Chinafrica (29) Watching for PRC Influence in Africa

We felt that this coming Article from Time was useful, this is definitely not for commercial distribution.



China's New Continent
Time
By Alex Perry / Kinshasa, Cape Town and Lusaka Monday, Jul. 05, 2010



If you want to see what's wrong with Africa, take a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The size of Western Europe, with almost no paved roads, Congo is the sucking vortex where Africa's heart should be. Independent Congo gave the world Mobutu Sese Seko, who for 32 years impoverished his people while traveling the world in a chartered Concorde. His death in 1997 ushered in a civil war that killed 5.4 million people and unleashed a hurricane of rape on tens of thousands more. Today AIDS and malaria are epidemic. Congo, then, is not a place you'd normally associate with a yuppie.

Tell that to Mathis Xu, 26, a manager at a Chinese state construction company I met last year. As a languages student in Beijing, Xu took French to be different - and different is what he got. In April 2008, he was picked to translate for the Congolese government and the state-owned China Railway Engineering Corp. (CREC) in negotiations over a $9 billion deal. CREC and others would build thousands of kilometers of roads and railways, 32 hospitals, 145 health centers and two universities, an investment of $6 billion in the kind of infrastructure Congo desperately needs. As part payment, China would receive $3 billion in concessions to mine the copper and cobalt essential to its growing industries. When the deal was struck that month, Xu found himself posted to Kinshasa as CREC's liaison with the government. "We will transform this city," he exclaimed, watching CREC's giant road builders level a hillside in Kinshasa next to the Congo River. "It will be fantastic!"

As more than 300 political figures, business leaders and champions of civil society gather in Cape Town for a Global Forum sponsored by TIME and our corporate cousins at FORTUNE and CNN, China's role in Africa will be a key part of their discussions. Notwithstanding the Great Recession, many observers think the African economy is poised for great things. Fueled by a commodities boom, the continent's output grew by 5% to 7% in both 2007 and '08 and even managed 2% growth in 2009. China is not the only nation that has noticed the opportunities in Africa, but it is the one that has taken them most seriously, in ways that may change not just the region's economic landscape but its political one too.

The ambition, speed and scale of Chinese involvement in Africa is extraordinary. According to Chris Alden, author of China in Africa, two-way trade stood at $10 billion in 2000. By 2006, it was $55 billion, and in 2009 it hit $90 billion, making China Africa's single largest trading partner, supplanting the U.S., which did $86 billion in trade with Africa in 2009. Today the Chinese are pumping oil from Sudan to Angola, logging from Liberia to Gabon, mining from Zambia to Ghana and farming from Kenya to Zimbabwe. Chinese contractors are building roads from Equatorial Guinea to Ethiopia, dams from the Congo to the Nile, and hospitals and schools, sports stadiums and presidential palaces across the continent. They are buying too. Acquisitions range from a $5.5 billion stake in South Africa's Standard Bank to a $14 million investment in a mobile-phone company in Somalia.
(See one of the most ambitious public-works programs in China.)

Beijing insists it is a partner in Africa's development, delivering investment and gaining a new market for its products and new access to resources. Western businesses say China is on a resource grab. They worry that it is playing unfairly, undercutting them by paying low wages and skirting standards on safety, the environment and human rights, and coordinating commerce, assistance and diplomacy in ways impossible, not to say illegal, in the West. The truth is somewhere in between. To the extent that China is using Africa as an experiment - to try out ideas of how it might be in the world - its African adventure is worthy of close study. To do that, we must answer two questions: How is China changing Africa? And how is Africa changing China?

Let's go back to Kinshasa. Congo's got problems. The Western way of helping has been with aid - multilateral, bilateral or through self-funding religious groups and NGOs. To stem the fighting in the east, Congo has a 21,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force - MONUC - the biggest in the world. These efforts have had mixed success. The war hasn't ended, and the world's loans to Congo have helped fuel corruption. Little has been done to address Congo's infrastructure deficit. Coordinating aid among so many groups and nations remains difficult.

