Africa is rich in natural resources and boasts some of the most fertile lands for agriculture and animal husbandry in the world. Its tourist attractions include the Victoria Falls, the beautiful national parks in Botswana, South Africa and the amazing Serengeti national park in Tanzania that merges into the Masai Mara of Kenya. The Congo, often described to be as bigger if not bigger that the whole of Europe is home of the famous gorillas but also harbors some of the richest treasures such as gold, diamond, copper and timber. Africa’s riches were the main attraction for the scramble for Africa that ushered in colonial rule in late 19th Century until only recently when the last of the colonized peoples of South Africa attained their freedom and dignity in 1993. With the attainment of independence, since 1956 when Ghana attained self-rule followed by many more States in the 1960s, most if not all-African countries continued to depend on foreign aid from mostly their former colonial masters. This aid was supplemented by multilateral assistance from the World Bank and other satellite International Finance Institutions and the United Nations through its subsidiary and specialized agencies.

Foreign aid both bilateral and multilateral has proved inadequate to promote development in Africa largely because the programmes and projects designed with the cooperation of Governments have proved not sustainable. Funding is cut to fit a particular project without any consideration of the effect of the final product on the overall economy or the necessity for continued maintenance. The consequence has been continued dependence on fresh aid to reconstruct previous projects that had since collapsed or associated infrastructure not previously foreseen but required due to newly designed projects. Money has been moved form sector to sector on an experimental basis without much progress, first through governments as executing agencies and now directly through a myriad of NGOs that have been hastily formed to tap excess resources diverted from Government to avoid corruption, in the end feeding corruption of another kind.

Privatization which was forced on African Governments as the panacea for spurring development by dismantling non-performing public enterprises, set up initially on advice of departing colonial administrators, has not worked. Industries and plants sold at give away prices to so called private investors have been run down without replacement for lack of commitment to development. It is now time for Africa to take control of their economies and take a page from the success of the TIGERS of Asia or BRICKS. The success enjoyed by China has come from forming partnerships at home between indigenous companies (state owned) and foreign companies looking for markets. The key is to obtain the necessary know-how from the partnership so that the resulting industrial development can be continued even after the departure of the foreign partner. This is referred to as “transfer of technology”. It may be necessary to buy if necessary and for this Governments ought to set up Development Banks that can provide the capital to local enterprises to invest in the partnerships in exchange for disclosure of necessary intellectual property in the processes under manufacture. Some have referred to this cooperation as Private Public Partnerships.

A Bad Good Deal: The Challenges of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment in Africa