Articles fulminating against Hailu Shawel’s signing of the code of conduct proliferate on Ethiopian websites. For these articles, the unilateral and hasty agreement with Meles while other opposition groups, such as Medrek, are still in contention about some important issues, constitutes nothing less than betrayal on Hailu’s part. This act of sabotage suggests, according to some articles, a prior agreement with the Meles regime promising Hailu a post in the future government in exchange for his contribution in dividing and weakening the opposition.
I am not yet ready to endorse this kind of analysis, though I admit that the agreement looks fishy indeed. I also wonder why those who used to oppose Hailu’s leadership of the AEUO are surprised at the “betrayal”: not only they should have expected his reversal, but also they should have seen it as a blessing in disguise finally precipitating his discredit among his own followers. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the agreement rests on a common interest: as it stands, it keeps Birtukan in jail to the delight of the EPRDF, Hailu, and his cronies; it also handicaps the rising multinational opposition known as Medrek.
Rather than adding to the general consternation, I would like to express my surprise at the ferocity of the criticisms, as it seems to reveal an expectation that I thought people had put behind them once and for all. To give a huge importance to negotiations with Meles strikes me as a naïve attitude. If anything, the reversal of the 2005 elections, the violent crackdown of protesters, and the imprisonment of the leaders of Kinjit have underscored the futility of reaching agreement with the present regime. So long as an autonomous power able to enforce mutually agreed documents is not in place, negotiations mean nothing. Those who blame Hailu Shawel seem to say that a fair and just election is possible in Ethiopia provided that the correct agreement is reached. In other words, it is hoped that tough negotiations will force Meles to respect the agreement. Is there an Ethiopian of sane mind really ready to give Meles such a vote of confidence?
The only broker that could have forced Meles to stick to the agreement is the international community. That is why some commentators argue that the signing of the code of conduct removed the possibility of obtaining more concessions in the direction of fair election from Meles through the pressure of the international community, not to mention the fact that said agreement with a major opposition group provides him with some “democratic” respectability.
I find the argument weak. The 2005 elections have taught us that the international community is unwilling to accompany its verbal condemnations with concrete punitive measures. Meles know this more than anybody else, especially now that the American administration seems again reluctant to add deeds to words. As to the democratic appearance that Meles might put on, I don’t think that Western governments are so gullible that they will fail to see that the agreement is yet another maneuver to divide and cripple the opposition.
Does this mean that the best option is not to participate in elections that we know are but fake? Such a conclusion would miss that elections have their own dynamics that even the most repressive regimes cannot totally control. They create events that lead to unforeseen outcomes, as witnessed by the 2005 elections and the recent Iranian elections. Moreover, fake elections generate deep frustrations that compel people to look for alternative forms of expression, perhaps even to show their discontent through non-cooperative forms of resistance, such as strikes and demonstrations.
My position is thus the following: let us continue to play the game of elections, but without creating the illusion that something decisive that would have brought victory was jeopardized by Hailu’s “betrayal.” Such an implication entertains the illusory hope that fair elections are possible under the TPLF. Instead, the elections should serve us to emphasize the extent to which the TPLF government does not even respect its own constitution. For, negotiations would have been unnecessary if the constitution had any force of law. Repeated exposures of the regime’s inconsistencies can convince people to try alternative means so as to have their voice respected.
One thing is clear: everything depends on the goal that each opposition party sets to itself. If an opposition party targets the toppling of the TPLF, then I understand that it sees negotiations as a means of creating the optimal condition for its success. Unfortunately, such a goal is unrealistic: assuming that victory is still possible, it will only lead to a repeat of the 2005 crackdown. By contrast, if an opposition party pursues the modest goals of increasing its seats in the parliament and becoming an opposing partner of the government rather than an expeller standing outside it, I understand that such a party sees negotiations with the TPLF from a different angle. This political option looks more realistic: it is based on a long-term strategy of being part of the government that it means to influence while strengthening the party and removing insecurity from those who now control power in the case of a loss of majority in the distant future.
