Global and Local Challenges and Opportunities: Reflections on China and the Governance of African Natural Resources

Abstract

China’s three decades of unbroken growth, transforming it from an economic backwater to the world’s second largest economy, has fuelled an ever-expanding demand for energy, strategic minerals, and new markets (Downs, 2004: 21-41; Oliveira, 2008: 83-109). The promulgation of the government’s ‘going out’ strategy, whereby over a hundred restructured state-owned enterprises have been given the legal and administrative means, preferential access to finance, and diplomatic support necessary to break into markets outside of China, has been the main policy response to this need. Given the financial resources of what by 2006 had become the world’s largest holder of foreign reserves (over USD 3 trillion as of mid-2012) and applying these to the problem of carving out a position in the energy and strategic minerals markets was, in retrospect, a fairly straightforward solution to this dilemma in a capital-starved African environment.