Comment by ejanus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ejanus | Hacker News Reader

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I am an African and I live in West Africa. I think China is doing great job for the continent and it is helping Africa upgrade her infrastructure. But we Africans should know that sustainable development and transfer of technology cannot come if we fail to build our own indigenous peoples and companies. Nobody is father Christmas, everybody is there to maximize his gains. So , we Africans should wake up and take our destiny into our hands. I have some concerns with Chinese loans, they are tied to we using only Chinese companies, Chinese technologies, and in most cases only Chinese labour. This shows that Chinese loans are not in the same class as World Bank own. There is nothing like open bidding and fair pricing mechanism. If we use only Chinese oriented inputs what benefit is their for the local communities and businesses? We must nurture , support , and empower our people and businesses. Chinese is just trying to continue her 'supersonic' growth via African loans. We have been mixing cement and granite before now , suddenly we are watching foreigners doing same in our backyard. This is inexcusable, and I cry each time I pass such site.

> If we use only Chinese oriented inputs what benefit is their for the local communities and businesses?

When you buy a road, you get to transport things; when you buy a port, you get to do long distance trade. That happens even when no local job is created.

The benefit is there as long as the loans are for fairly priced infrastructure with real value. People (across the world) suspect this kind of loan because it is too often used for financing way too expensive infrastructure with no real value. The local population of a country has the challenge of allowing their politicians to do the first without allowing them to do the second, so if you trust your people and institutions to achieve that, there's absolutely no problem with the loans.

Here in Brazil people are starting to open up for the Chinese loans. It is happening at the same time as people are trusting a bit more the government to not be corrupt, but I don't think there is any causal relation.

> Here in Brazil people are starting to open up for the Chinese loans.

I read the opposite. What is that based on?

EDIT: In response to the reply below, a search shows plenty of research out there on this topic. (Sorry, I don't have time to read it myself right now.)

It's based on talking to people and watching them change their opinion though time.

It may be completely off due to sampling bias, but I don't think there is any source out there with better confidence, as I have never seen anybody doing a serious poll of the subject.

EDIT: Well, in reply to your edit, how did you search for that research? All I can see is trash news about some huge investment coming from China to Brazil in the future or how the next Brazilian president is a xenophobe that will reject money from anywhere. I still haven't seen any serious handle of the subject, by researchers or the press.

I did this search at Startpage.com:

  brazil attitudes toward china poll

Oh, that shows Brazil has a favorable opinion of China (not surprising).

At least for me, it doesn't show any poll about opinion on Chinese investment. Those are different things.

So, I’m American.

And honestly, you have every reason to tell me to fuck off and more besides. And I’m not Father Christmas, if you make a deal with me, I expect something in exchange.

But what can we do for people in Africa?

Invest in African growth businesses(stocks at the moment, African focused mutual markets). Purchase African products. Lobby your government/EU governments to continue AGOA(US)/open the door towards African food/crop imports (unlikely). And honestly, tourism, some great destinations on the continent, and a great way to actually spend in local economies.

Africans don't need charity. The NGO industrial complex has failed to create modern states, it can deliver great help to badly affected communities but it can't leapstart growth. We all know the US won't invest tens of billions in African countries, but change your perception of Africa as some place to be helped, and countries that want investment, this explains why China has become such a big player on the continent.

Is it true to say the US donates more (like Tom’s shoes) than legitimate investments?

It would be hard to quantify, what we can say is that China focuses more on hard infrastructure, which African countries have a huge lack of capacity of, and which the West has't really focused on development wise since the 1970s.

America excels more traditionally on capacity("soft" work to do with say governance, healthcare, NGOs, and also committed through the IMF/World Bank).

I think the problem with the "West" and Africa, is that we view Africa as mostly a single unit, and not the individual countries that make up the continent. From a westerners prospective, African countries have a huge corruption issue, and years of "give-a-man-a-fish" charity from the West appears to have labeled westerners as someone to be taken advantage of and to get free handouts from. It's difficult to evaluate the legitimacy of a company ran be people who think much differently than you.

I've been following the story of a Westerner (I believe he is American) that is taking a land trip through Africa[1]. While there are areas of great, geniune people, many of his stories involve people, both government and private, in the countries trying to exploit him for money, gifts, etc...

