Here is a roundup of stories accumulating on my desktop, with commentary as applicable:
Are American investors missing out on great investment opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa? This opinion piece in The Christian Science Monitor argues as much: “Investment-led growth in Africa will enable that continent to contribute to the recovery from the global recession affecting individual Americans as well as improving the lives of Africans.” Of course the worry many of us have is that the line between investment and exploitation is a thinner one than most investors realize.
At Pambazuko News Tierno Monenembo is not pleased with Guinea’s junta leader Dadis Camara, comparing him to Pol Pot and Charles Taylor, among others. Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua, the current chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), on Saturday took the rather extraordinary step of calling for a regional summit in Abuja to address the Guinea crisis (as well as political unrest in Niger). With a situation as fraught as the one in Guinea, naturally now is not the time for China to be accelerating investments there is it? Well, if you understand China’s strategy in Africa, you know the answer: Of course it is!
So it seems that the recent closures of American Embassies and other facilities in South Africa was connected to threats from Somali terrorists: “Tired of fighting, and largely losing, against the US in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia, a group of Somali terrorists devised a strategy to take on the superpower in South Africa.” These threats naturally have led to another round of “South Africa is not ready to host the World Cup” hand-wringing, which is odd given that South Africans, working with the United States, managed to discover and thwart the plot.
Anne Stevens doesn’t like Cape Town. That’s her opinion and she’s welcome to it (and I agree that Durban is underrated) but I do loathe when people argue that Cape Town “is not an African city,” which almost always tends to fetishize perceived images of primitivism.
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Speaking of exploitation and investment in Africa . . .
http://humanrights.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2009/10/13/profit-and-blood/
Though to be fair to China, I don’t know how much you can blame African woes on questionable Chinese investment policies when we are the ones normally buying the end products.
Kimberly –
To be sure, China is part of a larger system in which African interests — even on the part of many African leaders — are not always a particular priority. At the same time, China’s approaches to human rights and foreign policy mean that the country has not earned the benefit of the doubt.
Thanks for reading -
dc
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