Resource Perspective
Limited recources – unlimited demand. China’s investment strategies in Africa
(workshop 5)
Lars Stein, oikos PhD fellow
Results:
Have a look at the workshop summary!
Teaser:
China and other Asian countries are heavily investing in infrastructure and resource deployment projects on the African continent. While Europe and the US considered Africa as “lost” until recently, China seems to perceive African countries as important partners on a common way to economic prosperity, as a future market for Chinese companies and as an indispensable resource provider for China’s economic growth.
Western Governments, NGOs and Companies observe these developments with a mixture of puzzlement, moral concerns, jealousy and economic opportunism. Some observers fear that China might inconsiderately exploit Africa’s resource base and might contribute to a new wave of debt-financing, both only worsening the situation of Africa’s people. The broader public has not yet made sense of what is happening in Africa and keeps to its traditional stereotypes.
In this workshop, we will explore the latest activities of China and other Asian countries in Africa and will reconstruct what is happening locally. Experts from international NGOs, Academia as well as Entrepreneurs familiar with the latest economic developments in Africa will share there insights with us. Equipped with these perspectives, we will reflect on what sustainability and sustainable growth in this context actually means and how a sustainable global resource management might look like. Questions of global power relations will have their room here. Assuming that we will reach consensus on what sustainable resource management means, we will outline first steps towards that and will have a look at what we personally might contribute.
Input Statements:
Friedel Hütz-Adams, Südwind Institute
Prof. Dr. Armin Reller, University of Augsburg