Didn’t the New York Times get the memo? Stories about foreign economic interests in Africa are now supposed to focus invariably on the dastardly Chinese ambitions on that continent! How strange to read such a retro piece…as if the French had anything to do at all with Africa’s pace of economic and political development!
Now that Wen Jiabao arrives on the continent with $10 billion in loans in tow, isn’t it time that we in the West simply sent those bad memories of Western colonialism down the memory hole? How discourteous to suggest otherwise!
Perhaps a few days spent reading alarmist books by French journalists in Africa about Chinese penetration of the continent will set things right.
Adam Cathcart 