Ian Linden: Who is helping Africa now?

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"Lesotho which nobody has ever heard of": this is Trump three weeks ago with customary offensiveness berating a US-funded aid programme in this small majority-Catholic African nation. Unusually not a flagrant lie - at least as far as his followers are concerned.

Lesotho is not desperately poor but some 35% of people in Africa's 55 countries are still living in extreme poverty, 43% without electricity, relying on only the most basic of health services. Even though 'the poor you will always have with you' [Mark 14.7], we seem no longer to be with them. They are becoming invisible.

You might think that a continent with annual GDP growth projected to rise from 3.8% this year to 4.1% in 2026 would receive more attention from the UK government. Ditto an export market of a projected 2.5 billion population in 2050 (world population around 9.7 billion). Add abundant rare earths and minerals sought for the information and renewables economy, and consolidating relationships with Africa, political, economic and humanitarian, should be a no-brainer.

But here's the rub. Take Nigeria, the future fourth largest population in the world by 2050 after China, India and Pakistan. Nigerians have entrepreneurial vigour seeping from every pore. Lagos has multiple small business start-ups. The Nollywood film industry, worth $.6.4 billion, employs 300,000 people churning out 2,500 films a year. But Nigeria has massive youth unemployment and comes damagingly high in Transparency International's country rating for perceived corruption at 140/180 (higher the score, worse the corruption). Its Government has failed to curb ethnic conflict over scarce land with its persistent killing mainly of Christians by nominally Muslim and by jihadist criminals .

The 4 Cs - Corruption, Climate Change, Conflict and Coups - threatening Africa's future are interlinked. Corruption undermines an "economy as if people mattered" (F.S. Schumacher Small is Beautiful). Coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have damaged the economy and security integration of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States). Prolonged droughts beset East Africa.
So how do China, Russia and the EU, in potentially game-changing relationships with Africa, together feature in this picture?

The People's Republic of China's complex relationship with Africa is becoming more mutually beneficial. China's total trade with Africa was $295 billion in 2024, up 6% from 2023. It has easier visa requirements for Africans than the West, not only for those who intermarry. There is surprisingly a Congolese Pentecostal Church in Guangzhou city, services in Mandarin for Chinese Christians in some African States. Although China has done nothing to stop debilitating corruption or the coups that hold Africa back.

China's contribution to transformative infrastructure dates back more than half a century. It includes railways, Addis Ababa to Djibouti, Mombasa to Nairobi, a huge Nile dam, the 1,600 kilometres long Greater Nile pipeline, from oil fields near the Nuba mountains to Port Sudan run by the China National Petroleum Company. Chinese companies are involved in many port projects around the African coast.

I remember eating Chinese dinners, unappetising pieces of tinned chicken, on holiday in Dar-es Salaam in 1970. Chinese workers were beginning building the Tanzam railway linking Zambia's copper-belt to the coast - avoiding South Africa - at the cost of $3.2 billion in today's money. A major improvement on 'the hell run', a meandering road full of huge potholes plied by oil-tanker drivers. Tanzanians' bon mot was "you could tell they were drunk if they were driving in a straight line".

The West's portrayal of a predatory China and a supine Africa describes States rather than citizens. China's African - once large - loans are accused of creating debt-dependency. Oil-producing Angola owes some $20 billion. A third of its population still live on less than $2.15 a day.

China seeks Africa's minerals and rare earths. It has a stake in 15 of 19 cobalt and copper mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The collapse of a 'tailing dam' at a Chinese, State majority owned, Zambian copper mine recently released a catastrophic 50 million litres of toxic slurry into the Kafue river. Over 50% of the population rely on its waters. Exporting their home human rights record, working conditions in China's mines have been appalling - though not uniquely so.

China's autocratic regime doesn't easily bend to popular concerns mor downgrade its commitment to a carbon-neutral 2050. China still relies on coal-fired energy generation but is making strides towards effective storage for its fast growing solar and wind generated energy, and improving the efficiency of semi-conductors used in lighting. But it needs cobalt for batteries, as well as - not so scarce - lithium, and more copper - smartphones - than in the past. China is now supporting economies with a strong digital and energy-transition component, and regional economic integration.

Russia, in comparison, unconcerned about climate change, floats on its oil and gas reserves. It is particularly interested in gold, diamonds and platinum, as well as securing supply-chains for its military-political complex. The Wagner mercenary force, some recruited from prison with $3-4,000 monthly salaries, represent a new mix of predatory - brutal - military, economic and political intervention, now under the Russian Ministry of Defense. They annually plunder c. £1 billion worth of gold from African mines. African votes at the UN are a political trophy in derzjavnost, Russia's imperial dream of statehood, the quest for equal global status with the USA and China.

Africa holds great potential but US isolationism, UK 's decade of economic mismanagement, leave the EU, its NGOs and Churches as the principal international alternative to Chinese support for Africa's development. The Catholic Church educates 19.2 million children in Africa in 33,000 primary schools, 5.4 million in 10,000 secondary schools, and maintains 28 Catholic Universities and Colleges. There are c. 1,600 Catholic hospitals and 5,300 health centres. And the mainstay of this educational work and health care have been, and are, the Religious Orders, most notably Women Religious. The role of national and partnering CARITAS organisations remains critical in reaching villages and promoting development.

One Catholic Sierra Leonian hospital in Makeni stands out in my mind. Treatment for the poor, say for a caesarian, was paid from charges for caesarians carried out on rich patients. The nurses had on-the-job training from a skilled instructor. A German parish had sent an X-ray machine.

To read on see: www.ianlinden.com/latest-blogs/who-is-helping-africa-now

Professor Ian Linden is Visiting Professor at St Mary's University, Strawberry Hill, London. A past director of the Catholic Institute for International Relations, he was awarded a CMG for his work for human rights in 2000. He has also been an adviser on Europe and Justice and Peace issues to the Department of International Affairs of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales. Ian chairs a new charity for After-school schooling in Beirut for Syrian refugees and Lebanese kids in danger of dropping out partnering with CARITAS Lebanon and work on board of Las Casas Institute in Oxford with Richard Finn OP. His latest book was Global Catholicism published by Hurst in 2009.