Ghanaian Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia commissioned a new road this week built by the Chinese conglomerate Sinohydro and paid for as part of a $2 billion bauxite barter deal with the company. The timing of this new road opening, though, is critical as Ghana grapples with the effects of climate change and a rapidly deteriorating economy.
Nosmot Gbadamosi, writer of Foreign Policy’s widely-read Africa Brief newsletter, joins Eric & Cobus from Lagos to discuss why this kind of infrastructure that the Chinese built in Ghana in just 13 months is so important for West Africa’s ongoing battle against the effects of climate change.
Show Notes:
- Foreign Policy: Floods Devastate West Africa by Nosmot Gbadamosi
- Foreign Policy: Is China Responsible for Zambia’s Debt Crisis? by Nosmot Gbadamosi
- Foreign Policy: What Does China Want in Ethiopia? by Nosmot Gbadamosi
About Nosmot Gbadamosi:
Nosmot Gbadamosi is the writer of Foreign Policy’s weekly Africa Brief. She has reported on human rights, the environment and sustainable development from across the African continent. Her reporting has appeared in over 30 publications including Al Jazeera, CNN, and TIME. She is a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grantee covering China-backed projects in Africa.
Transcript:
Eric: Hello, and welcome to another edition of The China in Africa Podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander, and as always, I’m joined by China Global South’s Managing Editor, Cobus van Staden, in Johnsburg, South Africa. A very good afternoon to you, Cobus.
Cobus: Good afternoon.
Eric: Cobus, today, there was a ribbon cutting in Ghana, a ribbon cutting for a new road that was, again, normally not huge news. We don’t tend to cover bridge openings and road openings. This happens quite frequently. But in Ghana, it’s especially interesting because this particular road was part of the $2 billion Bauxite for infrastructure deal that we covered a couple of years ago. I think it was 2019 when that deal was first signed. Now, since then, it has been hugely controversial. There’s been a lot of frustration on the part of civil society. Environmentalist, if you recall, were concerned about the Bauxite extraction. And they were also concerned that the pace of development for these road buildings and these construction projects was not happening fast enough. Well, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, he commissioned some of the inner-city road projects in the Cape Coast. And these roads, again, are only a portion of what they are building throughout the country. Let’s take a listen to some of his remarks that he made at the road opening and the commissioning service. And he was joined by officials from the Chinese Embassy along with officials from Sinohydro.
Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia: Today, marks yet another day of the commissioning of yet another Sinohydro project freely, freely. Unfortunately for some of our opponents, when we say something and they don’t understand, instead of asking for an explanation and also reading about it, they don’t like to read. They don’t want to ask for explanation. They just say, “You are lying.” But today, as we commissioned [Foreign language 0:02:29], they are silent. They are no longer saying, “It’s not possible.” A total of 441 kilometers of road and two interchanges are to be constructed. The objectives of the projects are to enhance intra-urban regional and national traffic flow, trade, and strengthen regional economic integration. I was privileged to perform the sword cutting for this important project on 21st November, 2019. The commencement of the project was on 20 December, 2019 for completion In 30 months. The project was duly completed on schedule.
Eric: Cobus, two very important takeaways from the vice president’s comments there. Number one, the message to his opponents, suck it! He was just brutal. Okay, because this particular issue has been a major point of contention against the government. Last year, this came up in parliament, it came up in the media. It was dominating for several months. They said, at the time, only $100 million out of the $2 billion had been released for infrastructure projects undermining really this questioning of whether or not the government is going to fulfill its promises on building new infrastructure and building roads in particular. There we go. Promise is made, promise is delivered. Let’s not forget we’re going into a political season in Ghana as well.
Other very important takeaway message was that this project was completed within a single electoral cycle within the presidency. This is a very important message here, and we can talk about this later with regards to the United States, but this point that he made that it was done in 13 months. Remember Cobus, when we spoke with a Ghanaian finance ministry official about the deal to begin with, he said that from the first negotiation to the first shovel in the ground was 18 months. Okay? Basically, 31 months from the start of the negotiation until a road is finished, and he is gleefully using giant scissors to open the new road and do the ribbon cutting. That is a very important aspect of Chinese infrastructure development in Africa is the speed they do it, which allows an administration to run on the infrastructure that was built under their term. You did some analysis on this week for our subscribers in the newsletter. What was your take?
Cobus: The event is really interesting, kind of confirmation of this broader trend that one sees in literature that frequently, unlike, I think, predictions made frequently by Western observers is that democracies in Africa frequently like to work with the Chinese, maybe even more than autocracies because it allows them to, to have this infrastructure that they can then unveil before the next election cycle. And the fact that all of this is happening so quickly and so efficiently, or relatively efficiently then, is an indication of why that is so. Of course, all of this is happening as the Ghanaian government wants some good news to broadcast because the Ghanaian economy has suffered some real tough times over the last few months, and it’s one of these countries that has frequently name check as a possible future debt problem.
