The Good the Bad the Ugly
Even as the lights of a desolate ghost town in the American Civil War goes out as the Yankees and the White ‘gores’ rushed on each other neck in the most vicious slaughtering anthem the triumphs however fell in the laps of African Americans who won it over and over in the name of equality, liberty and freedom.
This was one victory for them however past the Atlantic ocean in the new Africa of the new millennium failed policies of the West still eludes people of how spectacularly the black have fallen back in time in contrast with the West.
Something that appeared in the New York Times recently said that- ‘While most of the developing world has managed to reduce poverty, the rate in Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s most poorest region, has not changed in nearly 25 years. Half of the people in Sub- Saharan Africa were living below the poverty line in 2005, the same as in 1981. That means about 389 million lived under the poverty line in 2005, compared with 200 million in 1981.
The African continent with the exceptions of some countries like South Africa and Egypt fails to stand up to the levels of any developing country and still stands in the line of under developed nations and shudder at the in-conclusive non-conceding and non pragmatic policies of the West that have failed and done nothing other than spreading mass despair amongst the people.
However a striking new recent debatable topic has come up as the media strengthens in the African nations and the Chinese presence in Africa is being felt at every part of the globe that Africa inherently is not poor. There is no region in the world that has faced such obsessed path to degradation and downturn, no region that has faced such disruptive government and mass rioting, there have been no nations that have suffered rather than Africa itself.
Even being master of mineral resources and being the future supplier as the world stands astonished at its wealth, Africa still stands deprived owing to a simple reason. Africa is not poor because of the residue of colonialism or the machinations of large global corporations. Africa is not poor because of poor resource endowments or climate. Africa is not poor due to corporations. Africa is not poor because of poor resource endowments or climate. Africa is poor because of barbaric governments, unruly monarchies and un-stabilised cabinets in most of these countries that have in one way or the other.
These governments since 1961 have done little for the development of the people rather than they have been under the payroll of Western economies for the vested interests of the West and the governmental stability in the African nations had been at a compromise.
A is A: West is West
Even as I trace back the past two decades into the development of the African nations there have not been much change. Whatever little change there have been it can be traced back to some or the other Western policies which have been holding on to the change. Africa recorded a respectable 5.2 percent rate of economic growth in 2007 it was reported 4.3 percent of it was supported by the US.
Now that commodity prices are falling in consequence of a global recession, however, all that growth and more will be undone once things fall in line. Angola, for example, maintained the continent’s fastest rate of economic growth of 20.8 percent in 2007, occasioned by high oil prices. But Angola’s oil bonanza has not helped the poor, has not been invested for future growth, and certainly will not continue, as prices have now fallen below $50 per barrel Angola is going down.
Ghana, too, is an emerging economic success story according to the World Bank, while Uganda has chalked up impressive growth rates averaging 8 percent in recent years. But real successes stories do not come with a bloated bureaucracy headed by ninety cabinet ministers and deputy ministers, as in Ghana. Nor do they come with a budget that is 55 percent dependent on foreign assistance, as in Uganda.
The West has not let the African nations prosper and had held them continuously under it arms. Be it the Cold War or may be oil production the money to the African nations have never been in development of democracy or the people elected government, it has always gone to corrupt monarchs and government officials only to buy their loyalty and to make their stance felt quite literally everywhere.
Bush institutionalised a plan in which he said that African countries would qualify for American aid only if their governmental conditions were secure. Now in order for them to come up he passed another loan to the countries to cope up with corruption. What a mockery of the system. Can you believe it, the Western government helped the African ones through fiscal means only to help them be able to come up to the level for further aid and interesting that level was never achieved.
Who talks about the present??
Traditionally as I had presumed that it is not the country that is poor and helpless rather it is the people that have been placed and forced in bounded slavery due to the rampant corrupt government practices and the not required western influences. During the Cold War, Western aid was mainly about buying political loyalty, not alleviating poverty.
As George Soros has put it, to “serve the interests of the donors first and the needs of the recipients second.” Americans and Westerners should therefore care what happens to Africa because its problems are in no small part the West’s making—no, not the sins of slavery, colonialism and imperialism, but more recently committed sins of selfishness, ignorance and, now we see it revealed on a massive scale, false pride.
The way to begin repairing the Western approach is, first, to quash the feel-good impulse to throw money at a problem. The Africans are not mindless people with whom the much developed nation is playing with. A sound fundamental approach is required if the West actually want the Blacks to come up.
The high inflation in Zimbabwe or maybe the terrorist outfit voicing themselves in Somalia, Horn of Africa and Nigeria and simultaneous military coups here and this is just a taste of what unsettling dispute that is under the process of being unleashed on all the parts of the world.
