China in Africa #2

I have had a lot of response to the last blog about China in Africa. It seems that many are somewhat surprised at how much China is involved in infrastructure development across the continent. 

In the next series, be prepared to be even more astonished.

For a start, the graph below, courtesy of the US Government Accountability Office,  shows imports and exports to/from Africa by the US and China. On the import side, China has marched from importing less than 20% of the US volume in 2001 to almost matching us in 2011. They now import far more ore, minerals and metals from Africa than does the US.



Exports to Africa show an even more staggering trend. China sends to Africa more machinery and transportation equipment than our total exports. From barely over a billion dollars in 2001, their volume has risen to over 20 billion in the course of ten years.

If this is not impressive enough, consider that, according to World Bank, China accounts for about 3% of equipment supply in Africa but 31% of the total value of civil works on the continent. So it is reasonable to suppose that the bulk of the above 'machinery and transportation equipment' portion of the chart is geared toward infrastructure projects managed by Chinese companies.

Should your boat remain un-rocked by that statistic, mull over this one. The same World Bank report shows that France is the next biggest winner in civil works projects in Africa with 12% and no other nation, including the USA, has more than 5%.

Is the glass half empty or half full? Are we so far behind that we cannot catch up or is there so much potential that we will wake up and start to view Africa in a different light, thus opening up the opportunities that China has already seen and enjoyed? More on that topic later. In the meantime, in coming blogs, I will provide more insight into China's activities in Africa.

TW

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