It’ll be interesting to see what kind of political dividends they get. And it’ll then also be interesting to see, or to hear more about what’s happening with the environmental impact of the Bauxite site mining. Because it’s supposed to be happening in this protected forest area, and there’s been a lot of criticism about possible environmental impacts and water impacts on local communities. So, it’ll be interesting to hear what’s happening there.
Eric: So, nobody’s talking about that part. Again, this bauxite deal is being done in the Atewa National Forest, which was, until recently, until this deal, a protected forest area. And they say, environmentalists say that the water supply for up to 5 million people could be impacted by the mining. Now, this issue of water is another important aspect of all of this, because over the past several weeks, there’s been a massive controversy in Ghana over the re-arrest of Aisha Huang, who’s known as the ‘Galamsey Queen’. And the government has come under enormous criticism, in part because this galamsey issue, which is the illegal mining issue, was one of the key platforms that the president ran on. And he said, “I’m going to bring the illegal mining issue under control.” And then Aisha Huang, who was deported back in December, 2018, and then reappeared this year, well, that’s causing a lot of issues.
That’s a little bit of the context for the vice president’s kind of tough tone that he took. Also, one interesting side note to all of this is the burgeoning dispute between the Ghanaian Finance Ministry and the International Monetary Fund over whether the $2 billion bauxite for infrastructure deal that was done with Sinohydro should be added to the country’s debt stock. Now, the government says it shouldn’t because it’s a barter deal, but the IMF wants to count it because it’s really akin to a financial obligation all the same. The government is on the hook to provide this, so it’s almost like having a bond or taking a loan. And now, this is very important because the 2 billion that makes up this resource for infrastructure deal could move the country’s debt to GDP ratio up 2% to 80%.
As Cobus pointed out, Ghana is really, in many ways, at the leading edge now of African countries facing the financial abyss. The currency of the city has been under tremendous pressure. The debt stock has been surging. The economy is facing real headwinds right now, and there’s a lot of concerns. Whether or not 78% or 80% is the debt to GDP ratio can make a very big difference. Very quickly, Ghana’s total national debt right now stands at $38 billion. China accounts for about 3.5 billion of that. So, just under 10%. But now let’s pull back the focus a little bit to look more broadly at what’s going on across the continent about some of the key China-Africa issues. And for that, we are thrilled to have on the show for the first time, Nosmot Gbadamosi, who joins us from Lagos. A very good afternoon to you, Nosmot.
Nosmot: Good afternoon. I’m really glad to be here.
Eric: It’s wonderful to have you. Nos is a multimedia journalist who has an extensive background reporting on African art, travel, culture, and a whole lot of politics, which is why we’re thrilled to have her here today. For those of you who subscribe to Foreign Policy in the U.S., you may be familiar with Nos’s work as she’s the author of the absolutely indispensable Africa Brief Newsletter that comes out every week. In her work for Foreign Policy, Nos looks across the continent to synthesize the key stories of the week. And not surprisingly, China comes up a lot in her coverage. So, we’re thrilled to have Nos on the line today to help give us some perspective on some of the stories that she’s been covering. Nos, let’s start with infrastructure and the situation in Ghana. In your latest edition of the Africa Brief, you talked about how West African countries have failed to invest in what you call preventive infrastructure. Let’s start there. What is preventive infrastructure and why is it so important?
Nosmot: I think it’s really looking at, for example, in Nigeria, the drainage systems, some of the things that Ghana is doing, good road networks. Things that just make a country run smoothly. Not only run smoothly, but prevent, for example, what’s happening in Nigeria at the moment with the floods. A lot of the heavy rainfall and the floods that have happened as a result of that could have been prevented by having good working drainage systems and also making sure that you are planning your towns and cities properly. Ghana is trying to do that with some of the loans that it has taken out. So, making sure that people aren’t just building because you’ve left everything to civilians to do. You are providing what a state should provide in terms of proper infrastructure planning, proper housing planning, road planning, and flood defenses.
Cobus: You mentioned the floods in Nigeria. We’re also obviously still looking at the aftermath of floods in Pakistan, which are widely, I think, acknowledged to have had a major climate component as well. What kind of adaptation and mitigation are we looking at for African countries in order to become more climate resilient? Like, what kind of infrastructure are they gonna have to focus on in order to not have every climate incident also become a massive disaster?
Nosmot: I think it’s really getting a grip with how urbanization is happening and how the movement of people is happening, and making sure that you are preemptively planning for that and providing the infrastructure that works for that. Obviously, as in Accra in Legos, a lot of the people flow is towards those areas, and they are kind of coastal areas. So, they are prone to flooding. Making sure that people are not building informal settlements and you are actually building houses for the people, building hospitals for the people. Making sure that the drainage systems that those informal settlements have work properly, which obviously, at the moment, they do not do. Lagos, for example, is predicted to be the worst affected by some of the climate change impact.
