Africa and the Indian Ocean Region

Timothy Doyle, Dennis Rumley

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138205345
• eBook ISBN: 9781315467153
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the presence of Africa as a significant force in the western Indian Ocean. Africa will increasingly play a pivotal role in the future of the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean region. The book considers the scope for greater African involvement in Indian Ocean region-building activities, and seeks to encourage a western Indian Ocean dialogue. The book publishes some of the best papers presented at an Indian Ocean Research Group (IORG Inc.) symposium held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2013, entitled "The Political Economy of Maritime Africa in the Indian Ocean Region." This symposium was part of a larger project on constructing a sense of "Indian Oceanness". Chapters include: India's new policy of engagement with Africa; China's growing presence in the Indian Ocean Region; security strategies in the Western Indian Ocean; the increasing importance and significance of the Western Indian Ocean littoral; and cultural linkages between Africa and the Indian Ocean region. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region.

Infrastructure and influence: China’s presence on the coast of East Africa

Ross Anthony

Centre for Chinese Studies, Stellenbosch University, Matieland, South Africa

This paper investigates the notion that China’s proposed development of ports and supporting hinterland infrastructure on the East coast of Africa serves greater geostrategic interests within Africa and the Indian Ocean. It cautions against a trend which accuses Chinese commercial infrastructural and resource development of being symmetrical with an almost colonial-like political influence. Through a comparison with nineteenth-century German and British colonialism in the region, the paper argues that, while there are certain affinities, the Chinese presence today is significantly different. Central to the argument is that Chinese port and hinterland developments are supplemented by a host of other actors, including host states, multinational corporations and regional development funds. The broader market economic system in which China and Africa engage today entails that Chinese unfettered access to projects is complicated by the interests of multiple stakeholders. The Chinese presence has been exaggerated at the expense of other actors and thus, in any future conflict, it cannot be assumed that China will be able to mobilise this infrastructure in its interests. This has implications for the broader analysis of China’s growing presence in the Indian Ocean.

Introduction

China’s growing commercial presence in the Indian Ocean has given rise to concerns that such a presence may be harnessed to exert growing political and military influence in the region (Peherson, 2006). China’s recent port developments on the East coast of Africa, in Kenya and Tanzania, overlap with another anxiety, namely the belief that China’s growing engagement with Africa is neo-colonial in nature. This paper takes the colonial allusion seriously insofar as it contrasts the recent Chinese port and infrastructure developments with similar such developments in Kenya and Tanzania during the nineteenth century, when British and German imperial powers gained control of these regions, respectively. Similarities are to be found insofar as in both periods actors sought to connect ports to the hinterland in order to open up markets and transport resources to port. Additionally, in both instances, large state-backed corporations have undertaken the construction of these projects. The differences, however, are equally significant. First, African states are today legally sovereign entities; rather than being the passive recipients of such projects, they now openly solicit such projects in the interests of national and regional development. In addition, the Chinese are but one of a host of investors in such infrastructural projects, with other actors coming from Europe, the USA, Asia and Africa.

Thus, when we conceptualise Chinese influence on the East coast of Africa, it needs to be situated within the context of a globalised, market economy in which a composite of actors contribute to such developments. Understanding Chinese influence within this context has implications for the way in which we grasp the changing nature of security in the region. To conflate Chinese infrastructural development projects with imminent political and even military influence is a mistake. This is not to say that China necessarily has no desire to increase such influence – a stance echoed in Chinese official rhetoric. Rather, it suggests that any such attempts will be complicated by the global multiplicity of actors. The article ends by suggesting that similar such studies on Chinese port developments in other Indian Ocean littoral states will contribute towards a more nuanced understanding of the security implications of China’s growing presence in the region.

