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G21 ASIA: THE CHINA-AFRICA SUMMIT 2006: Contributor KEN KAMOCHE reports from Hong-Kong on the implications of the recent overtures of China in Africa.
HONG KONG - The China-Africa Beijing Summit is the latest in a sequence of efforts at closer cooperation between Africa and Asia in the last fifty years. What makes this latest Asia-Africa dalliance markedly different in character and substance is the fact that is it being orchestrated by one Asian country, China.
Before considering the significance of this summit it is worth putting the whole Asia-Africa dialogue in context. This dialogue can be traced back to the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955.
That conference brought together 29 nations that represented more than half the world's population. Why did these countries, many of which were still under the colonial yoke, see a need for kinship and fraternity? Precisely because they felt marginalized by the great Western powers which not only controlled the destinies of these poor African and Asian countries, but also paradoxically, effectively ignored them as if they didn't exist.
Few people are aware of this 1955 seminal meeting. Yet the seeds of cooperation amongst the marginalized states that were sowed then ultimately resulted, six years later in the Non-Aligned Movement. So in fact opportunities for cooperation between Asia and Africa go a long way. Last year during the Golden Jubilee of the Bandung summit, participants affirmed the need for even closer cooperation in the wake of the hiatus created by the end of the Cold War.
The trouble with these meetings and declarations is that there are typically long on rhetoric and short on action. I suspect that more people have heard of Doha given its association with WTO than have heard of the Bandung summits. While the Non-Aligned Movement can boast more success, relatively speaking, in creating what Nehru called a third force in the spirit of neutralism, the same cannot be said of Asian-Africa cooperation... READ MORE
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