I got into a passionate discussion with a friend after going to Church this Sunday. The friend who I was debating with is from Hong Kong and our "discussion" revolved around the approaches that have been used by China and the West in their economic relationship with Africa. His bottom line is that the strategies used by both sides is essentially the same-that both sides have sought to exploit Africa in every which way and as quickly as possible.

In his view the main difference is that the West is more sophisticated in their exploitation and that their efforts at encouraging good governance and human rights simply serves as good PR (with China being more "honest" about just simply wanting to get at the natural resources). I agreed that both sides were looking out first for their own national interests in Africa and that the West was not entirely altruistic. However, I argued that the West's focus on getting African countries to improve their human rights and governance frameworks would ultimately serve the continent's long term interests better and demonstrated a concern with moving the relationship beyond one of dependence.

In my mind, China, with its increasing influence in Africa, can play a vital role in inparting its knowledge on how to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. My concern is that China has not demonstrated interest in doing just that-instead it has continued to reiterate that is has no desire to interject itself into a country's internal affairs in rote fashion. But am I wrong? Since China has started increasing its economic presence in Africa some countries have shown remarkable growth-though one can argue that is simply the result of high commodity prices. Has the West played a positive role in the region? I haven't seen much evidence that our hectoring has made much of a difference to date.