Africans In China

The Libyan leader and current chairman of the African Union, His Excellency Brother Muamar Ghadafi has once again reiterated his clarion call for African unity, stressing that the continent must be united in other to achieve its goals.

He stressed that in the absence of unity and lack of political will, the continent’s goals will be hard to achieve. The visiting Libyan leader made these comments yesterday at the Independence Stadium in Bakau, where he addressed thousands of Gambians as part of his activities in the country.

The mass rally, which was presided over by The Gambian leader, His Excellency Sheikh Professir Alhaji Dr Yahya Jammeh, also had in attendance, the vice president and minister of Women’s Affairs - Her Excellency Aja Dr Isatou Njie-Saidy, the speaker of National Assembly of The Gambia- Honourable Elizabeth Renner, brought together thousands of Gambian youths. According to the African Union chairman, the people of the continent will not allow themselves to be colonised again, but he quickly stressed that in order to achieve that there is a great need for a United States of Africa, a goal that he has been advocating for. The United States of Africa, he noted, guarantees the growth and development of the continent.

“We need one Africa with one identity, one passport, and so on,” emphasized the AU Chief, while calling on African people to wake up from their long sleep. The strong advocate of continental unity used the opportunity to called on the big powers to respect Africa, stressing the need for Africa to be given a permanent seat in the United Nation’s Security Council. He stressed that the continent should be represented in the council, as well as be given its due in other international organisations.

The African Union chairman also used the opportunity to implore the youths to distance themselves from illegal migration, stressing the need for them to stay on the continent. He noted that Africans should rely on themselves for development, saying “we have the mineral resources, and the people”. To this end, he reminded the youths about the fact that the former colonials colonised the continent because it is the richest in the world. He told the youths that the colonisers had treated Africans like animals.

” They colonised The Gambia and built only two high schools and two hospitals. This means that they spend 200 years to build two hospitals and another 200 years to build the two hospitals,” he told the youths. At this juncture, the Libyan leader went on hail President Jammeh’s revolutionary spirit, calling on Gambians to keep supporting him.

The African Union chief stated that they are determined to achieve the United States of Africa. The path, he saidm may be rough, but they are determined to achieve the dream of the continent. Speaking earlier, the chairperson of the National Youth Council, Almamy Taal, said the youths are fully aware of the African Union chairman’s struggle for continental unity, and went on to assure him of their commitment to the same goal. The African youths, he noted, want a unified continent. He told the Libyan leader that they are proud to have him as a leader in this vital cause.

For his part, Marchel Mendy, executive secretary of the National Youth Council, told the Libyan leader that President Jammeh has the development of Africa and the youths as his priority. This, he said, is attested to by the fact that he has created the enabling environment in ensuring that The Gambian youths are given greater opportunities to develop their potentials so as to effectively participate in all spheres of national development.

The NYC boss went on to state that the Libyan leader’s role in re-defining and shaping the African Union through his direct and pragmatic leadership received a special place in the hearts of all Gambian youths. Mendy commended the Libyan leader for meeting The Gambian youths as part of his program of activities.

The Ministry of Youth and Sports handed over a proposal to the Libyan leader at the end of the occasion. The minister of Youth and Sports, Sheriff Gomez chaired the rally.

(ALLAFRICA)

By Hisane MASAKI

The increasingly fierce competition between Japan and China over energy and political influence is spilling over into Africa.

Following in the footsteps of Beijing, Tokyo has recently begun to turn to the continent as a new source of oil. Meanwhile, the leaders of the two Asian neighbors have recently made whirlwind tours of Africa.

Japan/Africa

While Japan until recently has almost ignored Africa as an energy-resource supplier, China has been aggressively pursuing oil and gas interests in Africa. Japan and China are the world’s No 3 and No 2 oil consumers, respectively. And they are both hungry for energy
to feed their economies, the world’s No 2 and No 4, respectively, in terms of gross domestic product.

Japan imports almost all of its oil, nearly 90% of which comes
from the Middle East. Deeply concerned about energy security at a time of stubbornly high global oil prices and a global rush for oil and other energy resources, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) recently released a new long-terms strategy aimed at ensuring stable oil, gas and other energy-resource supplies.

The New National Energy Strategy calls for, among other things, strengthening relations with resource-rich countries, securing energy resources abroad through the fostering of more powerful domestic energy companies, and boosting to 40% by 2030 from the current 15% the ratio of “Hinomaru oil”, that is oil developed and imported through Japanese domestic producers.