I am not suggesting that Hailu Shawel has opted for the long-term strategy for the simple reason that I have no information concerning his motives. I raise the issue because I want us to be clear about our expectations. Put otherwise, when opposition parties decide to participate in elections, they must tell us clearly what their objectives are. If, under the present conditions, their main objective is to oust the TPLF government by winning the majority of votes, I tell them that they are obviously using the wrong method, and so should adjust the means to the end by, for instance, embracing armed struggle. Hence my question to those who castigate Hailu Shawel: What do you expect from the coming elections?
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — Six months before a crucial election, one of Ethiopia’s small band of opposition MPs has a simple question: How can he campaign for votes when he cannot even hold a public meeting or meet voters freely?
Negaso Gidada, a former president of Ethiopia and now an independent MP, tried to visit his constituents in southern Ethiopia recently. It was an arduous journey.
He was not permitted to hold any meetings in public places. He was kept under surveillance, and his hosts were interrogated. Those who met him were questioned by police. He was given no coverage in the media.
“People are so intimidated that they are afraid even to speak to me on the phone,” he says. “Campaigning is totally impossible. How can it be a fair election?”
Four years ago, foreign election observers concluded that the last Ethiopian election had been rigged. Opposition supporters took to the streets, and an estimated 30,000 people were arrested in a crackdown on dissent. Nearly 200 people were killed when Ethiopia’s police opened fire on the protesters. Dozens of opposition leaders and activists were jailed.
This time, with an election scheduled for May, the ruling party is taking no chances. Ethiopia is sliding deeper into authoritarian controls. Police agents and informers are keeping a close eye on the population, with harsh restrictions imposed on opposition leaders and civil society groups.
The election matters because Ethiopia is strategically important. It is the second most populous country in sub-Saharan African, and a key U.S. ally in the Horn of Africa, where Ethiopian troops have repeatedly intervened in Somalia. And it is one of the biggest recipients of Canadian foreign aid, with $90-million donated by Canada in 2007 alone.
Mr. Negaso, who was president of Ethiopia from 1995 to 2001 but later split from the ruling party of autocratic Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has managed to hold only a few public meetings as he travelled around the country in the past year.
One meeting in August was broken up by dozens of thugs, including some whom he recognized from the ranks of the ruling party. They shouted, whistled, grabbed the microphone and prevented people from speaking. “We were chased out,” Mr. Negaso said.
In another district, he said, the police told opposition leaders that they needed a special permit if they wanted to use a megaphone.
Even his e-mail messages and phone calls are monitored, he said. But he refuses to be intimidated. “If you are afraid,” he says, “you can’t do anything.”
Another opposition leader, Seye Abraha, is a former close ally of Mr. Meles from the early 1970s when they were both young revolutionaries fighting the military junta known as the Derg, which they finally overthrew in 1991. He became the defence minister but was jailed for six years on corruption allegations after a falling out with Mr. Meles. Now he says he is under constant surveillance, his phones and e-mails monitored, his movements constantly followed by security agents.
“In restaurants, spies sit close to me, and you can’t ask them to leave,” he says. “There is no private life, no private property. And there is nowhere you can complain. You can go to the police, but they will do nothing.”
In a desperate effort to communicate with voters, the opposition sometimes tries to distribute cellphones to its supporters. If it sends campaign letters to voters, the letters must be kept hidden from security agents. “Families are afraid to pass the letters from one to another,” said Bulcha Demeksa, an MP who heads an opposition party.
Earlier this year, eight of Ethiopia’s opposition parties formed a coalition with Mr. Negaso and Mr. Seeye in a bid to defeat the ruling party, but the move has been little help. “If tomorrow I go to my constituency and speak to people under a tree, the police will disrupt it,” Mr. Bulcha said.
The International Crisis Group, an independent think tank based in Brussels, says the Ethiopian government is controlling its population with neighbourhood committees, informers, media controls and high-tech surveillance.
“Thanks to Chinese electronic monitoring-and-control software, the government is able to block most opposition electronic communications when it desires,” the group said in a recent report.
“Few journalists, academics, human-rights advocates and intellectuals dare to publicly criticize the government. While self-censorship existed before the 2005 elections, it has now become widespread.”