Enter China. Beijing doesn't do gifts; it does deals. In Congo, China's infrastructure-for-mines deal irked the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Fund argued that Congo's guarantee to China that it would recoup at least $3 billion in minerals was an IOU on Congo's national assets and therefore a new debt. That fell afoul of debt-write-off conditions, which require that the debtor take on no new loans. "If the Congolese take the Chinese deal," said a Western official familiar with the negotiations in mid-2009, "they will not get any more [Western] support." A standoff ensued. An earlier deal, in 2007 with Angola, also outraged the IMF. It had been negotiating a new loan with Angola for years, with carefully calibrated conditions to block corruption and alleviate poverty. By paying Luanda $5 billion in return for oil concessions and infrastructure contracts, China effectively made the IMF redundant. Diplomats across Africa like to say the continent offers space for everyone. But what's happening in Angola and Congo is a new scramble for Africa. Xu, the translator, has no doubt that he is engaged in an intense rivalry. "Not everybody is pleased to see us here, that's for sure. But we are not going to lose."

For all the heat, even IMF officials admit that the Chinese model for African development has some advantages. First, it's quick. Loan talks with multilateral agencies take years. The China-Angola discussions took weeks. "With the West, there are studies, analyses and bureaucracy," says the Western official. "The Chinese just ask what the government wants, and they don't question or comment or judge. They just do it." China also works as visibly as it does quickly. Drive across almost any African country today and you'll find Chinese engineers by the side of the road, sleeves rolled up, overseeing work crews. IMF officials in suits crunching numbers inside air-conditioned compounds just don't have the same kind of dash. "What we do is always in the shade," complains an IMF staffer in Africa. "Macroeconomic stability - what is that? You can't show it on camera."

Apart from aid, the Asian model of development is looking increasingly attractive. African governments look at Western economic instability over the past two years and find a better model in Asia's extraordinary growth. Special economic zones, one of the engines of China's growth for two decades, are popping up across the continent. But what really distinguishes Chinese businesspeople from their Western rivals in Africa is how risk-happy they seem. Barely a month goes by without the announcement of a new billion-dollar investment in one of the world's least stable countries. The latest? A stunning $23 billion deal in May to rebuild Nigeria's oil-refining capacity. For Chinese businesses, backing by a rich state that packages aid with commerce and has an extended time horizon cuts risk significantly. Chinese ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo Wu Zexian elaborates on this new model of development assistance. "Before, African countries never profited from their resources. Now they help them build infrastructure. Other countries say, This country has a lot of problems. We say, This country has huge potential." The key is long-term vision. "Yes, there is a risk," says Wu. "But in 50 years, we will still be here. So will Congo and the mines. Short term: sure, problems. Long term: not much risk."

So how is Africa changing China? In 2005, 49 workers died in an accident at a Chinese mining-explosives factory in Chambishi, Zambia. Populist opposition leader Michael Sata accused the government of selling out the country to Beijing, a stance that earned him wide support in the 2006 and '08 elections. His views on China are colorful and expressed in terms that many Chinese would find deeply offensive. "In every part of Zambia, the Chinaman is there, packed eight to a room," he says at his office in Lusaka. "What the Chinaman is doing, nobody knows."

Zambia is just one country in Africa where China's presence has provoked criticism. In South Africa, China found itself rebutting warnings from former President Thabo Mbeki about a new "colonial relationship." In Ethiopia, in April 2007, China had to take sides in a separatist conflict when Ogaden National Liberation Front rebels killed 74 workers, nine of whom were Chinese, at a Chinese oil-field installation. The same year, a Chinese engineer was killed in an attack on a stone-material plant in Mombasa, Kenya, and Chinese oil workers have been kidnapped by rebels in Nigeria. Chinese migrants fought pitched battles with Algerians in the capital, Algiers, last year.

So China is trying to explain itself. Chinese bankers, academics and diplomats now take star turns at economic summits across the continent. "There is a mistrust of China," says Wu. "We have to speak to be understood." China has done more than just speak. It has also, in some cases, abandoned its long-standing policy of noninterference in the internal affairs of sovereign states. Liu Guijin, China's special representative to Africa and its top diplomat on the continent, calls himself a "political troubleshooter" and says he spends a lot of time in Sudan mediating the conflict in Darfur. That sounds like a definite departure. "Perhaps we are having a flexible interpretation of noninterference," Liu replies with a laugh. After an earlier reluctance, China is now the fourth largest contributor of troops to peacekeeping operations: its soldiers are on the ground in Liberia, Sudan and Congo as part of U.N. operations there.

