When Xi Jinping pondered which foreign region to visit first as China’s newly appointed President, he wasn’t swayed to a mineral-rich Australia, a thriving Singapore or steadfast North Korea. Instead, his careful calculations took him to Africa. After a brief, almost obligatory stop in Moscow, he flew to Tanzania, South Africa and Congo-Brazzaville, where he promised $20 billion in new credit to finance infrastructure and agriculture in Africa over the next three years.
Some two months after that visit, President Barack Obama followed in the Chinese leader’s footsteps. It was only the American President’s first extended trip to Africa since taking office some four and a half years earlier. The sign of America’s lagging commitment to Africa was not lost upon Africans. That China has moved 600 million people out of extreme poverty over the past 35 years is a source of wonder for many Africans who remain trapped in cycles of poverty. As the American President spoke of a “Pivot to Asia,” China was intently channeling its attention here: In 2009 China supplanted the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner and never looked back. China’s government estimates that it conducted $200 billion worth of trade with the continent in 2012.
Perhaps no African people is more optimistic about the potential of Chinese investment than that of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a nation rich in natural resources but poor in nearly every other respect. Congo is the world’s most underdeveloped nation and the most unlikely place for an individual to improve his or her livelihood, according to the United Nations.
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