China 'buying out' Africa: Top 5 destinations of Chinese money

On a quest to secure raw materials and energy resources to support the exponential growth of its economy, China has become the fastest-growing investor in Africa. As of July 2010, China overtook the United States as the world’s largest energy user, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), and much of that energy comes from African countries such as Sudan and Angola. Critics argue that China undermines democracy, human rights, and transparency by signing business deals with authoritarian leaders. They also point to the “$10 billion imbalance in China’s favor in 2010” as a type of African recolonization.  

But many African leaders welcome the unconditional Chinese largesse. “There are people who still consider Africans like children who can be easily manipulated," Faida Mitifu, Congo's ambassador to Washington told Reuters. "The good thing about this partnership is that it's give and take.

Here are the top five destinations of Chinese capital, in order of estimated Chinese investment.

Xinhua
The newly Chinese-built towering African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia encapsulates the growing importance of Sino-African relations and marks the latest manifestation of China’s strategic expansion in the continent.

1. Angola

Xinhua
The newly Chinese-built towering African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia encapsulates the growing importance of Sino-African relations and marks the latest manifestation of China’s strategic expansion in the continent.

Angola is endowed with resources such as oil, diamonds, gold, and copper, but it has only begun to rebuild after decades of crushing civil war. Oil and diamonds constituted 60 percent of the economic output in 2008 and Angola is expected to surpass Nigeria as the biggest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, The Economist reports.

Angola is China's top African supplier of crude, and China buys 43.8 percent of Angola’s total oil exports. The bilateral trade between the two countries exceeded $120 billion in 2010, according to China Briefing, a business magazine and news agency. The majority of the oil deals "are characterized by loans and credit lines in connection with infrastructure projects," China Briefing says, including three major deals financed by China’s Export-Import Bank, totaling more than $7 billion since 2004. 

In addition to oil-related projects, China is heavily involved in Angola’s reconstruction effort, after a devastating 27-year civil war that ruined much of its infrastructure. One of the main investments is the rebuilding of the Benguela Railway, a 840-mile transcontinental railway that links the Atlantic port of Lobito in Angola with rail networks in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. The project is expected to cost $300 million, the Japanese Institute of Developing Economies reports, but it will provide a much-needed cheap outlet for Congolese and Zambia copper, tin, and coltan. Angolan-Chinese bilateral trade was roughly $25 billion in 2010, Asia Times reports. 

1 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.