I entirely agree with Firoze [China still a small player in Africa, I would add, however, that one of biggest problems that Africa has been suffering from is a type of leadership which has generally been focused on how to get richer as selfishly as possible, turning the exercise of leader into one comparable to a feudal CEO (e.g. Mobutu).  When a leader like Jean Bertrand Aristide appeared on the scene, determined to change the equation imposed by the West, and follow up on what was squashed after 1804, the West finds a way to remove/kill him (Kimpa Vita, Kimbangu, Lumumba (DRC), Moumié (Cameroon), Sankara (Burkina Fasso), Muhtar Mohamed (Nigeria), to only mention a few.  

Firoze, quite rightly points out that both China and the West are engaged in maintaining the same system (e.g. working hard to increase the rate of profit).  What he does not mention and a topic which is creating a great deal of tension in some countries is China's practice of insisting to use its own workers.  Most African countries  suffer from extremely high unemployment rates.  If I were a skilled or unskilled worker in any of these countries, I would not like the practice, at all.  But, even here, the practice of the West is not much better, especially if one looks at skilled labor.  China itself is suffering from growing rates of unemployment as the gap between rich and poor in China gets deeper. 

Will the emergence of China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. trigger the badly needed awakening within the African leadership?  Issues like access to food, education and health for all have become a world problem in a way that it will become increasingly difficult if not impossible to resolve within the dominant mentality of capitalism whether Chinese or Western. 

Firoze's piece is very much welcome, but I also think that, given the situation in which humanity finds itself, important to pay attention to ideas coming from thinkers like Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, Lewis Ricardo Gordon, Alain Badiou, who have been thinking about emancipatory politics  beyond and away from capitalism and its accessory institutions.