By Helen Cui
Colonialism wreaked havoc on the unsuspecting continent of Africa. Colonial era attempts at drawing borders were at best arbitrary lines and at worst made to pit ethnic groups against each other. Yet they still stand as the current boundaries for most countries. The waves of independence in the 1950s and 60s brought an end to 75 years of rule by European nations. Under European rule, resources were mined, infrastructure was built, and ethinic divisions were created. When African nations gained independence, they found themselves lacking a steady foundation to start on. The rich land had been emptied, the infrastructure proved useless: it was made for resource extraction, not for the people, and internal clashing proved disastrous.
The majority of countries have found themselves trapped, trying to find a way to build from the ground up. In recent years, a seeming ally has stepped up to the plate: China. To many Americans this raises red flags, and not without reason. China has committed human rights atrocities and continues to violently suppress minorities like Tibetans and Xinjiang Uyghurs. However, their loans are incredibly favorable, perhaps best demonstrated in Latin America where commitments are consistently more than that of the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and the United States Export-Import Bank. Researchers also found that they impose no policy conditions and have less environmental guidelines than many Western institutions. These loans seem like miracles. The funding is being readily provided, something that many countries desperately need. The sheer volume of them is remarkable, the World Bank has estimated that the largest slice of the debt load from China to Africa is an estimated $583 billion.
However, that number was not easy to come by. Chinese investors and diplomats are incredibly secretive and prefer to work behind closed doors. This has made third party debt restructuring incredibly difficult and many Chinese institutions are uncooperative, preferring to resolve conflicts through bilateral agreements. In the current economic crisis, many are seeing the real world effects of such decisions. For example, Zambia has already given control over its Mopani mine in exchange for debt relief. In Uganda, under current contracts state assets could be seized if they cannot repay their debt.
Although given the extenuating circumstances, consider if 2020 had been a perfectly fine year and everything had gone as projected. Even in this alternate case, Chinese presence in Africa has not exactly been well received. Human Rights Watch has confirmed that conditions in Chinese owned mines are consistently worse than other foreign mines. In fact in 2012, tensions had risen so high that in Zambia there was a Chinese manager killed during a riot over the late implementation of a new minimum wage standard. Not only that, in the year before the Zambian government dropped two charges against Chinese employers, after they shot at employees over a pay dispute. There have been unified shows of discontent as well. In Namibia, the Metal and Allied Namibian Workers Union has accused Chinese state-owned companies of only paying a third of the minimum wage and bringing in Chinese workers instead of Namibians.
This assertion is not completely grounded, as three quarters of the workers employed by Chinese corporations are local. Although, the reasoning behind that statistic is a little bit more nefarious. Since the average pay for Chinese workers is growing, Chinese firms are outsourcing labor to cheaper African countries. Nevertheless, there is a definite amount of tension in many African nations over the new arrival of Chinese immigrants and workers.
The growing influence of China within Africa has not gone unnoticed, and many Western countries have cautioned against taking them. However, without better alternatives to this funding, these loans are the easiest answer to being strapped financially. There does not seem to be change on the horizon, in fact, China will most definitely proceed at its current rate. In the end, there is no one to blame but colonization.
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