That means a lot of the buildings in Lagos need to have and be built with proper flood defenses mitigated in. And that hasn’t really been happening. And that is down to state failure, the same way that it has largely been with Pakistan as well.
Eric: But if you talk to the supporters of Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, they will tell you that he has done more for infrastructure, especially working with the Chinese, than his predecessors have, and that a lot of progress has been made under his administration. So, he’s built new railways. There have been new airports that have been built. There’s the new Lekki that is coming online. So, massive infrastructure investments with the Chinese. The problem is though, is that the Chinese now are backing away from financing Nigerian infrastructure. About 15 billion, maybe 16 billion was approved by the senate. These were loans that were initially negotiated with the China Exim Bank, and then Beijing stopped answering the phone from Nigerians, and said, “You know what? We’re just not going to go anywhere.” And I remember former transportation minister, Rotimi Amaechi, kept saying, “Well, we’re trying to get in touch with the Chinese. We’re trying to find out what’s going on about these loans.”
The question now is, if the Chinese are out of the game of financing large scale transportation infrastructure, this preventive infrastructure that you talk about, and the bond markets now are very expensive to borrow money, where does a country like Nigeria go to finance its infrastructure?
Nosmot: There’s been a lot of talk about having more regional financial institutions that can sort of pick up the pace and provide the types of funding that a lot of African governments need. Really, there is only the African Development Bank. There’s not that many sort of regional institutions that can do that, and that does need to change. But for that to happen, ironically, that also means that a lot of the governments then need to work together and also pull their own resources to facilitate institutions that can do that. But that really isn’t happening at the moment. I know that it is something that a lot of experts tell me is an issue and something that African governments have to actually think about addressing because you cannot keep relying on China, the U.S., and a few other countries who have their own sort of geopolitical reasons for doing things. You cannot keep relying on them to finance these infrastructure developments.
You have to come up with a way that there is some kind of regional financial institution that can do that, that isn’t just relying on the African Development Bank.
Cobus: One of the issues across both the issue of development and dealing with all of these climate challenges is infrastructure, and then particularly, lending for infrastructure. Over the last year and a half or so, we’ve seen this mounting, not only a mounting actual debt crisis, but also a lot of discourse about global south (0:16:39): African debt crisis. And that discourse tends to sometimes be more or less realistic in terms of the actual challenges faced by African countries. So, I was wondering how you, in the newsletter, cover the African debt issue and then what you’ve made of the different kind of coverage of this issue of an African debt crisis as you move across different publications.
Nosmot: Yeah, it’s really interesting at the moment. Because if you look at Europe at the moment and what’s happening there, Italy is getting a lot of press coverage right now with its recently concluded elections. And it’s government debt is over 150% of its GDP. If you look at Greece, it is over 180%. When compared to Europe, the debt crisis in Africa is actually quite small. But despite a lot of European countries owing more depth than the recommended, I think it’s 70% threshold of debt to GDP ratio, and they are not classified as being distressed when a lot of African countries are. I think that that is something that the Ghanaian president mentioned at the UN General Assembly actually, that there really needs to be reforms in the way that Western countries continue to have this kind of hegemony and this kind of narrative over the financial markets in terms of African countries being described as being in this debt crisis versus elsewhere globally.
I’m trying to just pull up what he actually… Yeah, he said that the financial markets have been set up and operate on the rules designed for the benefit of rich and powerful nations. And he was saying that there is this kind of narrative that debt sustainability in Africa, it’s essentially not sustainable, which is completely false according to him. I would largely agree. I think it’s interesting that there’s this so-called debt trap diplomacy that’s always lauded about with Chinese loans. And it’s interesting that the second-largest Chinese loan recipient after Angola is actually Nigeria, which doesn’t really get that much media coverage as you mentioned at the start. At one point Nigeria was actually the biggest loan recipient, and I think it is because it doesn’t really fit into this narrative of a debt trap diplomacy, that China is picking off these very small, impoverished countries and in indebting them. Nigeria is, obviously, Africa’s biggest economy.
Eric: So, Nigeria has about $3.5 billion out of about $100 billion of total debt now. And so, the three and a half billion is owed to China. So, that’s about 3.5%, which is always funny for me when you hear the hysterical coverage in the Nigerian press about China colonizing Nigeria and sovereignty being lost, and all of this. It’s ridiculous. It shows you, again, the dangers of not being well informed on these debt issues. We’ve seen that also in Congress as well in the Nigeria legislature, how poorly informed so many of the legislators are on the issue of the Chinese debt. One little factoid that came out this week from the folks at Development Reimagined, which Nos, speaks to your point here, is about context here.
