This week’s blog will not solely look at the role of China’s interventions in West Africa as part of its Africa-wide “Going Global Strategy” as previously discussed, but addresses how my future blogs and wider research must consider the often-missing voices of African scholars.
It is evident that individuals have their own pre-conceptions and positionality, with ideas of Orientalism living on academically, as a part of the West’s political unconscious (Shatz, 2019), and imaginative geographies persisting in the form of ‘othering’ (Aitken, 2005), with themes of ‘saving’ the continent and ‘making poverty history’ (Mahadeo, 2007) pervading throughout Western media and academic writings, perpetuating popular stereotypes (Michira, 2002). The work of Martin Scott was central in highlighting the substantial gaps in analyses of Western media, with a tendency of news outlets and researchers to focus on negative topics (Scott, 2015; Stabler, 2018), ignoring the actualities of social and economic processes in the continent (Jarosz, 1992). Furthermore, particularly in regards to water, representations also opt to overlook the success stories of the continent, with studies by academics including Ayisi and Brylla, Poncian and Asante revealing the continued portrayal of Africa as crisis-ridden and dependant on overseas powers (Oguh, 2015), and such as The Trouble with Africa (Calderisi,2007) and No Refuge: The Crisis of Refugee Militarization in Africa (Muggah, 2006), not containing any malign content but rather having negative images on the covers so as to grab the attention of readers. Reflexivity is clearly thus a vital aspect of research, but also something that needs to be bettered (Kobayashi, 2003). Researchers and policy-makers need to vigorously interrogate European representations of former colonial territories (Duncan and Ley, 1993), whilst elevating African voices within global goals.
Representations of Africa in the Economist. Source.
The cover of Robert Muggah's 'No Refuge' depicting a soldier bearing an AK-47.
Moreover these representations are not solely confined to Europe, with scholars noting the ways in which Chinese media outlets, owned by the publicity department of the government, such as China Daily, have at times glorified the state’s domination of African countries, portraying the nation as being a saviour (Zhu, 2014), with media portrayals of Africans in China being directly attributed to biased attitudes toward Africans among the population (Tan et al, 2009). The Annual Spring Festival Gala for example, broadcast on China’s national broadcaster, CCTV, has an estimated 500million viewers (Time), with the 2018 Gala “Celebrating” (同喜同乐) Chinese-African relations, but continuing on to use stereotypes, coupled with a well-known Chinese actress in full blackface (The Conversation).
Spring Gala Festival with the use of blackface. Source.
A 2016 Chinese detergent advert shows a black man forcefully washed until he is a fair-skinned Chinese man. Source.
What worries me about such overt racism on national television, is the Chinese government’s refusal to denounce such activity, with increased racism towards Africans in China reported during the Covid-19 outbreak (Guardian), whilst it heightens its involvement in African infrastructure and water programmes. The recent agreement for Côte d'Ivoire to receive a 511 million euro loan from China’s Exim Bank, a fund aimed at financing a drinking water project that will cover 12 cities in the country and provide safe drinking water for 3 million people (Afrik21), exhibits the growing role of China in West Africa. These schemes, part of China’s Africa-wide “Going Global Strategy”, in which China looks for, ‘Global leadership and cooperation’, entails two unique schemes; the Belt and Road Initiative, and Capacity Cooperation (China Policy). For some such as Langan, such extensive loans represent neo-colonialist deals attempting to co-opt African nations into agreeing with Chinese terms and pursuing mercantilist interests (Langan, 2017), with others going as far as to state how China’s attempts to extract raw materials from across Africa mirrors the exploitative nature of past colonisers such as Britain (Balasubramanyam, 2015). These adversities can be demonstrated in Waldhauser’s estimations in early 2018 that Djibouti owed at least $1.2 billion to China, and Zambia accumulating loans from China totalling almost 6.4 billion USD at end-2017 (CARI), displaying that such intervention may have entrenched strings attached, meaning we must remain vigilant.
A really important portion of the discourses of water and development in Africa! I was completely unaware of the dangerous narrative that the Chinese government was openly and actively contributing to, and you're incorporation of this into a concept that has often focused on Eurocentric representation was very interesting.
My name is Sebastian Alsina-Olaizola and over the course of several weeks, I will explore the nature of politics and water in Africa, focussing in particular on West Africa, which consists of 16 unique nations and 400 million people. I have opted to look at the political aspects of water, specifically, "water conflict", defined as, “Any disagreement or dispute over or about water, where external social, economic, legal, political or military intervention is needed to resolve the problem” ( Ashton, 2007 ), having recently returned from a year abroad in California. Here, I gained a brief insight into the politicised nature of water, even on a continent that holds the largest share of the world’s total freshwater ( Gaye and Tindimugaya, 2019 ). I was able to kayak down the Colorado River, and learnt of the historic disagreements over the Compact Agreement which distributes use between the seven states the river runs through, as well as damming by the US, that has led to the riv
As addressed in previous blogs, water in West African nations such as Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire is facing severe challenges in the form of misallocation and pollution, with climate change heightening pressures further ( Kundzewicz et al., 2007 ). These issues are compounded by the transboundary nature of water in the region, with my next two blogs investigating such shared water resources in West Africa and the cooperative strategies employed to alleviate tensions and negotiate more equitable utilisation of water ( Tawfik, 2016 ). It can be noted that 90% of all of Africa’s surface freshwater is in the form of river basins and lakes that are shared by two or more nations ( Goulden et al, 2010 ), with transboundary aquifers (TBAs) representing an estimated 42% of the continental area ( Altchenko and Villholth, 2013 ). I was astonished at the true extent of such transboundary water resources in West Africa specifically, with all countries in this region, except for Cape Verde, sha
Artwork by Nigerian-born artist Temi Coker . The past several weeks of writing this blog have been enlightening to say the least. As we enter a Tier4 lockdown here in the UK, I have been reminded that as a male living in Britain, this pandemic has had a minuscule impact on my daily routine when compared to the intensification of existing inequalities examined throughout the African continent. This blog originated as an attempt to learn more about hydropolitics in West Africa, covering the shortfalls of inadequate governance in Ghana , the complexities of reaching an agreement in relation to transboundary watercourse in the LCB and NBA , whilst addressing mixed use private and community-based approac hes when recovering after conflict. After pausing in the fourth week to consider the need to elevate missing voices of African scholarship, with this experience illuminating the dominance of the field by predominantly white scholars, I learnt to adopt an intersectional approach when rese
A really important portion of the discourses of water and development in Africa! I was completely unaware of the dangerous narrative that the Chinese government was openly and actively contributing to, and you're incorporation of this into a concept that has often focused on Eurocentric representation was very interesting.
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