Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
change for direct investment in infrastructure projects in Sudan, including a refinery and
several hydroelectric dams, the largest of which is the Merowe Dam on the Nile. More than
adozenChinesenationals,manyworkinginstate-ownedenterprisessuchasSinohydroand
China National Petroleum, have been abducted or killed in recent years in conflict zones
from Sudan to Afghanistan.
There are several ways to view this trend in Chinese-African engagement. One is by
considering the economic impact of increased investment in large-scale infrastructure in
some of the world's poorest nations and regions. Africa is the continent with the lowest
percentage of its theoretical hydropower currently developed, and power shortages argu-
ably exacerbate poverty and prohibit economic growth (Boyd 2012). From this point of
view, developing Africa's hydropower capacity may be seen as a step toward a more reli-
able electricity supply, which is something on which all other development goals—poverty
alleviation, disease reduction, and the expansion of entrepreneurial activity—arguably de-
pend. Of course, Chinese corporations also eye the African continent's one billion people
as a future consumer market for their manufactured goods.
The legitimate fear on the part of environmental and human rights activists, however,
is that Chinese developers have failed and will likely continue to fail to apply even basic
standards for environmental and social review. The developers' quid pro quo approach to
development, coupled with a policy of noninterference in the domestic affairs of the coun-
tries in which they operate, may make even the most ardent critics of the World Bank long
for the days of structural-adjustment programs. Such programs have been a standard tool of
multilateral agencies, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, for
decades, tying aid and loans to a host government's willingness to carry out political and
economic reforms. Structural-adjustment programs, buttressed by the faith in liberal eco-
nomics that permeates the entire development industry, are geared toward creating greater
efficiency and transparency in markets and governments by forcing greater fiscal austerity,
privatization of land and industry, trade liberalization, and financial deregulation (Rapley
2007:87-133).
By contrast, the new arrangements between Chinese dam developers and African gov-
ernments may entail a lack of transparency even greater than was the case under interna-
tional financial institutions. Because of Chinese hydropower companies' general orienta-
tion toward corporate profits, most dams are designed to meet the demands of large in-
dustries such as iron and steel or cement rather than building a solid electricity-distribu-
tion network and supplying poor people with electricity. Mozambique's Mphanda Nkuwa
Dam, for example, which was approved by the national government in 2011 and is projec-
ted to cost $2 billion, was designed principally to supply power to the aluminum industry
and to export surplus electricity to neighboring South Africa, leaving many of Mozam-
bique's poorest citizens with no reliable electricity supply (Pottinger 2012). This type of
outcome may not be “development-induced poverty” in the way of structural adjustments,