So many people, when they think of the burgeoning debt issues in Africa, they associate that with China. But Development Reimagined just did some research where they said China accounts for just “8.7% of all debt owed by African countries,” and I’m quoting there. 8.7%. So, the hysteria and the reality are not really aligned there at all, but that to me is very interesting. Nonetheless. Let’s just get to brass tacks. You are very polite, you’re very diplomatic in what you were saying, but President Hichilema, he said that there is a premium that’s paid onto African countries for the fact that they’re being forced to pay more, even though, as you pointed out, their debt to GDP ratios are more modest than European countries and even other developing countries. Why do you think it is? Is it racism? Is it anti-poverty discrimination? What is the reason be that Africans are paying more for debt or getting attacked in different ways than, say, European countries or even other Asian countries?
Nosmot: I actually tend to think that Nana Akufo-Addona is correct in his summarization that it is largely because the financial system, there is a hegemony that is geared towards Western developed governments. And within the whole financial system, there is a hierarchy that unfortunately, African governments are unfairly treated within it.
Eric: And how do you account for Japan, Singapore, South Korea, China, which are not Western?
Nosmot: China is an interesting one because that’s usually the kind of, well, how come China has been able to grow on its own and it’s become more independent? A lot of African countries, people seem to forget that a lot of the debt is still owed to most of their former colonial countries. I think it is really interesting when you look at the IMF debt analysis for each country because it gives you a real picture of who the debt is owed to and where. For a lot of African countries, when you actually start to look at where they are owing their debt, the private lenders tend to be from the country that was their former colonial power. I think you can’t start to compare apples and oranges until you really, really start to look at where they’re acquiring their debt, who they’re owing their debt to, and what kind of arrangements they are being allowed to make on those debts.
I think it’s interesting that you mentioned Hichilema, for example, with Zambia’s debt, there is a lot of talk that China is the biggest single creditor. But when you actually look at the IMF analysis of Zambia, a lot of its debt is owed to private Western lenders.
Cobus: In relation to this issue, we see… African countries are frequently so structurally excluded from the real circles of decision-making for the world economy and world governance. And yet, at the same time, they’re also really on the hook to, as you say, for example, to Western private lenders. What kind of ways do you think, and this I admit is a difficult question, but what kind of ways do you think are there for Africa to actually increase its leverage in the international system? How can Africa actually get more of a voice or get more ways to force concessions from external actors?
Nosmot: That’s a bit of a hard one. I think some of the things that were being pressed for at the UN General Assembly, certainly, if those were done, if African countries were to get a fairer say and an equal kind of share in terms of how the IMF arranges its loan ratio, how the UN Security Council is made up, all of those things would make a change. I really do not think that that is going to happen, though, sadly, unfortunately. I think it really is down to what we were talking about at the start, which is looking at ways that the continent as a whole can start working together in terms of finding its own kind of financing.
Eric: But let’s be realistic though, as you pointed out too, and you acknowledged this, there isn’t a whole lot of precedent for that to happen, not just in Africa, but in other regions as well. South America doesn’t work well regionally. Here, in Southeast Asia, ASEAN’s a very weak grouping. They don’t work very well regionally. So, there’s not an enormous amount of precedent. Cobus, just to your question, I’m going to flip the question, I want to put it back onto you, but I’m going to say something very depressing, which is not surprising coming from me, but I’m going to say something very depressing, that there’s no real alternative for a poor country to force the rich countries to move and to do something against their will unless that poor country acquires nuclear weapons. Okay? Look at Pakistan.
Cobus: Are you calling for before the general nuclearization of Africa?
Eric: No, no, no, no, but I’m talking… But here’s the thing. No, this is the… Literally, but let’s go through the examples, North Korea, Pakistan, even Iran has brought on the table. My point here is that it takes extreme measures to force this. Okay? Just saying we want to get together and we want a seat at the G-20, we want a permanent membership at the Security Council, you’re easy to dismiss, okay? And so, only in the most extreme ways have poor countries been able to exert this kind of influence and to force this kind of change. Cobus, let me ask you the question that you asked Nos. What do you think it will take for developing countries to be able to push back and exert more agency over wealthy countries? Or maybe it’s just not possible.
Cobus: It’s a difficult question and it tends to, as I myself was thinking as I was asking the question, is it tends to force one into hypotheticals. I think you’re right. Something like nuclear weapons, of course, does tip the scales, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that those countries then have an easy ride. Iran isn’t having an easy time with it.
Eric: And there’s North Korea, by the way, either.
Cobus: Yes, The kind of global system does tend to… Things tend to flip to pariah stages quite easily around these issues. For me, I guess, one of the… When you ask Nos about this issue of Asian rising powers and their international clout, I was thinking that there is a cynical way of thinking about this way, the only way for a country to be taken seriously by Western powers is to be a globe changing, unprecedented kind of growth phenomenon, the way that China or Japan was. The less cynical version of that is that greater regional coordination and greater cross-border coordination to generate regional growth opportunities will then start forcing, simply because of profit seeking, or start forcing some of these international actors to rate Africa differently, maybe. The other form of leverage, there’s other two forms of leverage, and both of these are controversial, and I have to admit, I don’t know how that would work in either case. But the one is that Africa, in some kind of way through some kind of collective action, essentially holds all of these raw resources that drives a lot of its economy hostage from the global market, that again, I have no idea how that would work. Second one is of migration itself.