One man's flexibility can be another's willingness to do deals with anyone. But China is becoming more sensitive to that criticism too. In Zimbabwe, China is often accused of helping keep Robert Mugabe in power. Not so, contends a senior member of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), who says China went to "huge lengths" to ensure that MDC Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, not Mugabe, got credit for a new $950 million loan in July 2009.

Mirroring the changes taking place in China itself, China's relationship with Africa is "changing and maturing month by month as both parties better understand each other," says Geoffrey White, CEO of the trans-African conglomerate Lonrho. It was that spirit that persuaded China to drop details in its Congo deal that the IMF found so objectionable, as well as cut the infrastructure part of the deal from $6 billion to $3 billion. Liu says that while China and the West have "different priorities, different approaches and different ways of doing things, we need China and [the West] to make efforts to align their interests and policies."

There are limits to how far China will go. It will continue to pursue warm relations with all African countries, whether they are democracies or dictatorships, partly because each African country represents a potential vote against Taiwan's efforts to gain diplomatic recognition. China's commitment to nonintervention also remains strong; it has, for example, not supported the International Criminal Court in its attempts to prosecute Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes.

For all the tangled tale of aid, investment and diplomacy, what China has really brought to Africa is a change in the way that the rest of the world thinks of the continent. China has helped transform the idea of Africa from a destination for charity to a place for business. In 2006, for the first time, flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Africa were greater than those of aid - $48 billion of FDI compared to $40 billion of aid, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And the numbers keep growing. In 2008, according to the U.N. trade body UNCTAD, FDI hit $88 billion. "Trade, not aid" is the new mantra of influential African leaders like Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

China's largesse, whatever the explanations for its arrival in Africa, has left a mark. As the representative of the Zambian Mineworkers Union at the Chambishi complex where 49 workers died, Mwinbe Stanslas, 45, might be expected to sound a note of caution about China's expansion. He does not. "I've worked for the British, the Americans, a Jew and the Swiss," he says. "They all closed. The way the Chinese are investing, they're not leaving. My boy will get a job in this mine, and his boy after him. China is taking over. And I tell you, it's a blessing."


© 2010 Time Inc. All rights reserved

Job - Construction Superintendent - Railroad

Construction Superintendent - Railroad
http://www.careerstructure.com/JobSeeking/Construction-Superintendent---Railroad_job47429335

Location:
Liberia jobs
Salary:
$10k USD per month + Package
Date posted:
14/05/2010 15:40
Sector:
Oil / Gas / Power jobs
Job role:
Site manager jobs
Job type:
Permanent jobs
Company:
The Highfield Company
Contact:
Toby Ball
Ref:
CareerStructure/TJ-CM-Liberia
Job ID:
47429335

My client is one of the world’s leading civil engineering and project management companies. Having extensive knowledge in the international construction arena they currently focus on a variety of projects including; Oil, Gas, Building, Petrochemical, civil works, rail and infrastructure.

They have recently started work on a major railroad revitalisation project in Liberia, Western Africa. The project itself requires a senior rail superintendent who has extensive experience in the construction and rehabilitation of rail projects, ideally in the mining sectors.

You will also have an in depth understanding Africa and working on major civils projects in the region. Liberia is classed as a hardship location and you will need to be able to drive projects forward and get local staff working together.

This role is available for an immediate start and offers a rotation of 70 days on 15 days off. On top of this you will be supplied with a comprehensive package as well.

For more information please contact Toby Ball on 0044 2380 554 334 or toby@thehighfieldcompany.com

###

Interesting, EarlyBird

Raping of Liberia’s minerals?

People,

We seem to be on a bumpy road, with ups and downs coming at us fast. We are in a good news bad news cycle with regard to natural resources. We cannot vouch for the veracity of the report (below) from Southern Times Africa, but it is quite serious.

