New horizons emerge for African economies

Ethiopia is also building a manufacturing base, helped by Chinese investment.

It was good to escape the humidity of the Beijing summer last week and head to Johannesburg, which was, by contrast, in the depths of its winter — just 37 degrees on my early morning arrival at Oliver Tambo airport.

The city was then in eager anticipation of the 10th BRICS summit, which began on Wednesday.

I was there to speak at the third edition of the Vision China series of talks, which was organized by China Daily and held at the Gallagher Convention Center in Midrand.

The theme was “BRICS and Globalization” and it has subsequently been watched on a range of platforms by 23 million.

It was a curtain-raiser event for the summit itself, with much of the discussion focusing on the importance of emerging markets engagement.

There are few better places to talk about this than South Africa, since it is where such concepts as South-South cooperation are part of everyday political dialogue.

The country has the smallest economy of the five BRICS members and was the last to join in 2010, a year after the first summit in Russia.

High on the agenda on this summit is how the BRICS nations can respond to a world descending into 1930s-style protectionism, with US President Donald Trump seemingly wanting to launch a trade war with anyone in his path.

The BRICS nations, however, need not be dictated to by anyone. They now have a combined GDP in terms of purchasing power parity of $40.55 trillion — 32 percent of the world’s total — and they now also account for 50 percent of global economic growth.

With more open trade between the BRICS members, whether we have a protectionist world or not may not actually be a decision of the current occupant of the White House.

My own focus in my presentation was the China-Africa relationship, which has been one of the most successful emerging market engagements of the last two decades.

China’s trade with Africa was $13 billion in 2000, but by 2015 had reached $188 billion, annual growth of 21 percent. China’s foreign direct investment has Andrew Moody grown at a steeper rate, rising from $1 billion in 2014 to $35 billion in 2015, an annual increase of 40 percent.

I have been reporting on China and Africa since 2012, just before China Daily launched its Africa weekly edition.

I interviewed Meles Zenawi, the late prime minister of Ethiopia at his Menelik Palace residence in Addis Ababa. For me, he defined the relationship between the continent and the world’s second-largest economy.

He was scathingly critical of the West’s stance on African development. The so-called Washington Consensus — espoused by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — had been the dominant orthodoxy since the 1990s.

Under its creed, the continent had to adopt free market policies because that was the only way it could build a private sector that would create jobs and generate tax revenue to build infrastructure and other things Africa desperately needed.

“Well, we have waited 30 years and nothing much has happened,” Meles told me.

He was more impressed by another model — of a country several thousand kilometers east.

He welcomed Chinese investment, which has transformed Ethiopia’s infrastructure, including a new railway that links the landlocked country to the sea through Djibouti.

Ethiopia is also building a manufacturing base, helped by Chinese investment.

With this year marking 40 years since Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening-up that has delivered 800 million out of poverty, ideas about poverty reduction is another area where China is having influence — Africa still has 400 million people living below accepted international standards of sustainable living.

President Xi Jinping’s book Up and Out of Poverty based on his experiences when Party chief in Ningde prefecture in Fujian province in the 1980s has been particularly influential.

His essential message is to shake off any poverty mentality because if you think you are poor, you probably are.

Xi’s big idea of “a community with a shared future for mankind” goes way beyond trade and economics.

This is partly based on ancient Chinese ideas of nations working together based on “harmony without uniformity”.

It is such a spirit that is already in evidence at the Johannesburg summit and one that is ultimately likely to prevail, particularly if the only alternative on offer is disharmony and chaos.