By Tanu Jalloh
“It's still far too early to judge China's impact in Africa - whether it is simply bleeding a supine continent dry, shoring up authoritarian regimes, providing essential infrastructure, injecting cash, fostering crony capitalism, offering a welcome alternative to failed western development models, giving countries a little economic breathing space, or simply inspiring people to work and study harder. My sense, right now, is that it's doing all of the above,” those are the immortal words and views expressed by Andrew Harding in an article titled: “How China is changing Sierra Leone”.
The BBC’s Africa correspondent on July 26, 2010 had put together a gripping piece and posted it on his blog, apparently speaking to the general perception at the time. His account, it would seem, is still among the latest of most thorough attempts to speak to the impression about a China-Sierra Leone relationship. Similar sentiments, some of them outright attacks, have been expressed about the advent of the Chinese in Africa. The most scathing have been those around their activities in the east and southern Africa.
China was significantly involved in the resource rich, small and poor West African nation even before the infamous decade-long Revolutionary United Front war of 1991-2001 and has recently revamped that relationship, this time based on mutual trade and investment benefits. The older phase coincided with the regime of Siaka Stevens, who subscribed to the leftist-socialist and non-aligned trends at the time.
Providing essential infrastructure
Many of the large structures that continue to dominate Freetown were built by the Chinese in the 1970's and 80's. They include the National Stadium (former Siaka Stevens Stadium), Youyi Building (Youyi being a Mandarin word Friendship) which now serves as a ministerial complex, and its popular get-together place called China-Sierra Leone Friendship House, the army headquarters at Cockeril and the police headquarters.
The provinces the Chinese are said to have built bridges linking Guinea and Sierra Leone, a demonstration rice plantation and sugar complex near Makeni, and a hydroelectric dam at Dodo near Kenema with power transmission lines.
The recent phase of engagement was highlighted by the Chinese Foreign Minister's visit in January 2010, in reciprocity to President Ernest Bai Koroma's visit to China in 2009. The Chinese have undertaken to restore, revamp, or remodel some of the old projects to include the National Stadium, the Youyi Ministerial Complex, the army headquarters, and the rice plantation and sugar complex. They have resurfaced many deplorable roads in the country, including those from Bo to Kenema and from Makeni to Matotoka. They are building a 100-bed hospital on the outskirts of Freetown at Kossoh Town, which is likely to become the country’s latest ultramodern and probably the best in terms of healthcare service delivery.
According to official documents, the Chinese are scheduled to resurface the now execrable road from the new American Embassy on Hill Station to Grafton/Kossoh Town, which is expected to help relieve the extraordinary gridlock that is typical of the perennial traffic in the east end of the city. They were also very committed to a much-needed and recently commissioned new Foreign Ministry building on Tower Hill, as well as additional offices at Parliament. Documents from the Chinese embassy in Freetown say while here, the Chinese Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, presided over the opening of a new elementary school in Freetown and that they are building a small stadium in Bo and will build another in Makeni.
Inspiring people to work and study harder
The Chinese government has instituted what its embassy describes as a volunteer program similar to the US Peace Corps, and Chinese diplomats tell us that 30 volunteers recently arrived and are working in Freetown in various activities from the health sector to martial arts. The document says medical challenges upcountry have prevented the embassy so far from sending any volunteers outside the capital.
As part of the government's privatization programme, Gouji Trading Company has taken over the huge former railway workshop in eastern Freetown – which used to house one of the largest Internally Displaced Persons’ camps during the war – and transformed it into a manufacturing complex assembling an array of large machines and much else from mattresses to construction materials.
Chinese companies have established health centers, cell-phone repair shops, and hair-product and clothing businesses. The Chinese have formed partnerships with Sierra Leoneans to harness the country’s fish resources, a flagging sector that is vulnerable to exploitation by foreign fishing vessels. The Chinese have struck many business deals with companies in the mining industry, agriculture and construction.
Injecting cash
There were rumours during the Chinese Foreign Minister's visit in 2010 suggesting that a new airport for Freetown was going to be built. While the Chinese made no commitments at the time, a source close to its embassy said they were nonetheless willing to be one of several partners in the airport project. In October, 2011 China agreed to finance the construction of the new airport.
An engineering team from the China International Railway Group, which is said to have been awarded the contract, was in the country to conduct some feasibility study as part of the actual construction work.
In March 2005 then President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah told the BBC that the Chinese were just being grateful because of Sierra Leone's backing of China's admission into the United Nations in 1971. “I think the Chinese are aware of this – so they're just being grateful to us for what we did.”
Although he saw China as a “key partner”, he also believed China was looking for places for its "surplus population" to go. "There is no more room... that is one of the reasons why they are looking outside for some expansion. That's my judgment of the situation" he said.
Quite recently, like the United States of America, the Chinese have introduced the international visitors’ leadership programme. For the past five decades the International Visitor Program of the United States Information Agency annually brings to the United States approximately 5,000 foreign nationals from all over the world to meet and confer with their professional counterparts and to experience America firsthand. The visitors, who are selected by American Foreign Service Officers overseas, are current or potential leaders in government, politics, the media, education, labour relations, the art, business and other fields.
The Chinese apparently saw how quickly the US was able to sell its rich democratic and leadership cultures to the rest of the world that it was soon doing the same. I was part of three hundred young professionals who visited China in 2008 and came back almost thrilled by the level of hard work they put into their domestic approach to growth before their trade crusade in Africa.
Interestingly, therefore, critics have said that China was only interested in resources, its exports to Africa threaten local industries, and that it was displacing Africa’s traditional partners, like the United States.
But the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a private non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States, has recently argued that comparing China to United States was a zero-sum game. In its international economic bulletin, the global think tank, said concerns were sometimes voiced that China was displacing the United States, one of Africa’s traditional partners as a donor, and that that might be harmful to both Africa and the United States. And let me close with a quote from him:
“But the idea that China is replacing the need for U.S. assistance is a myth. In practice, China and the United States have very different approaches to the continent. China’s activities are generally more commercial—most of its aid comes in the form of low-interest loans, for instance—and it adheres to a ‘noninterference policy’ in African politics. U.S. aid is often conditional and the United States is more frequently involved in Africa’s internal political affairs. The United States also still provides far greater aid than China. In 2009, it gave $8 billion in assistance to Africa, while China gave an estimated $ 1.4.”
See you next week.