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — It wasn’t famine that killed Jamal Ali’s mother. She died in a cholera outbreak that swept through their Ethiopian village when at last the rains came. Twenty-five years later Jamal, now a parent himself, is lining up for handouts in a food distribution centre in Harbu, Amhara, His prematurely aged face, hollow with hunger, creases further when asked about this unwelcome return. “It is a very bitter feeling. No one likes this begging. I am ashamed,” he said.
Up a steep, dusty track from Harbu to Chorisa village the tiny, duncoloured terraced fields bare witness to the third poor harvest in a row. This village is supposed to be an aid showpiece but even here fields of failed cereal crops are being turned over to lean-looking cattle.
A villager strips an ear of the cereal crop tef and cups the inedible seed in her hand for a moment before casting into a relentlessly sky. It’s not that the rains didn’t come, she said — they came just at the wrong time. The field was supposed to yield 500 kilograms of cash crop; now it might just save a few cows from starvation.
The UN warns that 6.2 million Ethiopians will need some sort of food aid in the coming months. The Government also seems highly sensitive to the idea that it needs help. Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister, would rather the world took notice of his position representing Africa in the climate change negotiations next month than his country’s never-ending dependency on food aid.
In Addis Ababa Ethiopian and Western officials voice disapproval of doom-laden reports that fail to acknowledge the progress being made, or the differences in scale between the famine of 1984, which killed a million people, and the situation today.
In private they acknowledge that Mr Meles and his Government are deliberately frustrating and delaying official assessments of the scale of the country’s humanitarian needs and blocking access to some areas where the situation is worst.
The latest UN estimate, to be released this Friday, is due to revise its figure upwards to nine million for those who will need help. Arguing that the definition of those in need is too broad — it includes those who are in a position to sell assets to buy food — the Government wants to change the way the figures are calculated to reduce that figure to 5 million.
Donor countries and the UN fear that counting only the truly desperate is a ploy that risks understating the true scale of the crisis. There are also allegations that food aid is being withheld from the regime’s opponents.
Criticism of Ethiopia has been muted by its success in improving local healthcare and expanding education, alongside its strategic importance in the fight against Islamic extremism in the Horn of Africa. Britain, which gives the country £200 million a year, and is Ethiopia’s second-largest bilateral donor, is stepping up the pressure on what was once regarded as its showpiece partner in Africa, amid growing concerns about what could happen in the coming months.
“The Government has just got to embrace the crisis and not be frightened of the statistics,” Gareth Thomas, a minister with the Department for International Development, said yesterday. “It is different from 1984 but there’s still huge need. There’s got to be a recognition that if we are going to stop children from being malnourished and keep people alive we have got to have accurate information and we’ve got to have it in a timely manner.”
Speaking before a meeting with Mr Meles, Mr Thomas said that he also intended to raise credible reports that aid was being withheld from opponents, but insisted he was satisfied that British aid was getting through. His main message, however, was that the Government had not yet grasped the urgent need for reform. The population, about 35 million in 1984, is now about 80 million and will have doubled again by 2050. At the same time, according to some estimates, most Ethiopian agriculture is still less productive than that of medieval England.
Mr Meles blames climate change for the erratic rainfall that has led to three successive poor harvests. The state’s ownership of land and its failure to provide seeds and fertiliser is at least as a big a factor, according to observers.
Similarly, the Government has overseen the building of an impressive road network — but in the absence of a thriving private sector and a more liberalised economy the traffic, other than convoys of aid vehicles, is light.
Two million Ethiopians a year are moving into cities as pressure on the land and education increase, a movement that threatens to overwhelm the state’s efforts to provide housing and jobs.
More than half of Britain’s annual aid budget of £117 million goes on helping to fund work schemes that keep 7.5 million Ethiopians out of the food distribution centres. With less than 5 per cent of the population becoming fully self-reliant in most areas each year, the dependency on foreign aid threatens to increase not diminish.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (Addis Fortune) — For a change, and after several months of political doldrums, the landscape has begun to churn. Not surprisingly, the recent deal signed at the Sheraton Addis in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa between leaders of the four political parties, including the incumbent’s, has struck up the debate at the various gossip corridors across the city.
However, none of the political leaders is facing the sizzle of frying pan more so than Hailu Shawel. It is fast becoming a trying task just to find defenders of his, these days.
