If you go around Africa building monuments that costs an arm and leg but don’t contribute to economic development, sure, call it debt trap diplomacy.
What do you think the Africans are selling to the Chinese?
The same things they sell to the West—energy and resources.
Are Westerners capable of building power plants, roads, railways, bridges and ports?
Why certainly.
So why is it that Africa continued to look like a dump decade after decade of independence, right into the 2000s?
I remember receiving UNICEF fundraising pleas for many years with pictures like this:
That’s what Africa lives with, after 50, 60, 70 years of Western “AID” and “GENEROSITY” straight out of the pockets of the “WHITE MAN’S BURDEN”.
Now, if you sell the same things to another customer at the same price (these are commodities) but in return, you receive these:
All on a scale, quality and financing no one else can offer. One would be crazy not to take it.
There is no insistence on political reform, no impossibly stringent conditions attached to the financing, no separate agenda (such as weapons sales, environmental guarantees, trade rights etc) tagged on these commercial transactions.
The Chinese have shown that if you connect, people will come. And generate wave after wave of economic activity in virtuous cycles. The investments, although hefty initially, will pay for themselves over and over in the coming decades. That is the Chinese experience.
Africans are no dumber than anyone. After all, the out of Africa theory make them the oldest among the races of men—they are history’s ultimate survivors. Surely they can smell a good deal from far away? And if the West or Japan and South Korea can offer a better deal, the Africans will go shopping.
Debt trap? Africa has been chained by the western aid trap for more than half a century.
Time to try something different with the Chinese who have demonstrated they are in it for the long haul.
Early results are very promising.
This is the picture of 21st century Africa I want to see more of. Not just well-fed, but well-educated. Chinese infrastructure will go a long ways contributing to African progress, way more than colonization, slavery, exploitation and in more recent times, arms sales, drone strikes, low commodity prices and expensive technology.
Majulah, Africa.
Note 1: The statues are built by North Koreans, not the Chinese.
Note 2: I feel compelled to say something about the debt trap. In 1980, China was poorer than Chad, a sub-saharan country that is still among the poorest today. How did China pay for HER OWN development over the past 40 years? There is at least two Chad’s worth of Chinese still living on less than $2 a day. China is intimately acquainted with poverty, the sort that keeps you up at night because your stomach is empty. She has no reason to exploit the very problem she has devoted the entire nation’s resource to eliminate.
Besides, if China really wants to exploit debt diplomacy, they are better served purchasing Western sovereign debt. At least they are triple A rated and there is much less risk of default.
Note 3: Want to know what Chinese aid looks like?
Hybrid rice that can yield more than 10 tonnes per hectare, on African soil! Free seeds, free R&D to adapt to local conditions, free training and subsidized equipment.
Now, let’s see Monsanto give away and adapt their hybrid jewels to the third world.
Poor enough to aid.
Picture Source Wikipedia
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