The setting

Over the past decade, the increase in trade between China and Africa has been stratospheric, rising from US$6.5 billion in 2004 to an estimated US$200 billion in 2013 (Xinhua News, 2013). The lion’s share of this trade entails the extraction of natural resources to China, and machinery, textiles, chemicals and electronic goods into Africa. Chinese mineral extraction, which adds little value to African economies, is off-set with massive infrastructure projects carried out primarily by Chinese state owned enterprises (SOE). These include the construction of schools, hospitals and stadiums but also roads, railways, ports and pipelines which, while enabling African states to increase their communication and trade capacities, also increase Chinese companies’ ability to transport resources from the hinterland to the ocean. A major reason for a recent surge in Chinese interest in East Africa is that the region has become a hot-spot for natural resource extraction with significant finds of oil, gas and coal. While it has been known for several decades that oil and gas are located in the region (Clarke, 2008, p. 322), up until the early 2000s, exploration in ‘frontier’ regions such as East Africa proved economically unviable, owing to its geological complexity and political instability.

This has dramatically changed in recent years. The rise in global oil prices has offered increasingly lucrative rewards to companies willing to invest in the region, with substantial oil and gas discoveries in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique, Uganda and Somalia.¹ Chinese companies are involved in a number of different projects, either in the production of oil and gas or in its supporting infrastructure. In Uganda, Chinese National Offshore Corporation (CNOOC) is involved in oil extraction in the Albertine Basin on the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo; on the borders of South Sudan, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) have numerous operations. Private Chinese companies are involved in gas exploration in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. Sichuan Hongda, a large Chinese conglomerate, has recently signed a US$3 billion deal with Tanzania in 2011 for a project involving the construction of Mchuchuma coal mine, a 600 metawatt thermal power station and the Liganga iron ore mine in southern Tanzania (Africa–Asia Confidential, 2013a, p. 7).

The parallel rise of a Chinese infrastructural presence on the East Coast of Africa is striking. In Kenya, China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) has recently won a bid to develop the first three berths at Lamu, where a new port is being constructed (which is planned to be expanded to 32 berths). In 2012 CCCC also signed a US$2.66 billion deal to update Kenya’s railways, announcing plans to construct a 479 km line between Mombasa and Nairobi (Jorgic, 2013). In 2011 a US$66.7 million deal was brokered to expand a number of berths at Mombasa, East Africa’s largest port (Jorgic, 2013). In Tanzania, Chinese president Xi Jinping’s visit to the country in March 2013 signalled the go-ahead for the Chinese financing of a US$10 billion port construction at Bagamoyo, due for completion in 2017. The port will be able to handle 20 more times cargo than the current port at Dar es Salaam (20 million containers per year as opposed to Dar es Salaam’s 800,000; Balile, 2013).

Such ports not only have the potential to serve Chinese security interests within the Indian Ocean but also to serve as ‘a knot where ocean and inland transport lines meet and intertwine’ (Weigend, 1958 in Notteboom, 2000). Ports serve as part of a much vaster network, ranging from roads, rail and pipelines in the host country to shipping and sea lines of communication (SLOC) of the Indian Ocean to, ultimately in our present context, the refineries of China. From this holistic perspective, every link in the chain is as crucial as the next in terms of the movement of commodities from China to Africa. With regards to the East African context, Chinese firms are engaged in the construction of various land linkages to the ports they are constructing. In Lamu, the same company responsible for the port construction, China Road and Bridge Company (CRBC), a subsidiary of CCCC, is engaged in a US$1,147 billion project to construct a Mombasa–Nairobi Railway. Tanzania has also been granted a soft loan of US$39.9 million by China to upgrade the Tanzania and Zambia Railways Authority (TAZARA) line, which was originally constructed by China in the 1970s. There are also a number of other plans under consideration, including a US$1.5 billion project to build a road which will connect northern Ethiopia with the port of Tadjourah, Djibouti. In Tanzania, the state-owned giant CNPC is involved in the construction of a 500 km, US$1.2 billion pipeline which will transport Tanzania’s gas from Mtwara to Dar es Salam.

