinese–Africa summit held in Beijing in November 2006, forty-eight African leaders were in attendance (the five countries that still recognized Taiwan were not represented) when President Hu Jintao announced that China would provide $5 billion in preferential loans and credit over the following three years (doubling its aid to Africa), while at the same time cancelling $10 billion in bilateral African debts.