Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta (R) and his Chinese counterpart Xi
Jinping (L) inspect a guard of honour outside the Great Hall of the
People in Beijing on August 19, 2013. AFP PHOTO / WANG ZHAO
Twelve years ago when I started
writing a regular column “Letter from East”, I believed Africa needed to
step up its engagement with Asia, but without necessarily abandoning
its traditional partners.
Africa can today exercise choice; what Bob Marley termed emancipation from mental slavery. Africa is in a position to say to the rest of the world: “We are a wealthy continent in terms of minerals, business opportunities and skills, and don’t need to be patronised.”
Evidently, Europe and North America, and indeed China, are interested in Africa because of what Africa has to offer. But Africa has not always fully appreciated the value of its resources, allowing itself to be ripped off and manipulated.
Africans must unrelentingly hold their leaders to account, as China’s interest in Africa now places the latter on the cusp of the most voracious feeding frenzy in living memory. The choice to engage with Asian countries that pride themselves on a “pragmatic” it’s-all-about-business approach, and are supposedly unconcerned with human rights, political, environmental, and other such so-called “strings attached” must be sweet music to African eating chiefs.
This is precisely why civil society must become even more vigilant. The procedures for awarding infrastructural, telecoms, defence and other contracts, must be scrutinised. The nature of these contracts itself remains a matter of great concern, requiring the sharpest minds at the negotiation tables because you can be sure China does not leave such fine details to well-fed corruptible politicians.
It is impressive that President Kenyatta extracted trade agreements worth $5 billion from his recent trip to China. But we need to scrutinise the fine print to determine exactly what is being mortgaged.
Of course Kenya needs foreign direct investment, but how sustainable is this economic dalliance, and how does it translate into employment opportunities for ordinary Kenyans? If Chinese investors are controlling the entire value chain, then we relegate ourselves to an economic dumping ground whose purpose is to alleviate unemployment in China. Is that what we want as a country emancipating itself from mental slavery?
I do not go
along with those who accuse China of seeking to colonise Africa.
Nevertheless, I take issue with African leaders who fail to protect
their countries from economic domination.
The second key priority is our wildlife and national heritage. Experts believe that the African elephant (and rhino for that matter) could go the way of the dodo by 2023 unless something really dramatic happens to change the ways of the main suspects: poachers, those who protect them, and those who consume the final product.
When President Kenyatta
says China will help Kenya fight poaching, what does that mean in terms
of China tackling the demand for ivory amongst its nouveau-riche? You
can target all the poachers in our game parks, but as long as ivory is
smuggled and exported through Kenya to satisfy demand in China and
Thailand, little will be achieved.
There may well be important lessons here from the anti-fur movement – it’s not cool to wear ivory trinkets and eat with ivory chopsticks. It is barbaric. More importantly, Africans should be angry that their heritage is being plundered while they do nothing.
Prof Kamoche teaches at Nottingham University and is author of Black Ghosts, a novel about Africans in China.
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