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Джоэл Кату Нетшитензе
is their concern for the growing presence of China and its long-
term arrangements.
Yang Guang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences argues that these
rivalries constitute normal “business competition” and that “there is kind
of a division of labour, because the United States is very good at investing
in resource development and industries – oil, gas, minerals… but China
also invests in a lot of laborintensive industries – textiles, consumer elec
tronics”. As such, he asserts, “…China and the United States do not have
strategic conicts in Africa”21. But, as evidenced in US policy pronounce-
ments, this is not how the ‘west’ sees the issue.
Christopher Alessi, writing for the Council on Foreign Relations
argues:
“As global demand for energy continues to rise, major players like the
United States, the European Union, and Japan are facing a new competi
tor in the race to secure longterm energy supplies: China. The economic
powerhouse has increasingly focussed on securing resources needed to
sustain its rapid growth, locking down sources of oil and other necessary
raw materials across the globe”22.
This of course extends to other African endowments such as minerals
and, increasingly, agricultural land and products.
• Militarisation of politics – proxy and direct wars: Besides
the tensions that continue to play themselves out in Central-Eastern
Europe, the Middle East, Afghanistan and the China Sea, as well
as the new US Pacic doctrine, military approaches to African
relations remain part of the stock-in-trade among ‘western’ powers.
While the use of proxies in conicts in the Great Lakes Region and
the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular are not easy
to pin down, the conduct of ‘western’ powers in Cote d’Ivoire and
Libya in 2011 brought home the reality of a resurgent arrogance to
resort to military force in pursuit of imperial interests.
Indeed, in each instance where an economic interest is identied, issues
of military security come immediately to the fore. Thus, in its recommendations, the African Oil Policy Initiative Group argues for the declaration
of the Gulf of Guinea as an area of “Vital Interest” to the US, the setting
21
Interview: Yang Guang, Director of the Institute for West Asian and African
Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Council on Foreign Relations.
November 28, 2007.
22
Alessi Christopher. Expanding China-Africa Oil Ties (updated February 8,
2012).
32
Africa’s New Development Trajectory and Opportunities
up of a sub-regional command and a US/Nigeria “compact on regional
security issues”23. It is these interests and the imperatives of the ‘global
war on terror’ that have impelled the recasting of the United States’ African
military strategy, including Africom.
• Primary uni-polarity and secondary multi-polarity:
The changing global balance of forces is reected in the fact that
China overtook Japan as the second-largest economy in the world
in 2011. The HSBC projects that China should overtake the US
by 2025; and Goldman Sachs projects the 2050 Top 6 global economic ranking in the following order: China, US, India, Brazil,
Russia and Japan24. Regional groupings and new partnerships such
as IBSA and BRICS reinforce the tendency towards multi-polarity.
Combined with this is increased activism within civil society in
the developed countries, especially in the context of growing in-
equality and the effects of the global economic crisis. In relation to
Africa, the changing economic balances and civil society activism
manifest in increased involvement of BRIC countries on the continent and mass campaigns in Europe and North America around
issues of investment, trade and aid. All these represent a nascent
multi-polarity.
However, the primary feature of current global balances is one of
uni-polarity. This is in terms of the dominant socio-economic system of
capitalism, US military power which is greater than that of about 10 of
the next powers combined, and the political dominance of the ‘western’
alliance which includes the capacity to manipulate multilateral agencies
such as the United Nations as was evidenced in 2011 in Cote d’Ivoire and
Libya.
• Tendency towards new growth coupling and decoupling:
The global economic crisis, located primarily in Europe and North
America, has not only accelerated the pace of global economic re-
balancing. A critical trend that is assuming greater prominence is
the growth coupling among developing countries in Latin America,
Asia and Africa. With regard to China and Africa in particular, it
is now estimated that in 2009, “China surpassed the United States
as Africa’s largest trading partner”; and a third of China’s oil im-
23
Alessi Christopher. Expanding China-Africa Oil Ties (updated February 8,
2012).
24
Quoted from the draft National Development Plan (2011) and background
documents on Scenario Planning, 2007/08. The Presidency (SA).
33
Джоэл Кату Нетшитензе
ports are from Africa25. According to the IMF, growth correlation
between Africa and China moved to 92% in the period between
1999 and 200826.
Of course, we are not about to see the disappearance of the multifaceted
mutual dependencies between China and other developing countries on
the one hand, and developed countries on the other, encompassing trade,
investment, nancial services, foreign currency holdings and so on. These
will continue into the distant future. However, whether signicant growth
decoupling takes place will depend, among other factors, on whether China
succeeds in ramping up domestic consumer demand, on the role it chooses
to play in efforts to resuscitate European economies, and on the variety of
factors that constrain South-South co-operation.