METI chief Nikai Toshihiro announced recently that Japan will send a high-powered mission, including the head of the METI-affiliated Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, to Libya to strengthen bilateral ties in energy and other areas. Libya, with an estimated 39 billion barrels of oil, has the world’s ninth-largest reserves.

Last October, Japan scored a coup in its oil diplomacy. Five Japanese enterprises won international tenders to acquire the rights to develop a combined six oil blocks in Libya. The deals marked the first oil-exploration concession ever given to Japanese firms in Libya.

Two Japanese oil blocks in Libya

Japan is also eyeing interests in oilfields in the rest of Africa. The government sent a fact-finding mission of officials from oil developers, trading firms and engineering firms to Mauritania and Chad early this year. Mauritanian Petroleum and Energy Minister Mohamed Aly visited Tokyo recently and met with Nikai. The two ministers agreed to cooperate in developing oil resources in the northwestern African country. Nikai pledged to send a high-level private-public mission to Mauritania soon, led by the head of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.

Japan also views as promising the development of oilfields in other African countries such as Equatorial Guinea and Ivory Coast.

While Japan has largely ignored Africa as a source of its badly needed oil, not all Japanese oil developers have shied away from making forays there. AOC, for example, signed a production-sharing contract with Egypt in July 2005 for oil and gas exploration and development in the Northwest October block in the Gulf of Suez. AOC plans to start production there during fiscal 2008. Teikoku Oil is more active in Egypt. It was awarded two blocks through an international tender in June 2005 - the South October and North Qarun blocks.

Earlier, Teikoku Oil had acquired interests in the West Bakr and Southeast July blocks. Teikoku Oil also made inroads into the Algerian oil and gas sectors several years ago. It is participating in development projects in Ohanet and El Ouar I and II blocks. Teikoku Oil has also participated in an offshore oil development project in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the 1970s.

Teikoku Oil’s gas project in Algeria

Japan’s new focus on Africa as a source of energy resources, especially oil, comes on the heels of China’s aggressive forays into the continent’s energy sector, as exemplified by recent visits by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. Hu visited three African countries, including Nigeria, the continent’s largest oil producer. Wen visited seven countries, including Angola, the continent’s second-largest oil producer.

China is a leading player in the recent global rush for oil and other energy reserves. China now depends on imports for more than 40% of its oil. The International Energy Agency predicts this will rise to 75% in 2030. Competition for energy sources has increased tensions between China and Japan. The Asian neighbors are locked in a simmering fracas over Chinese gas projects in the disputed waters in the East China Sea. They have also lobbied hard for alternative routes for a pipeline from eastern Siberia’s oilfields to Pacific Rim nations.

China’s aggressiveness in the global oil market drew widespread attention last summer when China National Offshore Oil Corp’s takeover bid for US oil-and-gas firm Unocal was blocked by the US government.

Still, China has gotten its hands on many foreign oil deposits in the past year or two, including some in Africa. China won oil interests off the coast of Angola after wooing that African country with a US$2 billion credit line. China also made the $2.27 billion purchase of a 45% stake in the Akpo offshore oil-and-gas field in Nigeria. China secured four oil-drilling licenses from Nigeria during Hu’s African tour. The ratio of crude-oil imports from Africa to China’s overall imports of the fuel has reached 30%. China’s focus is on Nigeria, Angola and Sudan. It is possible that Angola has already replaced Saudi Arabia as China’s largest oil supplier.

To be sure, Japan has also stepped up its Africa diplomacy in recent years. But this has been driven mainly by a strong desire to gain support from the continent’s 53 countries for Japan’s bid for a permanent United Nations Security Council seat.

Meanwhile, in late April Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro visited Ethiopia, where the African Union is headquartered. Japan has hosted the ministerial-level Tokyo International Conference on African Development three times since 1993 to muster international support for the region, still plagued by poverty, conflict and infectious diseases. Japan will host the fourth TICAD in 2008. Japan, the world’s second-largest donor of official development assistance (ODA) after the United States, has chipped in about 10% of such money extended directly to developing countries. At the Asian-African summit in Jakarta in April last year, Koizumi announced a decision to double Japanese ODA for Africa in three years.

However, China seems to be outdoing Japan in forging closer economic relations - and increasing influence - with Africa. African-Chinese trade totaled $40 billion in 2005, up 35% from 2004. This figure eclipses African-Japanese trade, which totaled $18 billion in 2005. In addition, China’s investment in Africa is rising sharply, and Beijing boasts a proactive record on aid and debt relief, having given more than $5.5 billion in assistance and canceled the debt of 31 countries.

