Africans In China

Funds for the communications system were secured through the Export-Import Bank of China, Senegalese state news agency APS reported

Visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao’s delegation has signed loan and aid deals worth $90 million with Senegal, state media in the West African country reported on Saturday.

Hu is in Senegal on the second leg of a four-nation African tour seen as an effort to reassure Africa that Beijing will not ease up on aid and investment during hard economic times and that its interests on the continent extend beyond oil and mining.

The deals included a 11.8 billion CFA ($23.25 million) loan to renovate Senegal’s public buses, financing for a 25 billion CFA ($49.26 million) secure government communications system and a 9 billion CFA francs $17.73 million gift, government daily Le Soleil reported after a signing ceremony late on Friday.

Funds for the communications system were secured through the Export-Import Bank of China, Senegalese state news agency APS reported.

Hu’s delegation also signed a deal under which China will buy 10,000 tonnes of Senegalese groundnut oil, although Le Soleil gave no timeframe for the purchases. Groundnuts are one of the West African country’s main crops.

China’s interests in Africa have multiplied in recent years, with trade rising 10-fold since 2000 to nearly $107 billion last year, and Beijing has been at pains to reassure African nations it will not desert them during the economic slowdown.

“CHINA WILL KEEP ITS PROMISE”

“China will keep its promise made at the Beijing Summit of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum in November 2006 and will not reduce its aid to Africa as a result of China’s efforts to address the global financial crisis,” Hu said in Dakar in comments published by Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

“China will urge the international community to pay attention to the difficulties the crisis has brought to Africa and to increase Africa’s representation and voice in reforms of the international financial system,” he said.

On Saturday, Hu visited the building site of a Grand National Theatre China is constructing in Senegal’s capital Dakar, a stone’s throw from a major port that serves much of West Africa.

Chinese residents, whose numbers have risen exponentially since Senegal ditched the breakaway island of Taiwan and renewed diplomatic ties with Beijing in 2005, turned out to cheer Hu, some of them joining in vigorous African dances with locals.

Hu has already visited Mali, where he laid the first brick of a “Friendship Bridge” in the capital which he called China’s largest ever gift to impoverished West Africa, and is due to continue to Tanzania and the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

Analysts at home and abroad have noted that none of the countries Hu is visiting are major sources of the oil or minerals which dominate China’s trade with Africa.

They are among the more successful democracies on a continent where many countries are scarred by generations of despotic rule and civil wars.

Some human rights campaigners criticise China’s “no strings attached” policy and accuse Beijing of ignoring rights abuses while doing business in countries like Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Others say the relationship is lopsided, with China using its economic influence and substantial bargaining power to gain more than its African counterparts in trade benefits and jobs.

(javno.com)

By David Lewis

DAKAR (Reuters) - Chinese companies are lining up to invest in African agriculture, but governments like Senegal must do more to limit the risks for investors, a veteran Chinese investor said.

Chinese markets remain hungry for crops grown in Africa and the money, jobs and expertise they bring will help, not exploit, the world’s poorest continent, Riping Ouyang, who has over 20 years experience in African agriculture, said this week.

“It would be difficult to convince those who don’t know agriculture in Africa to invest in this sector,” Ouyang told Reuters in Senegal, where he has a sesame production business.

“If there are no examples, people won’t take risks. But if we succeed, others will follow. That is why our project is sensitive for the Chinese and Senegalese governments,” he added.

Ouyang, managing director of DATONG Enterprises, which operates across West Africa, spoke to Reuters ahead of a visit this week by China’s President Hu Jintao to Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Mauritius, all relatively stable but poor countries.

Sino-African trade has jumped from around $10 billion per year in 2000 to over $106 billion last year. Analysts say Hu will try and show that China’s interest in the continent extends beyond extractive industries in resource-rich countries.