Staking a place in the sun
Given the potential that Africa has displayed in the past 12 years and the
complex global environment within which this is taking place, it is critical
for Africa to rene and assert its own strategy for global partnerships. As
with all such strategies, this should be informed by Africa’s own objectives
and interests.
The starting point in this regard is the effort to realise a continental
democratic revolution underpinned by the development of productive forces
and management of social relations based on the pursuit of human rights.
This should span all the generations of human rights, from the political and
socio-economic, to the environmental and the ‘informational’. Improvement
of the African human condition demands no less. In this regard, the continent
should assert its collective sovereign right to pursue these objectives in
partnership with, but not dictated to by, foreign powers.
It is in Africa’s interest to develop partnerships with all regions of the
world. This means, among others, breaking the stranglehold that relations of
colonialism and neo-colonialism imposed on the continent. In this respect,
an examination of Africa’s pre-colonial history underlines the fact that
strong relations with Asia and the Middle East were a natural consequence
of geography. It is therefore to be expected that, as part of post-colonial
geo-strategic normalisation, over and above the subjective efforts of states,
there should be an enhanced relationship between the continent and other
developing countries.
25
Quoted from the draft National Development Plan (2011) and background
documents on Scenario Planning, 2007/08. The Presidency (SA).
26
IMF, EIU. Frontier Advisory Analysis (quoted from the Financial Mail,
October 9, 2010).
34
Africa’s New Development Trajectory and Opportunities
At the same time, the content and depth of economic relations with the
BRICS and other fraternal actors have the potential to promote Africa’s
multifaceted interests in terms of infrastructure development, transfer of
technology, human resource development and so on. There is still much
to be done to ensure that this happens in actual practice. But the start that
has been made does afford the continent a unique opportunity to use this to
redene its relations with all other actors.
As the world strives to extricate itself from the current global economic
crisis, a new discourse about paths of development is taking shape, beyond
the prescripts of the Washington Consensus. In the continuum between the
neo-liberalism of rapacious market licence and the rigid statism of universal
state intervention and control, humanity is striving for the appropriate
balance, informed by regional and country peculiarities.
Each country in Africa has to nd its own balance. The bare minimum,
though, has to include a capable state that gives leadership to economic
development through, among others, policy-making, regulation, provision
of public goods, procurement as well as research and development. Such a
state should be able to build partnerships across all sectors of society and
forge a social compact for growth and development.
The continent also has to appreciate its obligation to ensure global
security of supply of energy, mineral and other resources. But it would be
the height of folly on its part if Africa did not leverage its endowments to
build manufacturing capacity and diversify its economic base.
As other regions of the globe have demonstrated, consistent growth
and development have to be informed by long-term strategies that include
forging sustainable and mutually-benecial global partnerships. Initiatives
contained in NEPAD and campaigns to ensure that these imperatives
featured prominently on the agenda of major global economies did reect
such self-initiated approaches. So rooted should these be in Africa’s
institutional policy and praxis, that their propagation should not depend on
the fancies of individual leaders. These campaigns should include working
with fraternal regions and countries to restructure global multilateral
institutions both to reect the changing global balance of power and to
ensure equitable international relations.
To succeed in all these endeavours, African countries should strengthen
the integration of their economies and polities; and ensure strong alliances
among anchor-countries in each region. Unbridled competition and
senseless rivalries will render the entire continent weak, and open it to
machinations that informed colonial and neo-colonial relations of years
gone by.
Арндт Хопфманн
Conclusion
Africa’s new growth narrative is underpinned by continental and
global objective conditions and subjective factors. The conuence of these
circumstances during the past two decades has provided an auspicious
historical moment for Africa to launch a continental democratic revolution,
and relate to the world in a manner that advances African people’s all-
round interests.
Both ‘old and new actors’ have to appreciate that, to succeed in their
endeavours on the continent, their African strategies should be informed by
a humane and sustainable paradigm which recognises that Africans have a
perfectly legitimate right to stake their place in the sun. The aim, overall,
should be to build equitable and mutually-benecial relations.
35
Д-р Арндт Хопфманн (Германия)
CHANGING PERCEPTIONS.
THE NEW EUPHORIA
ABOUT THE AFRICAN MIDDLE CLASS
For almost ve decades the image of Africa (in Europe) has been
dominated by two extremes which could be copped in the terms of «Poverty»
and «Serengeti». Sub-Saharan Africa was perceived as a (sub)continent of
extreme human impoverishment and on-going catastrophes but all this is
happening in a breathtakingly beautiful landscape. While in the 1960s the
catholic German aid-organization Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World)
campaigned to save the lives of malnourished сhildren, the director of the
Zoo in Frankfurt/Main, Prof. Grzimek directed the famous documentary
«Serengeti must not die». Despite the perception that Africa stood for
hunger and poverty, for brutal civil wars and corruption, for laziness and
an incapable administration it became a prime holiday-destination for the
aspiring European middle class, perhaps the last place to go with a «real
spirit of adventure».
