Africa must shake off its romantic view of China and accept Beijing is a competitor as much as a partner and capable of the same exploitative practices as the old colonial powers, Nigeria’s central bank governor has warned.
Reflecting the shifting views of a growing number of senior African officials who fear the continent’s anaemic industrial sector is being battered by cheap Chinese imports Lamido Sanusi cautions that Africa is “opening itself up to a new form of imperialism”.
“China takes from us primary goods and sells us manufactured ones. This was also the essence of colonialism,” he writes in the Financial Times. His remarks are among the most trenchant by a serving African official about the continent’s ties with the world’s second-largest economy.