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New 'cool war' hotting up in Africa as communism and capitalism duke it out to win the hearts and minds

A "cool war" appears to be hotting up in Africa between the United States and China which have set two old rivals, Kenya (GDP: US$74.94 billion / pop 47.7 million) and Tanzania (GDP: US$52.09 billion /pop 57.31 million) against each other as proxy powers for the two sides.

Rather like gladiators in the Coliseum of ancient Rome, the two sides have different weapons and face each other with advantages and disadvantages that the other side does not possess.

On the US side, Kenya represents that shining city on the hill, of freedom and democracy, which draws the multitudes to its shores. The disadvantage from an aid-receiving African nation point of view are the moral hoops state aid recipients must jump through before they lay their hands on the western cash.

China, as an aid donor, is a good deal less picky, being uncritical of regimes that undermine democracy and verge toward centralised authoritarian rule, while concurrently emphasising they conform to market principles and economic growth.

China argues that host countries should reject the failed Western system with all its demanding conditions and follow the freer Chinese developmental model, pursuing economic growth first and deferring the political reforms until later. The US insists that China's approach is beginning to undermine the West's development efforts in Africa.

The future challenge to Kenya may well come from Tanzania's Bagamoyo, a small fishing port, 45 miles north of Dar es Salaam, which planners say stands to become Africa's biggest container port in the next 10 years - with Chinese help.

China's largest public-port operator, Hong Kong-headquartered China Merchants Holdings, has commenced what the Ecofin Agency called "the most significant construction project in the last four decades of Chinese-Tanzanian relations", says the Paris-based newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique.

Part of the US$10 billion funding will come from the Sultanate of Oman's sovereign-wealth fund and China's Exim Bank. There will be a special economic zone modeled on Shenzhen's. The piers and docks are expected to extend along 10 miles along the coast, and handle 20 million TEU a year, more than Rotterdam, Europe's biggest port. Tanzanian authorities say it will create an industrial revolution in a mainly rural country where 70 per cent still live below the poverty line.

According to Daudi Mukangara, a political scientist at the University of Dar es Salaam, the CCM's original brand of socialism did not withstand "the neoliberal assault of the late 1980s and '90s, which denationalised the very notion of nationalism." That is, the free-market efficiency had marginalised Tanzania's old love of central planning.

Today, Tanzania has one of Africa's strongest growth rates - 5.8 per cent in 2018, with a forecast of six per cent in 2019, according to the IMF - and has begun a massive infrastructure-development programme.

The Bagamoyo project will let Oman regain a foothold in Africa; the nearby island of Zanzibar was Omani territory from 1698, from where it ran slave trade supplying the Gulf States. China, too, extending its influence in East Africa in Tanzania, has long been a pillar of Sino-African cooperation. Until the mid-19th century, Bagamoyo was an important transit point for copra (dried coconut), ivory and slaves.

Tanzania has been governed by John Magufuli since late 2015. He is the political heir of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM or the Party of the Revolution), founded in 1977 by Julius Nyerere, the first president and darling of the left.

When it comes to Belt and Road activity, it is remembered with affection that Nyerere visited China 30 times, and the Soviet Union only once. China, a pioneer in Global South relations, is bringing Africa's globalisation full circle in opening the way for Turkish, Egyptian, Indian, and Gulf operators.

The new Bagamoyo port agreement was made public in March 2013 during the second official visit of China's President Xi Jinping to Africa; Tanzania was his first stop. No Chinese leader has visited this region as often since Deng Xiaoping launched his open-door policy in 1978.

Charles Sanga, the late Nyerere's personal assistant, remembers that "at the end of his life in 1999, he believed we had only one true friend: China". Mr Sanga was Tanzania's ambassador in Beijing at the time of the first Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit in September 2000, was attended by just four African heads of state, including then-Tanzanian president, Benjamin Mkapa.

China is Africa's biggest trading partner, ahead of the United States. At the eighth China-Africa summit in Beijing last September, under the "New Silk Roads" banner, China promised $60 billion: Reuters reported that this would be "$15 billion of aid, interest-free loans and concessional loans, a credit line of $20 billion, a $10 billion special fund for China-Africa development and a $5 billion special fund for imports from Africa."

President Xi said he would not fund any vanity projects: "China's cooperation with Africa is clearly targeted at the major bottlenecks to development." In 2000-16, China loaned Africa $125 billion, according to the China Africa Research Initiative in Washington. In 2017 bilateral trade was worth $180 billion, $75.3 billion of it Chinese imports from Africa. US-African bilateral trade is worth less than $39 billion.

President Donald Trump's administration now wants to block China, which it accuses of "deliberately and aggressively targeting their investments in the region to gain a competitive advantage over the United States," as National Security Adviser John Bolton told the rightist Heritage Foundation.

Mr Bolton accused China of resorting to "bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing's wishes and demands". China is unperturbed by US accusations and has reaffirmed its promise to "contribute to Africa's development by putting its own development to good use".

Bolton mentioned East Africa in his speech on the new US strategy for the continent: Public debt, particularly in Zambia, would leave countries at China's mercy. That began a war of words between the United States and China. Tanzania, with Ethiopia, Kenya, and Egypt, is officially a country China identified in 2015 for business delocalisations.

Tanzania plans make itelf a semi-industrialised nation by 2025. He hopes the manufacturing sector will by then generate at least 40 per cent of its wealth, not less than 10 per cent as it does now.

Tanzania is also Africa's fourth gold producer, has altered mining companies' exploitation contracts, giving the government the right to renegotiate or sever them in instances of proven fraud. The new legislation also does away with mining companies' right to settle disputes through international arbitration.

Such policies have "weakened growth in the mining sector and scared off investors, who are now afraid of having to deal with the Tanzanian justice system", said former parliamentarian Zitto Kabwe, who now leads the Alliance for Change and Transparency.

Mr Kabwe is critical of the World Bank and the IMF, "which imposed the 1998 mining code, which favours multinational extraction companies, and forced us into a debt trap." China is no better: It is "advancing its pawns in Africa in its own interest."

He warned against falling into anti-Chinese rhetoric that serves Western interests: "Sixty per cent of our external public debt is to multilateral organisations such as Bretton Woods and only 10 per cent to China."

The Pentagon and US State Department are reinforcing their commitment to African security and influence amid numerous reports of stepped up Chinese military and economic incursions into the region. Having established a military base in Djibouti on the coast as recently as last year, China is expanding political and military influence in the region, inspiring substantial concern among US officials and prompting discussion of a stronger commitment.

"Djibouti is a key, strategic United States partner in the region and is host to Camp Lemonnier, the sole enduring presence for the United States military in Africa since 2003. Djibouti remains committed to ensuring the pursuit of our shared interests in the region," a State Department official told Warrior Maven Global Security.

China's Africa moves certainly align with their highly-visible and often-discussed expansionist strategy, involving a dramatic shift from operating as a dominant regional power - to working toward becoming a major international superpower. "These moves are in line with the ‘New Historic Missions' doctrine, which calls for an expeditionary capability that can, among other things, safeguard growing Chinese interests on the continent, maintain a naval presence in the western Indian Ocean, protect its merchant ships from piracy, and support China's growing participation in UN missions in Africa," says the African Centre for Strategic Studies.

So as the famous detective Sherlock Holmes might say: "The game's afoot!"

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When one couples this latter-day Race for Africa, to use a phrase popular in the 19th century, with a 21st century trade war, what risks do you see emerging? Might it threaten passage through the Suez Canal? Or will African economic development - even rival economic development - make the continent a more valuable trading partner internationally?

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