This has widely changed. The new image of Africa is no longer focusing
on landscapes and wild animals but on posh city skylines with young men
and women posing in business dresses in front of hyper-modern ofce
buildings or conference centers – the African country-side is now merely
two 4x4-driving hours away from the (mega)cities where the new African
middle class reigns and is doing business in the most spectacular manner.
36
Changing Perceptions
This new imagination of Africa does not come out of the blue. The
European middle class (in particular journalists, «development»-experts,
medical doctors and writers) have discovered there counterparts in Africa
and they started to develop an emotional relation to them; for various
reasons:
Both social groups are well educated (many African middle class
people are graduates of European and American universities) and share the
same values and preferences not only regarding consumption patterns but
also as far as hopes and schemes of life are concerned. Between the very
few super rich and the majority of poor people they seem to be the only
really concerned citizens who are willing to take up responsibility and to
provide leadership – in Europe as well as in Africa.
The «new middle class Africans» are not only responsible and willing
to lead, many of them are business people; and this in a way that makes their
European counterparts sometimes jealous. Their African role models do
not have to excuse themselves for their reckless and unstoppable obsession
to get rich and super rich.
A German journalist writes: «Political beliefs are completely obsolete
in the Africa of today. Ideological orientations are not only outdated but
totally useless. Only money and power count. Who has money is powerful. …
The successful knows the law is on his side and it is on his side because
he is successful. … Rulers and ruled develop a completely instrumental
relationship. The state is run like an enterprise. The citizens have to obey
like employees and the president acts like a CEO…»27.
In other words – «Nothing succeeds more than success!». Ulrich
Golaszinski (a German policy consultant) refers to this as «the replacement
of the logic of social (family) relations by the logic of money relations» –
28
and it reads as if he is tempted to add «thank goodness»
.
But the European and the African middle class share also their grief and
despair: This is predominantly the fear to drop out of their current social
position; the achieved standard of living is precarious because almost all
their fortune is monetary wealth. The middle class in Africa as well as
in Europe is not (yet) rich enough to be independent from economic and
27
Johnson Dominic. Afrika vor dem großen Sprung [Africa before the Big
Leap]. Berlin (Wagenbach). 2011. P. 64.
28
Goldberg J. Jörg Überleben im Goldland. Afrika im globalen Kapitalismus
[Survival in the Land of Gold. Africa in Global Capitalism]. Köln (Papy Rossa).
2008. P. 11.
37
Арндт Хопфманн
political conjunctions, the ups and downs of politics and economics; they
are moneyed people but not rich aristocrats whose fortune is diversied
and (most importantly) it is parked in foreign currency at save tax-heavens
out-side the country.
But what does the emergence of the African middle class – the «new
white hope» – really mean? Whence did it come and where will it go? What
it is its raison d’etre. Is there any historical mission? An attempt to answer
these questions will produce two unexpected insights (see gure 1).
What is remarkable at rst glance is the obviously consolidated level
of poverty (< $2 per person and day/p.d.) which has hardly changed despite
average growth rates of about ve per cent per annum during the last ten
years. Africa’s economic growth has not yielded commensurate dividends
in poverty reduction. The proportion of people in Central, Eastern, Southern
and Western Africa living on less than $1,25 a day declined in 1990–2005,
but only from 58% to 51%. Almost all the fruits of economic growth of
the last decade in Africa went to the already better off. While wealthy
households prot extraordinarily the poorest households are completely
excluded from any benets29.
30
Inequality in Africa is rising to unprecedented levels
. The number
of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) is nowhere growing faster than in
Africa (11,1% p.a.) and their fortune grew even quicker by 13,6% p.a.31
Thus the so-called new middle class is in fact an «old» one. Its share
of the overall population has not remarkably changed but the wealth it
commands has! About ten years of extraordinary economic growth have
resulted in a deeper differentiation of those strata that had previously
already accumulated some fortune. However, the rest of the populace
(in fact a two thirds majority) has not been touched by these developments
at all; with more than 50% remaining in absolute poverty.
If these ndings prove that in a money economy the command over
some permanent income is a precondition to benet from economic growth
then there is another lesson to be learnt. In order to alleviate poverty it is
necessary to integrate the poor into the money economy. In other words:
29
Kappel R. Afrika vor dem wirtschaftlichen Durchbruch? [Africa on the brink
of an economic break-through?] GIGA-Focus, 11/2011, Hamburg (German Institute
for Global and Area Studies, Institute for African Studies). P. 5.
