By Hannah Ryder, Deputy Country Director, United Nations Development Program China
Just a few weeks ago, my sister got married. The wedding was beautiful, her husband is an absolutely wonderful man from Uganda, and my two other sisters and I were bridesmaids. But there was one problem. I found myself comparing her wedding to mine seven years ago. Either thinking “Oh, I wish we had done our flowers like that” or “I wish we had practiced our first dance a bit more”. It was when I turned to my husband to tell him yet another comparison that he reminded me of a famous phrase first coined by Mark Twain in the late 1800’s: “comparison is the death of joy”. And in so many words, he helped me curb my comparative reflection.
But comparison is an easy trap to fall in, whether you’re an individual, group, country – and even a region. Here in China last week, comparison was in the air as the first ever meeting between Chinese government leaders and Ministers of CELAC – a group of 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries formed in 2011 – got underway. The comparison was with another region – Africa.
Showing posts with label Investment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Investment. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Translation Tuesday: China’s Follow-Up Strategy for the Prospective African Free Trade Zone
By Laiyin Yuan
Author: Shao Zhiyuan
Translator: Laiyin Yuan
Published on: 08/18/2014
Source: China Industrial Economy News
Original text (in Chinese): http://www.cien.com.cn/html/report/14081882-1.htm
A strong and united Africa has always been a dream for many Africans, and the upcoming African Free Trade Zone would be a milestone for its regional integration. However, how would it influence African countries and their Chinese investors? Would Africa still be a “fairytale land” for Chinese companies under a multilateral economic framework? The Chinese say: of course there would be risks, but we should focus more on potential opportunities.
--- Laiyin Yuan (translator)
On August 16, Stergomena Lawrence Tax, executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), said that if everything goes well, the African Free Trade Zone (AFTZ) will be established in 2015, a year earlier than originally planned.
Meanwhile, on August 17 and 18 the 34th SADC Summit was also held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. During the conference, national leaders from 15 member countries discussed SADC’s economic restructuring strategy with the AFTZ-related negotiations in particular.
Author: Shao Zhiyuan
Translator: Laiyin Yuan
Published on: 08/18/2014
Source: China Industrial Economy News
Original text (in Chinese): http://www.cien.com.cn/html/report/14081882-1.htm
A strong and united Africa has always been a dream for many Africans, and the upcoming African Free Trade Zone would be a milestone for its regional integration. However, how would it influence African countries and their Chinese investors? Would Africa still be a “fairytale land” for Chinese companies under a multilateral economic framework? The Chinese say: of course there would be risks, but we should focus more on potential opportunities.
--- Laiyin Yuan (translator)
On August 16, Stergomena Lawrence Tax, executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), said that if everything goes well, the African Free Trade Zone (AFTZ) will be established in 2015, a year earlier than originally planned.
Meanwhile, on August 17 and 18 the 34th SADC Summit was also held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. During the conference, national leaders from 15 member countries discussed SADC’s economic restructuring strategy with the AFTZ-related negotiations in particular.
Monday, June 17, 2013
SADC: Tomorrow: U.S. Competitiveness in Africa w/ Members of Congress
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Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Wait, so Structural Adjustment WORKED for Africa?
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Link of the Day: Sweet and Sour: China in Africa, Beyond the Headlines
Sino-Africa scholar Deborah Brautigam has an interview with the University of Melbourne's Up Close program about her research. This caught my eye:
ERIC VAN BEMMELAlso, if you are on twitter, I heartily recommend following Anne Sherman (@annesher07) who took some great photos of Guangzhou and it's African population and put them up on her instagram. Sherman is a Sino-Africa expert in her own right and the Social Media Manager for the The China Africa Project.
Yes, you’ve written about these infrastructure projects, promised but not delivered and they are getting beyond the memorandum of understanding, it's not always an easy thing. (Emphasis mine)
DEBORAH BRAUTIGAM
Exactly. Now, I would caution though about calling these promises or pledges. What we are talking about is a long series of negotiations for any kind of project, whether it's an investment or something that will be financed by a Chinese bank. So there's an initial memorandum of understanding and one expert who works on these issues, not just with regard to China but in Africa more generally, says that only about 3 per cent of any memorandum of understanding ever reach completion and actually become a project. So we are talking about a lot of companies, a lot of banks going around and having initial discussions about something and saying, yes, we are interested, but then getting to the final point where something actually happens is very difficult. One of the reasons is that these products demand feasibility studies. The Chinese bank doesn’t want to actually put the money up until it sees whether or not the project can repay the loan. So this has happened over and over again, the Chinese do a feasibility study and then they go, hmm, this product doesn’t look quite as profitable as it did in the beginning and we don’t think we are going to finance it or we don’t think we are going to invest in it and that's natural. That actually happens all the time and it happens all the time with western companies but it just doesn’t get the headlines because nobody is tracking western interest the way they are tracking Chinese interest. So it seems as though the Chinese are making promises and then not following up but I think it is much more realistic to look at this as the natural progression of negotiations on any kind of project. (Emphasis mine)
ERIC VAN BEMMEL
The lesson to be drawn here is we need to be sceptical about such agreements actually turning into projects. (Emphasis mine)
DEBORAH BRAUTIGAM
Yes, and that's not a new thing. It's not a new thing for the Chinese. It's not a new thing for us but we can't take a headline as an actual project and that's a point I would like to drive home. (Emphasis mine)
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Reading: The Dragon's Gift
UPDATE: I finished finished reading Deborah Brautigam's The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa. I wrote an earlier post describing some of my initial thoughts and I just finished something a little more substantive.
Prof. Deborah Brautigam has written a text that should be on the shelf of anyone interested in Sino-African relations, plain and simple. Professor and Director of the International Development Program at Johns Hopkins University/School of Advanced International Studies, Brautigam has more than three decades of experience studying development, specifically African development, and she is one of the world's foremost experts on Sino-African relations, having been interested in Chinese aid projects to Africa since the 1980s. Looking primarily to debunk some of the more excessive stories being written about China's presence in Africa, she succeeds in that mission. However, she also either ignores or does not deal with evidence that contradicts her thesis, and she does both in a way that made me wary of her overall research. However, even with that said, her research and arguments are compelling enough to make up for those problems.
Prof. Deborah Brautigam has written a text that should be on the shelf of anyone interested in Sino-African relations, plain and simple. Professor and Director of the International Development Program at Johns Hopkins University/School of Advanced International Studies, Brautigam has more than three decades of experience studying development, specifically African development, and she is one of the world's foremost experts on Sino-African relations, having been interested in Chinese aid projects to Africa since the 1980s. Looking primarily to debunk some of the more excessive stories being written about China's presence in Africa, she succeeds in that mission. However, she also either ignores or does not deal with evidence that contradicts her thesis, and she does both in a way that made me wary of her overall research. However, even with that said, her research and arguments are compelling enough to make up for those problems.
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