Africans In China

In 1884, at the request of Portugal, German chancellor Bismark called together the major western powers for a talk on a negotiated solution to the questions over the control of Africa which 80% of territory was still under traditional and local control. Bismark wanted to expand Germany’s sphere of influence over Africa but have seen dangerous the fact that western powers were struggling with one another for territory.

Fourteen countries (Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands,Russia, Portugal, Spain, Sweden-Norway, Turkey, and the United States of America) participated to that conference and four of them (France, Germany, Great Britain, and Portugal) were the major players in the conference, already controlling about 20% of Africa at the time.

The conference obtained the neutrality of Congo and Niger Rivers mouths and basins and they were opened to trade for all the Colons. However, despite its neutrality, part of the Congo Basin became a personal kingdom for Belgium’s King Leopold II ( and was named Leopoldville : meaning Leopold’s Town) and under his rule, over half of the region’s African population died.

Even after the conference, the same give and take continued depending on the influence a country was gaining or losing. The map above is 30 years after the Berlin conference European powers claims, they had fully divided Africa among themselves into fifty countries

• Great Britain desired a Cape-to-Cairo collection of colonies and almost succeeded though their control of Egypt, Sudan (Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), Uganda, Kenya (British East Africa), South Africa, and Zambia, Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), and Botswana. The British also controlled Nigeria and Ghana (Gold Coast).
• France took much of western Africa, from Mauritania to Chad (French West Africa) and Gabon and the Republic of Congo (French Equatorial Africa).
• Belgium and King Leopold II controlled the Democratic Republic of Congo (Belgian Congo).
• Portugal took Mozambique in the east and Angola in the west.
• Italy’s holdings were Somalia (Italian Somaliland) and a portion of Ethiopia.
• Germany took Namibia (German Southwest Africa) and Tanzania (German East Africa).
• Spain claimed the smallest territory - Equatorial Guinea (Rio Muni).

You can see that some of the participants such as USA don’t have any claims in Africa, at least that what the map tells us. I wonder what their part was or if they wanted just to waste their time ( 3 months of negotiations) negotiating something they didn’t want.

More than 100 hundred years after the Bismark conference more super powers have emerged and of course want exactly what the former wanted and Africa is on the Agenda.

Africa is now meant to be independent, and more than 50 African countries are members of the UN. Their masters are now called partners. They didn’t easily give up their title of masters but have lost it after long fights. They are now called partners and not masters but you don’t need to be a politician expert to notice than they don’t act differently. Even a software engineer like me knows that Africa is not yet independent.

With China and India economies booming, Africa, the continent which have been fueling all the economies: USA and Europe from the slave trade era to the modern era, is for sure still needed for help and ready than ever. However, Africa is already divided and the traditional super powers have already traced their borders.

The world economy is exactly in the situation of 1884 when emerging industries were in luck of enough raw materials. China and India are in need of the food of their machines and Africa had got plenty of them.

China, which has been seeking relationship with Africa since the Mao’s era, has recently boosted it’s cooperation with Africa. It’s worth mentioning that Chinese cooperation with Africa is not matter of yesterday as one would think when reading news around internet. It’s just recently that we are being told all the time about the “disastrous China-Africa cooperation” by western media.

Even though China-Africa cooperation is not a matter of yesterday as I said previously, it’s just recently that we are being told frequently that : China is invading Africa, China is devouring African resources, Congolese kids are dying mining for Chinese companies, China is giving weapons to Mugabe and Sudan to kill Africans and many more. China have been in Africa a long time ago but was not a treat to the masters’ interest in any how. However now days, building on the long time relationship it had already with Africa, China has aggressively and quickly used it’s friendship with Africa to get economic interests and many deals are being signed despite the cries from West.

In the modern worlds, every country is meant to have right to choose its partners and West have lost the title of Master. They are supposed to be and are called Partners and not masters even tough they play the later.

The West now have two choices:

- Give up Africa and leave it with China and concentrate to their own economies. They have had enough time ( more than 100 years) to steal Africa and it would not be surprising that Belgium has now more gold than it’s colony : Congo. In terms of raw materials, I don’t doubt that Europe has enough stock for their industries for decades to come.

The consequences would arise if China managed to help Africa develop itself without the West: I don’t want this to happen just for the sake of international security. Imagine Africa as a world power without any help from Europe with the history of slave trade and colonization and all the killings of African nationalists that followed and all the made in Europe civil wars . I don’t want to have an image of a bad, criminal, bandit, … white man because really it’s not true. I’ve got very good white friends and I can say they wouldn’t be unhappy to hear Africa is developing. Even though I fearlessly can affirm that the Evil of Africa is white, I have not doubt that the White is not the Evil of Africa.