American Mining Associates has been in the news for years. Is there anyone out there that can corroborate this stuff?

Thanks.
Anthropogenicagent

------------------------------

Raping of Liberia’s minerals
Southern Times Africa
Oct 29, 2009

The raping, observers say, is ignoring recent announcement by the Sirleaf Administration that all inherited concessionaire agreements and rights were suspended for review.

According to them the raping was going on at the time the United Nations, EU, and other members of the donor community are adamant that they would contribute to efforts to jumpstart the Liberian economy only if Liberia showed indications that it has control over the exploration and exploitation of its mineral and forest resources and that the revenue generated from such economic activities would benefit the majority of Liberia's impoverished population.

Perhaps it is in realisation of where the international community and the Sirleaf Administration stand on the issue of mineral tapping versus appropriate legislation that prompted the locals in the Kungbor District to express outrage, this week, at the wild abandon with which local certificate-brandishing miners and the American Mining Associates (AMA) were ravaging and ripping diamonds and other hard currency earners with no regards for the welfare of operation areas.

Mohammed Swaray, a local community development chairman, is outraged over an alleged illicit diamond mining operations of the American Mining Associates (AMA) in Kungbor District in Gbarpolu County.

Like Mohammed, several citizens of the district are also not happy about the AMA activities. The citizens said it is preposterous that AMA continues to carry out mining activities in their district while the United Nations' ban on diamond and timber industries is still in force.

According to them, AMA was indiscriminately and illicitly exploiting the diamond deposits in the region especially near Kungbor, a town along Liberia's border with Sierra Leone.

Each day, they told our reporter, gigantic earthmoving and mineral washing equipments belonging to AMA were seen gulping precious gems from the land without reference to them or regard for their welfare. "What is perplexing about the massive digging of the diamond here is that Government is not doing anything to arrest the illicit mining," a youthful resident in Kungbor told The Analyst.

"In fact, it is a matter of time before AMA begins razing some villages that prospectors believe are sitting on diamonds. There are threats by the company to relocate villages forcibly so that it can have access to what it claims to be gems upon which the villages are situated," said Sarnor Kollie who called himself 'concerned citizen'.

What was angering most citizens, according to Kollie, was that individuals claiming to be agents of the Ministry of Lands and Mines were aiding and abetting the raping of the gems without bothering to explain to the locals what was happening and how they would benefit in keeping with the new political and economic dispensation that the Sirleaf Administration has been preaching.

The residents specifically accused Charles Dagoseh, Director for Mines, and James Konuwa, Assistant Minister for Mines of the Ministry of Lands Mines and Energy of aiding and abetting the AMA exploits.

Town Chief Vaniba Sheriff told The Analyst during a day-long investigative tour conducted by The Analyst over the weekend that AMA headed by Gene Bryge and a Lebanese, Alieyou Ussuf, and his Liberian wife Muna Ussef are involved in illicit mining, an act the chief described as a violation to the UN security sanction on diamonds.

Chief Vaniba said they are operating in the Liberian forest with the alleged approval of Dagoseh and Konuwa, officials of the ministry. "The only thing that is hurting me is that AMA claims it has bought the entire town and therefore request that citizens vacate or be expelled,"

the chief said. "Where does this American company expect us to move to? Is it serious for us to leave the town of our forefathers and be displaced in our own county?

Government needs to come out with an investigation and a solution in this serious matter. If the Government feels that sanctions hovering over the country are not important, we the citizens matter." He said despite the illicit mining activities in the county, the AMA has refused to help the locals improve their livelihood by employing them.

According to him, the management instead has chosen to employ Sierra Leonean, Malians, and Mauritanians. Mr. Sheriff said on several occasions the citizens attempted to disrupt the operation of illicit mining in the county but that Messrs Dargoseh and Konuwa, upon receiving the information about the citizens' plans, immediately dispatched personnel of the Liberian National Police to provide security for the AMA operation.

"Mr. Journalist, go and see the sophisticated mining equipment that AMA is using to mine diamonds in the district despite the fact that Liberia is under UN diamond sanctions," the chief said. "We want the president to know about the illicit mining activities in this district. Go and see the open holes they dug and left behind and see how many more they dig daily and think what will happen when this continues for the next five to ten years."

