Dambisa Moyo Examines China’s Interests in Africa in Winner Take All
Dambisa Moyo, the outspoken and sometimes controversial economist from Zambia, who focuses on macroeconomy and global affairs, recently made further startling pronouncements. While this mat not surprise her fans, it will continue to perplex those who question what they perceive to be her simplistic views on major issues. In an op-ed for The New York Times, Moyo gives her opinion on China’s expansion into Africa, the subject of her latest book, Winner Take All: China’s Race for Resources and What It Means for the World:
In June 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a speech in Zambia warning of a “new colonialism” threatening the African continent. “We saw that during colonial times, it is easy to come in, take out natural resources, pay off leaders and leave,” she said, in a thinly veiled swipe at China.
In 2009, China became Africa’s single largest trading partner, surpassing the United States. And China’s foreign direct investment in Africa has skyrocketed from under $100 million in 2003 to more than $12 billion in 2011
In an interview with Moyo, The Guardian’s Decca Aitkenhead expresses her belief that, while Moyo’s critics will continue to harangue her for her simplistic and alarmist approach, what she says actually makes a lot of sense:
Massive geopolitical shifts seldom announce themselves with a bang. They tend instead to creep up slowly, until it’s hard to be sure exactly when they began. I remember going to buy some steel about six years ago, and being staggered by the price. “Ah,” the man in the hardware store explained, “it’s the Chinese, you see. They’re buying up so much steel, the price has gone through the roof.” The last time I visited my brother, all the lead had been stripped from his garden shed – the second theft in two months – thanks to rocketing lead prices. And it must have been around the time of the Iraq war that I recall first hearing someone say the next big war would be fought over water. At the time the prediction had sounded far-fetched; these days, it’s a commonplace.
Book details
- How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices Ahead by Dambisa Moyo
EAN: 9781846142352
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- Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo and Niall Ferguson
EAN: 9780374532123
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- Winner Take All: China’s Race for Resources and What It Means for the World by Dambisa Moyo
EAN: 9780465028283
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Photo courtesy The Guardian
Apr
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