It seems apparent that the coming national election will hardly be harvest time for Hailu and party. The situation makes it painfully obvious that he will need to employ an abundance of damage control exercises in the few months ahead – all the while paying a huge price, much more so than any of the parties in the deal.
Negotiators from his party, the All Ethiopian Unity Party (AEUP), did not surrender easily after what was an exhaustive, two-month long inter-party dialogue.
Negotiators from the ruling party [in large part] and those from the other opposition parties [to a certain extent] have demonstrated unusual patience in keeping AEUP’s negotiators at the roundtable held inside Parliament. The latter were proven to be extremely wooly, with all the list of questions they would bring the following day, purportedly from Hailu.
The chief negotiator for AEUP was Yacob Leekie, brother of Senay Leekie, a Soviet trained Marxist. He was killed in the mid-1970s inside Menelik’s Palace, during a shoot-out between those who had supported Mengistu Hailemariam and others stood against him. Senay was a prominent personality in the early years of bloody political struggle within the junior military officers and the leftist politicians around them.
Yacob is also known to have been raised with the family of Kassa WoldeMariam, president of the Addis Abeba University, during the Emperor’s rule. His daughter, Yeshi, also a great granddaughter of the Emperor’s, is married to Hailu Shawel’s son, Shawel Hailu.
Nevertheless, none of the four negotiators of AEUP were as forceful and close to Hailu as Mamushet Amare. Once a captain in the Derg army, he was calling the shots during the negotiations.
Revealing the identities of those on the negotiating front on behalf of the ruling EPRDF is proved especially relevant: Bereket Simon, Hailemariam Desalegn, Sekuture Getachew and Muktar Kedir.
The Ethiopian Democratic Party (EDP) had been represented by its president, Lidetu Ayalew, as well as Mushie Semu and Mesfin.
There was a huge uncertainty, down to the very last day, as to whether or not Hailu’s party would actually sign the deal. They had threatened to drop out of the deal on several occasions. Reason being that they had wanted to talk about broader issues, they had felt would affect the coming election, and not simply the code of conduct. It came as a surprise to all when Yacob Leekie came around to agreeing to the signing at the end.
The final point of concern among negotiators was the supposed unpredictability of Hailu fearing he would go for a microphone in the presence of Meles Zenawi. Negotiators from the ruling party had gambled, too. They were not to be disappointed as they watched Hailu say what has earned him onslaught from his supporters and appreciation from his opponents across the aisle.
Praised, he was, at a dinner party which the ruling party, Woyanne, hosted. The party was hosted inside the Addis Top View Hotel, near Ras Amba Hotel at Arat Kilo. It was held to celebrate the deal on the electoral code of conduct the very night it was signed. Several political leaders from all the four parties were seated mingled at tables which looked designed to let them feel one another out.
In his book Night, Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and the man the Nobel Committee called the “messenger to mankind” when it awarded him the peace prize in 1986, wrote:
For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time. The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future.
On November 9-10, 1938, the Nazis destroyed thousands of Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses throughout Germany, killing nearly 100 and arresting and deporting some 30,000 to concentration camps. That was Krystallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), the forerunner to the Holocaust. On March 21, 1960, apartheid security forces in the township of Sharpeville, South Africa, fired 705 bullets in two minutes to disperse a crowd of protesting Africans. When the shooting spree stopped, 69 black Africans lay dead, shot in the back; and 186 suffered severe gunshot wounds.
Following the May, 2005 Ethiopian parliamentary elections, paramilitary forces under the direct command and control of regime leader Meles Zenawi massacred 193 innocent men, women and children and wounded 763 persons engaged in ordinary civil protest. Nearly all of the victims shot and killed died from injuries to their heads or upper torso, and there was evidence that sharpshooters were used in the indiscriminate and wanton attack on the protesters. On November 3, 2005, during an alleged disturbance at the infamous Kality prison near Addis Abeba, guards sprayed more than 1500 bullets into inmate cells in 15 minutes killing 17 and severely wounding 53. These facts were meticulously documented by a 10-member Inquiry Commission established by Zenawi himself after examining 16,990 documents, receiving testimony from 1,300 witnesses and undertaking months of investigation in the field.
