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China and Africa

Building a Strategic Partnership

Piet Konings is senior researcher at the African Studies Centre, University of Leiden (The Netherlands). He has published widely on the political economy and labour in Africa, especially in Ghana and Cameroon. His most recent publications include Negotiating Anglophone Identity: A Study in the Politics of Recognition and Representation in Cameroon (Brill, 2003), Trajectoires de Libération en Afrique Contemporaine (Karthala, 2000), and Unilever Estates in Crisis and the Power of Organizations in Cameroon (LIT Verlag, 1998). He has also contributed to several volumes of the editors of this special, including Big Business and Economic Development: Conglomerates and Economic Groups in Developing Countries and Transition Economies Under Globalization (Routledge, 2007), and Good Governance in the Era of Global Neoliberalism: Conflict and depolitisation in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa (Routledge, 2004). Address: African Studies Centre, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden,The Netherlands. Email: konings{at}ascleiden.nl

This article focuses on China's growing engagement with Africa – a subject that has not been given due attention in African studies. Following a review of the various shifts and continuities in Sino-African relations since the 1950s, the study sets out to explain the renewed interest of China in Africa since the end of the 1980s. Africa's interests in China complement much of the agenda being promoted by Beijing. Governing and business elites within Africa see new opportunities in China: trade (growing Chinese markets for African products) and investment opportunities, ways to bolster regime stability, and strategically important partnerships. Particularly attractive for many African rulers is the alternative development model propagated by China: non-interference in state sovereignty, freedom from ‘western hegemony’, and absence of any conditions in giving aid. However, there are also points of tension. One of them is trade since the balance of trade favours China. Local industries (especially manufacturing and textiles) and merchants have been hard hit by the flood of cheap Chinese imports. In addition, the newly created Pan African organizations like the African Union and the New Economic Partnership for African Development(NEPAD) represent a challenge to non-interference in state sovereignty, and call for ‘good governance’.

Journal of Developing Societies, Vol. 23, No. 3, 341-367 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0169796X0702300303


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