Ghana:Australia is providing Lessons

Serious countries on the globe are reading the signs of the times in a world rapidly re-ordering and de-centering away from the erstwhile dominant West. Australia is showing the way is this most publicly unapologetic way http://australianpolitics.com/2012/10/28/gillard-launches-asian-century-white-paper.html. Australia is positioning herself for the coming era which in fact is here already: ASIA AS VERY INFLUENTIAL GEO-ECONOMIC AND STRATEGIC ENTITY.
I called for this sort of policy document for Ghana way back in 2007. If anybody listened where will Ghana have been on this matter? Good to daydream at the very least I guess.

Ghana and Africa must learn lessons or lose out. And this involves clear vision, concrete plans and the institutions and brains to pursue such an AGENDA. The future actually is here already.

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Generation Next: Rethinking Africa & China

Assistant Professor at Ashesi, Lloyd G. Adu Amoah, discusses the future of Sino-Africa relations in the Ashesi University Bulletin. The latter half of 2012 will prove a momentous period for China with long-term implications for Africa. Keenly awaited by close China-watchers this year is the convening of National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the highlight of which will be the handing over of power – only the second time this century- from China’s ‘fourth generation’ leadership to its fifth. The late Communist leader and head of the ‘second generation’, Deng Xiaoping, instituted many of the market oriented reforms seen today, but it was the current President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao who have stabilised the booming post-Deng years. This Hu-Wen generation – mostly born during the World War II - was deeply marked by the chaos of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and thus adopted an almost machine-like technocratic style of policy formulation and implementation. It is no accident that both Hu and Wen are engineers. China’s courting and engagement with Africa has been critical in achieving this stabilisation. In fact, the value of trade between the two partners has crossed the $100 billion mark in the past two years. And China’s infrastructural footprints have become very visible on the continent in the past decade of which the construction of the African Union headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa is the most symbolic and daring expression. Chinese companies - state, quasi-state and private - have invested heavily under the Hu-Wen administration in the extractive, telecommunications, manufacturing and financial sectors in virtually all parts of the continent. And for a decade now, Africa has also responded on her own terms to China’s overtures. An indication of this is a burgeoning African diaspora visible in major China cities such as Macau, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Chongqing and Wuhan. The fifth generation Chinese leadership, who will likely coalesce around Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, probably anticipate that they will have to deal with, and be judged by, a languid or maturing Africa-China partnership. In other words the key concerns of the potential Xi-Li administration will be less about planting a strategic toe hold in Africa, something their immediate predecessors focused on, than ensuring that that delicate Chinese toe in question is not exposed to debilitating bruises or forcible amputation. They would do well to take note of a couple of warning signs. One sore point of Africa-China relations is the year-on-year trade deficits that African countries have had to endure on account of commerce with China. The upshot of this – for China at least - is the emergence of Chinese traders in the retail sector of African markets who are corralling the supply chains of Chinese commodities in high demand in Africa and competing directly with African traders. The Ghana United Traders Association (GUTA) is not standing for it and has protested about the dominance of China in its domestic markets. GUTA’s protests have led to a June ultimatum by the Government of Ghana for Chinese retail traders to close shop ‘or face the consequences’. In an election year, Ghana’s government may not want to upset its voters. In China itself, more protests are flaring up in the diaspora communities over the heavy handed treatment of African migrants on the mainland. In Guangzhou, for instance, riots have broken out leading to injuries. In the short run however the Xi-Li administration could be side-tracked by something much closer to home – the infamous Bo Xilai affair – dubbed one of the biggest scandals ever to hit the China’s ruling party. He was the former Communist Party chief in Chongqing, who lived a lavish lifestyle and is now facing charges of corruption. His wife is also being investigated for murder. The Bo matter has become a microcosm of the challenges that the new leadership will face. Bo can be considered a veritable dross on the shine of a ruling Chinese elite that has diligently cast itself as austere and selfless and deployed this to attract a steady stream of investments from the West. The Xi-Li team will probably focus on presenting Bo as an aberration rather than a norm in China to, at the very least, reassure foreign investors that the new Chinese leadership remains a trustworthy business partner. There is a lot at stake here. In China the Bo imbroglio touches a raw nerve given the widening gulf between the country’s rich and poor, and the potential for mass social unrest. For the Xi-Li cohort these realities may leave Africa-China relations on hold; a matter to tackle after the fire-fighting over Bo has been done. One senses, at least in the short-term, that the new administration will want to project a business-as-usual approach to Africa while it diverts its energies to crises on home soil. This is very risky. Primarily it means that China’s new rulers will be taking their eyes off growing discontent in Africa over the country’s conduct on the continent, all the while trying to douse simmering discontent at home. Promises of pro-poor policies in China may work for now. But if one considers how key Africa is to China’s future growth – and thus its continuing stability – it would be a gross miscalculation of the new regime if those promises of poverty attenuating policies did not extend to the African continent as well. In the meantime, the time is ripe for Africa’s policymakers, civil society organisations, academics and other interested parties to seize the initiative and lobby Beijing in order to reform relations with China for the mutual benefit of both parties. Originally written for: July-September, 2012 edition of the BBC Focus on Africa magazine.

