Emerging powers news roundup

Exim Bank of India to open office in Addis
The Export-Import Bank of India (Exim Bank), the country’s premiere export finance institution, is scheduled to official inaugurate a representative office in Addis Ababa. The office, being set up to promote trade and investment flows between India and the East African region, will look after the bank’s interest in Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, according to Sachin More, Resident Representative of the bank.
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China Taking Steps to Boost Exports From Ethiopia, Ambassador Gu Says
China is taking steps to increase the volume of goods it receives from Ethiopia, the state-owned Ethiopian News Agency cited Chinese Ambassador Gu Xiaojie as saying. China is using policy measures such as zero tariffs on products from developing countries and organizing trade fairs for Ethiopian exporters to improve the balance of trade for the Horn of Africa nation, Gu said in an interview, according to the Addis Ababa-based agency.
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Bono bails on Africa
The U2 front man, who together with his wife Ali Hewson founded the Edun fashion line to resurrect clothing manufacturing in sub-Saharan Africa, has relocated production to China because of quality and consistency problems.
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I.B.M.: Africa Is the Next Growth Frontier
I.B.M. will supply the computing technology and services for an upgraded cellphone network across 16 nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Its customer is India’s largest cellphone operator, Bharti Airtel, which paid $9 billion a few months ago for most of the African assets of Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications Company, or Zain. The Bharti contract punctuates I.B.M.’s Africa strategy. The company’s presence in Africa dates back 50 years, but in the last five years I.B.M. has invested $300 million in the region to build data centers, add country offices and foster technology training programs — and it plans to expand aggressively in the region.
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Kenya: Chinese Loan Underwrites Lake Turkana Destruction
NGOs are outraged after confirmation that the world's largest bank will finance the destructive Gibe 3 hydropower dam. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is underwriting a US$500 million contract awarded May 13 to Dongfang Electric Corporation for the dam's turbines and electro-mechanical works. Although ICBC has not publicly announced the loan, an official confirmed September 8 by email that the financial agreement between ICBC and the Ethiopian government was signed in July. The funding undermines ICBC's efforts to build a global reputation as a socially and environmentally responsible lending institution.
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Sundance working on funding for $3,3bn Mbalam project
Africa-focused iron-ore developer Sundance Resources expects to secure financing for its Mbalam iron-ore project, on the border of Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), before the end of the year. Sundance chairperson George Jones said “In recent weeks, we’ve travelled extensively to meet with a number of the major steel mills and discuss sales contracts and potential joint-venture arrangements. It was during these visits that we met and engaged with China Harbour Engineering Company and CRCC China Africa Construction,”.
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Chinese consortium mulls $20bn investment in Nigeria’s infrastructure
The Commonwealth Business Council on Thursday disclosed that a consortium from China is perfecting plans to invest about $20 billion on infrastructure development and capacity building in Nigeria. Mohan Kaul, director general of the council, who made the revelation in Abuja at a round table on the Nigerian international investors’ forum, said some major investment banks from France and the United Kingdom (UK) are also looking at investment opportunities of very high level in the country. The director general said, “We have China consortium here who are trying to use their credit line that China has given to Nigeria, which is about $20 billion. That credit line we got through an agreement with the Chinese government can be used on infrastructure and for capacity building. So, we have a Chinese group that is basically looking at infrastructure project using that credit line which I told you is as high as $20 billion. We have also some major investment banks from France and UK which are also looking at investment projects of very high level. So what we are looking at is investment of infrastructure projects of very high level.”
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Following the money
Chinese firms have radically stepped up their overseas investment activity in recent years. But the environmental impact of that investment has caused international controversy and China’s own environmental NGOs are starting to pay attention. One such group is the Global Environmental Institute (GEI), a non-profit outfit headquartered in Beijing that has a particular focus on the environmental impact of Chinese finance abroad.
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South Africa - China rejects maize surplus
“They don’t need grain in its primary form, so we exchanged information on agro-processing and agribusiness. We also discussed market access for processed goods,” she said. Grain SA chairperson Neels Ferreira, who was part of the delegation, said South Africa didn’t have the infrastructure to deliver the 4 million ton grain surplus in under a year.
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Construction firms eye Africa as work dries up
South African construction companies, which arguably benefited the most from infrastructure contracts associated with the 2010 soccer World Cup, are now pinning their hopes on projects elsewhere on the African continent and in other parts of the world.
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Ghana says in talks with Chinese oil investors-Reuters + China gives Ghana over $3bn loan
Ghana is making good progress in talks with Chinese investors interested in buying a stake in the West African nation’s oil assets, its deputy energy minister said on Monday. Ghana aims to produce its first barrel of oil this year but developments have often been overshadowed by talk of disputes between state oil firm GNPC and foreign energy firms.
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Nirupama Rao, Foreign Secretary of India, delivered the Harish C. Mahindra Memorial Lecture and she also spoke on India’s global role at Harvard University

