Debating “China in Africa” at the World Social Forum 2013

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At the World Social Forum 2013 in Tunis only one session dealt explicitly with the issue of “China in Africa”. Enda (Environnement et développement du Tiers Monde) and CACID (Centre Africain pour le Commerce, l’Intégration et le développement) organized a session entitled “China and Africa: Commerce, Investment and Public Aid for Development.”

Interestingly enough, however, the first speaker, Cherif Salif Sy from Senegal did not speak about China but about France and the francophone Africa. In a perspective of a critic of the so called “Françafriquehe emphasized the colonial and postcolonial effects of the French Colonial Pact (pacte colonial). This pact sought to secure French economic interests by controlling the flows of raw materials, merchandises and capital. The pact envisaged the following three points:

  1. The prohibition or restriction of the access of foreign products to the colonial market
  2. The obligation to export the colonial products mainly or exclusively to France
  3. The interdiction of processing in the colonial regions.

Sy concluded that until today the economy of francophone Africa is still dominated by France and still lacking processing industries, the exceptions being mainly subsidiary companies of French enterprises.

The second speaker, Demra Moussa Dembele, formulated also a very harsh critic of the “West”. Referring to Sy’s arguments, Dembele focused on the Western discourse about China and Africa. He demonstrated to the audience, with a majority of European listeners, how absurd it sounds to African people when Europe warns them that China could do to them what Europe did.

China, as Dembele puts it, is the “nightmare of the Western World” and Europe tries with all means to contain the growing importance of China in Africa. In this sense Dembele pointed out that Europe’s intense efforts to impose the Economic Partnership Agreements is the expression of a colonial reflex trying to limit the Chinese influence. Thereby the West remains in a domination logic and is not able to conceive Africa as an equal partner. Dembele added that contrary to Europe, China never possessed colonies in Africa and therefore the relations with China are not biased. Today the most important issue for Africa is to choose its partners freely and to improve the industrialization of the continent. Therefore, China could be an example and a partner.

From a European point of view it may be astonishing, that none of the speakers spoke about Chinese land deals in Africa, as our media often depict China as one of the main land grabbers (e.g. in Die Zeit). But contrary to this depiction, Asian land deals only play a minor role in Africa (with the important exception of India) and Chinese land acquisitions in Africa represent less than 5% of the European acquisitions (fig. 1 and fig. 2).

Fig. 1: Land acquisitions in Africa classified by origin region of the investors in million hectares (China’s part is black)

(Source: Land Matrix 03.04.13)

Fig. 2: List of the ten most important origin countries of land investments in Africa followed by the Asian countries acquiring land in Africa

 1-56

Hectare

Country

 

4.120.273

Europe

1

1.880.000

United Arab Emirates

2

1.784.820

India

3

1.523.584

UK

4

1.438.858

USA

5

1.340.617

South Africa

6

564.792

Italy

7

475.012

Germany

8

464.500

Sudan

9

367.550

Ethiopia

10

358.734

Portugal

(…)

 

 

15

260.000

Malaysia

17

240.000

Singapore

19

162.171

China

27

100.000

Republic of Korea

32

71.000

Japan

35

50.000

Viet Nam

43

21.500

Maldives

45

20.234

Iran (Islamic Republic of)

52

8.000

Indonesia

(Source: Land Matrix 03.04.13)


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