Africa’s eyes on Asia

largest and leading dynamic economies even in labour-flight Philippines. The region’s simplest lesson for Africa is that huge populations are vital assets if universal and high quality education reaches human resources. Its ancient civilizations did export millions of its most vigorous population into slavery to the Americas annually for over four hundred years. The survival […]

largest and leading dynamic economies even in labour-flight Philippines. The region’s simplest lesson for Africa is that huge populations are vital assets if universal and high quality education reaches human resources. Its ancient civilizations did export millions of its most vigorous population into slavery to the Americas annually for over four hundred years. The survival of ancient cultural values in Japan, India, China, Korea and Thailand, have been creatively used to build vigorous economies.
The survival of an African Diaspora in India, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji; archaeological evidence on the East African coast of the Indian Ocean, and  Asiatic peoples of the island of Madagascar, testify to ancient contacts between Eastern Asia and Africa. Evidence of more recent contacts include British deportation of populations from India to build the Mombasa to Kampala railway; work on sugar plantations in Mauritius and South Africa, and Prime Minister Nehru offering scholarships to students from Africa to study in India’s universities.
The predominance of the lowest classes among India’s deportees to eastern and southern Africa meant that higher cultural achievements were not disseminated, and the more barbaric prejudices of caste ideology poisoned relations with Africans.   Jawaharlal Nehru was, however, influenced by the example of the 1945 Pan-African conference held in Manchester under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore, Jomo Kenyatta, and W.E.B. Dubois. In March 1947, Nehru convened the ‘’Asian Relations Conference’’ in New Delhi, five months before India’s independence in August 1947. Nkrumah was, in turn, to convene the ‘’All Africa Conference’’ in 1958 as an echo of Nehru mounting a conference against Holland’s colonial war in Indonesia.  The Bandung Movement, named after an Indonesia town, rolled into a diplomatic grouping of non-aligned countries wishing to assert their right to shape international affairs independently of WARSAW Pact and NATO alliances.
 Africa moved further than Asia in forming the Organisation of African Unity which included immigrants from Arabia settled on the northern eyelid of Africa on the Mediterranean Sea; Indians/Pakistanis on the Indian Ocean islands, coast and hinterland, and immigrants from Europe.  Liberation movements across southern Africa and Algeria were inspired more by demand for social justice, equality and democratic governance than wishes to expel alien racial groups from Africa.
 The nearest grouping in Asia is the projected ‘’Regional Comprehensive Economic Cooperation (RCEP)’’ due to be realised in 2015. It will include China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the ASEAN nations. Asia and Africa are competitive in spawning a multiplicity of associations. Asia has more colourfully named ones, like ASEAN Plus Three (APT), East Asia Summit, ASSEAN Dialogue and Summit Partnership Meeting, and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).  Africa has crafted ECOWAS; the East African Community – which is crawling towards a political federation of Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, South Sudan; IGAD and the Southern African Development Community, etc.
Asia is, however, way ahead in several areas. Following the 1997 flight of Euro-American financial capital out of the region, its leaders responded with a muscular establishment of ‘’Chiang Mai Initiative’’ which has collected $ 240 billion for future protection. They learnt the lesson of being vulnerable (due their dependence on exporting their products to markets of the European Union and the United States of America), by selling products internally. By 2011, trade within Asia accounted for a huge 59 per cent of their total trade. In January 2014, the highest amounts of foreign investment into China came from Hong Kong (US dollars 8 billion); Singapore (521 million), Taiwan Province (504 million) and Japan (321 million).  The United Kingdom invested only USD 96 million; Holland 102 million and USA 369 million.
In 2011 alone, the larger Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) had inflows of US Dollars 114 billion, for a total stock of 1.1 trillion dollars. The driving mechanisms behind this inflow are a series of collective measures, notably: implementing the ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement; developing the ASEAN Economic Community, the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement, and the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services.  The refrain in Africa, by contrast, is the failure by member states to implement collective resolutions to give primacy to intra-Africa trade and investment.
Africa is not investing in Asia. Asia is extracting raw materials; refining petroleum, and building real estate. Malaysia’s SIME DARBY spent 3.1 billion dollars to buy 200,000 hectares of land in Liberia to produce palm oil and rubber; and is extracting timber from the Democratic Republic of Congo. China extracts copper and other minerals from Zambia; oil from South Sudan, and is building roads and railways in Kenya and Nigeria. Asian smugglers of ivory are sponsoring decimations of elephants and rhinos in Kenya and South Africa.
To counter China’s investment and trade in Africa, NATO is inciting armed challenges by rebel militias. Central African Republic, South Sudan, Mali, Nigeria and Libya have been hit. The United States has demanded exit from power by pro-China Joseph Kabila in DR Congo; and openly opposed Uhuru Kenyatta winning Kenya’s 2013 elections. An Africa- Asia Forum is imperative. African business groups must support major languages, notably: Mandarin, Hindu, Japanese and Indonesian being taught in African schools; and research by Africa’s universities of these countries.