Known more for importing oil and minerals and exporting cheap goods to African markets, Chinese diplomats have been quick to underscore trade in goods such as Ethiopian sesame, Egyptian cotton and Zimbabwean tobacco ahead of Hu’s visit.

More than 450 products from more than 30 of Africa’s poorest countries are exempt from import tax in China, encouraging $680 million in exports from Africa by 2008, according to one Chinese briefing.

Ouyang said he set up his business last year after Beijing encouraged private Chinese companies to invest in Mali, Burkina Faso and Senegal, saying there “weren’t enough” investments in crops like sesame, ground nuts and rice in the region.

He has also taken advantage of an ambitious 345 billion CFA franc agricultural programme that Senegal, one of the world’s largest food importers per capita, launched last year after violent demonstrations against high food prices.

Under the scheme, known by its French acronym, GOANA, investors are offered tax breaks on customs duties and value added tax. Foreign exchange controls have also been lifted for five years to free investors to take profits out of the country.

Ouyang says DATONG invested over 3 billion CFA francs in its first six months, setting up a factory in Dakar and providing farmers’ associations with credit for seeds and fertilisers.

The company, which buys, cleans and bags the sesame for export, plans to invest well over $5 million a year over the next five years and hopes to produce 150,000 tonnes of sesame per year for export to China, Latin America and Europe.

WARNING TO THE GOVERNMENT

He said it was too early to estimate this season’s sesame harvest, which began in November and runs to the end of March.

Farmgate prices are currently at 250 francs/kg, up 5 francs since November but less than half the $1,200/tonne price once cleaned and shipped to China, he said.

But just six months into operations, the firm is already facing problems recovering financing. Ouyang said some farmers are selling produce to other buyers who can offer higher prices as they do not have the overheads of investing in associations.

“We’ve warned the Senegalese government and called them to help us recover credit and supervise associations, he said.

“If there are no guarantees, who will want to invest in this game? We have done our part but we are appealing to the Senegalese government to help us move forward,” he added.

Applauded by some for their “no strings attached” approach to Africa, others accuse the Chinese of exploitation.

Ouyang rejected that charge as “absurd”, saying his business was a model of how both parties could profit from a scheme that involves 200,000 people and 35,000 hectares of land in Senegal.

“We have a large market in China and here, there is the land and the workforce … Have I come to exploit? On the contrary, I come to invest. I’m throwing money (into) here,” he said.

“If we hit 150,000 tonnes, how many billions (of francs) will that bring the country? Money is coming into the country, it is going into the hands of the farmers. That is poverty reduction,” he said.

DAKAR (AFP) — Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade has praised the West African country’s partnership with China ahead of a visit Saturday by his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao.

“We are partners with China and I want to say that this partnership is a success and an example, and I’ll tell the Chinese president that,” the official APS news agency reported Wade as saying late Tuesday during a visit to the central town of Touba.

Wade praised the “private cooperation” between China and Senegal, citing the example of private Chinese construction company Henan Chine, which has several infrastructure projects in Touba.

Dakar and Beijing re-established diplomatic ties in 2005 after a 10-year hiatus over Senegal’s prior recognition of China’s rival Taiwan.

Since then there has been a string of joint projects. Earlier this year the two countries announced an agreement to revamp several sport stadiums and build a new national theatre.

“All that is going very well,” Wade said.

Hu is due to begin a two-day visit to Senegal on Friday as part of a four-nation African tour, including Mali, Tanzania and Mauritius.

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Balde appreciates China’s quick work on installing the government Internet for the West African country.

During his recent visit to a China-funded Center of Resources of Administrative Internet, Balde expressed appreciation that 90 percent of work has been completed for the project originally planned for two years.

Situated in the suburbs of the capital Dakar, the three-story building is a venture of 25 billion FCFA (50 million U.S. dollars), which will link state agencies to the network. As an information hub, its services will cover the entire territory of Senegal, benefiting, among others, institutions ranging from hospitals to universities.

