Hello dear Dehaiers,
I am writing my opinion on Mark Anderson's criticizing article regarding Chinese Aid to Africa. I was surprised when I read this article: The Guardian.com: African presidents 'use China aid for patronage politics' on Deahi's November 19, 2014 issue. The title immediately locks into one's thoughts creating instant doubt about the validity of the Chinese aid. The opening statement which reads "African leaders are almost three times more likely to spend Chinesedevelopment aid in areas where they have ethnic ties, casting doubt on thehumanitarian effectiveness of Beijing's strict "hands-off" policy in thecontinent" can create mistrust in the Chinese approach to Africa and African leaders' intention of getting this aid. Mr. Anderson supported his report with
http://chinaaiddata.org issue which shows the distribution of Chinese projects in various African countries. I may not have expert knowledge of Africa's population distribution but because of Africa's past colonial history impact only few places in each African nation is highly populated and the rest remain sparsely populated either because of having little or no industry, being arid and non productive or because of nomadic population and did not yet have necessary services in place to attract people. The other major factor of the West's intentions to break one nation apart on regional, religious, ethnic differences is not to be ignored and we Africans must always be keen to this matter.. Mr. Anderson has chosen a nice angle from which to attack the Chinese Aid--an issue which has been a thorn in the butts for the West. His aim is to misguide us, the African benefactors and push us to revolt against the good Chinese intention by creating a crack of mistrust on our leaders.
The West had all the time from the end of WW II to the present to help Africa. All we have seen and learned so far is that they were pouring millions of dollars to support repressive governments every where. There is no time when Western aid was aimed at helping progressive or solving peoples' basic problems--self reliance in food, health and education. Most of the aid that we had opportunity to witness was 1. Food aid which was disseminated with the intention of making the population aid dependent, 2. Military aid which helped repressive governments to crash any revolt and keep them tied to the West's commands. If the result of these forms of aid fail to satisfy the West's ulterior designs then the next step is to create a situation of internal revolt by means of a few of their inland recruits, mercenaries or via border conflict with neighboring states, a good example being Eritrea. We have not seen this coming from Chinese aid. They are building hospitals and schools in remote areas where Western governments never intended to explore. They are offering loans at very low interest which the borrowing nation can afford to repay, where as the West's loans come with high interest rate and strings attached to finally break down the nation's economy and leaving them helpless and unattended. Because of this basic difference which was strong enough to attract Africa's leaders to Chinese aid the West has lost their control in Africa and they have been crying over this matter for some time now. Mr. Anderson's fantastic discovery of aid being given to create patronage can only be interpreted as crocodile's cries or tears. Among Mr. Anderson's choice of major Chinese aid receipients Ethiopia still gets massive aid from the West mostly in military hardware which only benefits the West in terms of sales of military equipment and Ethiopia, with its most pronounced form of repression and genocide, happens to be the West's favorite partner in creating havoc in East Africa. Ghana has been lucky enough to stay in peace and is getting aid it deserves. As for the DRC, the most disadvantaged nation in African history, Mr. Anderson should be ashamed of bringing it as an example. This nation was doomed to Western devilish designs ever since the early Belgian occupation. If China helps the DRC in building schools and hospitals and improving the nation's infrastructure so what is Mr. Anderson complaining about?Regarding Chinese aid being spent in the country's leaders birth place, the main poison Mr Anderson wants to spread, I will mention Eritrea and Ethiopia, two nations I have familiarity with. In his [
http://chinaaiddata.org] data reference it shows that most of the Chinese aid to Eritrea is spent in the highland regions where population density is highest. But the Eritrean government has been investing quite a bit money and manpower in the lowlands ever since Eritrea's independence in transforming the people's way of life from nomadic to sedentary farming and cattle raising, opening clinics, hospitals and schools in the area, making sure potable water is available for the population and creating huge water reservoirs for farming and watering the people's herds and last but not least creating a previously nonexistent infrastructure to enable easy access from remote places to places of service--hospitals and clinics in case of emergency. The area mentioned in Ethiopia as the leader's birth place is again misleading. Whereas most of the effective current Ethiopian leadership is born in the northern part of the country the main Chinese aid is spent in the central region which the country exploits for International exposure. Investing more in areas with higher population density is not necessarily investing in leadership birth place and Mr. Anderson's message and intent is not laudable but laughable.
Solomon BisratSeattle, WA
Received on Thu Nov 20 2014 - 13:38:11 EST