Is Chinas Rise Good For Africa

Chinese President Hu Jintao, right, with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2006.

Image: Elizabeth Dalziel/Associated Press

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Can China’s hunger for African exports revive sub-Saharan Africa?

That's a fairly tall order considering that the region has long been economically marginalized and lacks many of the institutions that could help foster growth. The 48 nations in the area account for just 1 percent of world trade.

Yet the recent surge in exports to China has raised hopes that increased trade could help lift millions of Africans out of poverty. Thanks to China’s seemingly insatiable appetite for oil and metals, trade between sub-Saharan Africa and China soared to $32 billion in 2005 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), a 263 percent increase from 2000, according to United Nations data.

While the region's amount of trade with China is still well below Europe's ($89 billion in 2005) or the United States' ($63 billion in 2005), it's been heartily welcomed by African countries, who argue that the rich Western nations are not doing enough to help Africa and that they attach too many requirements for trade and aid.

“We like Chinese investment because we have one meeting, we discuss what they want to do, and then they just do it,” Sahr Johnny, Sierra Leone’s ambassador to Beijing, said in 2005. “There are no benchmarks or preconditions.”
 

 
China has been criticized for its no-questions-asked approach to trade and especially for its dealings with Sudan, where government-backed forces have killed hundreds of thousands of citizens over the past four years.

But the rise in African-Chinese trade has come as democracy, by and large, has been spreading in the region. In sub-Saharan Africa, 23 nations are considered free or partly free, up from three in the late 1970s, according to Freedom House, an organization that tracks the spread of democratic institutions.

So can the region’s mostly poor countries leverage trade with China into long-term economic growth?

The answer partly depends on the type of country and what it does with its commodity windfall, says Ali Zafar, an economist with the Africa Region of the World Bank.
 
“If you’re energy rich or metal rich, you’re going to benefit from China. If you’re a textile producer and an oil importer, you’re going to suffer. And if you’re something in the middle, the effects will be mixed,” Zafar says.

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