He went into a rant in one of his posts that I think has been removed now, but the gist was that years of free handouts from the West is the reason for this behavior.

I don't know how to fix it, but this mentality and perception has to be fixed by the African people -- the West is not going to change on its own. The problem seems to ultimately have been created by the West, and should be fixed by the West, but the reality of the situation is that is not likely to happen. If Africa wants Western investment, it will need to address these stereotypes and perceptions, otherwise China will continue investing. They are not involved in African politics now, but wait 50 years and see if that is still the story. They have to establish their grip on the money first. Once they have solid control of the money, the control of the people will follow.

[1] http://theroadchoseme.com

Your first point is spot-on (so much so that people have made things like this[1] just to point it out).

Your second is more complex, but the general principle of a rich visitor being shaken down is very, very old - after all, you clearly have the means to come visit, while the reverse is not generally the case.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/24/africa-clinton

> Africans don't need charity. The NGO industrial complex has failed to create modern states, it can deliver great help to badly affected communities but it can't leapstart growth.

Since this is a startup/hacker forum, what do you think about entrepreneurs moving there to not only start a business, while being ethically charitable and involved in the locally community (rather than just being a digital nomad). Would this be accepted culturally, or would I just be viewed as a rich foreigner trying to trick/scam the populace?

I've only visited the continent as a tourist, but am very interested in your perspective on cultural viewpoints. And followup question -- are certain African nations more open to outsiders than others?

Certain countries are more open to this than others. It'd be tricky to start such a business in West Africa but Kenya in particular is a big tech hub which has quite many Western expats playing a role in it. Kenya would be my pick for where you could do something like that and not be seen as weird/not welcomed.

In other African countries the racial context would prevent it (Southern African countries) or they're more protectionist(Anglophone West African states).

I could also see Uganda and Rwanda also being quite welcoming of such an effort as they're making big moves on trying to grow their tech sectors. The latter two are repressive dictatorships though politically. Economically and socially however the people are largely free. Kenya by comparison is a deeply messy and perhaps perpetually corrupt democracy.

Make America realize that helping other countries will benefit the world including the US in the long run.

Or convince America that there is a whole continent that could become a powerful ally to the US when it will economically boom.

Working on it.

We're just in a bit of a 1968 moment after despairing over how difficult nation building is with Afghanistan and Iraq.

I'm sure we'll return to our regularly scheduled American exceptionalism circa-2040.

Make America realize that helping other countries will benefit the world including the US in the long run.

America does realize this. It's why USAID, VOA, and other agencies spend billions of dollars each year for the last 60+ years building water systems, and swerage treatment plants, distributing medicine, teaching people better agriculture methods, stocking hospitals, supplying HIV/AIDS drugs to 80 million+ people, treating millions of people each year with malaria medicine, and a metric ass-ton of other things. All of this from tax dollars from the "America" the world thinks is full of hate.

Much of this money is spent in the very nations, especially in the Middle East, that have significant populations that chant "Death to America" every time a television camera is around, then when the news crews go away, return to eating food supplied by the U.S. government.

Here's a good place to start if you want to know more about the quiet, good work America does: https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do

> Much of this money is spent in the very nations, especially in the Middle East, that have significant populations that chant "Death to America" every time a television camera is around, then when the news crews go away, return to eating food supplied by the U.S. government.

Are you meaning to imply that donating food should buy the U.S. some kind of credit allowance to conduct drone strikes that kill mainly civilians? In many cases, the food they're donating is needed in the first place because of actions the U.S. themselves participates in, see the genocide in Yemen for example.

Also, it's funny that you mention DTA chants, but forget that there are plenty of lawmakers in the U.S. spewing similar rhetoric. After the attack in Iran, the response in the U.S. was basically "they deserved it".

I think both your comments are legit. The US, like many countries, is very paradoxal in its decisions. I hope that one day such negative acts will be negligible compared to the positive ones.

You can build roads and infrastructure, create businesses and invest into education or have a supporting economy that does the same. China does many of these including their chat platform (Wechat) that enables a bunch of local businesses to be able to do what they want. I don't think that you can do too much more that that.

One example:

https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/simbapay-launches-kenya-to...

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