The behaviour of China and India as development partners is changing the global aid picture, most importantly in Africa. Welcomed by African governments as alternative sources of development finance to the West, they have modelled their development finance on a framework of concessional loans and aid for resource security and infrastructure reconstruction. But their development assistance remains negligible, compared to the DAC and multilateral donors, who remain Africa’s main development partners. Until fairly recently, both countries have received large Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) disbursements. Conflicting definitions of aid as co-operation or ODA, offered by the Chinese government and well positioned academic sources, reflect a lack of clarity in Chinese foreign aid policy. Trying to pigeon hole or compartmentalise aid policies in each country into neatly defined boxes proves difficult, particularly as China and India’s donor activities in Africa are often inextricably viewed together with commercial interests and investment projects.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
According to this book, the first certain trade between Africa and China may be dated from the fourteenth century, but east African city-states may have been trading with southern China even earlier. In the mid-twentieth century, Maoist China funded and educated sub-Saharan African anticolonial liberation movements and leaders, and China then assisted new sub-Saharan nations. Africa and China are now immersed in their third and most transformative era of heavy engagement, one that this book believes will promise to do more for economic growth and poverty alleviation than anything attempted by Western colonialism or international aid programs. Robert Rotberg and his Chinese, African and other colleagues discuss this important trend and specify its likely implications. Among the specific topics tackled here are China’s interest in African oil; military and security relations; the influx and goals of Chinese aid to sub-Saharan Africa; human rights issues; and China’s overall strategy in the region. China’s insatiable demand for energy and raw materials responds to sub-Saharan Africa’s relatively abundant supplies of unprocessed metals, diamonds, and gold, while offering a growing market for Africa’s agriculture and light manufactures. As the book illustrates, this evolving symbiosis could be the making of Africa, the poorest and most troubled continent, while it further powers China’s expansive economic machine.
A detailed new database provides information on Chinese loans to African governments and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Started in 2007 the database details a total of $86.9 billion of Chinese loans from 2000 to 2014, with the loans verified on the ground or with relevant stakeholders and cross-checked the data in multiple languages. This paper reports five initial lessons that emerge from the endeavour. Media perceptions of Africa-China relations tend to emphasise high sums of money going from China to Africa – such as reports that $1 trillion in Chinese financing destined for Africa by 2025 – but the reality appears far more modest. According to the database, China loaned $86.9 billion to African governments and SOEs from 2000 to 2014. Although the average value of Chinese loans to Africa from 2000-14 may be just $6.2 billion/year, this number has been growing in recent years. While China is sometimes portrayed as only being interested in Africa’s natural riches, the data paints a more complex picture. 28% of Chinese financing goes to transport; 20% to energy; and 8% communication. When China’s engagement in Africa is talked about in the international media, “aid”, “loans”, “investment”, and “development finance” are often mixed up or used interchangeably. That means that whenever China offers any money to an African country, it is typically interpreted as a combination of aid and development assistance. The database avoids these conceptual confusions by focusing on loans without trying to define these as either aid or not. It tracks both concessional and commercial lines of credit extended by government, policy, and commercial banks and their corresponding suppliers/contractors. The project shows that using clearly defined categories such as loans can be a much more meaningful and unambiguous approach to understanding the impacts of Chinese money in African countries than many previous methods.
China has asserted that its aid to Africa has no strings attached. The author of this article argues that in contrast China's activities in Africa, like those of other major external funders have conditionalities attached. There is an oft-repeated Western view that China's only interest in Africa is to extract its natural resources. However in Mozambique China's investments are more targetted at the industrial sector, and there are numerous infrastructure and development projects across the continent attesting to the effectiveness of Chinese investment. The author notes that African governments would be foolish to believe that their relationship with China will avoid all the political wrangling inherent in aid and trade relationships. He warns that rather than casting aspersions on China's role in Africa. Western governments should acknowledge their own mixed record in African relations, and build a more balanced analysis of the costs and benefits of China's growing engagement in international development.
Since 2000, China has hosted six ministerial Fora on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), held every three years, in which health is but one of many areas of attention. In the last FOCAC, the accompanying Beijing Action Plan for 2013-15 listed cooperation in many areas – 6 in political, 9 in economic, 6 in cultural, and 6 in development – of which ‘medical aid and public health’ is one. This opinion piece discusses the strengths and challenges of the inaugural forum on health held in August 2013 and the Beijing declaration after the Forum, seen by the author to mark a turning point in the history of Chinese development and health cooperation to Africa. The author notes that China’s top-level leadership clearly sees the political, economic, and perhaps health importance of global engagement especially in Africa.
