China Offers Africa an Opportunity to Take Charge of its Own Narrative

Published on 5th July 2011

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Renewed interest in Africa by emerging and existing global giants may develop the continent but leave Africans underdeveloped. To paraphrase Dr. Sharon Freeman; people who do not take charge of their own narrative will be rendered ineffective. The West has dominated the development and solution-giver narrative in Africa for over a century now. The emergence of China as a key global player offers Africans a window to take control of their own narrative.

The Chinese have prioritized "hardware" development as opposed to "software." Each African country has at least a "hardware" project from
China, ranging from roads, stadiums, conference facilities and airports among others. Europeans focused on "software" development through religion, governance and International Non Governmental Organizations' value systems.

While Europeans created nations out of thousands of ethnic-based kingdoms, the Chinese appear keen to create a dominion called Africa. A great (but slim) opportunity exists for Africans to leverage their own software at this juncture when the European "software" has met the Chinese "hardware."

To borrow from Dr.Sharon, Africans must (urgently) learn to master themselves; observe; adapt and invest less in facades. It is not enough for African countries to simply have governments that mimic the rest without evolving own strategies to make them responsive to African people.  

Africans can as well learn from an African Union soldier who asked top African academicians: "If you jump up in 2050, where will you land?" The force of gravity dictates that you land back on earth. The reverse is true for "geopolitical gravitation forces;" history shows the center keeps shifting. At one time one would have landed in Portugal, Spain and Britain among other thousands of pull centers all over the world. The continent's intellectual class ought to avoid "fire fighting" mentality and focus on long term. Long term focus and strategy will assist Africans to take charge of their own narrative. 

Development and solutions to the continent's challenges narrative has to feature Africans. It is important that Africans document, measure and articulate outcomes. The idea is not to shun the West or the Chinese, but rather to indigenize or domesticate all great aspects of their contributions to Africa. The Chinese surge globally is partly due to their domestication of Western strategies. What the Chinese did was simply to take charge of the conversation! 

In the 90s, the World Bank (for their key stakeholders' strategic reasons) stopped financing higher education in Africa. The result was the mushrooming of institutions that offer courses to prepare a labor market for industrialized nations. In the 2000s under the Millennium Development Goals initiative - African governments surrendered their primary education initiatives to international players. For Africa to drive its own narrative, the education sector has to take cognizance of competing global interests and prepare the youth to appreciate Africa and compete with others effectively. 

The Chinese "hardware" is interoperable, as demonstrated by their ability to be both capitalist and communist. While it lasts, Africans ought to use it to surface their own "software." It is time for Africans to dialogue and brainstorm and act for their future. To simply surrender to Chinese "hardware" and the West's "software" will leave Africa developed and Africans underdeveloped. Africans ought to exploit the state of multiple pull centers to position themselves to benefit from the renewed global interest. If not, once the source of  the "gravitational force" crystallizes -Africans will once more be left to simply offer labor and natural resources to the global market system.   

By James Shikwati.

The author is Director of Inter Region Economic Network (IREN Kenya)


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