Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa challenged the West to match Chinese investment in his country on Tuesday, saying Western countries had let Zambia down.
Mwanawasa said Zambia would carry on welcoming Chinese investment, credit and loans despite domestic political opposition and unease in the West over the pace of China’s drive to boost economic ties with Africa.
”Those who oppose Chinese investment … all they need to do is to equal the help we are getting from China. We only turned to the East when you people in the West let us down,” Mwanawasa told Reuters on the sidelines of an African business forum.
”Give us the same or more cooperation we are getting from China and you will see that we are friends,” he said.
China is pursuing a strategy of tapping African raw materials to feed its economic growth, in exchange for grants and unconditional loans to the world’s poorest continent.
Zambia said last month China had boosted its planned investment to $900-million in the country’s mineral-rich Copperbelt over the next four years.
”The good thing is that I know of no strings that are attached to Chinese investment,” said Mwanawasa.
China’s increasing involvement in Africa has raised concerns among Western companies that they will be squeezed out of the race for Africa’s mineral and energy deposits.
Eyebrows are also being raised in Western political circles at China’s rising influence in the populous continent.
Some within Zambia oppose Chinese investment. Workers at a Chinese-owned copper mine in Zambia rioted over pay last year and the main opposition Patriotic Front party has accused the government of selling out to Beijing.
Mwanawasa dismissed talk of domestic opposition to China: ”The opposition in Zambia oppose anything.”
Chinese businesses have already invested more than $6-billion in Africa and are engaged across sectors from energy and mining to construction, infrastructure and textiles.
Some Western companies are hamstrung by their bankers who balk at the potential risks of doing business in a continent with a poor record on corporate governance.
Mwanawasa, who in a speech to the business forum stressed the need to root out graft, dismissed allegations his government’s anti-corruption campaign was a political witch hunt against his predecessor Frederick Chiluba.
Chiluba, who says he is the target of a witch hunt, is to stand trial on corruption charges on August 14, accused of stealing $488 000 in state funds while ruling the Southern African nation from 1991 to 2001.
The case has been stalled since May 2006 due to concerns about his health.
”Chiluba is a very close friend of mine … there is no reason whatsoever why we should want to purge” the country of his supporters, said Mwanawasa.
He said he had offered Chiluba an olive branch — that he could repay 70% of what he had allegedly stolen and receive a pardon but Chiluba had rejected the proposal. – Reuters