Eric: Never going to happen.
Cobus: Particularly in relation to Europe, migration itself is already a massive political issue. And as we’ve seen before, and again, I’m not advocating this, but as we’ve seen before in the case of Cuba, for example, the use of migration as a form of geopolitical tool is itself on the table. So, it’ll be interesting to see how African countries play with Europe, for example, in relation to migration flows. Again, I have no idea whether any of that would happen or whether either feasible or good it would be. Nos, I wonder, picking up on that, I wonder if you could reflect a little bit about the role of migration in Africa’s relationship with Europe, and particularly now that we’ve seen this fascist flip in Italy. How do you think that, and a related one also in Sweden, how are we going to see these kind of issues play out politically between the two?
Nosmot: We’re already starting to see how that is going to go. There’s starting to be some really unsavory, I would say unsavory deals being made in terms of using development money or development deals as a way to either keep your population in the country or take in other migrants that European countries do not necessarily want. I think that is definitely the route that Europe wants to go down to. I guess it depends on whether African governments will keep accepting these types of… They say that the China is doing infrastructure for resource barter deals. Europe is now doing infrastructure for migration barter deal. That’s essentially what is happening.
And yeah, it’s very unsafe free. We’ve seen that with Rwanda. There are other countries that are now being pressed for that. Africa is trying to have a regional cooperation. I think next week, there’s actually a talk happening on Wednesday about how countries can have some kind of regional cooperation on migration. But I really do think that these types of deals will be forced onto them. And it’s whether they accept that type of money in terms of building their infrastructure and then keeping migration to Europe down.
Eric: Let’s shift the focus to politics and great power politics specifically. You wrote about, in your newsletter, about the new U.S. strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa. You’ve also talked about the GP… Was it PGII, which is the alternative to the BRI, which is the successor to B3W, all of the acronyms, there we go. But basically, it’s the U.S. trying to get into the infrastructure game to compete with the Chinese in places like Africa and throughout the global south. And then, of course, there is the Global Gateway from the European Union. So, as we talked about infrastructure, and we’ve talked about politics, what kind of faith do you have based on your reading of the political environment that either Global Gateway or PGII? What does PGII stand for again, Cobus? I can’t keep up with their…
Cobus: Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment.
Eric: Okay, there you go. It’s so hard to keep up with all the acronyms. I apologize. Then, do you think any of this is actually going to happen? And what was your reading of the U.S. strategy?
Nosmot: I think that both the U.S. and Europe would like to see it happen. The problem is that there isn’t a whole lot of money that they have to put forward to counter China. If you look at what’s being offered by both of those initiatives, the actual financial investment is still very, very low compared to the types of annual loan deals that the China is offering African countries. They do not compare at all. Essentially, in short, I don’t really think that they will work if I’m-
Eric: And do you get the sense that African policy makers feel the same way? Is that a widespread sentiment in your conversations and your reading of African politics?
Nosmot: Yes, because I think the problem with U.S. foreign policy, particularly towards Africa, is that it’s very reactionary. It’s very geared towards what China or Russia is doing. But without the financial backing to… You’ve got to put your money where your mouth is type of thing, that there isn’t really the kind of funding to back what they want to achieve in terms of limiting China’s influence in Africa as they see it. I think, yeah, a lot of African leaders are thinking, well, if we look at the climate change goals and climate adaptation, the funding that’s been promised, none of these things are really happening. And like you said earlier, the kind of speed with which China is able to define that in some of its infrastructure deals is incomparable.
Cobus: In both of our newsletters, we’ve written a lot about the impact of the Ukraine situation on Africa, and particularly around the kind of great power pressure on African countries to choose sides around these issues. And I was wondering, from our perspective, We’ve looked at it a lot in terms of Chinese diplomatic messaging and the way that China has worked very hard to try and develop this, a kind of a third position, a neutral position where the debate tends to focus a lot more on Western sanctions rather than on the invasion of Ukraine itself. I was wondering what your perspective is on how the Ukraine crisis are shaken out in Africa, the distribution of pro and anti-voting, and then particularly the abstentions, and the way the narration of the Ukraine crisis in the context of Africa, particularly from great powers.
