Last November, l visited Japan as part of a United Nations University/Japan Foreign Press Center fellowship. While in Japan, l was delighted to learn about the upcoming TICAD meeting.

The International Trade Confrenec for Africa's Developement. which will bring together heads of states from Africa to the city of Yokohama.

According to the organizers of the event, the mayor of the city of Yokohama and the ministry of foreign affairs of Japan, the meeting will act a showcase for the G8 summit scheduled to take place in Osaka later in July.

Every thing that has been happening to rally African leaders to the 'trade table' from Japan to Brussels.

Ofcourse, this has been prompted by thge fears that China is staging a coup in Africa. Ofcourse, there has been growing speculations that another 'cold war' is likely to take place. This time itn will happen in Africa.

In the last five years, there has been a spectacular increase in China’s trade with Africa so that it has overtaken Britain and is now the continent’s third largest trading partner for Africa after the United States and France.

Take for instance, in 2000, China’s trade with Africa stood at $10 billion; by 2005 it had leapt to $40 billion. And in the first six months of 2006 it rose again by 41 per cent. Today, some 1200 Chinese state companies are doing business in Africa. China’s extensive involvement in Africa brings with it tough pressures on African countries.

Remember, when an opposition spokesman in Zambia, where China has made large investments in the copper industry, attacked the extent of China’s investment, Beijing threatened to break off diplomatic relations.

At the same time, China is developing into a significant aid donor with its volunteers teaching agriculture, computer skills, traditional medicine and Chinese in Africa for almost free of charge. China is also offering exchange programs and conducting seminars for government officials to make them understand its policies for Africa.

The truth is that China’s primary objective is economic developement and now that Africa has many of the raw materials, including oil, which China urgently requires to fuel its industrial revolution, the rush is inevitable. Infact, Beijing views Africa as an important market for its cheap exports. China has also become a source of unconditional loans to Africa's most feared dictators-the likes of President Kibaki of Kenya and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe who stand to benefit from China's 'dangerious policies' in Africa. And these are all the more dangerious because, unlike Western loans, conditions about “good governance” are not attached to them. At this point it is worth considering a recent United Nations proposal that new aid funds for Africa should be channelled through a single body, a UN Fund for Africa.

A report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) claims: “The sheer multiplicity of donors has created a landscape of aid that, at best, can only be described as chaotic.” The report criticised the politicisation of aid programmes and the high administrative costs of such programmes. It also argued that increased aid, as a result of the Gleneagles summit when the G8 vowed to double aid with an extra $48 billion a year by 2010, should be delivered through a single multilateral agency. This proposal, predictably, was vetoed by Britain, which argued that improving existing mechanisms would be a better way to deliver increased aid to Africa.

In the 1960s there was a strong lobby, including Britain, which argued for channelling aid through the UN so as to take the politics out of it. Now, there are growing signs that aid is being overtly politicised so as to meet the Chinese “threat” aganist world powers.

Its obvious that during the Cold War, politicisation of aid became necessary to contain possible threats of dominance. There appears to be a return to Cold War tactics by Western powers in response to China’s growing involvement in Africa.

China’s political objectives are obvious enough to push the Americans and the British aways from Africa.

Chaina has established diplomatic relations with 48 African countries and sees these as useful potential allies in preventing any recognition of Taiwan that it believes the US has occasionally attempted to push through at the UN. China, is pursuing “naked mercantilism” in Africa for its own survival.

The Americans and the Europeans have also engaged in this kind of bad behaviour in Africa. Chaina has been accused of doing business with dubious regimes – providing soft loans to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, for example, or opposing sanctions against Sudan for its mistakes in Darfur . Such structures come ill from the West whose reputation in this respect bear close examination.

China’s impact at present is most obvious in Sudan, which has become a cockpit of conflicting strategic interests. China now owns 13 of the 15 top companies in Sudan and buys 50 per cent of the country’s oil. It has blocked UN attempts to exert meaningful pressures upon Khartoum over Darfur and has supplied hundreds of military vehicles to the Sudanese government while a large proportion of the arms used by the Janjaweed militias come from China.

In essense, Chaina is funding another 'genocide' in Africa's Darfur region with impunity.

However, despite the Chinese high handedness in Darfur, it is worthy to note that also the Americans have anti-terrorist “listening posts” in Sudan and probably sees these as being strategically more important than overt pressures in relation to Darfur.

Across Africa, the sentiments are clear that the surge in Chinese investment and aid is providing a much more effective alternative to the West than ever the Communist powers achieved during the Cold War era.

The continent is experiencing improved growth as a result of higher commodity prices because of China’s growing demands. At the same time, China is prepared to finance and build large infrastructure projects such as bridges, ports or railways that the West has become wary of tackling and, for example, it made a loan of $1 billion to Nigeria to modernise its rail system and its engaged in another multimillion dollar project in Kenya for improving the road network.

Infact, Kenya's ill-equipped military is benefiting from cheap and second hand military hardware donated by the Chinese army.

China has cancelled $1 billion of debts and became an early investor in post-conflict Sierra Leone. And the West is clearly less than happy with this Chinese invasion of what had been regarded as a Western sphere of interest and influence for decades.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has occassionally suggested that aid to Africa was as much a strategic as a moral challenge – a line clearly designed to appeal to the US – as the continent fell under the influence of China as well as terror groups such as al-Qaida and Taliban.

Brown's remarks are nothing short of 'blatant' Cold War-speak and only the target has changed. Ofcourse to Brown, China, Taliban and al-Qaida are viewed as capitalist powers.

While addressing an an anti-poverty conference organised by former US President Bill Clinton, Brown urged the delegates to embrace a “new deal” for Africa before it was too late.

This came as Britain pledged a $15 billion over 10 years to educate Africa's poor children. His fear was that if they don’t wake up to the need for the new deal they would find that what they thought was a moral imperative has become very quickly a strategic imperative.

He emphasised how several things had changed in Africa including the infliltration by al-Qaida bases than in any other part of the world, more immigration from Africa into Europe, more failed states and the raising of more dictators courtesy of China playing politics in Africa.

l understand that the problem with Brown is how China is “playing politics in Africa”.

According to Zimbabwe's despotic leader Robert Mugabe, Britain has a long history of 'playing bad politics' in Africa.

Mugabe and Kenya's former President Daniel Moi believe that China’s lending to Africa was “self liberation' from the york of debt imposed by the higly industrialised nations and that the politics of development assistance would move “right to the centre of the agenda” of Africa's furture democracy. In essence, Brown declared war on China in Africa on behalf of the old West.

And African leaders who are relying on cheap favors from China have been put on notice that their days are numbered.

The continued crack down on peaceful Tibetians by the Chinese authorities in the wake up for thew Olympic games is proving to be a harmful affair between the Chinese and the old West. The US has infact threatened to take 'action' aganist China for continued violation of humaN rights coming only weeks after the US States Department removed China from the list of countries that were regarded as the greatest violaters of human rights. What a contradiction.