China is not new to Africa but the change over the decades in its relations with the continent is as revolutionary as China’s own internal revolution. Chinese President grabbed headlines by announcing a hefty $60 billion package for Africa towards end of 2018. According to the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, China’s relationship with Africa is now entering “the golden age”.

China’s interests in Africa:

• China is Africa’s largest trading partner since 2008 with goods worth $170 billion being traded in 2017.
• Trade volume of the US and Africa is not even one-third of that amount.
• About 70 percent of Africa’s exports to China are crude oil and another 15 percent is raw materials, mostly minerals.
• Some fifteen African oil and mineral exporters have large trade surpluses with China while more than thirty others have sizeable trade deficits.
• According to Xinhua, Xi committed China to eight major initiatives in the next three years and beyond in industrial promotion, infrastructure connectivity, trade facilitation and green development.
• China is already involved in a slew of infrastructure connectivity plans in Africa, ranging from the upgradation of the Nairobi-Mombasa railway to the building of Bagamayo port and they have enhanced their presence in other countries as well.
• China also committed itself to offer vocational training for 1,000 high-end technical personnel and provide 50,000 government scholarships and an equal number of opportunities for young Africans to participate in seminars and workshops in China.
• China is also setting up a China-Africa peace and security fund which will provide free military aid to the African Union and a number of security assistance programmes will be taken up in the areas of UN peacekeeping, fighting piracy and counter-terrorism.

Concerns raised over China’s African relations:

• Unidirectional trade:
  • The direction of the trade has been one way — raw material and unprocessed goods flow from Africa to China, while cheap manufactured goods flow the other way.
• Vulture Capitalism:
  • Beijing’s focus in Africa has been in energy and infrastructure, besides mines, with little backward or forward linkages in the host economy. Debt, if unserviced, can lead to Chinese takeover of assets.
  • In the garb of providing net security, China established military base at Djibouti to further promote her Belt and Road Initiative.
  • China provides labour from her own people, this is reducing the job opportunities for the locals and their socio-economic conditions are worsening.
• Human rights issues:
  • China has invested in the oil industry of South Sudan and some years ago it had to evacuate some 350 Chinese oil workers because of instability there.
  • In 2011, China had to evacuate 35,000 people from Libya, and more recently from Yemen. All this has led to the Chinese setting up their first overseas military base in Djibouti.
  • China’s role in southern Africa has prompted a growing backlash especially after the labourers were killed in many projects like in Zambia.
• Meddling in the internal affairs:
  • Its involvement in the Zimbabwe coup against President Mugabe in 2017 remains murky.

Options for India:

• New Delhi cannot match China’s investment and aid, but it is working along other options. One of these is the Asia Africa Growth Corridor, an Indo-Japanese venture that seeks to promote connectivity and economic relations with Africa.
• New Delhi’s biggest challenge has been its inability to deliver on the promises that it makes. India must promptly work on this front.
• The objective is to be to promote south-south cooperation and boosting trade and investments between India and Africa across key sectors such as Agriculture, Renewable Energy, Education & Skill Development, Healthcare, Information Technology, IT enabled Services and so on.
• India must look beyond energy and infrastructure. It must encourage companies to invest in Africa, expanding value-added processing plants to reduce dependence on imports of finished goods, boost employment and promote a stronger business culture.
• New Delhi must work with partners — France, Germany, UK and Japan — providing a viable alternative to China.
• The term ‘Indo-Pacific’ is a recognition of India’s pivotal role in establishing trading regimes and rules-based maritime freedom of navigation, and noted that Africa “counts” on India to play a very important part strategically and politically for the same.

Conclusion:

Working with allies, India must leverage its historic ties with Africa and its shared colonial past to essay a development pathway that is based on partnership and mutual benefit, especially in education, training and measures to counter climate change, reduce poverty and boost agriculture.