-A second choice is to really engage Europe in the development of Africa : that would be very good. Africans would easily forget their history and treat the West as a Partner not as an enemy. The current generations of Europe would have reason to reject the responsibility of their ancestors actions arguing that they would have acted differently if they’ve born before the slave trade like we do when blaming those criminal who killed Jesus. Who would not benefit from that ? None.

The consequences of the ideal solution are two:

* That would mean investing money, I mean money and not the aid, not financing unproductive made in Europe projects. That would come to a cost but there is no doubt that the West is able to handle it.They have got enough to invest and much of the benefits would still go to them.

* An other alternative that I think would not be with less consequences, is the independence of Africa. Africa would then seek economic and political independence. Imagine an Africa with nothing to report to the World Bank or the IMF and a decision maker in World Trade organization. Europe would find itself in situation of one of African partners like China and India. Africa would cease being just a natural resources provider but a hub of heavy industries. The cost of natural resources would rise and the European industries face the treat of cheap African goods on their market in application of their own rules of World Trade Organization. With the experience they have with China I don’t think they are ready to accept that.

Unable to stop China “Invading” Africa, they have lost their mind as you can see in this video, and they are now fighting on two fronts:

- Demonizing China however and whenever they can: we are now being told whatever about how Chinese actions in Africa is disastrous. We are told of a China “devouring” Africa and sponsoring dictatorship in Africa, undermining the “good efforts” of promoting good governance and democracy from the West. A Congolese kid mining is mining for Chinese companies, a gun which shoots innocents is made is China, …. the very very very very … bad China. However we all know that China is not the first supplier of Africa in any thing but infrastructures. I don’t say and even doubt that Chinese sell weapons in Africa. But unless those made in West are made in way they recognize innocents and only kill bad guys, they should not be the first to criticize it.

However this is doomed to fail: Chinese don’t care of the cries from the West and are on their way to Congo, Angola to name two, building roads and all kind of infrastructures quickly and silently. You see a bad Chinese enemy of Africa and a good European friend of Africa on the net and TV and you see in the street a Chinese building road and Europeans working in many so-called humanitarian aid organizations driving Mercedes and BMW in the Chinese made road. What to believe ? What you see or what you heard or read ? “Blessed are those who believe without seeing ” the Bible says but here we can both see and hear.

-Westerners are not stupid, they play all the cards but know which ones can win. They know they are not going to succeed telling to Congolese that Chinese are stealing their minerals if they can see made-by-Chinese roads, rail ways, hospitals,universities and schools. They have heard from long time that their country has got plenty of gold and diamonds and have got nothing from them but their people dying in mines for the past 100 years. Building a hospital and taking tons and tons of gold doesn’t matter for them because they have mined to death for someone else and didn’t see the hospital. What Westerners media haven’t understood is that Africans don’t know the price of natural resources because they have never seen salvation from them. Telling them: “hey look at Chinese they are devouring your diamonds”, doesn’t really produce expected results.

They know that they are doomed to fail and are now seeking for a 1884 Berlin like negotiated solution over the sharing of African resources. They have now to allocate some parts to China and India otherwise they risk loosing all. The “good” idea of not fighting but sharing Africa is again from Germany but not at Berlin but Bonn.

Bellow is a communique for the conferences

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However if negotiations are not yet finished, the new Bismark is going to have many challenges. China have got good reputation in Africa and Africans are willing more than ever not the right to choose their partners because that’s too demanding maybe, but the right to choose their master is seen as a must have one. They West will need to impose their practices to China what it’s impossible because Chinese will not be welcomed in Africa unless they show themselves different from Westerners. Would you hide from a river in the lake ?

China then is in a good position and has high needs and may ask a big part and why not even asking for the whole thing ? The 1884 Berlin participants didn’t get equal portions. India comes also with not a small appetite and they should wait also Russia because it hasn’t said the last word. How if our Brazilian brothers and Sisters join the game ? Maybe it’s not like football, otherwise they should also think twice.

I would like to attend that meeting because it’s not going to be the 1884 Berlin way for sure.Nothing shocking at all will be said. Partnership in helping Africa will be the main topic for sure and it sounds nice and sweet. There is no doubt that the black continent will be invited to attend. I m afraid the true negotiations will have been somewhere else. Wait and see.

Time will tell.

Daniel

Longkou port in east China’s Shandong Province is to launch two extra sea liner routes to Africa in the latter half of the year. Shandong Provincial Bureau of Port Shipping Services said Longkou Port dispatched 41 cement and sundry goods ships to African nations in the past seven months, with cement exports totaling 970,000 tonnes, accounting for 30 percent of China’s cement export total.