Under constant threat by the regime and afraid to make these facts public in Ethiopia, the Commission’s chairman Judge Frehiwot Samuel, vice chair Woldemichael Meshesha, and member attorney Teshome Mitiku fled the country with the evidence. They made their findings public on November 16, 2006, before a committee of the U.S. Congress. Their report completely exonerated the protesters and pinned the blame for the massacres entirely on the regime and its security forces. No protesters possessed, used or attempted to use firearms, explosives or any other objects that could be used as a weapon. No protester set or attempted to set fire to public or private property, robbed or attempted to rob a bank.[1]
The victims of the post-election massacres were not faceless and nameless images in the crowd. They were individuals with identities. Among the victims were Tensae Zegeye, age 14; Habtamu Tola, age 16; Binyam Degefa, age 18; Behailu Tesfaye, age 20; Kasim Ali Rashid, age 21. Teodros Giday Hailu, age 23. Adissu Belachew, age 25; Milion Kebede Robi, age 32; Desta Umma Birru, age 37; Tiruwork G. Tsadik, age 41; Elfnesh Tekle, age 45. Abebeth Huletu, age 50; Regassa Feyessa, age 55; Teshome Addis Kidane, age 65; Victim No. 21762, age 75, female, and Victim No. 21760, male, age unknown and many dozens more.[2]
Ethiopians have a special duty to bear witness for these innocent victims who died as eye witnesses to the theft of an election and the mugging of democracy in Ethiopia in 2005. They went into the streets to peacefully defend their right to vote and have their votes count, and defend the first democratic election in Ethiopia’s 3,000-year history. We must force ourselves to testify for them not just as victims of monstrous crimes but also as true patriots. For they acted out of a sense of duty, honor, love of country and deep concern for the future of Ethiopia. They died so that 80 million Ethiopians could live free.
Ethiopia’s dictators would have the world believe that the victims of their carnage were nobodies who did not matter. It is true they were all ordinary people of the humblest origins. But we value them not for their wealth and social status but for their patriotism and sacrifices in the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights.
Elie Weisel is absolutely right. We have a duty to bear witness against those who commit crimes against humanity and for the innocent victims of tyranny and dictatorship. We have to “force” ourselves to testify not only for the dead but also “for the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow.” We do not want the massacres of 2005 to become the future of Ethiopia.
When we bear witness for Ethiopia’s innocent victims, we bear witness for all victims of tyranny and dictatorships. For the cause of the innocent transcends race, ethnicity, religion, language, country or continent. It even transcends time and space because the innocent represent humanity’s infinite capacity for virtue as dictators and tyrants represent humanity’s dregs. When we bear witness for them, we also testify in our own behalf against that evil lurking secretly and deep in our souls and hearts. But by not forcing ourselves to testify against evil, we become an inseparable part of it. As Dr. Martin Luther King said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” That is also the essential message of Elie Weisel.
Let us bear witness now for Zenawi’s victims. Let us tell the world that they cry out for justice from the grave. Let us testify that they died on the bloody battlefield of dictatorship with nothing in their hands, but peace and love in their hearts, justice in their minds and passion for the cause of freedom and democracy in their spirits and bodies. Let us remember and honor them, not in sorrow, but in gratitude and eternal indebtedness. Let us make sure that their sacrifices will tell generations of Ethiopians to come stories of personal bravery and courage and an abiding and unflinching faith in democracy and the rule of law. And when we despair over what appears to be the victory of evil over good, let us be inspired by Gandhi’s words: “There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS.” Let us remind ourselves every day that “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men and women do nothing.”
[1] These victims were documented by the Inquiry Commission in its investigation of shootings of unarmed protesters in Addis Ababa on June 8, and November 1-10 and 14-16, 2005 in Oromia and Amhara “regional states”. See, http://www.ethiomedia.com/addfile/ethiopian_inquiry_commission_briefs_congress.html
(Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on Pambazuka News and New American Media.)
BEIJING (CNN) — Large African communities are forming in China, from Guangzhou to Beijing. Many of the migrants are traders and entrepreneurs hoping to make a profit by sending China’s cheap manufactured goods back home.