China's Next Power Team: Implications for Africa

My latest article on the imminent power shift in China and the implications for Africa!

Strategy3 Policy Brief

Policy Brief

March 2012

Ghana and the China Question: what next after 50 years?

Nana Akufo-Addo

The presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo devoted significant ideational space in his recent Oppenheimer Lecture(http://www.iiss.org/conferences/oppenheimer-lecture/oppenheimer-lecture-2012-nana-akufo-addo/), Houston Texas Speech and appearance on BBC Hardtalk programme to Ghana-China relations.

    

Ghana’s diplomatic relations (est.5^th July, 1960) with China have already gone past the golden jubilee mark. Nana Akufo-Addo is providing compelling signals that as a potential president of the Republic of Ghana post the upcoming 2012 General Elections he intends to reconfigure Ghana’s economic, trade and diplomatic relations with China along a clear and robust win-win axis.

That the China question[1] will inevitably condition Ghana’s medium to long term national transformation strategy is undergirded by that country’s increasing economic and diplomatic influence on the African continent. China was Ghana’s largest investor in 2007(and still held the record half a decade latter in 2011[2]). Against this backdrop and the imminent ascension to power (at the upcoming 18^th Party Congress) of the fifth generation of Chinese leaders led by Xi Jinping the necessity for a win-win posture as articulated by Nana Akufo-Addo takes on a certain urgency.     

The key question however is how to flesh out the details of this win-win engagement with this Asian power. Our view is that Ghana requires a comprehensive China Policy document to anchor and provide the needed ballast as a matter of national strategic long term positioning . This is a vexing matter that both government and opposition need to provide leadership on.

In 2000 China launched the Forum on China Africa Co-operation (FOCAC). The last FOCAC (summit meeting) was held in Beijing in November 2006. The fifth FOCAC ministerial meeting is scheduled for Beijing in 2012. The FOCAC has emerged as the foremost framework through which China and African nations discourse and strategize on pressing socio-economic and political issues facing Africa and the wider world. In January 2006 China released its Africa Policy Document. It is clear that China has offered the basis and framework for her engagement with African countries. A fitting response to this by Ghana lies in crafting her very own China Policy document which will inter alia:

n     provide the needed clarity, focus and coherence for Ghana’s engagement with China.

n     define the principles, values and basis for Ghana’s relationship with China. This is important in respect of Ghana’s engagement with other bilateral and multilateral partners. For Ghana-China relations the conduct of both parties will judged by these standards.

n   elaborate and define the core areas/sectors that Ghana considers of top priority strategic importance in her relations with China and to construct the mechanisms for co-operation in these areas.

n   signal to the Chinese that Ghana takes its relationship with China seriously and seeks a two-way relationship that is mutually beneficial to both countries.

n  provide an empirical and legalo-regulatory framework for handling misunderstandings, potential conflicts and strengthening and improving bilateral relations between the two countries.

n   allow Ghana to have clear guidelines for positioning herself strategically in a reconfigured world in which China undoubtedly is playing a key part.  

As the Chinese say: Talk does not cook rice. Ghana’s sages also provide useful wisdom in the view that : "Woforo dua pa a, na yepia wo" (to wit "When you climb a good tree, you are given a push."). From the years of Deng Xiaoping, through Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao Ghana has not had a documented, living China blue print. With Xi Jinping set to take power in China this year will Ghana still deal with this new generation of China’s leadership with the same adhockery?

Lloyd G.Adu Amoah, Ph.D.

Strategy and Governance Unit

Strategy3

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[1]See the upcoming March 2012 edition of Business World magazine(http://www.businessworldghana.com/) for a comprehensive analysis on this question by the author.

[2] Of the 83 investment  projects tracked by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre for the last quarter of  2011, China accounted for 25 of these(and was third in terms of value of FDI) followed by India with 16. China remained the leading investor country (in terms of registered projects) to Ghana overall in 2011.