'Chinese loans are funding many of the infrastructure projects changing the face of the continent'
This is an article from the left-liberal Guardian newspaper in Britain. It is an article about the economic developments in Mozambique, and is quite lengthy, I have produced just a clip of it below. For some reason the word 'basket-case' is often used by the west when they are talking about African states.
It's just a shame that writers like this don't also admit that the negative aspects of African states are in overwhelming large part to do with how the west has ensured that Africa does not unite, and does not develop itself for its people, and the most violent and obvious example of this attitude is their destruction through last year of the African state which has the highest human development index - Libya.
The writer sees rather reluctant to state in the article that it is thanks to the nature of relations with China that has resulted in Mozambique seeing some positive indicators to its economic development. What the article doesn't explore is the issue that if it is relations with China that is giving Africa a massive boost, why hasn't the same been the case with Africa's relations with the west? Going into that just wouldn't wash with the white man's burden types who run the newspaper.
A uniting and economically rising Africa is what the west fears, and the west will and is doing all it can to ensure this does not happen, and it is definitely alarmed that this is developing with a increasingly close partnership with China.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrkhan said in his latest speech that the usa is planning a war with China, but is already involved in a war on China, and cited the case of nato's war on Libya being also a war on China with the resultant departure of Chinese involvement in Libya and the 130,000 Chinese workers there.
Sukant Chandan, Friends of China
Boom time for Mozambique, once the basket case of Africa
The shells of stylish colonial-era buildings, like shipwrecks on the ocean floor, still give Maputo a distinct character. But the capital of Mozambique no longer feels like an urban museum. Amid the crumbling grandeur rumble cranes and mechanical diggers, carving out a different skyline.
A construction boom is under way here, concrete proof of the economic revolution in Mozambique. Growth hit 7.1% last year, accelerating to 8.1% in the final quarter. The country, riven by civil war for 15 years, is poised to become the world's biggest coal exporter within the next decade, while the recent discovery of two massive gas fields in its waters has turned the region into an energy hotspot, promising a £250bn bonanza.
The national currency was the best performing in the world against the dollar. Investment is pouring in on an unprecedented scale; as if to prove that history has a sense of irony, Portuguese feeling Europe's economic pain are flocking back to the former colony, scenting better prospects than at home. Increasingly this is the rule, not the exception in Africa, which has boasted six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies in the past decade. The first oil discovery in Kenya was confirmed on Monday, while the British firm BG Group announced that one of its gas fields off the Tanzanian coast was bigger than expected and could lead to billions of pounds of investment. Bankers, analysts and politicians have never been so bullish about the continent, which barely 10 years ago was regarded as a basket case.
From Cape Town to Cairo, there are signs of a continent on the move: giant infrastructure projects, an expanding middle class, foreign equity scrambling for opportunities in telecoms, financial services and products aimed at a billion consumers. Growth is no magic bullet for reducing inequality or fostering democracy, but the stubborn truth that it is still the world's poorest continent has done little to dull the confidence and hype about the African renaissance.
Africa has 16 billionaires, topped by Nigerian cement tycoon Aliko Dangote with an estimated fortune of $10.1bn (£6.5bn), according to Forbes magazine. Economic growth across the continent will be 5.3% this year and 5.6% in 2013, the World Bank predicts, with some countries hitting double digits. "Africa could be on the brink of an economic take-off, much like China was 30 years ago and India 20 years ago," the bank says. Many of the African lions are already outpacing the Asian tigers.
Africa exports its natural resources with the price and demand for them determined by growth in China, whose bilateral trade with Africa has grown tenfold in a decade, eclipsing that of the United States.
In return, Chinese loans are funding many of the infrastructure projects changing the face of the continent.
There are an estimated 1 million Chinese in Africa: trading, investing, building, labouring, running micro-businesses and, critics say, exploiting its wealth of natural resources.
On a recent afternoon at the Southern Sun hotel in Maputo, overlooking the Indian Ocean, the arrival of a delegation of Chinese businessmen in smart suits surprised no one. Mozambique is now an immensely attractive prospect as it emerges from a traumatic past of colonialism and civil war.
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