Indicating that AMA was not doing anything in the interest of citizens despite the exploitation, he said the company failed to construct the drinking well it promised residents two years ago.

He said without doing anything to address the failure to make good its promise to the residents, employees of AMA were, without remorse of conscience, drawing drinking water from a hand-pump installed by German Argo, an international non-governmental organization operating in the area. According him, residents of the district have realized too late and at their disadvantage that AMA was using the well promise as a cover to conduct mineral exploration in the area. He said haven't noticed that no diamonds were at the location marked for the hand pump AMA began the damaging of gravesites in search of diamonds. "They even dug up the recreation center built for our children," he said.

Raymond Kpoto, Chairman of the Kungbor District Youth Association, said the operations of AMA were intended to endanger the assistance the international community promised to provide for the Sirleaf Administration, adding, "My county will be seen as a defiant society amongst the comity of nations." The AMA claimed to have built bridges, schools, markets, shelters of the locals, offices of immigration, but nothing has been done in the district, he said.

"The AMA alleged that they have purchased the entire clan from the Lands and Mines Ministry. Because of that, they put their security forces on the alert to arrest and detain anyone caught mining in the area.

Sometime their security people are assisted by some officers of National Police who are acting on the directive of assistant minister-designate James Konuwa," said one resident.

He said the AMA security guards, headed by one Eric Doe III, were wearing army uniforms and carrying handcuffs. According to some residents who spoke with our reporter, security guards of AMA were in the habit of ill-treating and intimidating those who dare mine diamond or challenge their right to mine in the area. "I am not in support of the AMA operation. They came here before the war, but they failed to do something positive for this district," said Kungbor District Development Chairman Mohammed Swaray. He added, "We expect any company besides the AMA to engage in development initiative that will help the county. In fact nobody or company is suppose to mines because Liberia is right now under sanction on diamonds." Some illicit miners in the area, according to the residents, are Abdul Kamara a Sierra Leonean who said he is operating on the license of his boss, Bakasa Jarbie, a Malian.

The AMA Manager, Gene Bryge, has meanwhile denied allegation that his company was mining diamond in the district. He however confirmed allegations that the AMA security guards were arresting 'illegal miners' and claimed to have invested million of dollars in the development program of the county without saying in what he invested the money.

Ministers Dagosi and Konowa, when asked for comment, referred our reporter to the minister proper. "We can not talk now until the minister gives us the authority to speak" they told our reporter. Investigation continues.

© 2009 Southern Times Africa

###

Shift from Blood Diamonds to Dirty Gold

By their own press release last week Venga Aerospace Systems Inc. announced that its mining affiliate, "Global Mineral Investments, LLC (GMI), has now shipped the main mining dredge and related equipment and supplies that will be used in GMI's gold dredging operation that will be carried on in those portions of the Upper Tartweh River flowing through GMI's GoldMatta concession located in the Sanquin Mining Zone, Sinoe County, Republic of Liberia."

Great

So GMI could start the dredging operation before the end of the first week of April.Gold mining remains one of the dirtiest industries in the world, and we should keep our eyes open with concern. In the absence of indications to the contrarily, does GMI expect to hide their dirty deeds in the flow of the rainy season?

We are not trying to negatively impugn GMI’s motives, but let us see their mining and reclamation plan. Accountability is all we ask.The state of the art demands that environmental considerations play an important role in the development and exploitation of all mineral resources in the Republic of Liberia. GMI is busy on the site now, but let us ask:

Where is plan to deal with water quality, air quality, land degradation, visual impact, noise, flora and fauna, rare and endangered species, and cultural resources?

Where is transparency related to the chemical extraction processes: the types and amount of wasted produces (solids, liquids, and gases)?

Where is the preparation for the short and long term stability of waste products, alteration of minerals and metal by the process, the process water balance and the need for discharge, and the method of waste disposal and treatment?

Sanquin district is a long distance from the ocean, imagine the impact. Dirty or clean, which is it going to be?

Anthropogenicagent