China and India in Africa: Opportunities and Challenges

Researchers, experts, diplomats and journalists from four continents gathered at the Nordic Africa Institute in September for one of the first major international conferences surveying the surging presence in Africa of the emerging giants China and India.

Opened by the Swedish Minister for Development Cooperation Ms Gunilla Carlsson and the ambassadors to Sweden of China, India and Sudan, the conference attracted, in the words of Nordic Africa Institute research director Fantu Cheru at the opening session, some of “the best and the brightest” among scholars and experts for an exchange ranging from geopolitics to peacekeeping via investment policies and raw materials.

Such notables as the renowned Egyptian scholar Samir Amin were among the participants, with Amin holding a public lecture at the end of the first conference day on the critical topic of “The new scramble for Africa: The roles of China and India”.

In the words of conference convener Fantu Cheru, “China’s and India’s rise poses a number of challenges, [but] on balance, the opportunities should outweigh the threats if managed correctly.”

“Regrettably, missing from the new China-India-Africa cooperation arrangements is a clear and coordinated strategy by African leaders on how to engage these emerging powers constructively. While both China and India know what they want from Africa, African countries have yet to develop a common framework on how to negotiate with China and India from a stronger and better-informed platform,” Cheru has pointed out.

Gunilla Carlsson, Swedish Minister for Development Cooperation made a similar point in her opening speech at the conference, noting that “the growing presence of China and India in Africa could be a moment of immense opportunity, with numerous positive spin-off effects”.

Anticipating critical viewpoints, the ambassador to Sweden of the People’s Republic of China, Mr Chen MingMing, in his speech at the opening session pointed to the common experience of colonial oppression of China and Africa. “China”, he said, “has a close bond of friendship and solidarity with Africa.” Ambassador Chen underscored that China is a long-term development partner, with a moral obligation to help Africa. “China”, he said, “is proud of its past record in Africa.”

The Indian ambassador Mrs Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa equally emphasized the shared history of poverty and colonialism and bonds between Africa and India that go back more than a century. Citing India’s liberation leader Gandhi and his experience with racial oppression in South Africa she pointed to India’s support for liberation in Africa since the 1950s. Ambassador Wadhwa noted that many African leaders have studied in India and that over 50,000 Africans study in India every year.

Sudan’s ambassador Moses M. Akol injected a note of skepticism into the discussion with his speech, noting that some “view China’s ascendancy to the helm of the international financial system with a great deal of apprehension”.

Samir Amin, himself a living monument of anti-colonialism, in his lecture at the end of the first day of the conference also spoke of the possibilities inherent in the new linkage between Africa and China-India. This new alliance, Amin said, is “potentially in a stronger position to dismantle the international monopolies” that control international trade, and much better so than at the time of the famed Bandung Conference of 1955, when Asia and Africa came together for the first time in an attempt to challenge the current world order.

The main part of the conference was organized in eight sessions or workshops, beginning with an overview of “The Big Picture: China and India as Emerging Giants” and passing through several aspects, such as the Chinese role in conflict development and peacekeeping, and finally reaching two sessions on historical and cultural perspectives of China-India-Africa relations.

A full report, including most of the 28 papers presented at the conference, will later be published as a freely downloadable electronic document. This report will only attempt to highlight a small number of the papers.

The scramble for control of energy and raw materials is a dominant factor in much of China’s and India’s approach to Africa. As professor Timothy Shaw pointed out in his presentation in Session 1:

“China takes over 60% of Sudan’s oil exports of over 500,000 barrels per day – now 10% of China’s oil imports – and some 35% of the flow from Angola. It owns 40% of the Sudanese oil sector and one of its SOEs built a 1,600 km oil pipeline to the coast in less than 12 months. Sudan’s oil industry is located primarily in the disaffected South so is inseparable from conflict.”

Professor Alemayehu Geda of the University of Addis Ababa, in a paper entitled ‘China and India’s Growth Surge: Is it a curse or blessing for Africa? The Case of Manufactured Exports’, discussed how China’s aggressive export strategy is displacing African products from third markets, but may still benefit from this growth. This, according to professor Geda “is possible if Africans step in to the manufacturing export space left by the Asian drivers as the latter move to higher technological ladder of manufacture exports”.

One of the more contentious issues of China’s presence in Africa was discussed in the session on ‘Conflict Development and Peacekeeping Nexus’ on the first day of the conference. Discussing China’s role in Sudan and Darfur, Professor He Wenping of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and currently guest researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute presented a picture in line with the official Chinese viewpoint, noting that:

“The root of the Darfur issue is poverty, and so economic development and cooperation are the solution. Through appointing a special envoy to Darfur, bridge-building between the Sudan government and the Western players as well as sending Chinese military engineers for implementing the UN 1769 resolution, China has been playing a very constructive role on the issue of Darfur.”

Daniel Large of the Africa Asia Centre in London, UK, held a more critical viewpoint, noting that “despite the value of all such external partners, the economic dominance of China in Sudan has raised the uncomfortable spectre of dependency”.

Citing traditional Chinese arguments that “underdevelopment, resource scarcity and environmental change” are the main causes of the Darfur conflict, Large said these were undoubtedly contributing factors to the conflict, but, he added:

”These cannot be taken on their own in isolation from the particular nature of political relations with the central ruling state apparatus in Khartoum in the combination of centrifugal development, political marginalization and exploitation of Sudan’s peripheries that has fuelled conflict not just in Darfur but other parts of Sudan.”

Christian Palme