Asian ‘Great Game’ on Africa
It looks like history repeating itself, but with different players at a different venue this time. During the empire building of the 1800s, the British-Russian rivalry to control Afghanistan and the regions around was called the Great Game. More than two centuries later another great game is taking place. This time on the African continent and the players are Asians, notably China, Japan and to some extent South Korea.
China and Japan are occupying the ranks of the second and third biggest economies in the world, and China seems to be on its way to take over even the United States as the world’s top economy. It has already done so in terms of oil consumption. No wonder, with its more than one billion population and ever growing economy its appetite to satisfy its needs is ever expanding. One area to secure is access to mineral and other natural resources.
To show its high level interest on the continent, China started a process of inviting the bulk of African leaders to come to Beijing, where they were granted some audience with the top Chinese leadership. They had the chance to present their case on what they need and why they should get help more than others. Last year China convened that summit, where it pledged $ 20 billion for the continent, double the amount pledged before, at the time it reinforced its commitment to Africa. Such meetings have been going for the past 12 years. However, attendance at the heads of state level was remarkably low at six presidents only from 54 countries.
On its part Japan did better this time, when it hosted earlier this month the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in its fifth round. Going so far for two decades, with some lapses, its revival is credited to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who came back to office last year after series of unstable domestic political scenarios that led to Japan going behind China in a number of areas, including its presence in Africa.
This revived Japanese interest helped in its own way in encouraging the bulk of African leaders to attend where some 40 of them showed up, including some heavy weights like South Africa’s Jacob Zuma and Ethiopia’s Hailemariam Desalgen.
Though Abe did not mention the word China in his public speeches during the 3-day conference, Beijing was around in every corner and a race seems to be ensuing. Japan has pledged $ 32 billion over the coming five years against China’s $ 20 billion but, more important, it wanted to focus its aid on infrastructure and improving human capital. The highlight of this is to help train 30,000 Africans back home as well as inviting 1,000 to Japan to improve their management abilities.
However, still Tokyo lags behind Beijing in many aspects. Figures available for 2011 show that Japan’s direct investment in Africa stood at $ 460 million as against China’s $ 3.1 billion. Trade on the other hand is not doing well as Japan’s volume of trade with the continent of $ 30 billion is almost one-fifth of China’s $ 166 billion. More significant is that while Africa hosts only about 8, 000 Japanese, their Chinese counterparts top 150,000.
The interesting part about this race is that both countries look at Africa as one block and not country by country. In fact, the Asian players are not unique in this. The Americans too have adopted this approach in their dealing with Africa. And this looks remarkably different from the approach adopted by world players in their dealing with the Arabs or Middle Eastern countries in general. It seems Africa’s success in presenting itself as one body since the days of the defunct Organization of African Unity that was replaced by the African Union, the continent at least has established the tradition of meeting regularly every year and is moving slowly but surely to tackle its problems.
Additionally, the main emphasis is on the abundant natural resources, which helped the continent’s economic growth drive that averaged around 6 percent annually. Aside from other resources, hydrocarbon is getting additional attention as East Africa looks increasingly as a new area of mini oil and gas boom. Some discoveries have already been announced in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique and Madagascar. And Japan is really interested in this aspect given its real energy worries following the widespread shutdown of nuclear plants after the 2011 Fukushima accident.
The main question actually is not what foreign powers are up to as far as Africa is concerned, but to what extent the continent’s leaders can make use of these changing times and race to tap their resources. One of the main appealing points the Chinese were able to offer was that Beijing refrains from intervening into the domestic political affairs of host countries as Western countries used to do.
But the bottom line remains whether Africa can make use of this interest to add value to its resources or continue to be a mere raw material exporter.
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