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April 2008 Vol 1 - Number 6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Headlines
from the latest issue. Want to see more? Email nadia@africa-confidential.com
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| The Delhi Durbar As Beijing and Tokyo boost their profiles, Prime Minister Singh's government hosts its first grand summit In a direct
challenge to established Western interests and the continent's growing
ties with China
and Japan,
India is promising to invest heavily in Africa's transport, energy and
manufacturing sectors as well as build up education and training
programmes. At the first-ever India-Africa summit in New Delhi on 8 April, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed 14 African leaders – eight of them heads of government – pledging to disburse US$500 million in grants for development projects in Africa over the next five years. |
Headlines
from Vol 1 No 1 Headlines from Vol 1 No 2 Headlines from Vol 1 No 3 Headlines from Vol 1 No 4 Headlines from Vol 1 No 5 SOFT POWERS Until recently, Africa-Asia relations have been viewed in terms of Asia's demands for Africa's hard commodities: oil, copper, uranium and iron ore. With the onset of structural changes in global demand for soft commodities, relations are set to take a turn much closer to the belly, towards the trade of food. African tables are worse off for the protectionism currently sweeping Asia. But in the long-term Asian capital invested to feed the food and fuel needs of the rising Chinese and Indian middle classes, and African countries' domestic needs, may be a solution to chronic food shortages. Western responses, by the United States and EU, have been to subsidise heavily their farmers for domestic production and then offer the surplus as aid to needing countries, with deleterious effects on foreign markets. Many African countries are open to foreign ownership of land and some Chinese and Indian projects in Africa have a long pedigree and have proven themselves profitable. But newer projects, such as a South Korean one in Congo-Kinshasa on a tract of land the size of Belgium, are likely to find huge difficulties in operating in a post-conflict country lacking infrastructure. This project, which will require vast investment and coordination will be a serious test for this untried Korean company. Nobutake Odano
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| INDIA | AFRICA In the Navy India has defined
Africa as part of its wider strategic interest and is concerned about
nuclear rival China's
encroachment on what it perceives as its 'wider sphere of influence'
along the African rim of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). To this end,
the Indian Navy (IN) is conducting fortnight-long India-Brazil-South Africa
maritime exercises (IBSAMAR) from 2 May off South Africa's
south-western coast as a force multiplier to further Delhi's strategic,
diplomatic and commercial influence in two continents. |
INDIA | AFRICA Chalo Africa Indian Commerce Minister Jairam Ramesh cut a deal with Endiama, Angola's state-owned diamond company, to facilitate the direct sale of stones to India by mid-2009. India is also expected to accept Endiama's offer for its mining companies to explore and develop Angolan diamond mines. Similarly, in neighbouring Namibia, Ramesh's discussions with various leaders including ex-President Sam Nujoma focused on directly procuring gems and precious stones, but with no agreement as yet. |
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| AFRICA
| ASIA | FOOD Two continents, one food crisis China, India and Korea are taking the lead in efforts to boost Africa’s farm production, while preventing grain exports to the region Africans
depend
heavily on imported food, and the World Bank
estimates that world food prices rose by 58% between March 2007 and
March 2008. Moreover, several important food-exporting countries are
trying to limit their own food-price increases by taxing, or banning,
their own exports.
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AFRICA
| ASIA | FOOD How Africa could feed itself... and Asia, too The veteran environmentalist Lester Brown asked in the mid-1990s: ‘Who will feed China?’ The answer is that the Chinese hope to, thanks to more fertiliser, better seeds and genetic modification, but the country is quickly becoming an importer of goods that it recently exported as consumption outpaces advances in production. Prompted by rising world food prices, which make farming more profitable, there is a chance that Asian capital and expertise will help Africa to produce for its own consumption and eventual export. |
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| NIGERIA |
CHINA A $50 billion handshake A sizable and much-ballyhooed credit line looks to be little
more than a goodwill gesture from China to Nigeria, promising much but
delivering little. The brief fanfare attached to the initial
announcement has died away, but concrete proposals have yet to emerge
to fill the silence. Word emerged this month of a US$40-50 billion package of export insurance for Nigeria. The package was offered by China's export credit insurance agency, China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure) and became President Umaru Yar'Adua's flashy souvenir of his first state visit to Beijing in late February. |
EQUATORIAL
GUINEA | CHINA Not working out When China evacuated 400 construction workers from Mongomo in Equatorial Guinea in early April, it marked the culmination of a labour dispute with a difference. In several African countries, notably Zambia and Congo-Kinshasa, Chinese companies have been criticised for their treatment of local staff. In other African countries, like Sudan, Ethiopia and Nigeria, Chinese technical staff have been kidnapped by dissident groups. But in Equatorial Guinea the tension was generated by the local authorities clashing with labourers imported from China. |
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| JAPAN |
AFRICA TICAD talks With just a month to go before the fourth Tokyo International
Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) on 28-30 May, the Japanese
hosts are busily firming proposals that will both push forward their
aspirations for Africa and earn Japan extra leverage and prestige
before the G8 meeting in July. |
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