Friday, March 29, 2024

PART 2: Dealing With Uncivil Agendas in the Development Arena

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ANITA Construction Limited employees moulding blocks for the 20 low-cost housing units under construction for civil servants in Mulobezi District. Picture by CHILA NAMAIKO

By Sunday Chilufya Chanda

PART 2: Why the West Is Opposed to Chinese Investment, What China Does for Africa That the West Doesn’t & How Europe has always misunderstood what Africans want.

“The Economist” is an English-language weekly magazine-format newspaper owned by the Economist Group and edited at offices in London.

The publication takes an editorial stance of classical and economic liberalism that is representative of western thought and culture.

Eighteen years ago, the Economist ran a story under the grim headline, “The Hopeless Continent”. The article painted a gloomy picture of Africa and it presented a pessimistic thesis that the “world” might just give up on the entire continent with its wars and famines.

For the Economist and many in the west, Africa was beyond help, beyond repair and doomed to a future of savagery and underdevelopment.

As a San Francisco-based writer and broker- Frederick Kuo tersely put it “A few years later, this story line would face a complete rebuttal as the continent became central to the strategic interest of a rising superpower from the east: China”.

The following is a reproduction of an article by Frederick Kuo entitled “What China Knows about Africa That the West Doesn’t”. The story also discusses how Europe has always misunderstood what Africans want:

What China Knows about Africa That the West Doesn’t-Frederick Kuo

Throughout the last five centuries, Africa has existed in the Western imagination between two polarized extremes. One is the Africa that exists as treasure trove of spoils, a source of slaves to take as free labor, and a vast land full of natural riches for the taking. The other extreme is the Africa that is in need of saving, a place of needy and helpless souls where Westerners can live out their fantasies of missionary heroism.

However, in the dawn of the twenty-first century, a different African story has emerged which is, and should be, challenging the way that the West imagines Africa. From Nigeria to Kenya, and from Angola to Ethiopia, Africa is now one of the engines of global economic growth, clocking in over 4 percent annually. Instead of a continent in need of saving, Africa is becoming the next great frontier for development and economic opportunity.

For the West to take part in this new African story, it is crucial to build a new relationship with Africa.

Ever since the first Portuguese ships began to ply the shores of sub-Saharan Africa, the “dark continent” has existed in the Western mind as a passive, helpless entity. The first several centuries of widespread contact coincided with the European age of discovery and industrialization, both events spelling great suffering for the peoples of Africa.

As Europeans colonised the New World, the need for a vast and compliant labor force drew them to West Africa, an easy source for slaves as the region had been practicing the institution of slavery for hundreds of years.

From the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, tens of millions of Africans would eventually be brought to the New World and dehumanized by a racialized institution of slavery, creating a major modern diaspora that is culturally disconnected from its origins.

As competition flared between great European powers, Africa became a boundless source for colony grabbing. The “Scramble for Africa” culminated with the Berlin Conference of 1884, where Africa was divided as bounty and the institutions for wholesale European colonization for Africa were formalized.

In 1870, only 10 percent of Africa was colonized. By 1914, over 90 percent of the continent’s landmass, with the exception of Ethiopia, Somalia’s Dervish state and Liberia, was under European control.

With colonization also came religious missionaries, who saw themselves as generous and enlightened saviors doing God’s work by saving the heaving masses of heathen souls. This well-meaning but ultimately misguided and self-righteous attitude was captured in Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden,” describing the West’s attitudes towards its colonies. “Take up the White Man’s burden, Send forth the best ye breed Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives’ need;”—Rudyard Kipling

In postcolonial Africa, Western imagination and intervention through humanitarian aid and the presence of Western NGOs have continued this legacy of missionary zeal and the attitude that the West, without input from Africans themselves, understood what is best for Africa.

As Western nations matured through centuries of social upheaval and evolution to become more humane and comfortable societies, the image of Africa evolved from a place to be looted to a place of misery where Western man could live out his savior fantasies.

With the political instability and ensuing chaos and mismanagement that followed decolonization, the image of famines, genocide and helpless Africans became ingrained in the Western imagination.

Though the image of Africa transitioned from bounty to be seized to that of an eternal victim, one thing remained constant: the passive nature of Africa’s place for the West to make its mark and bestow civilization.

Enter the Dragon

In 2000, the Economist ran a cover story, “The Hopeless Continent,” which argued the thesis that Africa was beyond help and doomed to a future of barbarism and underdevelopment because of its poor social institutions and corrupt governance. A few years later, this story line would face a complete rebuttal as the continent became central to the strategic interest of a rising superpower from the east: China.

Although China had established diplomatic ties with a wide number of African nations, and even participated in aiding anticolonial struggles in the continent since the fifties, its presence on the continent had largely been minimal.

However, at the onset of the twenty-first century, China, experiencing the throes of the most massive industrialization in history, began to identify Africa, a continent full of natural resources, commodities and a vast untapped market, as a place of great long-term strategic value.

Using a diverse arsenal of tools, from increasing trade, investment, loans and infrastructure aid, China has emerged as the dominant foreign power in Africa, and as a favoured partner for African countries looking to emulate its rapid development.

From a negligible trickle in 2000, China’s trade with Africa topped $160 billion in 2015, ranking as far and away the largest trade partner with the continent.

In 2014, China signed more than $70 billion in infrastructure contracts in the continent, and Chinese banks now provide more loans to African nations than does the World Bank.” (End of Kuo Article)

The foregoing excerpt from Frederick Kuo’s article shows how the west has constantly misunderstood what Africa Wants and what it needs.

Thirteen years after painting its gloomy picture of Africa as “The Hopeless Continent” The Economist published a Special Report in March 2013 with a more optimistic heading “A hopeful Continent” emblazoned across its front cover.

What had changed in the interim? A big country with a big economy and a big heart for Africa captured in five short letters-China.

In Part 3 of the series “Dealing With Uncivil Agendas In The Arena Of Development” Sunday Chanda discusses the recent FOCAC Summit and western world’s classification of funds from that part of the world as “Pie” and similar funds from China as “Debt Trap”

The author is the PF Media Director At the Patriotic Front Secretariat In Lusaka

4 COMMENTS

  1. I have often pointed out to my students that serious colonial governance was with us for over 70 years. The Zambia that Britain exited in 1964 is far much better now that what it was during colonial rule. The British littered selected areas in which they stole our wealth with schools and hospitals similar to those in the U.K. for their kindred and nothing to write home about for the indigenous.
    Change with support from China can be seen.
    I hear critics bleat and I say to them…colonial education was at best education for subordination. Today, you read and write but are subdued, subordinated. Think! LOOK and see! The Chinese are better partners than the WEST. We have achieved more with their support than what we got during the entire colonial era.

    • Are we ever going to learn,how many west verses east unprofitable wars will Africans fight.our forefathers fought against each other for British ,French or German, then after the second world war it was either you with the Communists russia or capitalist America, now the likes of chanda are at it again with the worthless political and economical wars on behalf of his preferred masters.

  2. It is not about who u get the help from. Because a learned person knows that the West and even britain still help poor Zambia. It is about what you do with that money because with thr Chinese remember that nothing is free with them. That money you are chewing will need to repaid with interest. This chilufya boy has no shame because today he wants to paint chinese as saints and yet it is well documented these criminals abuse our people and even shoot workers

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