China does not seem to be fussy about where its oil comes from. It gets oil in Sudan, for example, despite the international uproar over the Darfur crisis. To be sure, Japan won concession rights for oil and gas in Sudan in June last year. But the winner, Systems International Group, is a company newly established by a Japanese non-governmental organization, Reliance. It plans to use the profit from oil development in eastern Sudan to finance humanitarian support in Africa.

China’s appetite for oil and other resources is not the only reason for Beijing’s active charm diplomacy in Africa.

Taiwan announced early this month that it was breaking off diplomatic relations with Chad, just hours before a planned trip by Taiwanese Premier Su Tseng-chang to the Central African country. Su’s trip was canceled. A Taiwanese spokesman said Chad was under pressure from Beijing to end its relations with Taiwan, so the island’s leaders made the break before Chad could move on its own.

At first glance, many African countries seem to be benefiting from China’s runaway economic growth. Critics say that Beijing’s interest in Africa is driven by self-interest and that it is prepared to ignore political, environmental and humanitarian considerations in its search for energy resources. They also say that oil wealth could entrench corruption in countries while natural resources are controlled by small elites.

Unlike China, Japan, the self-proclaimed champion of democracy in Asia, cannot turn a blind eye to poor records on democracy and human rights in many African countries. Japan has applied strict criteria for aid provision to developing countries in Asia, Africa and elsewhere in the world, with democracy and human-rights protection as basic conditions.

China’s influence in Africa looks set to grow further. The emerging economic powerhouse seems to be seen by some African leaders as a role model for their own nations. The odds seem to be in China’s favor.

Hisane Masaki is a Tokyo-based journalist, commentator and scholar on international politics and economy. Masaki’s e-mail address is yiu45535@nifty.com. This is a slightly abbreviated version of an article that appeared in Asia Times. Posted at Japan Focus on August 19, 2006.

(mascareignas.blogspot.com)

(China Knowledge) - China Gezhouba (Group) Corp<600068>, one of the biggest engineering and construction enterprises in China, signed on Mar. 25 a construction contract worth US$406 million with the Housing and Infrastructure Bureau of Libya, according to the company’s statement on Friday

According to the contract, the Chinese company will offer services of survey, evaluation, planning, design and construction of an infrastructure project in southwestern Tripoli, the capital of Libya.  It will take about four years to finish the project.

The statement also said that the company has obtained approval from its board of directors to establish the Gezhouba Angola Limited with a registered capital of US$1 million to expand its business in the country.
Copyright © 2009 www.chinaknowledge.com

From terrorist sponsor to African Union chair, would-be statesman is achieving his goals

Michael Slackman
New York Times

TRIPOLI, Libya–Forty years after he seized power in a bloodless coup, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, the Libyan leader has achieved the international status he always craved: as chair of the African Union.

Gadhafi’s selection to lead the 53-nation African Union coincided with his emergence as a welcomed figure in Western capitals, where heads of state are eager to tap Libya’s vast oil and gas reserves and to gain access to virgin Libyan markets. Once vilified for promoting state terrorism – and called “this mad dog of the Middle East” by U.S. president Ronald Reagan – Gadhafi is now courted.

But he remains the same eccentric, unpredictable revolutionary as always. He has used his new status to promote his call for a United States of Africa, with one passport, one military and one currency.

He has blamed Israel for the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan, defended Somali pirates for fighting “greedy Western nations” and declared multi-party democracy is not right for the people of Africa.

“This is a role that Gadhafi has been looking for for 40 years,” said Wahid Abdel Meguid, deputy director of Egypt’s Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “He kept shifting and changing directions in search of this role.”

Each step of Gadhafi’s calculated transformation from terrorist sponsor to would-be statesman has bolstered the next. The thaw in relations with the West, which began in 2003 when he gave up Libya’s nuclear weapons program, provided more credibility in Africa, and his rising status there has him more acceptable to the West. All of which has been aimed at one primary objective: bolstering his image.

At one time, Gadhafi, who was born in 1942, tried to position himself as the next pan-Arab leader. But he was rejected, at times mocked, for his eccentric style and pronouncements. His country was isolated for decades because he sent his agents to kill civilians, including in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, in 1988.

But now in Africa, he has found traction. African heads of state view him suspiciously, and his one-Africa agenda is generally dismissed as unworkable. But he is embraced for his growing status in the West, the lack of credible alternatives across the continent and his money.