Sitting at the eastern side of Laizhou Bay, part of Bohai Sea, Longkou port has only 20 to 40 days of icing in a year and is capable of handling 5,000 deadweight tonnage ships.

China has spent Sh3.7 billion in an aggressive search for oil in Eastern Province and says initial tests show “positive results”, the Sunday Nation can reveal.

Industry experts said Chinese optimism is not surprising: oil was discovered at Loperot, 100 kilometres South of Lodwar by Shell in 1992 and the Chinese are prospecting in the same basin.

Shell struck oil in the so-called Block 10B after drilling 11 dry wells. A dispute between the firm and the Kanu government halted exploration and the find was hushed up, but not before 19 litres of crude was extracted.

In 1993 the US government estimated that there could be 100 million barrels of oil (worth more than Sh800 billion) at the Kenyan Coast alone.

Woodside, an Australian company which prospected for oil off the Coast of Lamu, had calculated that four out of the seven possible wells, had more than 250 million barrels of oil, according to confidential documents seen by the Sunday Nation, and as much as one billion barrels for the whole of its block.

Woodside left after its $100 million drilling came up with nothing despite high expectation that they would strike at least natural gas.

Kenya, which some experts describe as a gas rather than oil region, has a prospective 100,000 square kilometre oil field off-shore with between 600 billion and 6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas, according to one US estimate.

There was a gas explosion in a nearby coastal island during exploration and satellite maps seen by the Sunday Nation indicate seepage of oil on the sea bed.

Exploration efforts

A Chinese company, Bureau of Geophysical Prospecting, contracted by the government-owned China Offshore Oil Exploration Corporation, has been doing tests in Merti, 260 kilometres from Isiolo town.

The Chinese project is one of five exploration efforts currently going on in various parts of the country. It also comes in the face of a mounting energy crisis which has seen the cost of fuel rise 40 per cent in 12 months and the cost of electricity follow suit.

The Chinese have identified 15 wells which they say show strong signs of oil but are narrowing down to one. They are starting more exploration in neighbouring Marsabit District this month.

In April, Lundin Company, a Swedish multinational visited Kargi and North Horr areas and informed the local community that they were to start searching for oil in the area.

“They conducted meetings with the locals to inform them about their plans to search for oil,” a resident of North Horr Hilary Halkano told the Sunday Nation.

This will be the second exploration in Kargi, the first was in 1987. A company contracted to do the job left behind holes which locals say contain water poisonous to animals.

Kenya has a poor oil exploration record having only sunk 31 wells and none between 1992 and 2007. Sudan struck oil after drilling 78 times.

BGP Party Chief Mr Ye Dong Quan told the Sunday Nation that the company identified the wells after seismic equipment, which can peer 20 kilometres into the ground using shock waves, detected oil in some points.

Another engineer Mr Zhu Shanxin, who put the chances of striking commercially viable oil deposits at more than 50 per cent, said the wells must be draining into a major reservoir through underground oil rivulets and the task that remained was to establish which one among the 15 could be drilled.

“Some of the wells might be too shallow or might have small amounts of oil not commercially viable,” he said.

The team has to establish the density, quality and quantity of oil before an announcement is made. Sources claimed that the Chinese are to spend up to $60 million (Sh3.7 billion) on the project.

The company has state of the art equipment on site, including a truck for generating seismic shocks and mobile data processing laboratories.

“We would not have brought these machines here if we were not sure of striking oil. It is so expensive to maintain and run them,” Mr Quan said.

He said his company was prospecting for oil in 17 countries across the world, including Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Nigerian and Sudan.

The provincial administration has laid out the red carpet for the Chinese firm, posting more than 30 Administration Police officers to guard the base camp and field equipment around the clock.

Six chiefs from Isiolo and Wajir districts have also been provided with a patrol vehicle to help keep off herders from the area.

An oil industry insider, who spoke to the Sunday Nation in confidence, said Kenya does not seem to have a consistent prospecting

(more…)

By Mike Cohen

Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) — Twelve Southern African nations set up a free trade area today in a bid to bolster regional exchange of goods and economic integration for a market of 247 million people and an economy worth more than $430 billion.

The accord was made at the annual summit of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community in Johannesburg. The bloc includes Angola, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Swaziland, Tanzania, South Africa, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Angola, Seychelles and Congo have yet to sign the agreement.

