(by Andrea Pinto) China with its foreign policy is succeeding in the far-sighted strategy of conquering not only African governments, but also many inhabitants of the black continent. This was confirmed by a poll last March by the US opinion research institute Pew Research Center, which examined China's global posture, interviewing over thirty thousand African citizens.
The poll revealed a division of the world into a political West and a global South. Sixteen of the twenty-four countries participating in the survey are highly developed economies that can be classified as belonging to the West. In these countries, negative views on China are at an all-time high. In Japan, Australia, Sweden and the United States, more than four-fifths of respondents expressed an "unfavorable" opinion of the Asian superpower.
Conversely, the People's Republic of China enjoys a lot of credit in eight emerging countries surveyed by pollsters: Asia, Latin America and above all Africa. In the three African countries, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, China is appreciated by up to 80% of those interviewed, who believe that China's foreign policy is attentive to the interests of their countries. In these four countries, the majority believe that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is doing the right thing in his approach to global politics. Citizens of Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria consider what China is building world-class in terms of technology, support to the military, universities and general improvement of living standards. The enthusiasm is given by the huge Chinese investments in Africa which collect 82% of appreciation from not only the governments but above all from the population, thus generating a consensus that is difficult to undermine with the new nascent policies that Western countries would like to put in place.
Conquering Africa
Since the beginning of the century the China it has grown from a fringe player to a major investor and trading partner for many countries, from Angola to Ethiopia. Much of the infrastructure that has sprung up across the continent has been built by Chinese companies.
In the recent past the Russia he implemented a different policy by sending Wagner mercenaries to Mali and the Central African Republic to support local dictatorships in exchange for privileges in the extraction of gold and diamond mines. Underlying, however, is also the Russian interest in increasing its regional influence to destabilize the West by opening and closing the taps of migratory flows.
- United States they are increasingly looking to Africa after decades of neglect. Joe Bidenrecently, also following the overt Chinese and Russian expansionist aims, it has decided to concentrate every diplomatic effort to bring the hand of regional influence back to the American side.
The alarm was sounded by American diplomats by the reluctance of African states (26 out of 54) to vote with the West in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Washington then organized a US-Africa summit next December and reversed the Trump administration's decision to withdraw US troops from Somalia and the Sahel.
Few are the attempts of theEuropean Union in wanting to approach a policy of approach to the African question net of the Italian initiative to promote the Mattei plan for Africa.
The immense African resources
By 2050, one in four people on Earth will be African, one third of the minerals needed for the transition to sustainable energy are found under African soil. Africans, and not just their elites, will have to try to take advantage of the potential earnings of these immense resources by implementing the processes of transformation of raw materials on the continent itself in favor of the creation of many jobs and thus improve the quality of life of the its citizens.
In the rainforest of the Congo Basin, the states of Central Africa are home to the second largest lung in the world. African capitals control a quarter of the United Nations votes. A Nigerian is the head of theWorld Trade Organization and an Ethiopian heads theWorld Health Organization.
The only certain thing in Africa are its extraordinary natural resources which include oil, gold, uranium, diamonds, rare earths and coltan, very useful materials for building high-tech products and for promoting the energy transition. Coltan hides in our mobile phone, in our computer, but also in surgical materials, photovoltaic cells, cameras, air bags and optical fibers. Three-quarters of the world's gold mines are located on this continent. More than half of manganese, chromite and cobalt are extracted in Africa as well as a third of radioactive uranium and phosphates, in addition to the large existing and unexplored hydrocarbon reserves.
In Africa, natural resources are enormous and could alone constitute a great wealth for African nations with immense benefits for many citizens who work hard in the mines. In Congo, men, women and children work tirelessly to extract coltan and cobalt from the bowels of the earth, needed to build the batteries of our electric cars.
80% of these extracted resources are then exported to other continents for further processing, thus dispersing new opportunities to encourage domestic work.
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