Nosmot: I think the narration has been particularly odd. I mean, in the newsletter, one of the things that we highlighted was data from Development Reimagined, which is looking at the whole kind of grain crisis, which the narrative from Western global powers is that Ukraine and Russia provide a lot of the food for African countries, hence they should be supporting Ukraine and they should be calling for an end to this war because they need the food. It’s a really strange kind of narrative because when you look at the data, Russian and Ukrainian imports is quite minimal. I mean, and also, it’s highly concentrated in a few countries, the whole kind of wheat crisis, which is a very, very important global issue. But wheat is not something that a lot of African countries consume.
Nosmot: So, there’s that kind of weird narrative where it’s not quite hitting the right mark. I think that the U.S. has made it very clear that its focus is now on Russia. Whereas before, the whole narrative was to counter China and its export of authoritarianism in Africa, just to use some of the narrative. It’s now that Russia is a threat to global peace and African governments need to reject this whole neutrality thing and pick aside. And we’ve seen that in the New Africa Policy released by Washington. Russia gets more of a consistent mention than China, which is quite strange given Russia’s engagement in Africa is very limited compared to China. I think that the fact that China is not outright backing Russia’s war and Beijing has declined requests to send military equipment to Russia has made it a lesser concern in terms of U.S. geopolitics across Africa. I think that tells us a whole lot about the kind of narrative that is happening right now.
Eric: Nos, you’re absolutely right, because a couple weeks ago, when South African President Cyril Ramaphosa went to Washington to meet with Joe Biden in the White House, there was no mention of China. It was remarkable. I mean, I looked high and low for any references to China in the meetings. And again, if this was a year ago or two years ago, there would’ve been tons of background briefings on the concern about Chinese engagement in South Africa. There would’ve been background briefings on Chinese weapon sales. There would’ve been background briefings on so many different things related to China’s presence in South Africa. Nothing in this one, but lots of focus on Russia. So, you can see how something has changed. Well, obviously a big war in Ukraine has changed, but the mood in Washington is now, they’re not at all as concerned about China in Africa as they are about Russia in Africa, which, as you pointed out, is somewhat odd, given the fact that Russia’s footprint in Africa is quite minimal. But were you surprised as well about the South African president and the U.S. president and their meeting, and that China wasn’t a bigger topic of conversation?
Nosmot: I wish I could say yes, but no, I wasn’t that surprised. As I said, Joe Biden has made it very clear his primary focus now is on Putin and Russia. As we heard from Ramaphosa, when he later gave a summary, it was South Africa’s position of neutrality was discussed. He said that South Africa’s position will be respected. And yeah, so the Russian aggression was very much the focus. I think it was you, you that you pointed out earlier about that 40 foreign ministers had gathered in New York at the request of China to discuss global development initiatives. And this wasn’t given much media coverage or attention.
Eric: None. Not even… I mean, it was in New York. It wasn’t in Lagos. It was in New York, and they couldn’t bother to cover it.
Nosmot: Yeah, I think the concerns about China in Africa has been put on the back burner now, which I think… There’s a lot of talk about China weakening the U.S. engagement and weakening U.S. position in Africa. But if I’m being honest, and this is my own opinion and not a reflection of Foreign Policy or anything, I think that the U.S. does that itself. I think that the way that Washington goes about its engagement in Africa, it kind of jars with a lot of citizens and it jars with African leaders as well in that now that U.S. foreign policy in terms of Washington, the biggest problem, if you read the Africa Policy, is what Russia is doing right now. And Russia, when you look at its footprint in Africa and you look at where it’s targeting, it’s quite small. It’s quite strategic. I don’t necessarily think that the amount of coverage in that Washington policy compared to what China got is a complete mismatch to the influence that both have. China is the greatest foreign political power in Africa right now. It is not Russia.
Eric: Well, your cynicism seems like you’re a very loyal listener of the China in Africa Podcast. We do appreciate that, because you are channeling us right there. Listen, everybody, if you’re not subscribed to Nosmot’s newsletter, you absolutely should do it. Is it free to everybody or do you have to be a subscriber to Foreign Policy to get it?
Nosmot: You don’t have to be a subscriber to foreign policy. You can subscribe to the newsletter, and it’s free to read.
Eric: Oh, fantastic. We’ll put a link to the subscription down in the show notes so that everybody can sign up for it. Nosmot, if people want to follow you on Twitter, where can they find you?
Nosmot: So, it’s @nosmotG.
Eric: So, Nosmot Gbadamosi is a multimedia journalist, multi-talented as well, covering a wide range of topics. Again, you would think, just from listening to her that she is only covering politics and geopolitics and economic. Not the case at all. Art, travel, culture, politics, so many cool things that she does. She’s also on NPR on any number of media, so listen for her. Nosmot, thank you so much for taking the time. Congratulations on an excellent newsletter. It was such an honor to have you on the show, and we really appreciate it.
Nosmot: Thank you. Thanks so much.