The free trade area “required a lot of compromise to be made on a number of sensitive issues,” including requiring member states to relinquish some of their sovereignty, said Tomas Salomao, SADC’s executive secretary. The agreement will make “SADC an attractive area for doing business.”

The free-trade plan was first considered eight years ago and required SADC’s member states to systematically cut tariffs on goods traded within the bloc. By the beginning of the year, duties on 85 percent of their trade had been abolished, meeting the World Trade Organization’s definition of a free trade area. All remaining tariffs are due to be scrapped by 2012.

“We need to recognize that regional economic integration is not only about the removal of tariff barriers,” South African Trade Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa said in Pretoria on Aug. 13. “We need to embark on to build both our productive and trade capacity. We need to focus on expanding our agriculture and industrial base to promote intra-regional trade.”

SADC also intends to create a customs union by 2012, a plan that’s been complicated by its member states signing separate trade deals with the European Union, known as economic partnership agreements, or EPAs.

“All SADC countries are participating in EPAs with the EU, but in four separate configurations,” Mpahlwa said. “All these EPAs differ in terms of having different tariff liberalization obligations to the EU.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Mike Cohen in Cape Town at mcohen21@bloomberg.net

CAIRO, Egypt - Archaeologists and scholars will excavate hundreds of fragments of an ancient Egyptian wooden boat entombed in an underground chamber next to Giza’s Great pyramid. They will then try to reassemble the craft.

Zahi Hawas, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), left, and Japanese Egyptologist Sakuji Yoshimura, right, from Waseda Universty in Japan, display for the first time the Pharaoh Cheops’ second solar boat through a camera put inside the boat pit at the Pyramids site in Giza, Egypt, Saturday, July 19, 2008. [Agencies]

The 4,500-year-old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces in 1954 from another pit and painstakingly reconstructed. Experts believe the boats were meant to ferry the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid in the afterlife.

Starting Saturday, tourists were allowed to view images from inside the second boat pit from a camera inserted through the a hole in the chamber’s limestone ceiling.

Professor Sakuji Yoshimura of Japan’s Waseda University says the excavation of around 600 pieces of timber will begin in November.

(Agencies)

China’s interest in Africa seems to be transcending the mining and construction industry: It has extended a loan of 3.3 billion Kenyan shillings (US$50.4 million), with the telecommunication industry earmarked as a major beneficiary.

The loan deal was extended by China Development Bank (CDB) to the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank, also known as PTA Bank. The loan is significant because it is the largest line of credit the bank has received from a single institution and will support its strategy in financing the budding regional telecom industry.

PTA Bank intends to be active in the telecom sector, which has a large impact on development, according to Michael Gondwe, PTA Bank president.

The Framework Cooperation Agreement, which spells out the terms of the partnership, dates back to the 2006 Sino-Africa Beijing Summit.

By Rebecca Wanjiku , IDG News Service

By Patrick K. Wrokpoh
The government of the Peoples’ Republic of China says it has resolved to build 100 primary schools across Africa, with Liberia considered as one of the favorites to benefit from the gesture.

The special envoy on African Affairs at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mr. Liu Guijin, said in addition to the construction of these schools, his government has planned to build 13 hospitals across the continent to assist with the medical needs of the countries that would benefit.

Addressing journalists from Africa who visited the Chinese Foreign Ministry recently when he briefed them on his country’s relationship with African nations, Mr. Guijin said that in addition to these gestures, his country has already signed series of relevant bilateral agreements with some countries on the continent for possible bilateral assistance.

Mr. Guijin, the former Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe, said all African nations would benefit from this gesture stressing that under the agreement, some of the countries would get more schools while others will get less.

He added that his country is prepared to get these projects started but pointed out that some of the countries are faced with the problem of acquiring land where these buildings will be erected.

Envoy Guijin, who was also his country’s Ambassador to the Dulfur Region of Sudan recalled that during the recent G-8 summit held in Japan, his country made a commitment to countries across the continent that it would focus on the development of Africa, stressing that under the China, Africa Forum, his country remains a partner of Africa.

Ambassador Guijin made it clear that under the China, Africa Forum, which according to him will see his country following the principle of equality with its African partners, China would not allow its trade relationship to interfere with the political affairs or decisions of African countries.

He assured African nations that China would honor all commitment it has made to countries across the continent because as he put it China attaches great importance to its relationship with African nations.

In a related development, the Government of the Peoples’ Republic of China has given its position on the political situation in Sudan and the indictment of the President of that country, Omar Al-Bashir.

In its position released by Ambassador Guijin, when he addressed visiting journalists at the Chinese Foreign Ministry recently in Beijing, the Chinese government said it supports dialogue out of the conflict and wants all the parties to come together and engage in dialogue.

