China and Africa are taking advantage from each other. Read today’s two stories:
From The New York Times:
China and a number of African nations agreed Sunday on 16 trade and investment deals valued at $1.9 billion, as Beijing extended its efforts to create a broad economic and diplomatic partnership with Africa, a resource-rich continent.
President Hu Jintao also pledged to extend $5 billion in loans and credits to Africa, forgive past debts and double foreign aid to the continent.
The aid announcement and deal-making capped a weekend of meetings that brought high-level representatives of 48 of the 53 African countries to Beijing. It was an unusually sweeping diplomatic initiative by China, which until recently had tended to focus mainly on domestic development rather than overseas expansion.[Full Text]
From The Wall Street Journal:
Nigeria Pledges More Oil to China
China will be first in line for more crude-oil imports from Nigeria if output from Africa’s biggest producer swells to four million barrels a day within two years, said Nigerian oil minister Edmund Daukoru.
Nigeria has been turning down buyers since February, when attacks by militants on oil installations in the Niger Delta started costing at least 500,000 barrels a day in production at any given time.
Customs data shows that in the first nine months of this year, Nigeria supplied 2.28 million barrels of crude to China, 75% less than in the same period of 2005 — in spite of Beijing’s efforts to court the West African country. China sees Nigeria as a key part of improving its energy security by reducing the need to buy oil from the Middle East.[Full Text]
