Is China Good For Africa?

“There is a great energy and a real hunger by many in Africa to step out of a past that was too often dependent on aid from the West, said Tom Lynch, founder of the Worthwhile Wine Company, an Atlanta-based importer of South African wines. “Whether for selfish gain or not, the thing the Chinese are doing is investing in the countries of Africa, and in doing so, interjecting a dose of self-sufficient capitalism that all of the West’s aid never did.”

China’s interests in Africa include lumber, refining, agriculture, mining, textiles, railroads, highways, bridges, airports and housing; and that’s just to name a few.

Seyi Fabode, who works with an Africa-focused market research firm called Textionnaire, has seen how the influx of Chinese money has changed the composition of his hometown of Lagos, Nigeria.  “There were undeveloped plots of land in 1996 that started getting developed in the early 2000s,” he recalled. “A few years ago the Chinese started showing interest and drove up land prices. Now, in 2010, my parents’ neighbors are Chinese engineers who house several of their staff. The staff [are] all Chinese and work for them on rail track projects and farm acres of land bought by the engineers, but most likely has been paid for by the Chinese government.”

With China’s massive investment comes some doubt. It’s a relationship that impacts both parties immensely, and although the receiving countries may not completely be involved in the terms of the deal, Fabode believes it’s a relationship that can be capitalized upon by African countries as well.

“Will Nigerians and Africans benefit from the Chinese interest? Inasmuch as the African people do not just sit by and ‘sell’ themselves for a lot less than the resources are truly worth, and the governments implement local content clauses like the Brazils of this world, then it will not be total pillage,” he said. “Otherwise Africa will look back in a few centuries and wonder how they screwed this huge opportunity up.”