Ambassador Guijin said China supports the position of the African Union and the Arab League to bring the parties to the conference table stressing that the decision of the ICC to indict the Sudanese President comes at an inappropriate time when efforts are being exhorted to pursue dialogue in the matter.

He said the decision of the ICC to unseal the indictment against President Bashir, would jeopardize and complicate the on-going process of dialogue being pursued by the AU and the Arab League.

Copyright © 2008 The Inquirer.

Have a look at the following video: it’s both inspiring and a comedy. I don’t think you will be able to understand this woman’s English unless you speak French. But if you can understand French, you will die of laughing.

It’s one of the materials I m gathering about the China Africa Cooperation, Trade and Investments and all about the noise it’s causing among the legitimate colonialists.
China Africa trade accounts only 3% of it’s total international trade but it’s causing more noise than an atomic bomb. Why?

It’s an other story, I will talk about it in my coming articles, just want you to laugh for today.

Daniel

Qualifying matches have begun around the world for the football World Cup, which begins in two years. In 2010 the World Cup is to be held for the first time in Africa and attention is focusing on host nation South Africa. In anticipation, sports and tourism officials have assured industry observers and sports fans that the country will be ready. They appeared at a major trade fair in the port city of Durban. Correspondent Scott Bobb was there and has this report.

Football fever was the major theme at South Africa’s tourism trade fair in Durban this year. And one of the attractions was an exhibition game of the world’s most popular sport.

Organizers of the 2010 Soccer World Cup also launched a major offensive to dispel any doubts about South Africa’s readiness when competition begins in two years.

The head of the local organizing committee, Danny Jordaan, told several hundred journalists that construction was ahead of schedule on the 10 stadiums to be used for the matches.

“Progress on the stadiums is very advanced in many cases,” he said. “And in some cases we have difficulties. But that is something which every other organizing committee experiences. However, we are convinced that the stadiums will be complete long before kickoff on 11th of July [2010].”

Durban’s Moses Mabhiba Stadium under construction Durban’s Moses Mabhiba Stadium under construction Durban’s stadium, one of several all-new facilities, is rising steadily.

With its 100-meter-high roof-supporting arch the stadium will alter the skyline of South Africa’s second largest city. At a cost of several hundred million dollars, it will be the center of a sports city with its own railway station and beachside entertainment park.

Cape Town is also building a brand new stadium at Greenpoint between its famous beaches and Table Mountain. Eight other cities are building or refurbishing stadiums including Johannesburg, which will host the final match.

Jordaan says a major concern is keeping costs down.

“We have been prudent enough to ensure that we remain within budget. And that is a huge challenge,” he said. “It requires consistent monitoring, financial discipline.”

But he says escalating costs for fuel and construction material cannot be controlled and this requires strict vigilance.

The government is also spending several billion dollars to upgrade airports, highways and other networks to transport the estimated 400,000 visitors who are to attend the event.

Suth Africa’s multi-billion dollar tourism industry is also gearing up. The head of South Africa Tourism, Moeketsi Mosola, says nine million tourists came to South Africa last year and 10 million are expected this year.

With such statistics he is certain that the industry will be able to accommodate World Cup fans. Moreover, he promises them a uniquely African experience.

“You wake up in the morning in the middle of a game reserve,” Mosola said. “You go for a [game] drive at four a.m. in the morning. We pick you up. We take you, we fly you into Johannesburg to watch a game at three o’clock. You are back in the middle of the bush by seven o’clock, eight, in the evening and you have a dinner in the boma [restaurant]. That is an African experience and that is what is going to make this World Cup absolutely different.”

Some of the teams will be training in neighboring countries, such as Namibia and Mozambique, and these are also mobilizing to attract some of the tourism dollars.

Zimbabwe is making a major pitch to attract fans to the famous Victoria Falls. The head of its government tourism agency, Shingi Munyeza, acknowledges that his country is experiencing economic and political problems but says these will not affect visitors.

“A guest is always worried about their safety. On the safety issues we can actually be very comfortable and tell them that you will not be affected by what is going on,” Munyeza said. “However, if there is some moral objection of what often happens, that as business people we are not able to address.”

As kick-off approaches, Africa’s always exuberant soccer fans are getting increasingly excited. Organizers acknowledge that a lot of work remains to be done but everyone here at least is confident that Africa will be ready.

(VOA)

JOHANNESBURG — Stadium construction costs for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa are expected to exceed budgets by 2 billion rands (US$253 million), the South African government said Wednesday.

