EDWIGE CHEN

Foreign Policy Report

Topic : Chinafrica

In nowadays society, global demand for energy keeps on rising.
In this competition to get long-term energy supplies, major players such as United States, Japan and European Union have found a new challenger: China.
Since China’s rapid growth is about 9% per year, it has to find the necessary supplier to its demand in order to sustain its economic growth.
Hence, China turned to Africa.

First of all, why Africa?
Africa, which is composed of the poorest countries in the world, which did not get out of poverty even though with the help of many organisations and an enormous amount of money since so many years, which also has one of the highest mortality rate in the world, so with all these reasons quoted above, why China chose Africa?
Undoubtedly, Africa is the continent with the most resources and raw materials on earth. China, a growing developing country which requires massive energy to keep going its growth, met Africa, which was craving so much for infrastructures and investment. This situation looks like a win-win situation.
Recently, the term of “Chinafrica” became more and more popular, especially because China’s presence in the African continent is more important than ever. This term is the title of a book written by Serge Michel and Michel Beuret, which aim is to make a parallel with the term “Francafrique” (“Francafrica”), used for French’s colonisation.

With no doubt, China and Africa’s partnership has brought a lot of success to both of them. In ten years, China has done more for Africa than other western countries.
Since China is the second largest consumer of oil, China is mainly interested in oil (Angola, Sudan, Congo are the main oil suppliers), but also in diamond and copper. As a result of this flourishing relationship, China became the second trading partner of Africa, just right after US and before Great Britain and France.
African countries also prefer to