Yet their recent, late entry has already made a telling difference in so short a time. They have brought value and employment to our economies and societies, enabled through mutually gainful partnerships never experienced before in our troubled history as a Continent.
We have seen Chinese capital supporting landmark and iconic infrastructural projects across the African continent. Here in Zimbabwe, China has helped fund and implement several projects in the sectors of energy, air transport, water, real estate, industrial value addition, mining and defence.
All these have secured and bolstered our Independence, while changing the structure of our Economy in this season of punitive western sanctions.
Expectedly, the West is not impressed. Apart from feeling challenged by alternative capital which now provides new opportunities to Africa, the West still views our continent as its colonial dependants, even though we have long become independent and sovereign states.
This is a reflex rooted in colonial history which we rejected and continue to reject. Daily, African leaders are bombarded with unsolicited advice by those who occupied us for over a century, but with nothing to show for it. They advise us to be wary of the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, the Brazilians, the Arabs, et cetera. These new investors, we are daily told, are out to finish our natural resources.
It is as if western miners have been growing those same non-renewables as they mined and exported them as ore for over a century. Their advice to us is false and cynical; we reject it with the utter contempt it deserves.
In sharp contrast, these alternative players we are daily being advised against, have rewritten global relations as never before, all the time putting accent on mutually gainful partnerships and local beneficiation of our resources which we never saw in all those long years western capital prowled on our continent. This is incontestable, both now and in history.
What startles us as leaders in our region is how this Western fear of competition from non-traditional, non-Western capital, is beginning to assume a belligerent tone. Just this week, the United States of America’s Legislature introduced a Bill which seeks to make it a punishable offence for any country, African countries especially, not to support the West in its bid to encircle Russia.
Relating to Russia which, alongside Ukraine, accounts for over 30% of global cereals, and nearly 70% of global phosphates, is now deemed an international crime and punishable offence by the United States of America! Not too long ago, US set up a war chest to roll back Chinese influence globally, and especially from Africa, itself the last known resource frontier. We thus feel embattled and besieged by our erstwhile colonisers and exploiters.
Until recently, America imported fossil fuels, gas, phosphates and several other minerals and grain from both Russia and Ukraine. Except it was never a punishable sin when she did. The European Union absorbs nearly half of Russia’s fuels and petroleum products.
Until recently, Russian capital has been active in Europe, in Britain especially, while Chinese capital under the Belt and Road Initiative continues to transform Europe, principally ports of Greece and massive highways in former Soviet States now under the EU umbrella. It is very disturbing when legal coercion and even threats are used against smaller states to force partnerships of the unwilling, or to stop gainful partnerships between willing sovereign states.
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