Africa, the environment & China in Africa

Africa World Now Project

[produced & aired, 2017]

This past weekend over a 150, 000 people were in Washington, DC to protest and call attention to the ever-increasing violent reality of climate change.

The devastating effects are already being felt across the planet and can no longer be denied, despite the best efforts of those who choose to ignore the facts. And the continent of Africa is feeling every bit its violent effects.

The 2011 drought-induced famine in the Horn of Africa affected more than 10 million people, claimed 257,000 lives and cost over $1 billion in damages. The Africa Adaptation Gap Report by the UN Environment Programme warns that climate change could reduce total crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa by as much as 20% by 2070. Additionally, a projected sea-level rise in Tanzania of 70 centimeters by 2070 could devastate the port city of Dar es Salaam, its largest and richest city and a major player in East Africa trade, and cost the country about $10 billion in property damages and related losses.
Environmentalists warn that rising sea levels could cause severe flooding, submerge land and destroy African coastal ecosystems.
Africa World Now Project’s executive producer; international journalist and human rights advocate recently sat with activist Matheca Mawinda, Executive Director at Pan African Climate Justice Alliance and Cecile Ndjebet Coordinating African Network of Community Management of Forrest, to discuss this crisis in greater detail.

Next, you will hear a presentation on the Africa-China question from a symposium titled Africa and World in the 21st Century.

Howard French in his work, China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa estimates that there are currently at least a million Chinese living in sub-Saharan Africa and says that may be a conservative figure. Several countries alone (Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique) have a hundred thousand each. Others have fairly decent sized enclaves or Chinese towns, often of ten thousand people. Africans have said for years that the Chinese isolate themselves, that they don’t integrate, though French shows that there are numerous exceptions to that, especially when Chinese males have married African women and started families. There is little question, however, that often these enclaves have sprung up because in many places Chinese companies have brought their own workers to complete a specific project.

What is the role of China in Africa? How do we understand the implications of this role in the context of a 21st century global economy? What are the new social, economic, and potential political formations that are being produced from China in Africa? What about Africa in China? Africa has a long historical record of interacting with China…what are the contemporary possibilities of Africa reversing the influence?

After all, W. E. B. Du Bios writing in his 1947 work: The World and Africa suggests that Chinese ships traded directly with Africa from the 8th to the 12th centuries.

These and a myriad of other important questions come to mind when exploring the China-Africa question.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Palestine, South Africa, and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!