Geostrategic anxieties

From a geostrategic point of view, the East African port developments can be situated within the context of the greater Indian Ocean, in which these ports are but two of a much vaster array of Chinese infrastructural activity stretching from Africa to Myanmar. Christopher Peherson has referred to this phenomenon as a ‘string of pearls’, in which each pearl as ‘a nexus of Chinese geopolitical influence or military presence’ (Peherson, 2006, p. 3). This influence manifests itself in the form of various infrastructure projects in littoral regions stretching from the South China Sea to the African coast. Writing in 2006, Peherson includes as pearls military facilities on Hainan Island (a part of mainland China, some 20 km south of Guangdong province), an upgraded airstrip on Woody Island in the Parcel archipelago, the construction of a deep water port at Sittwe, Myanmar, a shipping container facility in Chittagong, Bangladesh and the construction of a port in Gwadar, Pakistan (Peherson, 2006). This last project may be strengthened as an energy and trade hub, insofar as China has intentions to link the port, via pipeline and possibly rail, to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region of western China (Haider, 2007)

Since this 2006 article, an array of potentially new ‘pearls’ have been added to the list. Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port is under construction by two Chinese SOEs, China Harbour Engineering Company and Sinohydro Corporation, costing over US$400 million. A second phase of construction, costing US$750 million, is set to be completed by 2014 (Portworld News, 2010). Additionally, the same two companies will be responsible for the expansion of Colombo South Harbour (Sri Lankan Ports Authority, 2012). Further west, Chinese companies have been recently awarded a US$879 million contract to carry out work on the New Doha Port project in Qatar, including the construction of an 8 km quay wall (Broomhall, 2011). Port Sudan has undergone a US$79 million upgrade, including deepening by the Chinese Engineering Works company, in order to better facilitate the shipment of oil from the Sudanese interior (Sudan Tribune, 2006). In the vein of Peherson’s argument, the ports in Tanzania and Kenya serve as a further extension of Chinese influence across the Indian Ocean.

This nexus of infrastructure and resource extraction has raised the ire of other Indian Ocean Powers (Hyung, 2002; French & Chambers, 2011). At a geostrategic level, it has been anticipated that such influence will increasingly threaten the USA and its international partners (including India, Australia, Singapore, Japan, France and Canada), who have traditionally enjoyed command over the region (Berlin, 2010, p. 52). One of the main drivers for maintaining the status quo has to do with resources, particularly in the Middle East region, where the USA possesses unfettered access to oil reserves. China, which, since 1993 has been a net importer of oil, increasingly requires access to foreign energy supplies in order to sustain its own rapid development. More imminently, it has been argued that India, who owing to its geographical positioning has long held significant influence in the Indian Ocean, will increasingly face the risk of conflict with China (Kumar, 2009). Thus, it is anticipated that China will seek greater influence in the Indian Ocean while the USA and her allies will resist this rise. In this vein, the USA’s concern about Indian Ocean security can be seen as an extension of its already growing presence in the Asia-Pacific, where it seeks to balance China. While it is impossible to say what course of action may be played out in the Indian Ocean, a key element would be guaranteeing the continued passage of resources and goods through the region. This would entail the maintenance of both SLOCs and navigation at major chokepoints (Green & Shearer, 2012, p. 177).

The increased presence of the Chinese in the Indian Ocean region and in Africa has generated an alarmist discourse within the Euro-American sphere, permeating media, think-tanks and policy-making circles. A common critique of Chinese infrastructure projects in Africa asserts that benefits for local communities are merely secondary to the swift removal of natural resources and the opening up of hinterland African markets to Chinese capital (Carmody & Owusu, 2007, p. 507). There is frequently a tendency to associate this presence with the label of ‘colonialism’ or ‘neo-colonialism’. To take an extreme example, the UK’s Daily Mail in 2008 published an article entitled: ‘How China’s taking over Africa and why the West should be VERY worried’; the article alleges that China plans to send 300 million Chinese to Africa to ease its domestic population (Malone, 2008). On US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Africa in 2012, in a comment widely believed to be pointed at China, she stated: ‘The days of having outsiders come and extract the wealth of Africa for...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Africa and the Indian Ocean Region
• 1. Infrastructure and influence: China’s presence on the coast of East Africa
• 2. Indian Ocean region: The evolving context and rising significance of the African littoral
• 3. Zones and routes: Securing a western Indian Ocean
• 4. India, Africa and the Indian Ocean
• 5. Impacts of forest-related large-scale land acquisitions in the Indian Ocean world
• 6. Lewis Nkosi’s Durban: An Indian Ocean city in flux
• Acknowledgement
• Index