Of late, India’s global role has been mentioned frequently against the backdrop of what we would call a shift of economic power to Asia. Today, it is almost de rigeur to speak of the dynamic Indian growth story despite the ravages of the global economic crisis. But, to put our arms around the Indian experience, you have to beyond just the factor of fast economic growth. And that would lead us onto the quest of India’s attributes and its enduring stability as a modern and democratic nation state. Driving our foreign policy priorities and our desire for strategic autonomy are factors of external security, internal security, the need for sustained economic growth, our energy security, maritime security and access to technology and innovation. Further, India is too large a country to be dovetailed into alliance type of relationships. In order to modernize our country we need to, and we have succeeded in, forging well-rounded strategic partnerships with all major powers. A fundamental goal of India’s foreign policy is to create an external environment that promotes the fulfilment of our economic growth targets and ambitions.
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President Mills arrives in China for State Visit
President John Evans Atta Mills, on his arrival in Beijing, China, on Sunday for a five-day state visit, has stressed Sino-Ghana relations and collaboration for mutual benefits. During his visit, President Mills would meet and hold talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao, and sign a 270 million dollar loan facility from China to expand the Kpong Water Project, in Ghana. Other activities on the itinerary of President Mills are a visit to Bonsai Aluminium Company, which recently invested 80 per cent share in the development of Ghana's bauxite and aluminium industries, investment talks and business forum organised by the China Development Bank and a meeting with African Ambassadors.
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India's cheap AIDS drug lifeline quantified
India's pivotal role in supplying cheap anti-HIV medicines to developing countries has been quantified for the first time.
The detailed assessment found that India is supplying 80 per cent of the cheap anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) bought by low- and middle-income countries. The authors say their work reveals the scale of the damage that could be done to these countries should the supply be cut off by new trade agreements. Sub-Saharan African countries, and India itself, rely heavily on cheap Indian generic drugs. This has been possible as Indian laws did not grant patents on a product, but only on a process to make it, which helped its drug firms to make cheaper versions and improved formulations using alternative methods. But India's signing of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement under the World Trade Organization in 2005 means that the country now has to grant patents on products as well as processes, for any drugs patented after this date. "Now, there is a threat that the limited policy space that remains will be further constricted by bilateral or regional free trade agreements" that have even more stringent clauses than TRIPS, said the authors.
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THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF “EMERGING”, “NON-DAC” DONORS AND THEIR DIFFERENCE FROM TRADITIONAL DONORS
This issue of NORRAG NEWS (NN44) is dedicated to an analysis of the new development partners, sometimes termed emerging donors. This latter is not a very useful term and especially as it is often used to refer to India, China and South Korea which have been involved in development cooperation for a very long time. These newer actors in development assistance are also sometime called non-DAC donors. This is also a misleading and a rather negative way of defining this very diverse group, as some of these new development assistance partners are new EU member states, others are OECD members but not of its Development Assistance Committee (DAC), others are Gulf States, while others again are members of the group called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). And there are many more.
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This issue is available here.

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* Compiled by Sanusha Naidu, research director of Fahamu’s Emerging powers in Africa programme.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.