Seeing Green in Africa

Carolyn O’Hara writes about China and India's rising economic involvment in Africa. "...The two Asian giants are pouring funds into the continent to find energy for their superheated economies and markets for their products...Why all the interest in the forgotten continent? A goodie bag of exploitable markets and exploitable resources. China has flooded Africa with cheap textiles, rice, and electronics. India has cornered the market in generic pharmaceuticals used to treat HIV and offers the hardware and software needed to get Africa on the information superhighway. Africa, in turn, is feeding the insatiable Asian thirst for energy: Both India and China have negotiated oil, gas, timber, and coal contracts worth billions of dollars...The burgeoning business offers African leaders an inside look at China’s and India’s enviable development models, which over the last decade have produced annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth of more than 9 percent and nearly 7 percent, respectively. China offers a manufacturing model built around cheap goods for export that many African countries are eager to emulate. India brings other assets to the table. “India has shown that poverty can be reduced through the knowledge industry,” says Manu Chandaria, Kenya-based chairman of the Comcraft Group, a steel, aluminum, and computer software conglomerate run by Chandaria’s Indian family in more than 40 countries..." Worryingly so though "...neither India nor China pesters African governments about good governance or human rights. After Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Gabon last year, Gabonese President Omar Bongo remarked that, “It seems to me that the aid provided by certain countries is tied aid, [but] cooperation with China comes without conditions, with mutual respect.” This mutual respect often means looking the other way when it comes to repression and official graft...".Chippla recently expressed concerns on the the motives of the Chinese and in light of recent loans offered to the Zimbabwean govt by China the question needs to be asked on whose side are the Chinese, the peoples or the tyrants?