The rendering of a stadium for the 2010 South Africa World Cup is seen in this undated picture. [Agenceis]

SA deputy finance minister Jabu Moloketi said increases in the price of oil and steel as well as fluctuations in exchange rates had pushed costs up.

Moloketi said 9.2 billion rands (US$1.2 billion ) had been allocated for stadium construction and renovation. The government and the host cities would have to share the additional costs, he said.

The government was meeting with financial institutions, including the Development Bank of South Africa, to secure additional funding, according to the South African Press Association.

The cost of hosting the tournament is expected to exceed 30 billion rands (US$3.8 billion), mainly because of escalating construction prices.

When the government bid to host the football showcase, estimates made in 2004 for the cost of hosting the tournament were as little as 3 billion rand (US$380 million). But plans have become more ambitious since then, with new stadiums being built in Durban and Cape Town.

The government has also decided to use the event as a catalyst for massive spending on badly needed transport infrastructure, as well as beefing up telecommunications, police numbers and equipment.

Moloketi said infrastructure projects were on track to meet deadlines ahead of next year’s Confederation Cup.

“Quite clearly South Africa is indeed ready,” Moloketi said. “We have covered a lot of ground.”

This undated file photo shows the construction site of World Cup 2010 stadium complex in South Africa. [Agenceis]

(XINHUANET)

East African Community (EAC) has called on the Chinese government to help it in improving the region’s dilapidated infrastructure, which analysts say is stalling the region’s economic development.

Eriya Kategaya, Uganda’s First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of East African Affairs told Xinhua in an interview on Wednesday that the region, which groups Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, is looking forward to forging closer ties with China in infrastructure sector.

Kategaya, who is also chairperson of the EAC Council of Ministers, led a team of ministers responsible for EAC affairs and senior government officials on a working visit to China early this month. The visit focused on learning from the Chinese experience in infrastructure development and lobbying for support and partnership in developing the region’s infrastructures.

He said the region’s infrastructure including roads, railways, civil aviation, information technology, energy, among others, need to be developed if the region is to attract sustainable investment, trade and development and full integration into the global economy.

“China could help us finance these projects through two stages, first carrying out feasibility studies and second financing,” he said. He singled out the region’s energy crisis as a major factor stalling the region’s economic development. Recent statistics showed that on average, each of the five EAC member states annually lose about 1.5 to 2.5 percent of its GDP every year due to the instability and inadequacy of their power supply.

“We have come to realize that without sufficient energy, we can not do much in these economies,” Kategaya said.

He said the bloc has decided to focus on partnership with China because the Asian country passed through the same challenges the EAC is facing now as it strives to develop.

He said the region has already had the roads, railways, civil aviation, and energy master plans but they lack funding for upgrade

(XINHUA)

NAIROBI  – East African countries have signed an agreement with regional commodity dealers that will enable them participate more in policy-making and facilitation of trade.

The agreement signed in Nairobi late Wednesday will also remove non tariff barriers and allow free movement of food and trade in the region.

The agreement was signed between East African Community (EAC) and the Eastern Africa Grain Council (EAGC), Africa Cotton and Textile Industries Federation and the Eastern and South African Dairy Association.

Some countries have either imposed bans or increased tax citing protection of their domestic markets from increased competition.

By Echo Shan (chinadaily.com.cn)

Mianzi (literally “face value”) has long been observed by most Chinese. As a famous saying goes, “Men live for face as trees grow for bark.”

Most Chinese people value the face a lot as an old saying goes that people live for polished face while trees live for bark. [baidu]

In a recent survey conducted by China Youth Daily, over 93 percent of the 1,150 polled said they pay much attention to their mianzi, which concerns people’s decency, personality, and dignity.

When asked what the most humiliating thing is, a heavy number accounting for 74.9 percent of the total chose public gaffes, with the failed fulfillment of one’s promise coming in as second.

More than a half of the respondents feel ashamed of being shown as ignorant before others. A total 47.5 percent of the polled considered it a loss of face to have not enough money on them when treating friends out to a dinner.

What would enhance one’s face value then? In a ranking on this question, the survey revealed that doing what others cannot do topped the list, taking up a high proportion of 83.7 percent. Following at the second, with 53.9 percent, was being praised in public.

Being outstandingly knowledgeable was third on the list for sharpening one’s mianzi, accounting for 51.7 percent.

According to the survey, face value usually comes at a price. To pay or not to pay, it’s a problem. Deeply obsessed with the face value concept, many “fight” each other for the chance to foot the bill despite an infertile pocket. Some 80.7 percent of those taking the poll thought it a tough life to always cling to the face value concept.