“This network will allow us to gain efficiency and time in the field of administrative work, not to speak of economic gains in state telephone budget estimated at billions of FCFA,” said the Senegalese president.

Thanks to the network, a professor in the University of Dakar could teach the courses to students elsewhere in Ziguinchor, the president said. A doctor in Fann Hospital could make a diagnosis in cooperation with his colleagues in Saint-Louis and Le Dantec hospitals, he added.

The government Internet will connect seven regions by means of optical fibers, including Dakar, Saint-Louis, Louga, Diourbel, Kaolack, Thies and Fatick, before getting through to all parts of the country, Balde declared.

He also announced the installation of telecommunication equipment at the Presidential Palace for videoconferences with leaders of other countries.

(http://news.xinhuanet.com)

First it took the animals. Goats fell silent and refused to stand up. Chickens died in handfuls, then en masse.

FILE 2008/The Associated Press

Ndep Tine stirs lead extracted from spent car batteries in Dakar, Senegal.

Then the little children started to wither and die.

The mysterious illness killed 18 children in this town on the fringes of Dakar, Senegal’s capital, before anyone in the outside world investigated. But medical experts did not find malaria or polio or AIDS, or any of the diseases that typically kill the poor of Africa.

They found lead.

The dirt here is laced with lead left over from years of extracting it from old car batteries. So when the price of lead quadrupled over five years, residents started digging up the earth to get at it. The World Health Organization says the area is still severely contaminated, 10 months after a government cleanup.

The tragedy of Thiaroye Sur Mer gives a glimpse at how the globalization of a modern tool – the car battery – can wreak havoc in the developing world.

As the demand for cars has increased, especially in China and India, so has the demand for lead-acid car batteries. About 70 percent of the lead manufactured worldwide goes into car batteries.

Manufacturing and recycling of these batteries have moved mostly to the Third World. In 2005 and 2006, lead poisoning involving batteries was reported in China. And in the Vietnamese village of Dong Mai, lead smelting left 500 people with chronic illnesses and 25 children with brain damage, according to San Francisco-based OK International, which works on environmental standards for battery manufacturing.

Most U.S. states require anyone who sells lead-acid batteries to collect spent ones and ship them to recycling plants licensed and regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency.

For years, blacksmiths in Thiaroye Sur Mer extracted lead from car batteries and remolded it into weights for fishing nets. It’s a dangerous, messy process in which workers crack open the batteries with a hatchet and pull small pieces of lead out of skin-burning acid. The work left the dirt of Thiaroye dense with small lead particles.

When the price of lead climbed, traders from India offered to buy bits of lead for 60 cents a kilogram (2.2 pounds), said Coumba Diaw, a mother of two.

So she dug up dirt and sifted out the lead. It took an hour to make what she did in a day of selling vegetables. She kept her two daughters nearby as she worked.

Women all over the neighborhood did the same, creating dust clouds of lead. Then the sicknesses started. The deaths came, one after another, from October 2007 through March.

The Associated Press

An elderly man opened fire on fans at a Senegal rap concert he believed were making fun of him by singing a song about cranky old men, police say.

The 70-year-old began shooting with a hunting rifle at Lobaly village in the Matam region at the weekend.

Police say the gunman warned fans to stop singing “Pa’ Tang Xol” (Angry Old Men) by popular Senegalese artist Baaba Mal before opening fire.

Five people were taken to hospital and two were seriously injured, say police.

Concert-goers had been listening to warm-up music before the live act at the gig on the border with Mauritania, 700km (440 miles) from the Senegalese capital Dakar.

The man took offence when he heard the Wolof language track’s lyrics and told the fans to stop singing it. When they did not, he opened fire four times, said police.

“The elderly gentleman felt that these young people were insulting him in their songs,” a policeman told Reuters news agency. The gunman was reportedly arrested.

One police source said that his own children were in the crowd but they were not injured.

(BBC)