Eric: Cobus, this is exactly why I wanted Nos to come on the show so we could cover a lot of ground. Let’s break down a few of the things that she said. I want to start first with this idea that China is not as important to the United States in Africa as it was a few years ago, and that everybody’s focused on Russia now. That’s absolutely the mood in Washington that Russia is the key topic of discussion. China’s less so. In fact, we saw that during the Blinken visit. We’ve seen it now in the new U.S. strategy for sub-Saharan Africa. China’s being downplayed quite a bit. And I guess, as Nos was saying that, it occurred to me that, is this a good thing for Africa or a bad thing for Africa? Now, I know everybody says, “We don’t want to be stuck in the middle of a new Cold War.” Everybody says that. But at the end of the day too, China brought attention, potentially resources and focus of the United States on Africa. And that without China as the priority, could the United States divert its attention away, again, from the continent? So, do you think it’s good or bad that the U.S. is focusing less on China in Africa?
Cobus: I think it’s kind of a mixed bag. As you say, on the one hand, it does lessen this kind of geopolitical pressure on African governments. On the other hand, and we’ve seen that geopolitical pressure translate into things like which internet providers they work with. For example, so it has real world development impacts. That’s on the one side. On the other hand, as you say, it could divert attention. One of the liabilities, I think, of Western foreign policy in Africa is that it can be a little bit ADHD sometimes. Can be very short attention spanned. We’ve seen, for example, that one of the things that the West really loves is announcing new initiatives.
They’re less assiduous on maintaining old initiatives. Build Back Better World gets announced, and then after a while, it’s like, no, no, no, that’s over. It’s PGII now. And then who knows what it’ll be soon. So, there is this on again, off again aspect of Western foreign policy in Africa. This could lead to an off again aspect. I don’t think, in the long term, that China’s going to go away, though. The rise of China is such a permanent structural change in the global order that there will be reactions to it anyway. What I would like is for African governments to gain more leverage. And there, I think, in the end, they will gain more leverage if they just set an agenda and stick to it, I think, rather than necessarily leaning so much into playing off these different actors against each other.
Because we know also that many Chinese entities and many Western entities also work together. And this is particularly true for mining companies, for example. So, it’s not such a clear-cut situation that geopolitical polarization will necessarily lead to greater leverage on the ground. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. So, what’s much more important is for African governments to stick to their own agenda. And for that, your agenda to be inclusive across borders as well.
Eric: I want to go back to a point that I tried to make in the beginning in our discussion about the bauxite for resource deal, which I don’t think I articulated as well as I could have. And it’s this question of water. So, we talked about previously, about the bauxite deal that the Ghanaian government’s done with Sinohydro that will do mining in the Atewa Forest Reserve, which again, has water reserves that environmentalists say feed about 5 million people. At the same time, there’s this galamsey issue. One of the points that came up in the discussion about the illegal mining, ongoing illegal mining issue in Ghana today is that so many of the rivers are polluted to the point where they’re not potable anymore. So, we have a situation now where analysts are warning, and in fact, actually it’s not even analyst, Cobus, we mentioned this in the newsletter. It’s literally the head of one of the water agencies said, “We may not have enough clean water in Ghana that we have to import water from other countries.”
Cobus: No, that’s shocking.
Eric: Think about that. That is just incredible to think about. It’s not that they don’t have enough water, they don’t have enough potable water because so much of it has been polluted. To the point about the Chinese involvement in this, now the Chinese government is not at all involved in the illegal mining issue. That, I think, that’s not a, a government thing. Where there is some accountability is on the Sinohydro deal, and this is where people want to see transparency in these contracts, so they can see what are the ESG, the environmental provisions in the contracts. And this is where again, we come up on the issue of, why aren’t African governments being more assertive with the Chinese to force the transparency of these contracts which people want to know? I don’t understand it, for the life of me, why they won’t accommodate that.
Cobus: Well, there’s some separate issues, right? The financial transparency of these loan contracts is one set of issues. I tend to think that there should be radical transparency and particularly also, radical financial transparency. But environmental and other forms of social and governance standards, those are supposed to be public anyway. Most countries, it’s standard that there has to be environmental impact assessments that also have to be not only publicly accessible but directly engaging with the specific publics in question in these particular areas. So, in that case, there is a very much a different kind of implementation landscape from country to country in Africa.
But even countries with quite weak regulation frequently do still have this basic idea that there should be some form of environmental assessment done. Then frequently, the problem is that either the laws are really weak or that the laws are okay, but they’re not being implemented. Or they are being implemented, but it’s only in a pro forma way and there’s not, kind of, follow through. And there again, sadly, the onus really falls on the African government. One of the things that this illegal mining, the galamsey scandal, ongoing scandal shows, and we should keep in mind that it’s not only… In the first place, the Chinese government isn’t involved. These are Chinese migrants that are involved. But not only Chinese migrants, there are also migrants from many other African countries that are also mining gold illegally in Ghana.