Surprisingly, only 8.7 percent of the polled insisted that it tarnishes a man’s authority and face value in a family where the wife is the major breadwinner.

Clad even into teeth with the luxury name brand apparels, a limited 7.7 percent among all the respondents tend to resort to pricey clothes in a bid to gain more face value.

Taking the social status into consideration, 82.9 percent of the polled nod at the opinion that those holding a superior position care far more than the general public about face.

In another comparison, the manual labors pay less attention to the face value than brainworkers.

The survey also revealed that men focus more on face value than women and the senior more than the young.

While most people hold a neutral viewpoint about those who value mianzi a lot, nearly 80 percent of all the respondents were willing to make friends with them.

Anita Swarup

Chinese enterprises are springing up all over Africa working across sectors such as food processing, fishing industries, furniture manufacturing and shoe and garment making – and not simply operating within the conventional sectors of oil and extractive industries.

China has also established US $5 billion fund to encourage Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa and many are expecting to benefit from this. However, most people in the West see Africa’s investment climate as very poor so what are the motives for the Chinese private sector. Why are they so willing to invest?

For some, Chinese investment raises hopes but for many it raises concerns such as good governance, labour standards and human rights. Clearly Chinese involvement in Africa – both state and private sector – has characteristics which are different from OECD countries.

The Chinese government designated 2006 the ‘Year of Africa’, and the Third Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Beijing, November 2006) emphasised the huge importance of increasing Chinese private investment in Africa.

‘Given the growth and influence of Chinese private firms in Africa, anyone who is concerned with African development can ill afford to underestimate the impact,’ said Dr. Jing Gu, IDS.
Ground-breaking study at IDS
A new study at IDS is looking at China’s private sector investment in Africa and assessing its significance. Questions looked at include the extent to which this investment is based on business logic and how far is it promoted by the Chinese Government as part of its broader relationship with Africa? And, as Chinese firms are positive about prospects in Africa and willing to make investments, what does this tell us about their perceptions of the investment climate in particular Africa countries?

Dr. Jing Gu, who is leading the project, has recently returned from a research trip in Africa where she visited three countries – Ghana, Nigeria and Madagascar. She has already conducted extensive research in China interviewing private entrepreneurs in the six provinces who have strong links to Africa in order to get a Chinese perspective as to what the motives are for investing in Africa.

The study’s objective is to contribute to development in Africa - it will contribute to the capacity of African governments to enable more effective promotion and management of investment inflows from China, particularly with respect to local capacity building and technology transfers.
Collaboration with Chinese partners
In a collaborative effort with researchers from the China-Africa Business Council (CABC) and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), an extensive survey of senior corporate attitudes was undertaken with in-depth interviews conducted with Chinese business, Chinese Embassy officials in Africa and UNDP representatives in Ghana, Nigeria and Madagascar. In these interviews, a range of issues were discussed such as China and development policy, the implementation of the Chinese government’s ‘Going Global’ policy, the motivation to invest in Africa and the pull and push factors affecting Chinese business decisions to invest.

Anita Swarup is a Communication Officer at IDS

WASHINGTON, Aug 14 (Reuters Life!) - A Stone Age graveyard on the shores of an ancient, dried-up lake in the Sahara is brimming with the skeletons of people, fish and crocodiles who thrived when the African desert was briefly green, researchers reported on Thursday.

The 10,000-year-old site in Niger, called Gobero after the Tuareg name for the area, was discovered in 2000 but the group has only now gathered enough information to make a full report, said University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno. The team stumbled onto the assortment of human and animal bones and artifacts while looking for dinosaur fossils. “I realized we were in the green Sahara,” Sereno, who discovered the site while working for National Geographic, said in a statement. The site contains at least 200 graves that appear to have been left by two separate settlements 1,000 years apart. Perhaps the most dramatic is a woman and two children, their arms entwined, laid to rest on a bed of flowers around 5,000 years ago. The older group were tall, robust hunter-gathers known as Kiffians, who apparently abandoned the area during a long drought that dried up the lake around 8,000 years ago, Sereno’s team reports in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE. A second group settled in the area between 7,000 and 4,500 years ago, they said. These were Tenerians, smaller, shorter people who hunted, herded and fished. Both left many artifacts, including tool kits, fishhooks, ceramics and jewelry, the researchers said. “At first glance, it’s hard to imagine two more biologically distinct groups of people burying their dead in the same place,” said Chris Stojanowski, a bioarchaeologist from Arizona State University who has been working on the site. The Sahara is the world’s largest desert and has been for tens of thousands of years, but changes in the Earth’s orbit 12,000 years ago brought monsoons further north for a while. The team sampled tooth enamel from the skeletons, pollen, bones and examined soil and tools to date the site, artifacts and remains. “The data from Gobero, when combined with existing sites in North Africa, indicate we are just beginning to understand the complex history of biosocial evolution in the face of severe climate fluctuation in the Sahara,” the researchers wrote in their report. (Editing by Will Dunham and Cynthia Osterman)

By Daniel Wallis and Duncan Miriri

NAIROBI (Reuters) - With global warming expected to hit Africa hard, some companies in the “forgotten continent” are taking action themselves to fight climate change.

