International Law

PostGlobal has an interesting discussion on the role of China in Africa, especially now that it is providing funds to Sudan.  AllAfrica.com is full of stories of other funds coming in, especially on the coattails of President Hu Jintao’s Africa trip.  It is an interesting debate, and one can see it in the project finance side as well as China steps up there, in a market already flush with cash (at least for the moment) that has weakened some of the more traditional players, who were used to being the only lenders/source of capital in town (and slanted the balance in terms of agreement drafting and the like).

And apparently China is not the only country stepping up interest in Africa, with Brazil and others getting into the field, though to a lesser extent. 

So as not to poach too much, we’ll leave the discussion for PostGlobal except for one quick thought — though there might be reasons to be concerned because of increasing resource extraction and legitimate questions of who benefits, is the West partly concerned because someone else is stepping up to the plate?  Does this have some early overtones of the Cold War money plays in Africa?