Africans are not 'organic traffic cones'
The Blip Report for Tuesday, October 8th 2024
I read a very important and informative story, by David Hendin, about the United States and Africa, and about the proposed Lobito Corridor railway project in the DRC and in Angola - ‘If the United States wants to compete with China for influence in Africa, it must first learn to look at Africans in the right light’, and Mr. Hendin first, talks about the old ‘western’ model of investment in Africa :
“the preferred economic model for Africa is for the continent to produce only cheap, unprocessed industrial raw materials and (inedible) cash crops. In this model, once African countries extract these raw materials from the ground, they must export them as cheaply and quickly as possible.”
and then, he compares it to the new ‘Chinese’ model of investment in Africa:
“for the first time in known human history, an external power has invested huge sums of money in Africa to build infrastructure to promote economic development on the continent, rather than simply to extract Africa's resources at a faster pace and with less local indigenous participation.”
And now, we can look at the Lobito corridor railway project, in that light.
Instead of going east to link up Congo with the new railway network of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, the US-led project wants to go west ‘through 1300 kilometers of dense Angolan rainforest’ to the Chinese-built port of Lobito:
“Its [i.e. the US project’s] purpose is obviously to transport Congolese minerals from the mining area to the port as quickly as possible and minimize contact with local residents. This idea is still the old way of investing in Africa in the past.”
But what about the Chinese investment in the Lobito port?
“The [Chinese] project, which is divided into five construction phases, is expected to create 12,000 jobs, $3 billion in annual turnover and $400 million in annual export revenue for Angola.”
And so we read of Mr. Hendin’s conclusion:
“If the United States wants to counter the enormous influence and reputation that China has built on the continent, it must drag its Africa strategy into the 21st century. The United States needs a new model of economic engagement that recognizes Africans as aspiring people who have the right to a good life, not as ‘organic traffic cones’ that must be avoided when transporting 200,000 tons of copper ore in a straight line through the Angolan rainforest every year.”
I just had to laugh (and cry) when Mr. Hendin says that we, westerners, should not look at an African as ‘an organic traffic cone’. And I wondered why, today, we are seen as having gotten that bad?!?!
But then I read a very interesting story about the way that Americans used to be seen, - ‘A missionary, a healer and a friend of China’, that is about the life of Dr. Edward Bliss, who, after graduating from Yale School of Medicine in 1892, travelled to China to spend the next 40 years to serve the Chinese people as a doctor - his clinic, on average, saw 70 patients a day.
“In order to improve the conditions of the clinic, Bliss used his own earnings and collected funds to build the first Western medicine hospital in Shaowu in 1898. The hospital is now called the Shaowu General Hospital, the best hospital in the area.”
Dr. Bliss is still remembered in China today -
“On June 28 last year, President Xi Jinping, in a congratulatory message to the ‘Bond with Kuliang: 2023 China-US People-to-People Friendship Forum’, noted the fact that the last words of Bliss before death were ‘I love the Chinese’. One year later, on June 28, 2024, an exhibition dedicated to Bliss officially opened to the public in Shaowu.”
And because today is the first day of Han Lu, in the Chinese solar calendar, known as part of the transition of autumn to winter, I watched a wonderful video of Hanlu - Cold Dew, about Shanghai and the making and eating of crab soup dumplings and of crab meatballs, and about the raising of hairy crabs at Yangching Lake, and of watching and listening to classic Kunqu opera songs.