Africa is lacking a clear and unified policy in terms of how it relates to China, argue the authors of this opinion piece. He points to China’s lack of respect for human rights and the problem of China issuing loans without conditions. The cooperation between Africa and its economic development partners (EU, China and US) are strategically different, and each is driven by economic self-interests. It is of vital importance therefore, that Africa approves on an equal footing, strategic and most consistent partner (business or otherwise) who recognises, shares and respects its difficult but critical needs be it political, economic or social as well as sovereignty. Africa must necessarily develop a coherent and structured plan in successfully asserting its political, economic and social ties with China, the authors argue. It must avoid repeating some of the mistakes committed in its past relations with its traditional development partners. In the meantime, African leaders must be able to define and formulate strategic and comprehensive policies, individually, for the influx of Chinese investments. For instance, they must exert pressure on China and together, differentiate and separate investments and loans clearly from interest free loans, grants and aid projects.
In its Foreign Trade White Paper, China positions its foreign trade policy as based on constructing all-round economic and trade partnerships with mutually beneficial co-operation. China' s trade with Brazil, India and South Africa has been enjoying rapid growth in recent years, which the Chinese government argues promotes the development of the member countries' respective advantageous industries and shows the broad development prospects of emerging markets. In recent years China has seen relatively fast growth in its trade with other developing countries, including bilateral trade with African countries. Currently over 150 countries and regions have signed agreements on bilateral trade or economic co-operation with China, which has established and maintains high-level economic dialogue mechanisms. Although China's foreign trade is still hampered by many uncertainties and is bound to meet new difficulties and challenges, during the 12th Five-year Plan (2011-2015) the government intends to open itself wider to the outside world as a driver for further reform, development and innovation, and integrate itself into the world economy on a wider scale and at a higher level.
According to this article, Africa has much to gain from China’s growing presence on the continent, though it is not without some negative impacts. Increased trade and investment links are particularly promising, as they have the potential to support poverty alleviation and sustain recent economic gains. However, African countries must exercise their bargaining power more effectively to ensure that they benefit from the growing relationship, including in areas such as modern technology transfer. It is also the continent’s responsibility to make sure that, as it takes advantage of Chinese investments, competition is preserved and encouraged and regulatory frameworks are improved, including mining codes, by increasing transparency and accountability of contracts. In addition, large flows of Chinese investment and aid should not be allowed to delay much-needed domestic reforms, such as strengthening economic management and improving the business environment. These are needed to attract foreign direct investment from Western countries, which in turn would help to counterbalance potential overdependence on China’s investment. Africa does not have to choose between the West and China – it can have both.
It has been frequently claimed that cholera epidemics, both in the 19th century and today, were and can be the key stimulus for procurement of safe water and sanitation, an idea that the author calls ‘cholera forcing’. ‘Technology forcing’ refers to imposition of exogenous factors that suddenly make possible achievements that had not seemed so; cholera has been seen in this light. He argues that this view oversimplifies and under-represents the importance of industrialisation in securing water supplies. Careful study of the financial, political, and administrative foundations of such changes will be more fruitful.
There is increasing evidence that environmental factors such as air pollution from mine dumps increase the risk of chronic respiratory symptoms and diseases. This study investigated the association between proximity to mine dumps and prevalence of chronic respiratory disease in people aged 55 years and older. Elderly persons in communities 1-2 km (exposed) and 5 km (unexposed), from five pre-selected mine dumps in Gauteng and North West Province, in South Africa were included in a cross-sectional study. Structured interviews were conducted with 2397 elderly people, using a previously validated ATS-DLD-78 questionnaire from the British Medical Research Council. Exposed elderly persons had a significantly higher prevalence of chronic respiratory symptoms and diseases than those who were unexposed., Results from the multiple logistic regression analysis indicated that living close to mine dumps was significantly associated with asthma, chronic bronchitis, chronic cough, emphysema, pneumonia and wheeze. Residing in exposed communities, current smoking, ex-smoking, use of paraffin as main residential cooking/heating fuel and low level of education emerged as independent significant risk factors for chronic respiratory symptoms and diseases. The study suggests that there is a high level of chronic respiratory symptoms and diseases among elderly people in communities located near to mine dumps in South Africa and that new long term effective dust control measures should be researched and implemented. One possible intervention could be to put buffer zones in place between mining dumps and where people come to settle as a start to what needs to be concerted government efforts to address the problem.