China in Africa: Africans, Beware!

The PUNCH editorial of Thursday, September 27, 2012 is the motivation for sending this previously written article for publication in the same newspaper. The editorial details how there is little to show for the billions of dollars in contracts which have been awarded to a Chinese firm for the rehabilitation and construction of several rail lines in the country.

The photograph on the front cover of the book, La Chinafrique: Pékin à la Conquête du Continent Noir, depicts an African soldier, in full uniform, his left hand clutching a gun, while the right hand holds a green and yellow umbrella over the head of a Chinese man in a T-shirt and knee-length shorts. The Chinese man is holding a cell phone to his ear with his right hand, while the left hand appears to be tucked into his belt. He exudes confidence and control. The soldier is almost standing at attention, with his face looking slightly downwards. Both of the men are standing at a location which obviously is a construction site, a housing estate, with a row of identical houses behind them. The photograph is said to have been taken in Nigeria.
The book itself was published in 2008 (Paris: Bernard Grasset) by two French journalists, Serge Michel and Michel Beuret, who travelled around 11 African countries (Algeria, Senegal, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Angola, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia) investigating how the Chinese were conducting their various businesses and what kind of relationship obtained between them and their host governments and communities. The book should ordinarily be a must-read for every African leader as well as all those desirous of conducting business with China, if not for the fact that most of our leaders as well as we, the led, are not known to be that enamoured with reading anyway. Also, the fact of the book having been written in French makes it inaccessible to the non-Francophone segments of the continent.

In the book, the authors provide pretty damning details of how Africa is being pillaged by the Chinese, who are arriving by their planeloads and are dealing with Africans in probably the most disrespectful and dehumanising manner since the slave trade, going as far as physically assaulting African workers on their construction sites and practising a system of “apartheid” between these ones and their Chinese counterparts. The Chinese businessmen are said to enjoy unusual perquisites from our governments, as can be deduced from the photograph described above. A Chinese businessman in Nigeria is said to drive around in a car, his personal car, bearing a police registration plate number! The free trade zones being established all over Africa are also normally exempted from accountability as to the impact of the business on the environment.

Culled from PUNCH