In recent years, journalists and pundits in the West have looked on China¡¯s economic engagement with Africa, including foreign aid, with growing alarm. An NYT op-ed a few years ago called China a ¡°rogue donor,¡° giving aid that is ¡°nondemocratic in origin and nontransparent in practice, and its effect is typically to stifle real progress while hurting ordinary citizens.¡±
Other negative stories about China in Africa include China abetting genocide in Darfur by supplying arms in exchange for Sudanese oil; propping up corrupt government in Zimbabwe; swooping in to undo the anti-corruption work of the IMF or the World Bank in Angola or Nigeria with offers of no-strings-attached loans; and generally ignoring environmental, safety and labor standards on projects in Africa.
So the idea that China¡¯s aid to Africa could be in any possible way better, more credible, or more effective than Western aid to Africa may be a hard sell. But Deborah Brautigam, author of the new book The Dragon¡¯s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, argues that focusing only on the China threat makes us blind to the real opportunities Chinese engagement offers for African development.
Part of the problem, says Brautigam, is that there is very little information about what China is really doing in Africa, and in this vacuum, ¡°myths sprang up and were rapidly accepted as facts.¡± Brautigam fills this void and dispels, or at least complicates, some commonly held beliefs about China in Africa.
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