Eric: That’s right, who account for the majority, by the way. When an interagency task force raided, last week, one of the major illegal mining zones, there were no Chinese. It was only Africans who were arrested.
Cobus: Yeah, so a lot of Nigerians and other West Africans and so on, people from the region. What you see there, and this is another very similar situation in the case of illegal logging that’s also driven by Chinese demand, for example, is that what you actually see then in action is this corrosive impact of very low-level corruption, where immigration officials, forestry officials, local administrators of different kinds are frequently very underpaid. And therefore, that makes them very vulnerable to small scale kickbacks that then allow me to just leave me alone to do a little bit of digging on this particular one acre off ground in some rural area. That kind of small level corruption.
That is just a massive, massive problem. It’s a massive problem everywhere in the world, but it’s particularly a massive problem in Africa. And the thing is again, different Chinese entities take different kinds of advantages of weak systems in Africa. But in the end, the only people who I could really blame for that are the people who are supposed to be maintaining the system. Much more hardcore accountability is needed. But you don’t get it with A, political will from the top, but also a lot of pressure from the bottom. So, popular, ongoing popular pressure for better systems is really important.
Eric: And we heard exactly what you’re talking about in the context of illegal fishing where Chinese trawlers were being fined for illegal fishing and for psycho fishing. Remember, we’ve talked about that on a number of occasions, and they never paid the fines. And then, when we talked to fishing activists who say, “How is this possible that this keeps happening?” They said exactly what you’ve said, the Chinese fishing trawlers and the fishing industry, through proxies, oftentimes are just paying off local officials. So, Ghana, the situation on corruption and the lack of governance is especially acute. And then I think gives a lot of people reasons for worry that the Atewa forest may end up being like what we’ve seen in the illegal mining and in the fishing sectors where governance just hasn’t been anywhere near as strong as it needs to be. So, lots of reason for concern there.
Water is the very big issue there. Cobus, I want to end on a factoid that I saw in our research for our daily newsletter. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to write about it, but it’s one of these data points that just blows your mind when you think about the scale that exists in China. So, the City of Chongqing, it’s in southwestern China. It’s a city that I used to go to quite a bit when I was living in China. It’s one of these massive, massive just sprawling cities of I think 25, 26 million people. It’s in the southwest. It’s one of the major technology manufacturing hubs, auto manufacturing hubs. Many of the major auto makers have their factories there. It’s just huge. But they released their eight-month trade figures from January to August, and it was incredible to see how much trade this one city does, $80 billion in just the first eight months of the year.
Again, I think that just speaks to the scale that is China, that a city can do $80 billion, which I think is more than many small developing countries do in a year. I think it’s just one of these interesting factoids that I saw that I’d like to talk about more in our coverage. And I’d love to get some folks on the show for us to talk about, again, breaking away from the idea that China is a singular entity. That in fact, now more and more, China’s behaving as, at the municipal level, at the provincial level, and we’ve just saw this week as well another little interesting data point that in Hainan, which is the island right across the water here from Vietnam, that China has a new shipping route that goes direct to West Africa. That’s happening at the provincial level. We’ve talked endlessly about what’s going on in Hunan Province, and then also all the new fruit imports coming in from Africa into the Port of Shanghai. So, a lot of this is happening at the municipal and also at the provincial level, but it makes for a much more interesting discussion when you move beyond just China.
Cobus: I think, yes, absolutely. And we hope to unpack those kind of complexities more. What it also, just in broad terms, also I think makes clear is how all these people who are A, talking about decoupling different kind of global economies, particularly that of the United States from China’s economy, and then also all of this discussion about manufacturing by international firms, particularly now led by Apple at the moment, is moving out of China to Vietnam, to India and so on. One can see how, okay, those are all kind of important trends, but at the same time, this is very premature to talk about any kind of decoupling of world from China’s economy. If a single city in China does that amount of trade, then we are not decoupled yet, and we won’t be for a while.
Eric: $80 billion, I mean, just huge for a city. Not a country, not a province, a city. I don’t know, that stuck out to me as just a massive number. Again, the year’s not even close to being over with, so there’s going to be a lot more trade for Chongqing. But Chongqing is a city you want to keep an eye on, and we’ll write about that a little bit more in our coverage. And if you’d like to follow all the stories that we’re doing, I say this every time at the end of the show, I just really would love for you to join and check out what we’re doing at The China-Global South Project. We’ve got a great team of editors in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, writing in French, Arabic, and English. Cobus and I are putting together the daily English newsletter with news and analysis fed in from the rest of the team.
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Let’s leave the conversation there. For Cobus van Staden in Johannesburg, I’m Eric Olander, thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: The discussion continues online. Tag us on Twitter @chinagsproject, and visit us at chinaglobalsouth.com. If you speak French, check out our full coverage at projetafriquechine.com and AfrikChine on Twitter. That’s Afrik with a K. And you’ll also find links to our sites and social media channels in Arabic.
