The debate on China and India's growing presence in Africa has become a popular topic within academic and policy-making circles. Globally, China and India's engagements in Africa are being interrogated in order to understand the implications for both the developed world and the global South. The fact that such dialogues are taking place is an indication of how the ‘Chindia’ debate is re-aligning academic thinking. Analysing the rise of the so-called ‘Asian Drivers’ has produced scholarship across a range of fields and has forced scholars to confront realities that defy traditional categorisation.
Already, two competing schools of thought have emerged, both of them rigid and oversimplified. The first takes a rather narrow view that China and India's engagement in Africa is purely exploitative, extractive, and destructive. Their conclusion is that China and India are the ‘new imperial’ powers with a ‘colonialist project’ that will perpetuate Africa's underdevelopment. The second approach asserts that the engagement is benign and that China and India do not threaten Africa's development. Instead, proponents of this view believe that Africa's engagements with these Asian giants will assist states in achieving their development objectives. The polarisation of the debate has served only to mask the nuances inherent in both China and India's engagement with economies on the African continent.
In the following three briefings arising from work conducted at the Centre for Chinese Studies at the University of Stellenbosch (http://www.ccs.org.za/), this more nuanced approach is put into practice. Within the context of each, the respective authors allude to the fact that the Asian Drivers’ presence in Africa is both a challenge and an opportunity, raising questions about how this engagement is being defined.
Within each of the briefings are a set of issues which relate to the broader questions of aid, geopolitics and development in Africa's engagement with China and India and how this, in turn, may be altering Africa's internal landscape and its relationship with the global economy.
This process is significant in gauging what leverage, if any, African governments are using in engaging with China and India. At the core of this engagement are more fundamental questions of race and class and whether China and India are re-fueling Africa's development prospects. Finally, we discuss the implications for governance and leadership issues for African states and their citizens.
Fundamentally, China and India are challenging the presence of traditional actors in Africa. While the developed world continues to argue about what is right and good for Africa, African academics and opinion-leaders are developing their analyses as regards the Asian giants. It is the reactions of Africa's policy-makers that will determine whether China and India's engagement is a paper tiger or a lost opportunity. It is with this in mind that the following briefings (and review article by Mohan) examine the burgeoning literature and present cutting-edge empirical work in order to provide new insights into how the rise of China and India in Africa needs to be understood.