In any event, the so-called reform process has been stalled through vexatious chicanery, wilful deception and creative acrobatics for decades. Only 16 out of the 54 African countries are democratic, and all but a few of these 16 are frail or manqué. Only eight, after all, have reasonably free and independent media.
Only one or two countries have consistent levels of economic growth sufficient to keep up with population growth. But so what? The answer is just simple the Western countries have been putting in money in the system under no ethical grounds only for their own good. They are doing just for their sake and nothing else.
Inglorious Bustards
Bustard is supposedly chiefly terrestrial game bird capable of powerful swift flight and here in we have a huge bustard wading in and around the Africa in search of its miraculous reserves and no points to guess it is the People’s Republic of China. China has been wading heavily on the African nations.
With in investments in all the major African nations and instalments From Cape Verde to Madagascar, in the smallest settlement or in thumping Lagos and Kinshasa, Chinatowns are popping up, packed with cheap imported goods from China—plastic buckets, shoes, clothes, household wares. And when Chinese investors build roads and bridges in oil-rich countries, while dishing out big loans, the labour is mostly imported. China is everywhere in Africa. It is building roads, making monasteries, building schools constructing governments.
China is the light and the Africa is living in it, but the question still remain how much benefit all is this relationship going to be and how much positive it may turn out compare to the past ones that have soured and have only thrown democracy out of the system more and more. This relation being with a communist more holds much more public speech at a ransom.
The good thing about China can be recapitulated is that its presence cannot be compared to the Wets that has been here. West has for long shied away from plans that may have brought in proper growth and kept itself confined to its own resolutions. However China has been involved in every single infrastructure building and development process and has provided an illustrious example of co existence where it has settled its needs by helping others. China is definitely not there just to cut the cake. It may have in mind getting a large part of it however it is doing a lot for others too.
China's phenomenal economic growth serves as a source of inspiration for much of Africa. It gives the countries renewed hope that they too can start to grow out of poverty and become important players on the global scene.
In February 2010, China launched the China-Africa Economic and Technology Cooperation Committee of the China Economic and Social Council aimed at helping Africa to learn from China's development experiences. Speaking at the launch ceremony in Beijing, Ghana's ambassador to China, Helen Mamle Kofi, said the country's economics provide Africa with an "example to follow in terms of economic, financial, social, technological and cultural integration".
Finally, China is also offering Africa additional ways to approach the linkages between economic growth and governance. Over the last two decades Africa has experimented with multi-party democracy. The assumption was that Western-style democracy was a prerequisite for Africa's economic growth. But the evidence is inconclusive. Democracy fosters growth just as much as growth enables growth. But none of it happens automatically; it takes concerted collective effort.
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
However another part of the picture is coming up. China's engagement with Africa should be a boon. Its overall trade with Africa rose from $10.6 billion in 2000 to $75.5 billion in 2008, propelling Africa's growth rate to 5.8% in 2008, its best performance since 1974. China is now Africa's second-largest trading partner after the United States, importing a third of its crude oil from Africa. Further, Africa needs the investment, in particular, to rebuild its decrepit infrastructure.
A November 2009 World Bank Report states: "The poor state of infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa—its electricity, water, roads and information and communications technology (ICT)—cuts national economic growth by two percentage points every year and reduces productivity by as much as 40 percent." To close the infrastructure gap, an annual spending of $93 billion would be required.
Thus, Chinese investment in Africa's infrastructure should be most welcome. But China's engagement is increasingly being seen as odious, predatory and brutish. The initial enthusiasm that greeted Chinese investments in Africa has now cooled.
China is now doing what previously the West had tried and failed. China is back to favouring the rampant corrupt governments bribing bureaucrats just to keep its own export and import on the continent stable. What has happened is that it has become second biggest trade partner entity with African countries and has captured the entire internal market. China has paid to capture the entire internal market and now is driving with it.
The claim that China's intentions in Africa are noble is fatuous. Its real intentions are well known: to elbow out all foreign companies and gain access to Africa's resources at cheap prices; canvas for African votes at the UN in its quest for global hegemony; isolate Taiwan ( with the support of the African nations ); and seek new markets for Chinese manufactures as European markets become saturated with Chinese goods.
Also is its quest for African land to dump its surplus population. As a condition for Chinese aid, African states must accept large numbers of Chinese experts and workers as part of their investment packages. Chinese communes are springing up across Africa. In Namibia, the number of Chinese expatriates has reached 40,000, with 100,000 in Zambia and 120,000 in Nigeria.
Reportedly there is something else, China has a secret plan, called the Chongqing Experiment, to resettle 12m of its farmers in Africa and we are not blind enough to see what is happening!!!
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