The below is excerpted from an opinion piece by Charles Onyango-Obbo on the East African website in Kenya:
… China seems to be a better trading and business partner for [African] governments. It will lend money without imposing irritating Western-style conditionalities. It won’t demand that a government release political prisoners first or stop corruption before signing a multibillion-dollar trade deal.
The Western media and the World Bank have been warning Africa, saying this approach is disastrous.
To Africa, the issue is clear. The West is jealous and is being a bad loser. After years of treating Africa badly, they are now angry that China has showed them up and is grabbing their once-captive markets on the continent.
The piece concludes on a rather depressing note:
However, just as the old Western-dominated economic order failed to lift Africa out of poverty, so will China fail. Today, the reasons why Africa continues to do badly, in large part, have to do mostly with internal conditions…
…If things don’t improve in Africa, even China will leave us with huge holes in the ground, land polluted by oil spills, and wastelands where once lush forests stood. We shall be vilifying it the way we do the West today, and waiting for a “better deal” from a new, better global economic power — India.
The whole article is here here.