30
Economic Commission for Africa: Economic Report on Africa 2012. Addis
Ababa.
31
WWR 2011 – Merrill Lynch/Capgemini: World Wealth Report 2011 (5/see
appendix 1).
38
Changing Perceptions
People without money, without «means of transaction», are virtually non-
existent in a money economy. Neither are they relevant as consumers
nor do they benet from the effective demand as providers of goods and
services. Therefore a Basic Income Grant (BIG) that enables poor people
to participate in the economy as consumers and/or producers is a powerful
and very efcient tool to alleviate poverty.
This can be shown by the impressive results of the BIG-Pilot-Project
in Namibia which has been supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
«Since the introduction of the BIG, household poverty has dropped
signicantly. Using the food poverty line, 76% of residents fell below this
line in November 2007. This was reduced to 37% within one year of the
BIG. Amongst households that were not affected by inmigration, the rate
dropped to 16%. This shows that a national BIG would have a dramatic
impact on poverty levels in Namibia»32.
Without a radical change of focus and without the implementation of
new approaches to «development», against all prophecies of doom from the
established neoliberal doctrine, Africa will remain a continent where half
of its inhabitants are completely excluded form anything like modernity,
despite all the euphoria around the new actor – the acclaimed African
Middle Class.
Source: Own calculations based on statistical data taken from various
issues of ECA, World Bank and UNDP publications, in particular Human
Developments Reports, World Development Reports and Economic
Reports on Africa.
32
BIG-Coalition 2009 – Basic Income Grant Coalition: Making the difference!
The BIG in Namibia, Basic Income Grant Pilot Project Assessment Report, April
2009 (Windhoek) – http://www.bignam.org/Index.html
39
Арндт Хопфманн
Figure: Africa – Af uence and Poverty (in percentages)
40
L’Afrique et les pays émergents
Д-р Сонко Бруно Джозеф Амад (Сенегал)
L’AFRIQUE ET LES PAYS EMERGENTS:
QUELS DEFIS POUR LE CONTINENT AFRICAIN?
Depuis la chute du mur de Berlin en 1989, la conguration des relations
internationales a changé avec l’apparition d’Etats qui, en moins de vingt
ans, sont devenus les véritables locomotives de l’économie mondiale. La
Chine, l’Inde et le Brésil, la Russie et l’Afrique du Sud, de par leur poids
économique et leurs stratégies économiques et politiques à l’échelle internationale, ont contribué à une redistribution des cartes dans l’exercice de
la puissance à l’échelle internationale. Cette situation interpelle fortement
l’Afrique, dans la mesure où les BRICS modient notablement le modèle
économique, politique et social hérité de la seconde guerre mondiale et
disposent des moyens de s’imposer, de modier les règles et de bousculer
les habitudes du «club» des pays développés.
Pour l’Afrique, l’émergence simultanée de ces pays et l’intérêt qu’ils
manifestent pour le continent, créent une situation quelque peu inédite et
induit de multiples bouleversements pouvant entraîner des conséquences
majeures pour son développement. De manière incontestable, les pays
émergents sont parvenus à se créer une place de choix sur le continent,
chacun d’entre eux agissant avec ses caractéristiques et stratégies propres.
Ce qui n’est pas sans susciter de multiples débats hors /et en Afrique, entre
ceux qui approuvent33 cette présence et ceux qui afchent plus ou moins
leur hostilité34.
Ce texte se veut une contribution sur le débat général sur la présence
des BRICS en Afrique et ambitionne de revenir sur quelques aspects qui
nous paraissent essentiels pour mieux comprendre leur percée. Notre questionnement principal sera: pourquoi la présence des BRICS sur le continent
constitue-t-elle un dé pour l’Afrique?
La présence des BRICS sur le continent est source de dé parce qu’elle
suscite débat et questionne l’avenir du continent. Où se situe le problème?
Il y a problème dans la mesure où il s’agit de rééchir sur la manière dont
l’Afrique doit évoluer et gérer au mieux ses intérêts pour le futur. Or, de-
33
Bangui T. La Chine, un nouveau partenaire de développement de l’Afrique,
Vers la n des privilèges européens sur le continent noir? // L’Harmattan. 2009; Gaye
A. Chine-Afrique: le dragon et l’autruche // L’Harmattan. 2006.
34
Imbert Anne. Quand la Chine fait son bol de riz sous le regard inconscient de
l’occident – http://www.news.batiweb.com (09/08/11)
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