Mutual benefit

Nagbe, however, says this also has drawbacks since there is a lack of competition when large infrastructure projects are offered for tender.

"It would be good for the government if there were more competitors so we could have more choice and as a result you would also have a cost reduction. But for now we don't have it," he says.

One of the charges made against Chinese companies is that they don't give enough employment opportunities to local people.

Zhou Yongsheng, general manager of China Communications Construction in Addis Ababa, says it is just not true.

He is currently responsible for the new $612 million expressway in the Ethiopian capital and has been responsible for more road construction in the country than anyone in history.

"Right now we have around 400 Chinese workers and between 7,000 and 8,000 Ethiopians," he says.

African labor also does not come cheap with young people in these countries wanting to own iPhones and the like as much as people in the West.

Arthur Lau is financial controller of Akosombo Textiles, which makes high-quality wax print cloth in Akosombo in the eastern region of Ghana.

Privately-owned and part of the Hong Kong-based Cha Group, it employs around 1,300 people, almost all Ghanaians.

"Labor rates are only about 30 percent cheaper here than in China but Chinese workers are two to three times more productive," he says.

The overall relationship between China and Africa will remain a subject of debate. Philip Nyinguro, associate professor of political science and international relations at the University of Nairobi, argues the weak state of some African countries makes them vulnerable when they are cutting deals with any country, whether it is China or a Western power.

"The onus has to be on African leaders themselves when they negotiate agreements that they create conditions that benefit themselves. They can't place this responsibility on China," he says.

James Shikiwati, director of the Inter Region Economic Network, a think tank based in Nairobi, insists it is wrong to describe China as new colonialists in Africa.

He contrasts China to the European powers which carved up the continent in 1885 at a conference in Berlin without any Africans being present.

"The Chinese have brought Africans around the table for discussion. That is the clear difference. You are not going to negotiate with a guy you are going to colonize," he says.

He believes China might actually prove the catalysts in actually helping build the vision the founding fathers of the continent had immediately after independence - a $1-trillion free trade area from Cape Town to Cairo.

"That vision of Africa's leaders at independence got lost in the post Cold War squabbles but has become a reality again with China playing a unifying role," he says.

Harry Verhoeven, a researcher in the department of politics and international relations at Oxford University and a convener of the university's China-Africa Network, believes the Chinese may have done an even greater service to Africa.

He believes they have made the Africa story one worthy of the Financial Times by their focus on business and not just one of aid and misery pedaled by pop stars.

"The single most important thing that China has done in Africa - and many Africans agree with this - is that they have changed the nature of the conversation about Africa," he says.

"The image of Africa should not be an Ethiopian orphan Band Aid-style but somebody in a business venture on a mobile phone."

Contact the writers at andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn and zhongnan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/21/2012 page1)