From IPS (link):
China is becoming a force to reckon with on the African continent. The world’s most populous country is busy building railways and roads in Angola, Nigeria and Kenya, revving up trade volumes with South Africa and Zambia and, most of all, guzzling up the continent’s rich reserves of oil and minerals.
Increasingly too, Beijing is courting resource-rich countries, like Sudan and Zimbabwe, that have been marginalised in recent years by the West, and forging partnerships on the strength of its non-interfering foreign policy.
China has refused to link its development aid and investment programme in Africa to demands for improved human rights and democracy, as advocated by the West.