“They don’t want to lose him because he is a gold mine for solving crises, usually financial crises,” said Attia Essawy, an Egyptian writer with expertise in African affairs. “He is searching for a role; he wants to have a role regardless of where.”

While Libya’s strongman is enjoying his burnished image, it has come at a cost to his nation of 5.5 million people and to the approximately 2 million Africans who flocked to Libya believing they would find warm receptions, good jobs and, perhaps, an easy path to Europe. Instead, they found hostility and a struggle just to eat.

“It is a burden,” said Ali Abd Alaziz Isawi, who served two years as the minister of economy, trade and investment, of the army of illegal immigrants living in Libya. “They’re a burden on health care, they spread disease, crime. They are illegal.”

All over this capital city, illegal African immigrants line up along roads, across bridges and at traffic circles hoping to be selected for menial day jobs that pay about $8 U.S.

Many people in Tripoli said they resented the presence of so many illegal workers. “We don’t like them,” said Moustafa Saleh, 28. “They smuggle themselves through the desert, and the way they deal with us is not good.”

For migrants, life in Libya is often a dead end. “They call us animals and slaves,” said Paul Oknonghou, 28, a Nigerian who lives with a dozen others in an unfinished house..

Thomas Thtakore, 26, from Ghana, who entered Libya illegally a year ago after a three-month journey across mountains and desert, said, “I have no help; I sleep under a bridge near the river.” He said his younger brother died on the way. “If I stay here, I will die.”

That hostile reality contrasts sharply with the image that Gadhafi likes to portray. In one of the many billboards in the capital, Gadhafi appears as a saviour as sunrays break over his shoulder and a crowd of black people reach toward him.

His Africa agenda helps empower him in other ways, too. Diplomats here said it gave him leverage in keeping African and European leaders listening and their doors open. If Libya sent the migrants home, they would be a burden to poorer African nations, which would have to absorb them while losing out on the remittances they send home. At the same time, diplomats said, Libya has made it plain to European countries that if Libya chose to look the other way; most migrants would head for Europe.

“It’s a kind of soft power they use,” said one Western diplomat who works on Libyan affairs but requested anonymity for fear of antagonizing Libyan authorities.

Gadhafi will serve only a one-year term as chair of the African Union, but his quest to use Africa as a stepping-stone to greater world influence and credibility is likely to continue well past that. Last August, 200 kings and traditional African leaders travelled to Libya and anointed him king of kings.

(thestar.com)

China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country’a largest oil company, is bidding for Canadian energy firm Verenex Energy to broaden its oil and gas assets in Africa, South China Morning Post reported on Monday, citing sources.

The deal may worth about $300 million, the newspaper said, adding a successful bid would broaden CNPC’s assets in Africa as Verenex owns a 50 percent stake in part of Ghadames Basin in Libya.

“The Chinese like Libya because of the geology there,” the newspaper cited a source as saying.

It gave no further details.

Indonesia’s state oil firm, Pertamina, had said earlier in December that the company would like to participate in the Libyan oil area of Canadian energy company Verenex. Pertamina has said it wants to expand its upstream activities and to participate in several potential oil and gas projects both at home and abroad to boost its reserves.

Mainland firms continue to drive for natural resources and have been eyeing resource-rich Africa, the Middle East and other regions as the domestic supply in China’s northeast approaches the end of its productive life, the newspaper said.

Last week, a local newspaper reported that CNPC, the parent of Asia’s top oil and gas producer PetroChina may team up with a foreign partner to bid for Australia’s third-largest oil and gas firm Santos Ltd.
(chinatradeinformation)

China Railway Construction Corp has begun building a 2.2 billion dinars railway project in Libya, Libyan state media said on Thursday.

The 453 kilometre railway line will link the capital Tripoli with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s coastal home town of Sirte, and would connect Libya’s factories and plants to its ports, Libyan state news agency Jana said.

The railway line is part of a major Libyan plan to build a railway network linking it to other African states, including neighbouring Maghreb countries, Jana added.

Other foreign companies, including one unnamed Russian company, would be involved in the North African state’s countrywide railway plan, alongside the Chinese company, whose involvement marks the latest foray by a Chinese company into Africa.

China has been aggressively seeking trade and investment ties with a number of African countries in an effort to tap into energy and natural resources to help feed its booming economy.

Libya is one of China’s largest trading partners in Africa, with two-way trade estimated by Libyan officials at more than $2.0 billion during last year.

(Reuters)