Africa Finds that Looking East is not Enough

In the area of international trade and cooperation, the language in Africa is heavily accented with the phrase, "Looking East" meaning that many African nations consider that China is a better trade partner in comparison to high incomer countries of the West. Apart from the slogans, a proper investigation of Chinese involvement in Africa revealed that this was majorly concentrated in nations with huge natural resource endowments. Seeing in this a strategy, it is clear that China's quest was to ensure that its rapid growth rates are not slowed down or halted by the huge demand for petroleum and other commodities that selected African countries have had in abundance.

Thus it appears that African countries and China had found a perfect diplomatic and commercial fir for their relations as China eschewed demands for democratic reforms and high standards of public sector management. In the last decade, the total volume of growth between China and countries in Africa grew phenomenally. In general terms, the structure of this trade represented commodity imports for China with development assistance to facilitate infrastructure construction coming with ,manufactured exports flowing into Africa.

This issue was addressed in this blog post in response to the assumption that China was emerging as Africa's new colonial power. That post is now vindicated as it is clear from this article in the NYT that Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other resource rich countries from Africa are facing a pull-back from China due to the instability of these countries and the collapse of the commodity prices worldwide. More than ever, it is evident that China's engagement was not a special bond but was driven by pragmatic concerns to construct infrastructure that allows for the extraction of petroleum, bauxite or Iron ore. To its chagrin, Africa will realize that it is not special at all and must conduct its international affairs more rationally than to try and play China against the Us and Europe. For as the referenced blog post states, China definitely needs the US and Europe more than it needs Africa.