“The environment is not being taken very seriously in most of the emerging markets, because we haven’t started feeling the pressure yet,” Adan Mohamed, chief executive of Barclays Bank Kenya, told Reuters.

“But it has got to be addressed and it is up to us corporates to lead that.”

Poverty in Africa, where nearly three quarters of people rely on agriculture, means it is the part of the world least able to adapt to the severe weather changes forecast to be triggered by global warming, experts say.

Tens of millions face water and food shortages, they say, as well as impacts ranging for disease to rising seas.

Kenyan firms including national flag carrier Kenya Airways, brewer East African Breweries and others are now actively studying ways to “green” their operations to help lessen the blow.

Even a popular Nairobi radio station, Capital FM, has got in on the trend, raising public awareness by paying $2,000 to an offsetting company to become a carbon free enterprise.

It all points to changing attitudes towards environmental protection in some of the world’s poorest counties.

Last November the top U.N. climate official, Yvo de Boer, told Reuters Africa was the “forgotten continent” in the battle against warming and desperately needed help.

He said damage to the continent projected by the U.N. climate panel justified stronger world action — even without considering likely disruptions to other parts of the planet.

Big developing countries like China, India and Brazil had won far more funds than Africa from rich nations to help cut greenhouse gases, he noted, for instance by investing in wind farms, hydropower dams or in cleaning up industrial emissions.

Just 2.4 percent of more than 1,100 projects for cutting greenhouse gases in developing nations are in Africa under the Clean Development Mechanism, a U.N.-backed scheme.

CHANGING ATTITUDES

South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, does have a handful of such projects.

Sasol, the world’s biggest maker of fuel from coal, is pioneering a plan to sell carbon credits by converting a greenhouse gas into nitrogen and oxygen, also earning it income.

Based at two plants in South Africa, the project will convert nitrous oxide and is aimed at cutting emissions equivalent to about 1 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

One ton of nitrous oxide has the greenhouse gas impact of 310 tons of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for warming.

Some 90 percent of South Africa’s electricity is produced from coal-fired plants. But carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment will be mandatory for all new power stations.

No power plant yet operates anywhere in the world with CCS equipment attached, and only a handful of countries including the United States, Britain, Canada and Norway, have pledged public money to test the technology on a commercial scale.

But the picture in cosmopolitan Johannesburg or Nairobi — where Kenya Airways plants thousands of seedlings on hills under it flight paths, or diners can eat in the leafy garden of Azalea, a carbon-free restaurant — remains rare in Africa.

Many nations are focused on the challenges of developing basic energy infrastructure to eliminate the need to run costly generators. The emergence of firms offering conscience-salving carbon offsets seems a long way off.

Desire Kouadio N’Goran, an official at Ivory Coast’s Environment Ministry, said his government was encouraging the use of solar energy and more efficient stoves, as well as public transport to cut vehicle emissions.

But Mohamed, the Barclays Kenya chief executive, said times were changing, and that African business had to plan long term.

He said his bank only lent to environmentally sustainable projects, but declined to give details.

“People are trading carbon units globally,” he said. “There’s no reason that can’t cross over to emerging markets.”

(Additional reporting by James Macharia in Johannesburg and Loucoumane Coulibaly in Abidjan; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Mary Gabriel)

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - A Chinese company has signed a $34 million deal with Ethiopia to build four factories producing leather goods north of the capital Addis Ababa.

A statement issued by the Ethiopian government on Wednesday said the firm, Sino-Overseas Leather Products, had bought 50,000 square metres of land for the plants.

It said the first factory, a tannery, was due to be completed before the end of the year and would produce more than 1 million square metres of finished leather annually.

The other three will make gloves, shoes and jackets.

Last month, Ethiopia’s government said Chinese investors had built the country’s first glass factory, worth some $15 million. The Chinese have been investing heavily in Africa, especially in resource rich areas.

Also last month, ZTE Corp, China’s second-largest telecoms gear maker, said it had agreed to build a national network covering 14 major cities in Ethiopia.