Ethiopian David Bekele is searching for space to open a new restaurant in Beijing. “Almost every African country has an embassy here in Beijing,” says Bekele. “There’s a huge number of students from Africa who come on scholarships funded by the Chinese government. And there are a lot businessmen come from Africa to buy goods and do trading.”
Beijing’s first Ethiopian restaurant, Ras Ethiopian Cuisine, was opened on March 6, 2008.
As U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with Chinese President Hu Jintao and the highest-ranking members of the Chinese Politburo, one has to wonder if he is sizing up the competition.
China appears to be leaving the United States in the dust by taking off on a global shopping spree from South America to the Middle East and especially Africa. The question is, can the U.S. keep up and does it want to?
The presidents did not address Africa in their joint statements on Tuesday in Beijing, but no doubt it is on both of their agendas.
So far this year, Obama has stopped in Ghana and Egypt while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrapped a seven-nation African tour in August.
Hu has stopped in Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Mauritius while Premier Wen Jiabao just attended the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Cairo. Among other things, he pledged $10 billion in loans to developing African countries. That is double what China promised at the same forum in 2006.
Wen emphasized that China is taking another step forward with its relationships with African countries. “This represents a new stage of development in relations with Africa,” he said earlier this month.
So far this year, China’s foreign direct investment in Africa is up 77.5 percent. China’s trade with Africa has multiplied 10 times in the last decade to more than $107 billion.
If anyone is keeping score, some analysts say the U.S. is behind.
“To my mind, the U.S. is already on the backfoot in Africa,” says David Kelly, Professor of China Studies at University of Technology Sydney. “The American public may not be terribly aware but basically most of Africa thinks it’s a great thing that China has come into the game, not necessarily because of the public goods that China provides or those alone, (but) because it must force America to raise its game.”
As the son of a Kenyan, Obama may have won African hearts, but it is China’s deep pockets that have been winning over African governments.
In the last few years, China has struck deal after deal with African countries, often buying natural resources in exchange for building infrastructure and providing loans. It is typical that the roads, hospitals, schools and more must be built primarily by Chinese workers.
In Gabon, the Chinese recently financed $800 million in railways, dams and ports in exchange for access to iron ore.
Critics say China’s actions have propped up dictatorships in Zimbabwe and Sudan. The Chinese have been supporting oil production in Sudan for years. China International Fund, a little-known Chinese company, reportedly signed a $7 billion mining deal with Guinea’s repressive military regime.
In response to criticism, Wen recently stated, “There has long been the argument that China is plundering Africa’s resources … Anyone who is familiar with history would know that the friendly relations and cooperation between China and Africa did not start just yesterday but as early as half a century ago. In those years, we helped Africa build the Tanzara railway and sent to Africa large numbers of medical teams. But we did not take away a single drop of oil or a single ton of mineral ores from Africa.”
Some leaders of African countries have indicated Africa will take money from anyone who is giving.
“Foreign direct investment has no fixed allegiance or nationality – it goes where it is most welcome,” said Ghanaian president John Atta Mills at a recent conference in Washington.
While China’s relationship with Africa strengthens, analysts say the United States may be too focused on the Middle East and, ironically this week, China to notice. Previous U.S. administrations placed Africa relatively high on their list of priorities. President George W. Bush’s heavy investment in HIV and AIDS prevention on the continent is largely considered a success.
In early October, Obama supported a $3.5 billion hunger and food security initiative focused on agriculture over the next three years in developing countries. Much of the money is intended for Africa. However, at this stage Obama’s Africa strategy has yet to be solidified.
But the vast opportunities in Africa are not without challenges. Poverty, corruption and instability are constantly changing the game. The question is how the U.S. and China choose to play.
Some analysts say Africa gives the U.S. and China a chance not necessarily to compete, but to cooperate and to make vital changes on a developing continent. Zha Daojiong, Professor of International Relations at Peking University, says the U.S. and China should consider working together on humanitarian issues including health care and food security.
“I think it is a meaningful issue for both governments to discuss,” says Zha. “Clearly there is a great potential there. We should put the interests of the African people in the center of these considerations.”
