CHINA’S RENEWED ENGAGEMENT IN AFRICA: ANOTHER UNEQUAL EXCHANGE

Abstract

In our globalizing world, the art of nations and regions coming together for calculated political, economic and even socio-cultural gains is no longer strange. For the past two decades, China has been more visible, vigorous and strategically engaging Africa on many fronts leading to a growing concern from several quarters. In spite of a functional relationship with an obvious win-win deal for both parties, the benefits from the socio-economic interactions between the duo have been subjected to diverse opinions by scholars and analysts, with serious concerns raised over the seemingly lopsidedness of the benefits in favour of China. While some Africans see this as a healthy engagement of South-south cooperation for mutual benefits, others feel uncomfortable with this renewed engagement. They consider it another rebranded unequal exchange not so different from colonialism and neo-colonial interactions that will further deepen Africa’s dependence. It is against this backdrop that this paper investigates deep to uncover the ultimate gainers in this new deal especially from 2000 till date. The question for this research therefore is; what was the nature of China-Africa previous relations that is remarkably deferent from her current engagement that is generating this huge global outrage? The study is undertaken in the context of the realism and dependency theories. The paper is a qualitative study, where secondary data are sourced from works done by previous writers and analyzed to answer the questions raised. The paper concludes that this engagement, just like Africa’s previous interactions with other nations and regions of the world, holds no real gains for the continent, at best, another unequal exchange in disguise.