Africa Isn’t Being Re-Colonized || Noah Smith

There’s a big difference between military conquest and development with overseas capital and know-how.

A number of African countries appear to be in the early stages of their own industrial revolution, promising to lift hundreds of millions out of grinding poverty. Much of the impetus for this transformation is coming from Chinese investment

But when confronted with this news, some well-meaning Westerners -- as well as some wary Africans -- worry that what’s really happening is a new form of colonialism. This worry especially crops up with respect to China and its large, well-publicized infrastructure projects, but it also sometimes gets applied to independent Chinese-owned factories operating on the continent, or just to foreign investment in general. If foreigners are profiting from Africa’s rise, some reason, that can only mean the continent’s resources are being extracted on unfair terms.

This concern is natural, given Africa’s tragic recent history of foreign conquest, occupation and exploitation. And in the case of China’s infrastructure projects, the worry may be justified. But privately owned factories in Africa are not a colonial project.

...

Here's a post by @MacroPoloChina on how most of the Chinese companies investing in Africa are of the private variety (and hence unlikely to be of the neo-colonialist type):https://t.co/ta435jhxmF pic.twitter.com/tSXuZLrHqt

— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) July 15, 2019