https://www.voanews.com/a/key-chinese-belt-and-road-projects-underway-in-africa/7767507.html
As FOCAC gets underway in Beijing in the next few days, it is not lost on its purpose of “equal consultation, enhancing understanding, expanding consensus, strengthening friendship and promoting cooperation”. It is indeed saddening that the promise of BRI is not being optimised in Africa. My theory is that it is not just the exploitive intent of the Chinese though natural, that is at fault as the Americans would like the world to believe, but the corruptive and light fingered nature of African public officials that is the more corrosive factor. How can anyone explain away that large contracts have been entered into for projects without bankable feasibility studies or business plans nor preliminary design? How contracts for humongous amounts are single sourced with no justification for the potential loss of value for money? These then are having difficulties passing “smell tests” when subjected to stringent integrity tests.
In the days of yore, the civil servants ensured that the political ambitions of the leaders were achieved by ensuring due process and consistency with best practices but we seem to have lost all that.
In my native Nigeria alone, there are 4/5 major railway projects amounting to some $25bn capital spend that have stalled most likely because of suspicions around their procurement. Similar issues or disputes have arisen in the power sector such that progress is hard to discern. Is it in the petroleum sector that we have spent billions of dollars rehabilitating refineries that have not produced a liter of petrol in over 20 years?
These are major projects that would have changed the course of history in Africa and unless we radically depart from our current approach to governance, we will continue groping in the dark.
Saddest of course is that no public officials tend to make jail in Africa even when courts in foreign lands jail their businessmen and officials for corruption in Africa. Halliburton, Siemens, P&ID, Malabu etc are some scandals involving public officials for which there is a deadly silence in Nigerian official circles.
As the world’s key source of raw materials, Africa has a lot to leverage. It is however sad and strange to see our leaders arriving in foreign capitals individually with begging bowls and not together. Everyone of them negotiating their piddling deals not from a position of strength but of weakness. Poverty of leadership has indeed been weaponised metaphorically speaking.
The conflicts in Nigeria and the DRC perhaps Africas most endowed must have something to do with their mineral wealth. The weapons that pour into these countries in return for minerals instead of machinery and equipment that would aid development are indicative of neo imperialist designs. Africa needs to wake up and the leaders, shine their eyes.